churchill on jews. who's to blame?
- Thread starter soul_warrior
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Pokurcz
Emperor
I didn't pick "tis the germans fault", because it was either the Nazi's fault or the whole European mindsets fault, or rather human nature to find anyone outside your group suspicious and then enlarge it out of "proportion".
The Nazis just went ape **** with it...
The Nazis just went ape **** with it...
Fugitive Sisyphus
Escape Artist
Many people, it seems, don't understand the difference between a reason and an excuse. A reason why Jews have been persecuted is because of their "separateness" but is not an excuse for the persecution.
It is just like when a person gets mugged while walking through a bad neighborhood. The reason why he got mugged was that he (perhaps stupidly) decided to take the shortcut through the bad neighborhood but that does not excuse the mugging.
It is just like when a person gets mugged while walking through a bad neighborhood. The reason why he got mugged was that he (perhaps stupidly) decided to take the shortcut through the bad neighborhood but that does not excuse the mugging.
Joe Harker
1st in the Premiership!
well i am sorry, i am going with the radioactive monkey
ParkCungHee
Deity
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QFT, because most of Europe was involved in the Holocaust at some level.
Fugitive Sisyphus
Escape Artist
Well metaphorically, the Jews are supposed to walk through the bad neighborhood except that they are supposed to wear a reversed baseball cap instead of a yomaka(sp?).
Adamb0mb
Lawless
If someone gets mugged and loses their wallet cause they were in the wrong place at the wrong time... so be it, he should've been more careful.
If someone gets mugged and thrown in an oven with his family... I'm just saying I don't think your analogy holds up.
Where could they go? America actually reduced the quota they would allow in during that time. You'd think they could have had some spare room for them in all those homes left over from putting the Japanese in concentration camps, or at least they could have set aside some reservations and provided them with free blankets.
Not to mention most of the Jews killed were from Poland and Eastern European countries, so you are saying that, assuming they can find somewhere to go, they are supposed to abandon their homeland based on their predictions of politics in a completely different country?
Well, his basic point is true, "reason" and "blame" are different, and even using the word "blame" for the Jews is ridiculous.
Maybe a better analogy would be that a man (living in a time or place without a banking system) who is known to be rich has his house broken into, and he and his family are murdered to steal his money. The reason he is murdered is because he is rich, but you don't blame him for being murdered because of that, nor excuse the murderers.
Anti-semitism in Europe only ends in 1948 when 1) the state of Israel is formed and many European Jews migrated there, 2) the full extent of Nazi crimes are known and 3) European countries realised the potential of Israel to keep newly independent Arab countries at bay. I'm not surprised by Churchill's article, because that sort of attitude is prevailing at the time (not to mention a ridiculous one too).
- Churchill cannot be commenting on the Holocaust in this article, as the death camps had not got up and running at the time he wrote it. He is referring to persecution of Jews which was by then well-known (and undeniably wrong and evil) but not extraordinary by historic standards. We must be careful in judging Churchill unfairly, since we view these comments through the lens of knowing what would happen next.
- The distinction between reason and responsibility is important, and Churchill draws it himself - by emphasising separateness some jewish groups make themselves easy targets, indeed this still happens today amongst a number of ethnic and religious groups. Unfortunately our society was not mature enough then, and is still not mature enough now, to allow differences to flourish without some people de-humanising those who are 'different'. Hence the valid point that lack of integration puts individuals and groups at risk - this is not right but it is true.
I don't think there is anything in the piece to suggest that Churchill was in favour of anti-semitism, let alone the awful treatment meted out to German jews, simply that he was pointing out an uncomfortable and regrettable reality.
BFR
- The distinction between reason and responsibility is important, and Churchill draws it himself - by emphasising separateness some jewish groups make themselves easy targets, indeed this still happens today amongst a number of ethnic and religious groups. Unfortunately our society was not mature enough then, and is still not mature enough now, to allow differences to flourish without some people de-humanising those who are 'different'. Hence the valid point that lack of integration puts individuals and groups at risk - this is not right but it is true.
I don't think there is anything in the piece to suggest that Churchill was in favour of anti-semitism, let alone the awful treatment meted out to German jews, simply that he was pointing out an uncomfortable and regrettable reality.
BFR
Neonanocyborgasm
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It's hard to believe Churchill was an anti-semite considering he once tried to get the RAF to bomb concentration camp supply routes in order to disrupt them, even though his own generals advised against it.
amadeus
Apply directly to the forehead
Assuming that Churchill did write that, you have to take into account that the Nazi policy on Jews wasn't as harsh as one imagines when you think of the Nazis. (I almost wrote Narzis...that'd be interesting!)
There was most certainly repression, but not the extrajudicial killings and deportations that would take place in the forties.
There was most certainly repression, but not the extrajudicial killings and deportations that would take place in the forties.
pboily
fingerlickinmathematickin
The two camps' survivors I know idolize Churchill. I will ask them how they feel about this. My guess: as long as Churchill went to bat for them at the end of the day, they won't care for a second that he had doubts at some point.
Moderator Action: Moved to History.
Adler17
Prussian Feldmarschall
It is complete BS to say the Jews provoked or were even guilty to start the Holocaust. The Jews in Germany were mostly assimilated and antisemitism was in most parts not very common. In Prussia for example you could be everything, if you were an atheist, a protestant, a Jew or a muslim, no problem. Only being catholic was problematical. Indeed in ww1 the Jews had from all German population groups the highest number of fatalities.
