Custer and Indian Wars, an antiheroic genocide?

Glassfan said:
Then we are agreed there was no explicit national policy of genocide. There were indeed policies that, ex post facto, might be interpreted as implicit policy.
Click to expand...

I think they could have been interpreted ex ante that way as well. Plus, determining something ex post isn't necessarily bad. It's hard to determine motivations ahead of time (id est, this isn't an example of ex hoc ergo propter hoc). I do agree with you that it's an implicit national policy more than an explicit one, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a national policy.
 
Glassfan said:
Then we are agreed there was no explicit national policy of genocide. There were indeed policies that, ex post facto, might be interpreted as implicit policy.
Click to expand...
I totally agree. I mean, where's the orders from the Fuhrer calling for the extermination of the Jews? It was wartime, and the Jews were imprisoned, and typhus and stuff got them. The Jews even had a pool and were allowed to frolic freely before the Allied terror-flyers disrupted the food supply and all the Jews died. It was tragic but it was them or our soldiers. So sad. :(

 
Masada said:
<pic>
Click to expand...

Oh. Did the US have the equivalent of Theresienstadt? Where native Americans could play the cello and all that.

One of those reservations (aka ghettos) might have been quite cosy.
 
Masada said:
I totally agree. I mean, where's the orders from the Fuhrer calling for the extermination of the Jews?
Click to expand...

Yes, the classic argument in Holocaust Denial. In fact there doesn't appear to be such a direct order from the Führer, though he made his intentions clear in Mein Kampf and countless speeches and meetings. It nonetheless became the official policy of Nazi Germany as ultimately defined by the Wannsee Protocals. Most action orders actually came from Himmler and Heydrich following Hitler's wishes...

Reich Chancellery meeting of 12 December 1941



Spoiler :
By 1943, the wholesale extermination of European Jewry had begun as clearly outlined in two of Himmler's speeches made to the Nazi Party leadership at Posen on October 4, 1943:

I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It's one of those things that is easily said: 'The Jewish people are being exterminated', says every party member, 'this is very obvious, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it, hah, a small matter.' [...] But of all those who talk this way, none had observed it, none had endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when 500 lie there or when 1,000 are lined up. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person - with exceptions due to human weaknesses - had made us tough. This is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned. [...] We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us


Wannsee Conference


Spoiler :

Facsimiles of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference and Eichmann's list, presented under glass at the Wannsee Conference House Memorial

I'm not denying that the American Indians were largely eliminated from the North American continent by the action of Europeans. But a claim was made above that genocide was a deliberate, explicit policy and it wasn't. I was merely challenging an exaggeration.

If this debate continues, I'll give my opinion on what really happened. I hesitate to do so here because it is, after all, just my opinion.
 
Neither of those things prove the Fuhrer knew about the Holocaust and what "proof" we have of the Fuhrers complicity is hearsay.

Glassfan said:
I'm not denying that the American Indians were largely eliminated from the North American continent by the action of Europeans. But a claim was made above that genocide was a deliberate, explicit policy and it wasn't. I was merely challenging an exaggeration.
Click to expand...

Your defense was:

Glassfan said:
None of these acts explicitly call for the extermination of the Indians. "...that in practice means assimilated or exterminated" - is your inference, possibly implicit policy. You do know what the word explicit means, right?
Click to expand...

But here's what the internationally accepted definition of genocide says:

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide said:
...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Click to expand...

In other words, extermination doesn't determine whether or not something is genocidal. It's just what most people happen to think genocide is.
 
If you require a Hitler order for the Holocaust, sure. But High officials and Bureaus of the Third Reich committed the Holocaust and that's documented. There's a paper trail, a smoking gun.

As for genocide, yes, I'm going with the generally accepted definition (extermination of a people) rather than diplomatic-speak.
 
I wonder if Glassfan realises that, by his reasoning, the Nazis were not engaged in the genocide of European Jewry until 1943. Until there was a document outlining such a scheme, they'd simply been killing Jews for poops and giggles.
 
What the Nazis really had was intent. The Americans did not.
 
The Americans had buckets of intent. United States history is an extended demonstration that genocide works, so long as you can get away with it. Sea to shining sea didn't leave much room for the wild Indian. Still doesn't, as anybody on a reservation will be happy to tell you.

Americans have forgotten that they had this intent, have convinced themselves that it was all just a big misunderstanding, but, well, Masada already provided the analogy for that one.
 
Glassfan said:
As for genocide, yes, I'm going with the generally accepted definition (extermination of a people) rather than diplomatic-speak.
Click to expand...
 
Traitorfish said:
I wonder if Glassfan realises that, by his reasoning, the Nazis were not engaged in the genocide of European Jewry until 1943. Until there was a document outlining such a scheme, they'd simply been killing Jews for poops and giggles.
Click to expand...

What do you suppose Hedrich's orders to the Einsatzgruppen back in the 1939 invasion of Poland would have been?

"Round up all Jews and... (employ strong language?)"
 
But you can't prove that was explicit national policy, ergo Hitler Did Nothing Wrong*.




*Until 1943, maybe.
 
Glassfan said:
"Round up all Jews and... (employ strong language?)"
Click to expand...
Of course he rounded up the Jews, the Jews were undermining the Reich. But what happened, if anything happened, was an accident. :(

Tolni said:
Except invading Russia, but that's a different topic for a different day.
Click to expand...
People welcomed the glorious German soldiers as liberators from the Judeo-Bosheviks.

Spoiler :
 
Until 10 seconds later, when they realised that, surprise, the Germans aren't exactly different from the Russians..
 
Masada said:
Neither of those things prove the Fuhrer knew about the Holocaust and what "proof" we have of the Fuhrers complicity is hearsay.
Click to expand...
It's true that no proof of his complicity has been forthcoming, nevertheless it seems plain that his intentions towards the Jews were extremely malevolent.

There's the 5 times he expressly stated in public that he was going to utterly destroy the Jews of Europe.

And...
Hitler said:
Once I am in power , my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews . As soon as I have the power to do so , I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich , for example - as many as traffic allows . Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately , and they will remain hanging until they stink , they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit . As soon as they have been untied , the next batch will be strung up , and so on down the line , until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated . Other cities will follow suit ,precisely in this fashion , until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews ` .
Click to expand...
Still, this is only yahoo: it may be made up.

Then there's Mein Kampf.

And since the Nazi system was set up so that people interested in advancement had only to second-guess what the great leader wanted, the idea that Hitler didn't want the express extermination of the Jews and didn't know about it when it started in earnest, might seem to be stretching credibility past breaking point.
-------------------

As for the US not deliberately trying to spread disease:

That small pox blanket thing is just a myth apparently. And even then it wasn't the US what done it. But the British. And the man what done it, never done it at all.

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/the-smallpox-infected-blankets/

So, I think that's cleared up.
 
That's a ferret, no?

So, he could be either ferreting stuff away*, or ferreting stuff out.

edit: no, that's an error, it should be squirrelling stuff away.

(Nah, I'm being silly. And I know it.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

King Phaedron
Indian Graveyard and Casino - Random Trade Routes and Pillaging
Replies
2
Views
324
Bonyduck Campersang
Bonyduck Campersang
Lexicus
  • Locked
Gaza Genocide News Thread
Replies
2
Views
242
lymond
lymond
R
v92 Indian America
Replies
2
Views
501
RyoFood
R
Thorvald of Lym
Sarcasmitron on Ukraine
Replies
9
Views
808
PPQ_Purple
PPQ_Purple
Uncle Paul
Phantom Piper in the Sky
Replies
0
Views
763
Uncle Paul
Uncle Paul
Top Bottom