Beyond the surface of history myths

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Some of the most pervasive myths concern religion. Many people still believe that the church taught that the earth is flat in the Middle Ages; that the church tried to suppress science in early modern times, by persecuting heliocentrists; that the church burned millions of witches in the Middle Ages; that Christianity as we know it is an invention of the emperor Constantine, who suppressed lots of books out of the New Testament that told the truth about Jesus; etc etc etc. The reason people believe such myths today is similar to the reason they believe the ones mentioned in the OP: it is useful (in a broad sense of the word) for them to do so, because they confirm their own prejudices.

That's because most of those "myths" are true.

Heliocentrists were persecuted, such as Galileo Galilei, and Giordano Bruno. Science was suppressed whenever it challenged theological issues, even by hinting. Many witches were burned but not millions. Christianity wasn't invented by Constantine, but it was his sponsorship of the Council of Nicaea that steered it towards orthodoxy. Until then, there were many schools of Christianity. The Empire's support of one school over others ultimately meant that those others gradually became extinct.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Well, the Emancipation Proclamation applied to areas of the Confederacy as they came under Union occupation. Plus, I think it actually did exclude the slaveholding states that had stayed in the Union.

 

[Plotinus]

That's because most of those "myths" are true.

Heliocentrists were persecuted, such as Galileo Galilei, and Giordano Bruno. Science was suppressed whenever it challenged theological issues, even by hinting. Many witches were burned but not millions. Christianity wasn't invented by Constantine, but it was his sponsorship of the Council of Nicaea that steered it towards orthodoxy. Until then, there were many schools of Christianity. The Empire's support of one school over others ultimately meant that those others gradually became extinct.

I fear you're still in the thrall of the myths... Heliocentrists weren't persecuted, at least not for being heliocentrists. Galileo got into trouble because he defied a papal injunction not to insist that he could prove heliocentrism. Bruno was persecuted for his theological views, not his scientific ones. Far from suppressing science during this period, the Catholic Church actively promoted it: Catholic thought has always stressed the fundamental agreement of faith and reason. Approximately 35,000 "witches" are now thought to have perished in the early modern persecutions, which is certainly a lot, but you need to multiply that by a hundred to get millions (saying that millions of people died in the witch hunts is like saying that hundreds of millions of people died in the Holocaust). And although there were indeed many versions of Christianity both before and after Nicaea, there was also a mainstream "orthodoxy" long before Constantine ever showed up. Irenaeus and Tertullian both provided the theory behind it a century and a half before Nicaea. Plus, of course, Arianism (the only rival "version" of Christianity condemned at Nicaea) not only survived the council but was subsequently promoted by Constantine and his heirs, and is still going strong today.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Well, "concentration camp" as the British used the term would turn out to be something quite different from the euphemistically-dubbed German version.

Actually this is another myth. First of all, by the time Hitler was calling for the creation of concentration camps (1921) the term had already entered into purjoritive meaning. While certainly not nearly as bad as we have seen in Germany, "concentration camps" did not sound like a harmless euphemism in the 20s and 30s. What the Spanish used in Cuba and the English used in the Boer War were still atrocious: masses of people forced into tiny areas without water or health facilities. They had been established by Lenin during the Russian Civil war (these would later become the Gulag) and this was well known. Even the comparitive havens of the Concentration Camps of the Irish Civil war were clear tools of oppresion, so the term "Concentration Camp" was hardly a euphemism, as people still got the general idea.

That said, what was a highly specific term in the Nazi terror apperatus has since become applied far too broadly to different camps with different purposes. One of the hardest things Holocaust Deniers have trouble coming up with an excuse for is that the Nazis didn't call Auschwitz a concentration camp, they called it an extermination camp (Vernichtungslage).

Concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) as they were established in the early thirties were exactly what you would expect from the term. Political Prisoners and other undiserables were placed into large camps, with attrocious conditions. While I'm not attempting to whitewash them, there was a very large gap in purpose. Concentration camps were created to seperate people from society, not outright destroy them, that idea came much later. Comparitively, in Dachau concentration camp, built in March of 1933, 33,000 prisoners died, mostly from disease and malnutrition, while in Auschwitz 1.1-1.6 million people died mostly from specifically designed Gas Chambers.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Well, I know that any version of concentracion camps were horrible, but since the term is now used almost exclusively to describe Nazi extermination camps it is usually misleading to refer to the Boer or other versions without clarification.

