Carville: Wake up Democrats; you could lose

[Bakustra]

Also, it's important to remember that the fascist states were initially supported by the western democracies as a bulwark against communism. It's pointlessly difficult to untangle all the links between the various causes of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but what can be said is that it was hardly the ideal solution and to jump to the idea of a "just war" renders it difficult to consider less violent solutions. In addition, WWII is so far away from the majority of wars that using it to justify things is dishonest. It's what leads us to say that Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega were new Hitlers, what lead us to declare that fighting to oppress the people of Viet Nam under a religiously intolerant, torturing and murderous dictatorship was fighting for freedom... it leads us down very bad roads to think about war primarily in the context of WWII, so very Zoroastrian in its nature.

I'm against all death. Stopping America's evil is simply step two toward a greater world.

So how do you propose to end all death? This sounds like the schism that sparked off the civil war in the Total Annihilation-verse.

There is a difference between dying of old age and getting shot by a soldier. One is a problem that may be impossible to solve, the other is a quite solvable problem.

Shep, don't bother, this is like arguing with a brick wall. *snip for length*

Your philosophy has been put into practice for less than a century. In that time frame it has killed millions needlessly and impoverished millions more needlessly. It has poisoned American thought and discourse in the public sphere, and the minds of millions of Americans. Your philosophy has failed.

[Ralin]

I think I got stuck in a parallel universe! I didn't realize that India is still part of the British Empire in this reality.

So, you do realize that like a million people died during the Parition of India, right?

[PeZook]

I think I got stuck in a parallel universe! I didn't realize that India is still part of the British Empire in this reality. Let me guess... Egypt is still ruled by Mubarak here too, isn't it?

You're not seriously suggesting the British occupation of India was remotely similar to what the Germans did in Eastern Europe...

Oh wait, you are:

Now, you might say "they'd all just be slaughtered", but let's play the numbers game. In real life, what, some 35,000,000 were dead in Europe? That's an awful lot of protesters to martyr to beat that number.

Are you even aware how things looked on the Eastern Front? FUCK YES the protesters would simply be slaughtered ; That's what the Germans were doing from day one of the occupation! They were shooting hundreds of people in retaliation for murder done by petty criminals, for fuck's sake. They cut down food rations for Warsaw to starvation levels literally on the second day of the occupation. They immediately arrested and disappeared any university professors and teachers they could find. They would kidnap dozens of people off the street to be shipped off to camps.

They literally wanted to murder every single Slav.

Peaceful resistance would've simply made it easier ; Oh, you silly Poles are staging a demonstration on the street? Send in the SS to arrest everyone. Such a conveneint gathering of the opposition!

You do know that out of the 35 million dead Russians, 10 million were military deaths which under your plan would be mostly avoided ; But 15 million were civilians, most of whom did nothing to resist - that death toll would only rise without the thereat of the Red Army haging above the Wehrmacht's head. The Einzatsgruppen would simply roll into villages and towns and murder everyone. That's 15 million dead civilians within three years ; After ten years of unopposed occupation, there'd hardly be a en ethnic Russian left alive. No, your plan would almost certainly now have worked to stop the Holocaust, because the Holocaust wasn't mere repression or injustice. It took Ghandi thirty years for his policies to work. If everyone just stood by and simply encouraged the German opposition very strongly, by the time it would've finally worked, there'd be noone left alive in Poland and Russia.

[B5B7]

Harry Turtledove wrote an interesting alt history short story about what if Nazis met Gandhi - it doesn't end well. Details Here

[Bakustra]

On the contrary, however, the policies of retribution encouraged or overlooked by the Allies prolonged the war. That is the conclusion of the US SBS concerning the effects of strategic bombing on German morale, and the fear of Soviet retribution almost certainly encouraged German troops to fight as hard as they could to avoid capture and defeat.

So there is a major alternative that could have been done- taking the high road and abandoning strategic bombing, which was largely ineffectual on actual economic damage and only hardened German resistance on the American/British side, and on the Soviet side declaring a policy of humane treatment of prisoners and civilians and attempting to commit to that wherever possible.

