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Was the German invasion of Russia more a war of colonization against the Slavs, or a war of elimination of the Jews?
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Jan 18, 2016 21:16
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It wasn't just Jews that were targets for The Nazis. Besides groups like homosexuals, the mentally/physically handicapped, etc., Slavs were the other large ethnic group Hitler and the Nazi Party designated for extermination. Hitler tended to blame the Slavs and Communists for "Germany's disgrace" in the same breath as Jews. It's hard to determine just how much of Generalplan Ost was motivated purely by Hitler's ethnic hatred versus a nihilistic desire for power, but either way, it was a sickening goal to work towards. Generalplan Ost, The Nazi plan to eradicate minimum numbers of Slavs to create Lebensraum, (literally "living room") for the German people, called to eliminate at least 50% of different groups of ethnics/nationals in Eastern Europe. This isn't even counting their desire to completely eradicate Poland of any ethnic non-Germans and basically just call it Germany. Overall, I'd say Jews were a small part of a reason to invade into Eastern Europe, the biggest reason being conquest of resources, with ethnic cleansing as a means of conquering and settling territories. Any time I hear someone say it's a shame the "Commies" won, I'm assuming they never read a single word of Generalplan Ost. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 18, 2016 21:27
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MikeCrotch posted:I can second Wages of Destruction, great book and surprisingly readable for such a potentially dry topic. I'm loving the Soviet realization that tanks only last 16 hours in combat so they're just making GBS threads out cheap T-34's
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Jan 18, 2016 22:55
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My Imaginary GF posted:Was the German invasion of Russia more a war of colonization against the Slavs, or a war of elimination of the Jews? Both. They saw Communism as an inherently Jewish creation but they also wanted to enslave the Slavs and "deport" the rest. Read up on Generaplan Ost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
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Jan 19, 2016 05:45
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Plan Z posted:You'd be surprised how many people claim "X SS Commander killed 40 American tanks without receiving a single shot!" When the only resource that claims it is the SS unit commander's diary or something. I believe it was the memoir where Gunter Grass came clean about what he'd done during the war, there's a great part where he describes the soldiers in the prison camp he was held endlessly refighting the battles they had participated in, describing them to others, saying things they could've done different, even building terrain models out of sand and dirt. These were the people whose memoirs shaped a lot of postwar opinions of how Reich forces fought the war, because we weren't about to trust some dirty commies.
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Jan 19, 2016 10:00
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And thanks for reminding me that trying to break my bad habit of repeating words sentence-to-sentence isn't going well.
Plan Z fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 10:44
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Plan Z posted:Any time I hear someone say it's a shame the "Commies" won, I'm assuming they never read a single word of Generalplan Ost. There are actually quite a few people who are so scared/dead set against communism that even that souds better than the communist Eastern Europe.
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Jan 23, 2016 13:06
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Fish of hemp posted:There are actually quite a few people who are so scared/dead set against communism that even that souds better than the communist Eastern Europe. Communism in Eastern Europe was kind of a lovely time, sure, but loving really? How in the hell was it worse than the mass genocide of nearly everyone living there? Especially in retrospect, I mean poo poo even communism itself lost the cultural war pretty goddamned hard.
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Jan 23, 2016 15:05
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DarklyDreaming posted:Was it The Wold Wars? Because I remember watching the first 5 minutes of that and when I saw that it opened with an origin story for Hitler's mustache I realized it was not for me It sounds like. I didn't exactly have high hopes for The World Wars, but I thought that they'd include WWI in things was a nice change of pace and potentially interesting, only to have it all fall apart both on the technical and historical levels. I mean the horrible staging and casual use of inappropriate props were wince-inducing (Japanese troops using MP40s during the China incident! Stuart tanks on the Western Front! That preposterous story about Hitler cutting his 'stache due to a gas attack!) but I could've gotten past them if the history was any good. It wasn't. Among the particularly egregious fallacies the series promoted, at least until I gave up in disgust so who knows if it got even worse, the worst was the heavy implication that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was, in fact, the USSR joining the Axis. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 16:54
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Thump! posted:Communism in Eastern Europe was kind of a lovely time, sure, but loving really? How in the hell was it worse than the mass genocide of nearly everyone living there? Official histories on the Eastern Front here were built largely with German accounts welded together by Cold War propaganda. I can understand where that type of bias can exist, but I'll always argue against it in the case of ethnic cleansing in the same way I'll speak against the crimes of the USSR. I had rarely read a lot of the more extreme stories of things like blocking detachments mowing down retreating units, order 227, weaponless charges etc. before Enemy at the Gates came out. I doubt it was entirely that movie's fault, but more of a lot of the media coinciding with the new usability of the internet that helped spread disinformation. I'm starting to think it was more of a matter of perspective that hadn't been examined. For example, after the Winter War, the USSR pretty much decided that if they were going to launch large offensives, it was going to be with the full compliment of equipment with a much greater force than what the enemy was defending with. To the Germans, this would seem like hell was raining down on them, and could end one of two ways 1) Soviets win. Germany is overwhelmed by a force with superior numbers and firepower. Since we German Soldiers are told that we are the best, we also believe it. This fuels the "USSR won because of numbers grinding against a superior-trained force." 2) Soviets lose. Attack fails for some reason or another. To the average German soldier, they see this as "they threw everything they had at us, and we won. It must be because we are so great." This basically fuels the same ending narrative as 1) Historians just quote these sorts of "analyses" until it becomes so diluted, you can't even pinpoint the origin and veracity of the claims, but due to the predominance of the stories, it becomes official anyway. It's not unique to this particular front, either. You can find these sorts of jumps to conclusions all throughout history, usually with some heavy racism thrown in as well. I am happy that things are getting better, anyway. At least to the point where I see more and more David Glantz being quoted, and Enemy at the Gates/Company of Heroes 2 stuff being widely lambasted.