 

[Plotinus]

I thought that it is usual to distinguish between "concentration camps" (used to intern people) and "extermination camps" (used specifically to kill people). Certainly I was taught to distinguish between them in the case of Nazi Germany. Obviously there's some crossover of function, in that they might have concentration camps with such appalling conditions that many people would die, and this might have been intended or at least hoped for, but there's obviously a difference between that and a camp where people are brought simply to be murdered.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I thought that it is usual to distinguish between "concentration camps" (used to intern people) and "extermination camps" (used specifically to kill people). Certainly I was taught to distinguish between them in the case of Nazi Germany. Obviously there's some crossover of function, in that they might have concentration camps with such appalling conditions that many people would die, and this might have been intended or at least hoped for, but there's obviously a difference between that and a camp where people are brought simply to be murdered.

Its clearly distinguished in academic circles, but in common usage, Concentration Camp has come to mean the latter. Gas Chambers are the first thing that springs to mind when people hear concentration camps. Its another example of my biggest complaint about the second world war, is that it has an immense hold on people's conciousness these days, even among people without any interest in History, yet people for the most part have remarkably little understanding of the subject.

Well, I know that any version of concentracion camps were horrible, but since the term is now used almost exclusively to describe Nazi extermination camps it is usually misleading to refer to the Boer or other versions without clarification.

Well yes, but my point is that the actuall concentration camps the Nazis did have, like Dachau, are actually quite similar to what was used in the Boer War, both in purpose and in practice.

 

[Evie]

Another historical myth...

It's Alexandre Dumas' fault that some people think of Richelieu as a vilainous enemy of France.

(Actually, it's the fault of tv/movie producers trying to simplify the story ; the 1993 Disney adaptation being a particularly guilty party.).

 

[Conroe]

Well yes, but my point is that the actuall concentration camps the Nazis did have, like Dachau, are actually quite similar to what was used in the Boer War, both in purpose and in practice.

Having actually walked through Dachau, having seen the ovens, having seen just a tiny glimpse at the "living" conditions in this camp, I find it difficult to believe such a benign picture can be painted of this place. Just because Dachau wasn't designed and built to be a death camp, solely to exterminate the Jewish population, should in no way minimize the attrocities that were committed there. The animals were treated better than the prisoners in this camp! Make no mistake about it, those interred at Dachau were never expected to leave the camp alive.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Having actually walked through Dachau, having seen the ovens, having seen just a tiny glimpse at the "living" conditions in this camp, I find it difficult to believe such a benign picture can be painted of this place. Just because Dachau wasn't designed and built to be a death camp, solely to exterminate the Jewish population, should in no way minimize the attrocities that were committed there. The animals were treated better than the prisoners in this camp! Make no mistake about it, those interred at Dachau were never expected to leave the camp alive.

I'm not minimizing it in anyway. I repeatedly said that the conditions in Dachau were attrocious. But they we're an entirely different tool in the Nazi Terror apperatus then the Annihilation camps, as the numbers plainly show. Outrage is not something you base historical terminology and/or facts on.

 

[Conroe]

I'm not minimizing it in anyway. I repeatedly said that the conditions in Dachau were attrocious. But they we're an entirely different tool in the Nazi Terror apperatus then the Annihilation camps, as the numbers plainly show. Outrage is not something you base historical terminology and/or facts on.

No, but you are comparing Dachau to the British internment camps. While I'm hardly an expert on the Boer war, I'd be shocked to learn that the British were conducting medical experiments. Nor do I believe the British used slave labor to force the prisoners to construct their own crematorian ovens.

To compare Dachau to the British camps, is to minimize Dachau. To imply that Dachau was not as bad as Auschwitz, is to minimize Dachau. Dachau was a camp of horrors, just like every other Nazi camp, no matter what kind of label you want to slap on it.