There actually were easily-seen alternatives to the war as fought even if the leadership had no chance in hell of ever fighting the war that way. But that's precisely why we shouldn't idealize WWII as some sort of moral ideal- because it was so very far from that ideal on the "good" side.

[PeZook]

It wasn't a very clean war, but it's the closest war ever got to being just, simply because of the sheer scale of the massacre enacted by the Germans. Of corse it could be fought better, mistakes were made, bloodlust clouded judgement amongst the Allies, two million German women were sexually abused during the Soviet occupation of Germany etc.

But the reality of this was that the entire population of eastern europe was the stake here. And it's not one of those murky ideas that are trotted out to justify bombing Iran, the Germans not only said they wanted to kill everyone east of them, they actually went ahead and tried to do just that.

I suppose though that "my enemy is vile and vicious" does not excuse crimes against humanity, and I agree with that. I just don't agree "don't fight a war, smother the murderous psychopaths with strong words and civil disobedience!" is actually a sensible choice once said psychopaths start their rampage.

[Bakustra]

Well to be fair, Gandhi wasn't an absolute pacifist either; he advocated that people who weren't psychologically willing to become satyagrahis take up arms and actively resist the British through force.

[Simon_Jester]

In addition, WWII is so far away from the majority of wars that using it to justify things is dishonest. It's what leads us to say that Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega were new Hitlers, what lead us to declare that fighting to oppress the people of Viet Nam under a religiously intolerant, torturing and murderous dictatorship was fighting for freedom... it leads us down very bad roads to think about war primarily in the context of WWII, so very Zoroastrian in its nature.

I don't actually disagree with this- but if one's theory of war turns into gibberish when confronted with the Second World War, and one doesn't even notice the problem and just starts blathering even faster, that's not a good sign.

As I said, it's like talking to a wall. You won't learn anything, it won't learn anything, you won't be convinced of anything and it can't be convinced of anything.

Shep, don't bother, this is like arguing with a brick wall. *snip for length*

Your philosophy has been put into practice for less than a century. In that time frame it has killed millions needlessly and impoverished millions more needlessly. It has poisoned American thought and discourse in the public sphere, and the minds of millions of Americans. Your philosophy has failed.

I think you don't even know what my philosophy is, I know you didn't ask, and I suspect you don't care. If you want to talk to me about it anyway, I find myself uninterested in the idea of having that conversation.

[Mr Bean]

I'm simply saying nonviolent resistance does work in that post. If you're saying it is stupid to say it worked in situation X so it works everywhere, I'll respond: it is at least equally stupid to say it wouldn't work here, so we shouldn't even be having a conversation about it.

You CAN see the difference between two groups can't you D13? I mean there is a significant plant in the whole 40s era political parties of the day

Meet the British
We want to rule over you
We want your natural resources
Our stated goal is to use you to help us ship your natural resources back to Jolly old England
We'd also like Taxes, Tribute and a hearty thank you for us civilizing you

Meet the Nazis
We want your natural resources
We want to exterminate your race because your inferior to us

Now do you see the key sticking point about why non-violent resistance is a complete and utter waste of time when dealing with NAZIS
So please explain to me when your being shipped to Belzec or Sobibor where exactly non-violent resistance would strike a cord. Keep in mind your being forced out of your home(If you refuse you will be carried or shot on the spot) with help of what's left of the local authorities. When you arrive at your destination if you survive that long you will either be put to work on rations sufficient to cause you to starve to death in six months or you will simply be killed. Refuse you work and you will be killed, try and escape and you will be killed.

Now where exactly does Non-violent resistance fit in to your goals of stopping the extermination of yourself and your people. Show me your project plan D13.

[Grumman]

By and large, they weren't psychopaths, at least not clinically. That's really the worst part.... the holocaust was perpetuated by regular people, just like us.

Before you claim they are like "us", perhaps you should first establish that they are like you. Would you, personally, do the sort of things the Nazis did during the Holocaust?

[MKSheppard]

Are you even aware how things looked on the Eastern Front? FUCK YES the protesters would simply be slaughtered ; That's what the Germans were doing from day one of the occupation! They were shooting hundreds of people in retaliation for murder done by petty criminals, for fuck's sake. They cut down food rations for Warsaw to starvation levels literally on the second day of the occupation. They immediately arrested and disappeared any university professors and teachers they could find. They would kidnap dozens of people off the street to be shipped off to camps.

