Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
You don't think the German policy toward Soviet citizens made fighting against them slightly more understandable?
"Holocaust was a hoax"
- Thread starter CivNoobie
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You don't think the German policy toward Soviet citizens made fighting against them slightly more understandable?
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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You are right. But it's worth noting that humans are consantly creating new groups (social, cultural, economic, or whatever classification one fancies). Making such a broad defenition of genocide inoperative, because where so many groups are created then surely many will also be destroyed through sustained action against them.
To give you an example: are we trying to genocide the tobacco smokers? Or the heroin users?
For those interested, here's a leading scholar arguing that white treatment of Aborigines was genocidal.
Mmm. I'm not even sure how it's controversial. Article 2 includes forcibly transferring children of the group to another group as one of the acts it explicitly mentions.
Oda Nobunaga said:
Mmm. I'm not even sure how it's controversial. Article 2 includes forcibly transferring children of the group to another group as one of the acts it explicitly mentions.
Do smokers constitute a national, ethnical, racial or religious group?innonimatu said:
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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A further condition. So only those four kinds of groups are special?
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
The type of groups that count for genocide are generally limited to ethnic, national, racial or religious. Pretty sure that you can't fit "tobacco smoker" or "heroin user" there.
Because, yes, counting tobacco smokers and the like would be downright silly, and nobody want to accidentally bar the state from taking children away from drunken, child-beating parents (who could after all claim to be a group)
It's mostly that it had never been framed in those terms, but yes, I agree that it absolutely is.
I was only mentioning it as an example of genocide that didn't involve deliberate killing.
There's been some talk in the last decade or so about broadening the definition to include distinct sub-cultural groups - such as homosexuals - but that seems to be far more adequately covered by the term "ethnic cleansing" (of which "cleansing" is becoming more appropriate to use in its own right, without the "ethnic" modifier). After all, genocide was originally intended in a racial or ethnic context.
@Kyriakos: You seem to have a rather large axe to grind in this thread. If there's anyone here who actually believes the Holocaust to be the only genocide in human history, I've missed it. I also have never come across anyone else who makes that claim. And I'm Jewish, so genocide isn't exactly a topic I have no familiarity with. So could you point out any instances of this taking place?
Lord_Baal (and Oda, and DutchFire) you are right that i over-reacted. In retrospect my own wording- or at least tone- was a bit uncalled for. I was reacting though to the original denial of the genocide of Armenians, by Israel, presenting it as a great injustice. The thought that only one genocide (the Jewish one in ww2) practically counts (they may recognize other genocides, but seem to be focused on this one) does seem to me to be generally true, but for certain entities of power (eg US government, Israeli government etc). I agree that i should not have had extended that claim to include people by and large 
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
More than understandable. But that was a matter of survival, not class politics.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
In June 1941 Belarussians and Ukrainians greeted Germans as liberators from Soviet terror of 1939 - 1941. In 1943 - 1944 the same Soviets were greeted as saviours from Nazi occupation (let's say that Belarussians as an ethnic group suffered the largest % of civilian casualties in WW2 if not counting Jews). So yes - the German genocidal policy toward Soviet citizens was one of the main factors which contributed to Soviet victory in WW2 (compare the morale of an average Red Army soldier in July 1941 - you can check Mark Solonin to read about this - with the morale of an average Red Army soldier in 1944 or 1945).
Genocidal Nazi policies encouraged the fighting spirit of Soviet soldiers even more than NKVD executioners positioned behind their lines. Another thing is that those policies started the chain of brutality on the Eastern Front, which continued well to 1945 and Soviet revenge in Germany (mass rapes, war crimes, etc.).
Warfare on the Eastern Front was the most brutal and dehumanized front of WW2 and this applies to cruelty on both sides.
A novelist without historical education, one of major proponents of Soviet offensive plans theory.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Was there a point to this response, apart from suggesting that some Ukrainians and Belorussians were exceedingly stupid in 1941?
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Exceedingly stupid ???
Germans were not exactly famous for their genocidal plans in early 1941.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Of course they were. What a ridiculous suggestion.
Case in point, I suppose, that they have still not learned.
I don't think he has been translated into English. Which is a shame.
Because pre-1941 Ukraine and Belarus were just the places where wealth of trustworthy and unbiased information was easily accessible?
To be fair, as Yeekim said, Ukraine and Belarus weren't exactly subject to unbiased information. The Jews of Kiev welcomed the Germans as liberators, on the grounds that the Germans had treated them extremely well after Brest-Livotsk. It would be very easy for someone living through the Stalinist period to simply discount any news about German aggression or atrocities as Soviet propaganda. I don't know how widespread the publication of Mein Kampff was outside of Germany - I know it was definitely published outside of the country, but not how widely - but I doubt Ukrainian and Belorussian peasants and workers living under the Soviet government were likely to have come across it.
... which, keep in mind, changed from strongly anti-German to strongly pro-German in almost a heartbeat after MRP.
Lending itself to confusion, making it even easier for people to discount it, yes.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
So the whole world - including all Ukrainian villages - knew about the existence of Death Camps already in early 1941 ???
What a revelation - you should entirely rewrite the history of WW2 if you have such amazing revelations.
Lord Baal said:
Exactly. Germany had a reputation of a "relatively civilized" power at that time - unlike the Soviet Union.
And it should be noted that extermination of Jews on a massive scale* started not before the second half of 1941.
*Of course that various persecutions of Jews started already before the war, and squeezing Jews in Ghettos started in October 1939. But not physical extermination on a massive scale yet - this started later (even though there were executions of both Poles and Jews since the very beginning of occupation).
Of course that Germans were brutal already in September 1939 during the invasion of Poland. And later in Belgium in 1940 as well.
And of course that Germans bombed civilian population - Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam... But they did it during WW1 as well - nothing new.
However, they were not famous for being extremely genocidal at that time yet. Soviets were considered as worse criminals in 1941.
@Domen, he is just saying something to antagonize you, not really because he has a point to make.
Maybe we should get back to the topic of the thread. By the way, i still got no reply about Domen's (and the wiki article's) claim that the second Northern War can be seen as causing Genocide against the Polish-Lithuanians.
It seems Poland-Lithuania lost around 40% of its population during it (according to the article, and also Domen's sources). So i would be interested in learning more about that...
Maybe we should get back to the topic of the thread. By the way, i still got no reply about Domen's (and the wiki article's) claim that the second Northern War can be seen as causing Genocide against the Polish-Lithuanians.
It seems Poland-Lithuania lost around 40% of its population during it (according to the article, and also Domen's sources). So i would be interested in learning more about that...
Great Northern War was rather brutal - population of Estonia fell from ~400,000 by the end of 17th century to ~150,000 by 1712, with Russian commander Sheremetyev reporting to Peter I that "there is nothing left to destroy" and that "whole of Livonia and Estonia is now so empty that it only exists on the map".
Seems that such tactics were par for the course.
Seems that such tactics were par for the course.
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