 

[ParkCungHee]

No, but you are comparing Dachau to the British internment camps. While I'm hardly an expert on the Boer war, I'd be shocked to learn that the British were conducting medical experiments. Nor do I believe the British used slave labor to force the prisoners to construct their own crematorian ovens.

You may be shocked to learn that 30-40 thousand people died in British concentration camps, in pretty much the exact same way as they died in Dachau.

To compare Dachau to the British camps, is to minimize Dachau. To imply that Dachau was not as bad as Auschwitz, is to minimize Dachau. Dachau was a camp of horrors, just like every other Nazi camp, no matter what kind of label you want to slap on it.

The numbers don't lie. In the comparitively shorter time Auschwitz was running, it killed thirty-three times as many people as Dachau, which had been operating for more then twice as long. Dachau was a camp of horrors, but saying Dachau wasn't the same or as bad as Auschwitz isn't minimizing Dachau because saying they're the same is minimizing Auschwitz.
There is only one Historian I have ever seen make the claim that there was no major Differences between the Konzentrationslager and the Vernichtungslage and his name is David Irving.

Oh and as a minor point, you claimed that no one was intended to leave Dachau alive. But prisoners were released occasionaly, which shows a massive difference in intent.

 

[Plotinus]

There is of course the additional point that most people find the notion of systematically murdering people in a production-line kind of way peculiarly horrific, in a way that transcends even the horrors of the most appalling concentration camps. That is, even if the death rates at Auschwitz hadn't been significantly higher than those at Dachau, the way in which they were achieved would make it worse in a different kind of way. That's why the Holocaust is generally considered so extraordinarily awful - not so much the numbers involved, huge though they were, but the fact that mass murder was not simply carried out but systematised and rationalised, with purpose-built murder institutions, and the logistics coolly calculated.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

That is why Hitler gets more press that Stalin - making murder factories is uglier than just shooting someone in the head in prison, regardless of numbers.

 

[privatehudson]

Indeed, and therein lies part of the important difference between Boer camps and death camps, or even Boer camps and concentration camps in the Nazi regime. As terrible as the Boer camps were the intention was not to wipe out the entire Boer race. Dachau was part of a system designed to eliminate an entire group of people. The Boer camps was part of a system of incompetence, indifference and ignorance, but once the nature of the camps were learnt steps were taken to resolve the problem.

The only time the Nazi regime took much care in the lives of its camp inmates was when they were too valuble as skilled labour to work or gas to death in the normal fashion.

 

[Conroe]

The numbers don't lie.

Its not about numbers. Its about the attrocities that one group of people committed upon their fellow human beings. Whether it is 10 thousand, 100 thousand, or 1 million, it is still mass murder.

To try and label one camp as a concentration camp versus an extermination camp is, in my opionion, complete nonsense. Primarily because the distinction is based upon the type of attrocity. And just because the Nazi's may have made the distinction does not make it sane!

Likewise, attempting to draw comparisons between Nazi camps and British camps is also just as ludicrous.

 

[ParkCungHee]

To try and label one camp as a concentration camp versus an extermination camp is, in my opionion, complete nonsense. Primarily because the distinction is based upon the type of attrocity. And just because the Nazi's may have made the distinction does not make it sane!

In my opinion its complete nonsense to make historical distinctions between things or not due so based an emotional purjoritive responses. I suppose we shouldn't make distinctions between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany because its a distinction based on a type of Murderous ideology, or how about we don't make a distinction between Hitler and Goebbels and Himmler and Stalin because their all monsters, differentiated merely by the type of monsters they were. The idea that we need to amalgamate everything together that we don't like into something primordial enemy and that by discussing an evil act objectively, is completely anti-thetical to the study of History.

 

[Conroe]

The idea that we need to amalgamate everything together that we don't like into something primordial enemy and that by discussing an evil act objectively, is completely anti-thetical to the study of History.