They literally wanted to murder every single Slav.

Peaceful resistance would've simply made it easier ; Oh, you silly Poles are staging a demonstration on the street? Send in the SS to arrest everyone. Such a conveneint gathering of the opposition!

Speaking of that....Masters of Death by Richard Rhodes has this passage revelant to the discussion:

During the first weeks after the invasion, while the Wehrmacht still controlled the occupied areas, a historian of the Polish experience summarizes, “531 towns and villages were burned; the provinces of Lodz and Warsaw suffered the heaviest losses. Various branches of the army and police [i.e., Himmler's legions] carried out 714 [mass] executions, which took the lives of 16,376 people, most of whom were Polish Christians. The Wehrmacht committed approximately 60 percent of these crimes, with the police responsible for the remainder.” The historian cites an Englishwoman's eyewitness account of executions in the Polish town of Bydgoszcz:

The first victims of the campaign were a number of Boy Scouts, from twelve to sixteen years of age, who were set up in the marketplace against a wall and shot. No reason was given. A devoted priest who rushed to administer the Last Sacrament was shot too. He received five wounds. A Pole said afterwards that the sight of those children lying dead was the most piteous of all the horrors he saw. That week the murders continued. Thirty-four of the leading tradespeople and merchants of the town were shot, and many other leading citizens. The square was surrounded by troops with machine-guns.

Three weeks after invading Poland, the Wehrmacht washed its hands of further responsibility for the decapitation, leaving the field to the specialists of the SS.

[Junghalli]

Look at all the Americans who think torture and other dodgy stuff of terrorists/suspected terrorists is OK because IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE BOMB JACK BAUER and they're our enemies and hate our freedom so fuck them.

Make sure the popular image of the target group is unsympathetic and scary and convince people that "hard things" are "necessary" to protect our way of life/all that is good and pure/etc. and I wouldn't be at all shocked if you could get a lot of people to participate in all sorts of terrible stuff. Actually from what I hear this is pretty much the technique the Nazis used: the Jews are evil predatory enemies out to destroy all that is good in German/European society and harsh measures are necessary to stop them.

[Aasharu]

“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” - Hermann Goering

[PeZook]

I'm simply saying nonviolent resistance does work in that post. If you're saying it is stupid to say it worked in situation X so it works everywhere, I'll respond: it is at least equally stupid to say it wouldn't work here, so we shouldn't even be having a conversation about it.

Could you clarify what you mean? I have no idea, and I don't want to strawman.

Even if it is true that acting like decent human beings wouldn't have worked faced with Nazi ideology, that doesn't legitmize Simon_Jester's general disillusionment (nor does discarding a concept because he doesn't like the messenger).

It's absolutely certain it wouldn't have worked against the Nazis, at least for the Poles and Russians. Did you know civil disobedience and peaceful resistance were actually the first organized operations conducted in occupied Warsaw?

Yes ; In response to Germans executing 107 (!!!) people as retaliation for the murder of two of their NCOs (by known criminals who had nothing to do with organized resistance), an organization called the Polish People's Independence Action began defacing announcements with insulting stickers ; In January 1940 it was destroyed (none of the arrestees save one survived incarceration), and in its place another group was created, called the "Small Sabotage Group 'Wawer'". It was composed of boy scouts and other young volunteers, and their operations included tearing down and defacing propaganda posters, breaking windows of photographers doing business with the occupier, distributing forbidden press, tear gas attacks against cinemas and German-only cafes and restaurants, painting propaganda grafitti on walls, promoting work slowdowns, etc.

Every single one of these activities were punishable by summary execution by the occupiers. The first summary executions for tearing down German posters began in November 1939.

The Germans literally didn't care they were executing teenagers for defacing walls. Small sabotage had a morale impact on the occupied populace, but zero effect on the occupational authorities and their policies.

Interestingly enough, the Germans only eased their policies after the resistance outright murdered Frantz Kutschera, a particularly heavy-handed SS general who also happened to take extreme measures to hide his identity and make an assassination attempt impossible.