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Jan 26, 2016 15:42
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So I heard at one point in my life that the Waffen SS were one of the founders of mondern phone tapping, does this have any validity to it? I don't know if it's bullshit or not and I can't find much anywhere about the idea of it happening.
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Feb 3, 2016 05:17
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LeoMarr posted:So I heard at one point in my life that the Waffen SS were one of the founders of mondern phone tapping, does this have any validity to it? I don't know if it's bullshit or not and I can't find much anywhere about the idea of it happening. I'd be surprised? I mean sure they're connected via the larger SS with the Gestapo/RSHA/every other state security agency and sure, those guys tapped the gently caress out of poo poo, but I don't think any of them really invented it and even if they did, how on earth would the Waffen-SS take direct credit for it? As for mastering that sort of thing in the 20th century, I think credit likely belongs to the Stasi.
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Feb 3, 2016 05:26
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I'd be surprised? I mean sure they're connected via the larger SS with the Gestapo/RSHA/every other state security agency and sure, those guys tapped the gently caress out of poo poo, but I don't think any of them really invented it and even if they did, how on earth would the Waffen-SS take direct credit for it? As for mastering that sort of thing in the 20th century, I think credit likely belongs to the Stasi. I mean it's quite possible if the Stasi was utilizing such technological espionage than Nazi Germany could have been utilizing it in the later months (Or years) of the war.
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Feb 3, 2016 05:58
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LeoMarr posted:So I heard at one point in my life that the Waffen SS were one of the founders of mondern phone tapping, does this have any validity to it? I don't know if it's bullshit or not and I can't find much anywhere about the idea of it happening. The Treasury Department used phonetapping to convict bootleggers during Prohibition, but I'm not sure how that differs with modern phonetapping.
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Feb 3, 2016 07:01
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Yeah, I'd have to hear the parameters of "modern" phonetapping, otherwise the claim ends up with stuff like this: https://imgur.com/gallery/iYRbA (may need to click on "load remaining images" to get the text) Nevermind they didn't invent half that stuff, but quite a few of the things listed were old Weimar programs given a new coat of paint. And don't get me started on his conflating of taxes with stealing the possessions of incarcerated Jews.
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Feb 3, 2016 11:26
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Phonetapping was used to great extent in WWI since radio nets were so primitive, especially at the start of the war. Tapping was so widespread that in 1916 the British Army had to uproot all of their telephone wiring and institute a completely new communication protocol since the Germans had basically compromised the telephones on the entire length of the front.
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Feb 3, 2016 14:56
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Should I avoid Antony Beevor's books? I've had multiple friends recommend them to me but on the same hand I've seen several rants about his writings being racist and SOURCES??.
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Feb 4, 2016 07:21
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That Jerk Steve posted:Should I avoid Antony Beevor's books? I've had multiple friends recommend them to me but on the same hand I've seen several rants about his writings being racist and SOURCES??. he's an evocative and skillful writer who manages to do in depth pop history that isn't too shallow or too bogged down in unit movements and orders of battle. as far as i'm aware most of the criticism against him comes from russian sources who accuse him of repeating neo-nazi exaggerations of russian atrocities so probably nothing to worry about unless you're a russian nationalist or something
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Feb 4, 2016 07:45
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I seem to recall criticism of his d-day book but I can't actually remember what is was so maybe I'm imagining it. Otoh I liked his book on the Spanish civil war, it seemed like a good overview of that clusterfuck.