Likewise, the study of history is not a statistical analysis to label or differentiate events based upon the number of murder victims. To say that Dachau and the British camps "are actually quite similar" because about the same number of people died is not historically accurate. And calling it an "emotional response" does not make it so.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I fear you're still in the thrall of the myths... Heliocentrists weren't persecuted, at least not for being heliocentrists. Galileo got into trouble because he defied a papal injunction not to insist that he could prove heliocentrism. Bruno was persecuted for his theological views, not his scientific ones.

Technicalities.

Far from suppressing science during this period, the Catholic Church actively promoted it: Catholic thought has always stressed the fundamental agreement of faith and reason.

Can you provide examples of such promotion?

Approximately 35,000 "witches" are now thought to have perished in the early modern persecutions, which is certainly a lot,

Ahhh...there's the promotion!

And although there were indeed many versions of Christianity both before and after Nicaea, there was also a mainstream "orthodoxy" long before Constantine ever showed up. Irenaeus and Tertullian both provided the theory behind it a century and a half before Nicaea. Plus, of course, Arianism (the only rival "version" of Christianity condemned at Nicaea) not only survived the council but was subsequently promoted by Constantine and his heirs, and is still going strong today.

I'm sure I could find lots of Gnostics today as well, or temples to Jupiter, Mars, and Minerva. Oh wait, I can't... because they were all destroyed!

The reality is that once (orthodox) Christianity became officially sanctioned by the Empire, it took revenge for 300 years of persecution by systematically eliminating all pagan religions, and then turned on non-orthodox versions of itself.

Well, the Emancipation Proclamation applied to areas of the Confederacy as they came under Union occupation. Plus, I think it actually did exclude the slaveholding states that had stayed in the Union.

I stand corrected. The EP didn't apply to the states that had stayed in the Union.

 

[Plotinus]

Technicalities.

Hmmm, I'm always surprised when people use the word "technicality" to mean "uncomfortable truth"! If you cite Bruno as a victim of oppression of heliocentrists, and I point out that he wasn't persecuted for his heliocentrism at all, then I don't see how that's a technicality. On the contrary, it's the whole point. You might as well say that there are black people in prison right now, therefore the government persecutes black people. Yes, Bruno was a scientist (well, sort of, he was really a philosopher who accepted Copernicanism, not a scientist like Galileo) and a heliocentrist, who was imprisoned and executed by the Catholic Church. But he wasn't imprisoned and executed for being a scientist or a heliocentrist, any more than black prisoners are in prison for being black.

Can you provide examples of such promotion?

The most obvious example is the use of the Jesuit order to collect astronomical data from around the world with the aim of determining the truth (to the extent that it could be determined, bearing in mind that the Catholic Church in those days adopted the same position towards scientific claims as modern scientists, namely that they are only models) about cosmology. Riccioli, Grimaldi, Kircher, and so on.

I'm sure I could find lots of Gnostics today as well, or temples to Jupiter, Mars, and Minerva. Oh wait, I can't... because they were all destroyed!

In fact, you really could find all those things today. There are certainly plenty of Gnostics. But I don't see what that has to do with the issues at hand. I didn't deny that the orthodox party in the church set about trying to eliminate those it regarded as heretical. My point was that that attempt did not begin with Constantine.

The reality is that once (orthodox) Christianity became officially sanctioned by the Empire, it took revenge for 300 years of persecution by systematically eliminating all pagan religions, and then turned on non-orthodox versions of itself.

I'm not sure how that really addresses the dispute. Yes, orthodox Christianity did indeed turn upon both pagan religions and heretical versions of itself (or, at least, what it regarded as heretical) after being officially sanctioned by the empire. However, I don't see any reason to reduce this simply to "revenge" for anti-Christian persecution; rather, it arose quite naturally from the understanding of orthodoxy and religious history that people had in those days. Furthermore, those who regarded themselves as "orthodox" had always attacked those they regarded as "heretical". You can see that not only in the works of Irenaeus and Tertullian, whom I already mentioned, but in the New Testament itself. So that sort of thing was hardly an innovation of the Constantinian era. And the thing we're meant to be arguing about here is the myth that Christianity as we know it was an invention of that era, of the Council of Nicaea in particular, and of Constantine himself above all. Which is simply ridiculous.