By and large, they weren't psychopaths, at least not clinically. That's really the worst part.... the holocaust was perpetuated by regular people, just like us.

Clinical psychopaths or not, once the rampage started, it would continue until forcefully stopped.

[PeZook]

So please explain to me when your being shipped to Belzec or Sobibor where exactly non-violent resistance would strike a cord. Keep in mind your being forced out of your home(If you refuse you will be carried or shot on the spot) with help of what's left of the local authorities. When you arrive at your destination if you survive that long you will either be put to work on rations sufficient to cause you to starve to death in six months or you will simply be killed. Refuse you work and you will be killed, try and escape and you will be killed.

For most of the people living in occupied Poland, execution was way off. However, from day 1 you'd be starving and scrounging for food, since the Germans set food rations for occupied Warsaw at IIRC 600 calories or so for adults and half that for children ; The city didn't starve only thanks to thousands of small-time smuggles who'd ship food in from the countryside.

From a certain point, you would also face random mass arrests (usually to get hostages who could be shot if any German soldier or collaborator was killed or harmed for any reason) every time you left the house. If you lived in the countryside, German troops could roll in at any time, and either outright murder everybody (a favorite Wehrmacht passtime in Russia) regardless of any offences, or just kill off the men if they found a single weapon, radio or propaganda press. If a farmer did something like hiding an unregistered cow, he could be shot, or just arrested and tortured for the heck of it.

And nobody fucking cared. The occupational authorities would offhandedly discuss between themselves best ways to kill off the next generation via starvation, and how to prevent the next generation of intelligentsia from arising (remember what I wrote about teachers? Teaching secret classes in Polish history or literature was punishable by death)

Peaceful resistance in such an environment was merely a means to make everything easier on the occupier ; If Germans could move across the countryside at will, they'd have a much easier time of moving arrestees about, sending around detachments to patrol for food smugglers, shipping prisoners for interrogation, etc.

Because they had to take measures to prevent partisan attacks, however, they couldn't do their mass murder thing remotely as efficiently (because, say, a two-man patrol riding around side roads around Warsaw looking for food smugglers was likely to never come back, they had to have heavy guard around important structures...)

[Junghalli]

On the other hand sounds like nonviolent resistance from the Germans could have been pretty effective.

The Nazi state, like pretty much every state, ultimately relied on people doing what they were told to do. Hitler couldn't have done what he did without broad popular obedience (and support). Just saying.

Isn't part of nonviolence sort of the realization that direct force is actually a really inefficient and shitty means of control so often you can massively inconvenience if not destroy oppressive regimes just by calling their bluff, refusing to obey their "soft" power of ideological rationalization and threat of force, and making them actually use force? That's sort of the impression I have. I seem to remember Ghandi saying something about filling up the jails...

[MKSheppard]

On the other hand sounds like nonviolent resistance from the Germans could have been pretty effective

Been done. Executed for their trouble. The White Rose

Achieved nothing of practical use except being martyrs to their cause.

They could have done more if they'd kept their mouths shut and quietly sheltered enemies of the state, such as Jews, Communists, etc. Instead, they went all raging intellectualoid and got killed for their troubles.

Sure, they got memoralized; in the same way that the random Filipino farmer who refused to kneel before a portrait of the Emperor and got his head cut off by a samurai sword got memoralized in bronze -- "here marks the spot where blah blah bravely stood up to the Japanese invader and paid for it with his life."

...meanwhile the actions of people like Shroom's family who pretended to go along with the occupation and secretly fed food and information to groups hiding out in the jungle went unmemoralized....

[Junghalli]

Well, of course, "refuse to obey the orders of the rulers" requires a certain critical mass to be effective, which is not necessarily achieved. Just like violent opposition requires a certain critical mass to be effective, which is not necessarily achieved.

Maybe if the culture was less receptive to fascist memes less people would have gone with the program, and a guy like Hitler wouldn't have been able to do the damage he did.

[PeZook]

You're basically right - but there is one large problem - being in charge of the Soviet Union, how do you ensure a popular revolution happens in Germany before everyone in your country is dead?