Austria OTOH was partly strong antisemitic. The mayor of Vienna was, when Hitler lived there, such a bastard. He was influenced there much. He also got to read a pamphlet made by the Czarist secret service to blame the Jews. There he became an antisemite.
Later he joined a small political party in Munich with some crazy idiots, who were anything else than "normal". I mean Göring was a junkie, Goebbels and Himmler also insane. This party was a splinter party we would only knew in a footnote to a monography about political parties in Germany in the 20s, if there wasn't the crise of 1929. Hitler's party was elected despite the antisemitism not because. By harvesting the fruits others made he could start dehumanizing the Jews. As long as he kept it "small" no one, including many Jews, thought he could do the things he did. They only thought, it was a hard time for the Jews, but soon it would be over. Also the Führer does not know what his idiotic followers do.
There were no hints about the Holocaust. Indeed that was not planned until 1941/42, when the idea to resettle the Jews in Madagascar or anywhere else seemed impossible. Even then Hitler tried to keep it secret from publicity knowing very well the uproar causing a publication. And that worked quite well. Also the British did only once use the Holocaust as propaganda in a broadcast of Christmas 1942. One of the Germans hearing that broadcast (which was strongly forbidden) was a great enemy of Hitler but even that he could not believe. He thought about another British propaganda lie like slaughtering Belgish babies in ww1. However he made one thing most did not as they feared the Nazis or did not believe that. He made researches. He needed one year to find a proof. I do not know, how many Germans knew about that, who were not parts of the KZs or SS, but it was not as easy as you might think.
However most Jews living here understood themselves as Germans and some indeed ever believed the Holocaust as misunderstanding. One judge for example who was imprisoned, was later used to judge over people being in the NSDAP. Most of them he gave a so called Persilschein at once!
Anyway, the Jews were not guilty. The Nazis were. Churchill might have been an antisemit either who could have bombed the KZs, but that is indeed no causing this crime. However he could have done more.
Adler
Austria OTOH was partly strong antisemitic. The mayor of Vienna was, when Hitler lived there, such a bastard. He was influenced there much. He also got to read a pamphlet made by the Czarist secret service to blame the Jews. There he became an antisemite.
Later he joined a small political party in Munich with some crazy idiots, who were anything else than "normal". I mean Göring was a junkie, Goebbels and Himmler also insane. This party was a splinter party we would only knew in a footnote to a monography about political parties in Germany in the 20s, if there wasn't the crise of 1929. Hitler's party was elected despite the antisemitism not because. By harvesting the fruits others made he could start dehumanizing the Jews. As long as he kept it "small" no one, including many Jews, thought he could do the things he did. They only thought, it was a hard time for the Jews, but soon it would be over. Also the Führer does not know what his idiotic followers do.
There were no hints about the Holocaust. Indeed that was not planned until 1941/42, when the idea to resettle the Jews in Madagascar or anywhere else seemed impossible. Even then Hitler tried to keep it secret from publicity knowing very well the uproar causing a publication. And that worked quite well. Also the British did only once use the Holocaust as propaganda in a broadcast of Christmas 1942. One of the Germans hearing that broadcast (which was strongly forbidden) was a great enemy of Hitler but even that he could not believe. He thought about another British propaganda lie like slaughtering Belgish babies in ww1. However he made one thing most did not as they feared the Nazis or did not believe that. He made researches. He needed one year to find a proof. I do not know, how many Germans knew about that, who were not parts of the KZs or SS, but it was not as easy as you might think.
However most Jews living here understood themselves as Germans and some indeed ever believed the Holocaust as misunderstanding. One judge for example who was imprisoned, was later used to judge over people being in the NSDAP. Most of them he gave a so called Persilschein at once!
Anyway, the Jews were not guilty. The Nazis were. Churchill might have been an antisemit either who could have bombed the KZs, but that is indeed no causing this crime. However he could have done more.
Adler
But surely Britain didn't go to war with Germany because of their Jewish policy. If Hitler had been exactly the same as he really was, but without the antisemitism, there would still have been war, because it was about his aggressive expansionism. Similarly, if Hitler had not been at all expansionist but had had the same antisemitic policies, there would have been no war. In other words, if Churchill was "batting" for the Jews, it was purely a happy historical accident.
Churchill believed in victors' justice anyway. I'm sure we've all seen those notorious passages where he says that the Native Americans, Indians, and Australian Aborigines all deserved the treatment they suffered at the hands of Europeans, because they were inferior races. It would be entirely consistent for him to think something similar about Jews.
pboily
fingerlickinmathematickin
it is clearly an accident, but if that accident is responsible for their survival, and that survival is responsible for their respect for the man, it will not make an ounce of a difference wheter he really wanted to help them or not. At the end of the day, he did. I imagine that it is a bit like the WMD debate in Iraq: in n years, assuming things somehow redress for the coalition of the willing and the country doesn't descend in chaos, it won't really have made a difference that they went in with the WMD justification: if people are better off without Saddam, the "victor's justice" will erase the fact that there are no WMD.
I'm still interested how these two particular people will deal with it.
I'm still interested how these two particular people will deal with it.
bob bobato
L'imparfait
That's a very stupid thing to say. But, just in case its true, Ill try to give a reason for 'hating jews' (Not that I believe its true).
In the new testament, when jesus is under trial, the jewish leaders say that they, and all their people, will take the blame for killing jesus.
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