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Feb 4, 2016 07:49
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That Jerk Steve posted:Should I avoid Antony Beevor's books? I've had multiple friends recommend them to me but on the same hand I've seen several rants about his writings being racist and SOURCES??. I'm a fan of both his Stalingrad and Berlin books, no idea if his other work is any good but on that basis I'd guess probably? MikeCrotch posted:Phonetapping was used to great extent in WWI since radio nets were so primitive, especially at the start of the war. Tapping was so widespread that in 1916 the British Army had to uproot all of their telephone wiring and institute a completely new communication protocol since the Germans had basically compromised the telephones on the entire length of the front. Hell I can go earlier than that. During the Civil War, both sides' engineers would, when the opportunity presented itself, tap each other's telegraphs by essentially just jamming a wire into the lines and hooking it to an earpiece. People have been pulling this poo poo for some time. Still not sure why LeoMarr heard it was the Waffen-SS, who I find an odd choice not because they were Nazis, but rather as they weren't especially part of the state intelligence apparatus as such (as opposed to the Gestapo/SD/Sipo/Abwehr/etc)
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Feb 4, 2016 14:41
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Popular Thug Drink posted:as far as i'm aware most of the criticism against him comes from russian sources who accuse him of repeating neo-nazi exaggerations of russian atrocities so probably nothing to worry about unless you're a russian nationalist or something 'Wiki" posted:In 2015, Russia's government called for banning Beevor's books, accusing him of Nazi sympathies. If the Russian government of 2015 is accusing you of being a Nazi you're more than likely doing something right.
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Feb 4, 2016 15:01
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Plan Z posted:Yeah, I'd have to hear the parameters of "modern" phonetapping, otherwise the claim ends up with stuff like this: The Zimmerman Telegraph from WW1 was intercepted by British agents tapping American undersea cables. So, yeah, lots of previous and high-profile examples.
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Feb 4, 2016 15:03
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Sorry I should have explained that better, By Modern Phonetapping I mean to a civilian populace en masse by a governmental body.
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Feb 4, 2016 17:06
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LeoMarr posted:Sorry I should have explained that better, By Modern Phonetapping I mean to a civilian populace en masse by a governmental body. Well, as long as we're paring it down, I think it's fairly safe to say that the Waffen SS were the first to wiretap a civilian population of primarily German descent that were currently living under a Nazi regime. But I could be wrong.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:27
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Eschers Basement posted:Well, as long as we're paring it down, I think it's fairly safe to say that the Waffen SS were the first to wiretap a civilian population of primarily German descent that were currently living under a Nazi regime. OK I get the joke here but this is starting to bug me more than a little: people do get that the Waffen-SS was the military adjunct of the larger SS and concentrated on, you know, actually fighting and not spying, right? Wiretapping civilians would likely have happened under the another organization. And honestly? Possibly not even then. Despite all the fear they engendered, the Gestapo and other Nazi police organizations were remarkable reactive and depended mostly on denunciations and civilian informers to do the heavy lifting for them.
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Feb 4, 2016 19:00
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Popular Thug Drink posted:he's an evocative and skillful writer who manages to do in depth pop history that isn't too shallow or too bogged down in unit movements and orders of battle. as far as i'm aware most of the criticism against him comes from russian sources who accuse him of repeating neo-nazi exaggerations of russian atrocities so probably nothing to worry about unless you're a russian nationalist or something The biggest criticism is of his estimates for the amount of rapes committed by Soviet troops against occupied areas (mainly focusing on Germans). I can't remember the details, but if I remember right, his book took the number of "Russian" children from one clinic in 1946, multiplied it by 10 (on an un-cited assertion that 90% of Soviet pregnancies would have been aborted), then multiplied by 5 (I think on the assertion that 1-in-5 women were raped). He then added extra numbers on top to try to account for rapes that didn't end in pregnancy or couldn't have ended in pregnancy. I saw no source for that final added number. So yeah, you can see how anyone would really debate the figures based purely on a statistic-forming basis. I'm not saying it discredits accusations of targeted sexual assault against occupied people, but the logic behind Beevor's case is a mess. His Stalingrad book was very well done, though. The criticism I've heard from his D-Day books were the inclusion of questionable stories and it being much less easy of a read, though I haven't read it at all.