These sorts of things aren't guaranteed to happen, and more to the point, take a long freakin' time. It's literally not an option for a country that's in the midst of being invaded and genocided. Besides, how the hell do you expect your own people to react to your immediate and unconditional surrender without a fight in the name of a peaceful resolution of the conflict?

[Junghalli]

Personally I'm less advocating strict pacifism in the face of Nazis and more questioning the framing.

Yeah, strict nonviolence looks pretty dubious if you're in charge of the USSR as of the beginning of the Nazi invasion, but that situation existing was not some inexplicable act of god that sprang spontaneously from Hitler's evil hypnotoad powers, human culture and decisions set the stage for it to exist. You can use Nazis to critique strict pacifism but on the other hand maybe if the world was run more pacifistically they wouldn't have existed or been able to get that much power in the first place?

Leaving aside the pretty much cliche by now that it might never have existed if WWI had ended differently, consider: would Nazism have been as successful or extreme as it was in a culture that hadn't been made fertile for that kind of thinking by centuries of racism and militarism?

[Simon_Jester]

This ties back to that Plan A/Plan B thing I was talking about.

The pacifist Plan A is "if we live in a peaceful world, people won't be belligerent and aggressive in the future."

Plan B is... a bit lacking, if you try to use it as a general strategy instead of just 'avoid wars when you can,' which is always good advice anyway even if you're not a pacifist.

Since we can't take the world apart and put it back together as having no use for armies, when politics and policy merge, the people who have a plan that works in light of real conditions at the time the plan was made... they usually win amy contests.

[Akhlut]

By and large, they weren't psychopaths, at least not clinically. That's really the worst part.... the holocaust was perpetuated by regular people, just like us.

Before you claim they are like "us", perhaps you should first establish that they are like you. Would you, personally, do the sort of things the Nazis did during the Holocaust?

Have you heard of the Stanford prison experiment?

Professor Philip Zimbardo got funding from the US Office of Naval Research to see why there was conflict between guards and prisoners. Zimbardo got 24 male students and sorted them randomly as guards and prisoners.

The experiment stopped after six days because the "guards" started to engage in psychological and physical torture of the "inmates."

And that was just from a roleplaying experiment after SIX DAYS.

Or, how about the Milgram experiment, where Professor Milgram had subjects act in the role as a teacher who punished their students for getting answers wrong via electrical shocks (the "students" were in another room, out of sight, but the "teachers" heard them through speakers). Oh, and "students" (really actors used for the study) all had heart conditions. The "teachers" were supervised and if they did not want to give electrical shocks to the "student" (who started to wail in pain, bang on the walls, and tell the "teachers" about their heart condition), then the experimenter would tell them to continue on as it was necessary for the experiment to continue. This continued until either the "teacher" stopped due to moral considerations or the "learner" received 3 450-volt shocks and stopped screaming in agony and hitting the walls.

In US experiments, some 60% of people continued.


And you mean to tell me that putting a bunch of young men into the military and repeatedly telling them they're the master race and that Jews and Slavs are subhuman filth to be exterminated wouldn't perhaps have the result of turning people into willing murderers and purveyors of genocide?

[Thanas]

Don't forget the copius amounts of alcohol and amphetamines handed out to them, which no doubt lowered inhibitions. With the "right" training, any human can be molded into anything.

[Akhlut]

Don't forget the copius amounts of alcohol and amphetamines handed out to them, which no doubt lowered inhibitions. With the "right" training, any human can be molded into anything.

Ah, yes, it is easy to forget how drugged up the Nazi war machine really was.

So, in the end, it is rather stupid to say "no, I would never do anything like that" when one isn't subjected to anything remotely similar.

[Thanas]

Don't forget the copius amounts of alcohol and amphetamines handed out to them, which no doubt lowered inhibitions. With the "right" training, any human can be molded into anything.

Ah, yes, it is easy to forget how drugged up the Nazi war machine really was.

Yeah. Pills before every assault, on watch and of course just when you felt like it....and to add to that the German war machine singlehandedly saving the french wine market...heck with 2 liters a day of wine I'd probably be too blazed to consider anything as well.