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Feb 5, 2016 09:07
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So in WW2-related news, Japan now claims there was "no forceful coercion" of Korean "comfort women" in WW2: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201602020058 Due to a recent agreement with South Korea, Japan paid a few million in reparations and acknowledged the existence of comfort women. In return, Korea basically can't bring up comfort women in any sort of international dialogue. I'm guessing they had something like this planned. The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party is also sponsoring a study to re-evaluate war crime tribunals: http://atimes.com/2015/11/japan-ldp-to-set-up-panel-to-review-tokyo-war-crimes-verdicts/
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Feb 6, 2016 19:08
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Plan Z posted:So in WW2-related news, Japan now claims there was "no forceful coercion" of Korean "comfort women" in WW2: Seems like its a more complicated issue than either side portrays, like the stories of Jewish collaborators in ghettos and concentration camps. I'm sure there was no direct knowledge of coercion by Japanese officials; why would they need to know, when they could contract out to Korean headhunters to meet their recruitment quotas?
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Feb 6, 2016 19:16
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My Imaginary GF posted:Seems like its a more complicated issue than either side portrays, like the stories of Jewish collaborators in ghettos and concentration camps. The whole "Korean comfort women were all whores anyway so what's the big deal?" line has been pushed by the Japanese basically ever since the war, albeit inconsistently, and is ahistorical garbage believed only by the self interested and complete idiots.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:35
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Tens of millions of slaves, including Korean women, were distributed all over the empire through government agencies and supervised by the military, it's literally impossible for the Japanese to wash their hands over this with any amount of credibility.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:49
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Part of the issue as I understand it is that a lot of the low level 'recruitment' and coercion was done by Korean collaborators, and guess who ran the South Korean government after the war and runs it to this day? Pro-Japanese collaborators. So it's a very touchy political issue because the Korean right wing is actually partially culpable itself. Not to excuse Japan in any way though
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Feb 6, 2016 23:38
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icantfindaname posted:Part of the issue as I understand it is that a lot of the low level 'recruitment' and coercion was done by Korean collaborators, and guess who ran the South Korean government after the war and runs it to this day? Pro-Japanese collaborators. So it's a very touchy political issue because the Korean right wing is actually partially culpable itself. Not to excuse Japan in any way though  e: A bunch of SKers wanting to make money and teaming up with Japan does not equal running the government btw.
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Feb 7, 2016 00:16
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Effectronica posted:That's not a strategy. That's a set of operational goals. It's also not really correct. The Japanese planned to invade and hold the Aleutians and Midway. Yeah, US and Japanese naval follies become glaringly obvious at Leyte Gulf.
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Feb 7, 2016 00:40
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buttcoinbrony posted:
The postwar government was run by former collaborators. Park Chung-Hee was a lieutenant in the Japanese military, and much of the industrial apparatus of postwar SK (and NK) was inherited from the Japanese colonial state
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Feb 7, 2016 01:07
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icantfindaname posted:The postwar government was run by former collaborators. Park Chung-Hee was a lieutenant in the Japanese military, and much of the industrial apparatus of postwar SK (and NK) was inherited from the Japanese colonial state Fair enough, I knew about turning away from nazi poo poo when reconstituting West Germany, not sure why I didn't think it would happen with SK. Apologies! e: Oh I remember why I originally quoted that, it was the 'to this day' part. I was under the outsider impression that SK has been democratic since early 90s ish, is that not the case?
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Feb 7, 2016 01:34
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buttcoinbrony posted:Fair enough, I knew about turning away from nazi poo poo when reconstituting West Germany, not sure why I didn't think it would happen with SK. Apologies! It has free elections now yes, but the conservatives and the chaebols still have an enormous amount of power and Park Chung Hee's literal daughter is the current president of the country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Geun-hye
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Feb 7, 2016 01:39
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Regardless of the level of Korean collaboration, it's not like there isn't a ton of documentation about just how active a role the Japanese military played in forcing women/girls into prostitution. We know this because it was presented at the Tokyo war crimes trials, and if I remember right the Japanese courts themselves have acknowledged that evidences' existence as recently as a few years ago.
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Feb 7, 2016 02:39
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buttcoinbrony posted:
I think it was less opportunism, than it was a buncha SKers who identified, and were regarded, as Japanese.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:27
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icantfindaname posted:Part of the issue as I understand it is that a lot of the low level 'recruitment' and coercion was done by Korean collaborators, and guess who ran the South Korean government after the war and runs it to this day? Pro-Japanese collaborators. So it's a very touchy political issue because the Korean right wing is actually partially culpable itself. Not to excuse Japan in any way though It doesn't help that democracy only really stabilized itself during the 90s, and even today, Korean politics seem very "managed, for example, the Progressive Party recently being outlawed. Traditionally though North Korea being a basket-case has largely overshadowed what happens in the south. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 17:18
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icantfindaname posted:It has free elections now yes, but the conservatives and the chaebols still have an enormous amount of power and Park Chung Hee's literal daughter is the current president of the country Fair enough, I thought they were beyond the strongman days, they just found a more palatable strong(wo)man.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:50
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