KWJ199F@SMSVMA.BITNET (K. W. Jeffreys) (02/20/90)
Dimitri V. writes: >believes, then for their genes). The allies acted no better than the axis >during WWII, and saying that a certain group is tainted because it was >persecuted by one side or the other is plain nosense. Both sides effectively >cooperated in the killing of the Jews, for example. Cooperated???? I am aware of that treaty between the Russia and Germany which pre-dated WWII. I am even aware of Chamberlain's treaty with Hitler (You know - 'We have peace in our time'). Is this what you meant when you said Cooperated? Could you amplify your 'effectively cooperated' phrase a little more? Now, on to the really silly part: 'The allies acted no better than the axis during WWII,...'. You are kidding, right? If you are right, then you can give me counter examples to: April 27, 1937: Germany bombs Guernica, Spain. German planes strafe and bomb marketplaces and farm houses. Nov. 29, 1937: A German court took away children from their parents when the parents refused to teach them Nazi Ideology. Oct. 5, 1938: Hitler occupies the Sudetenland. Nov. 9, 1938: Crystal Night. Sept. 30, 1939: Nazis invade Poland. Dec. 18, 1939: Berlin: Reich official Robert Ley says Germany aims for annihilation of Britain. Apr. 9, 1940: Nazis occupied Copenhagen. June 14, 1940: Germans occupied Paris. Apr. 17: 1941: Nazis invade Yugoslavia. Sept. 6, 1941: German secret police publish and order whose first para- graph reads 'Jews who have completed their 6th year are for- bidden to show themselves in public without the Jewish star.' Dec. 7, 1941: A day which will live in infamy. Jan. 20, 1942: Nazi leaders met in Berlin to discuss 'the Jewish problem, and the final solution.' Jul. 16, 1942: French (Vichy) round up 13000 Jews and hold them in the Velodrome. These detainees include invalids, pregnant women, and 3000 children. Sept. 21, 1942: To date, over 207000 people in Europe have been executed by the Nazis. May 16, 1943: Jurgen Stroop, SS German General, says his troops killed 56065 Jews in stopping the Ghetto Uprising. July 8, 1942: Jean Moulin, French Underground leader, is killed after a month of torture at the hands of the Gestapo. He refused to sign a statement blaming Senegalese soldiers for murders comm- itted by Germans. March 19, 1944: Nazis send Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. March 24, 1944: Italian priests, Jews, women, and two 14-year-old boys were executed by the Gestapo. June 10, 1944: SS massacre 642 in the French village of Oradour-sur- Glane. At 6pm, the Germans stopped a train bound for the village and arrested everyone bound for the village and executed them. By the end of the day the population of the village was 0. Aug. 27, 1944: Polish and Soviet officials estimate nearly 1.5 million people were put to death in the Maidanek concentration camp in Poland. The victims were men, women and children, Jews and Christians, from every Nation in Europe. The crematoriums were capable of processing 1,900 bodies a day, and the ashes were sold to farmers as fertilizer. Jan 27, 1945: Auschwitz is liberated. The Nazis, realizing they could not stop the liberation force marched 60000 prisoners to Germany. Lets stop here and not talk about the camps at Amersfoort, Vught, Dachau, Esterwegen, Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Dora, Ohrdruf, Flossenburg, Natzweiler-Struthof, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, Theresienstadt, Gross-Rosen, Stutthof, Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek, and Lublin. (Too name a few.) May 7, 1945: Germany surrenders. Dimitri, I will not say anything about Japan, and Bataan, or the 150 American soldiers that were herded into a bunker, doused with gasoline and set on file. How about the 3500 prisoners that were starved, beaten, and shot on a 140 mile march to a prison camp? How about the allied prisoners in Japanese hospitals that were injected with acid and bile? The Allies were as bad as the Axis in WWII???? YOU GOTTA BE KIDDIN'.
DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET (Dimitri Vulis) (02/20/90)
Thanks you K. W. Jeffreys for the interesting note. I will write a long detailed response later; in the meantime I'l like to mention a few related atrocities (longer letter to follow) * The treatment of german and japanse pows in Russia (they had even lower survival rate than russian pows in germany!) * the continous massacre of the chinese by the japanese in the 30's and 40's * the indiscriminate bombing of german cities (useless from military viewpoint) * the massacres by stalin of his own population before, during and after wwii * the forced repatriation after wwii of hundreds of thousands of soviets who fled with the nazis * the refusal by the allies to accept jewish refugees (more on this later in great detail) * the brutalities by soviet troops against german civilians in east prussia and elsewhere * the exile of millions of germans, hungarians, etc from the lands where their ancestors had lived for centuries after wwii * the excile (accompanied by the kiiling of about 60%) of crimean tartars, greeks, germans, kalmyks and countless other nationalities accused by stalin of collaborating with the germans. (I'm just listing things that come randomly to my mind, but for some reason all but #2 were committed by the 'good guys'). By the way, you mention Hitler's invasion of Poland. Do you happen to remember who invaded Poland from the other side? :) The point that I'm trying to make is that painting either side in this conflict as being the 'good guys' in any way, shape or form is in my humble opinion undeserved. Dimitri Vulis
PH408014@BROWNVM.BITNET (Tim Johnson) (02/20/90)
From: Dimitri Vulis <DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET> >* The treatment of german and japanse pows in Russia (they had even lower >survival rate than russian pows in germany!) Umm, not to support your cause, or anything like that, but please do not forget to include the fate of repatriated Russian POWs.... But then, as to your comment about the "good guys," it has been a long time since anyone in this nation but the most self deluded individual considered Stalin to be one of the good guys. (Tell me, Ron, if you are out there...would support of Stalin considered c.d., a reverse of your safe criticism - kind of a safe-support, or do you have a new term for all of us to share?) -Tim
DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET (Dimitri Vulis) (02/20/90)
I still haven't gotten around the long comment that I promised, but: yes, the repatriated Sov pows (from wwii and from the war with finland) How about the summary execution of all professional military personnel from the Baltic states and Poland? Everyone knows Katyn by now, but no one seems to mention some 50,000 Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian army officers executed in 1940. FYI, in the '30s and '40's it was considered a real faux pax in the liberal circles to question that Stalin was really a good guy. Ahem. More later, anyway. D
DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET (Dimitri Vulis) (02/20/90)
JP, I remember reading somewhere that the number of French executed after WWII for collaboration with the Germans exceeded the number of French executed or deported by the Germans during WWII. Do you know if this is correct? I sort of doubt it, unless the latter figure does not include the Jews and the frontline casualties. What is the first figure anyway? Re genocide: if you read Solzhenitsyn, read the part about small ethinic groups (crimean tartars, kalmyks, et al) being rounded up solely because of their ethnicity, put onto trains and sent not into camps (which is where Solzhenitsyn was, and he writes mostly about what he himself saw) but into central asian desert. 60% of the deportees died during the deportation itself, presumably mostly the children and the elderly. By the way, I think I saw a mention on this list that Stalin was not necessarily a 'good guy'. Hmm. If the '30's, '40's or early 50's, if you uttered such heresy in a liberal company like this, you'd forever be known as a nazi sympathiser and might get into serious trouble. Gotta be careful with what you say or post. D
PHARABOD@FRCPN11.BITNET (02/20/90)
If the definition has not changed, a genocide is the systematic killing
of a specified ethnic group: men, women and children. From what I have
read, I understand that there have been three genocides in this century:
Armenians by the Turks,
Jews by the Germans,
Tziganes by the Germans.
Though he was a monster, Stalin was not a "genocidist". I have read
Solzhenitsyn several years ago, and he said that in the Gulag there
were about 10% women, and very few children (if my memory is good).
The case of the Khmer Rouge is less clear: it seems that they killed
systematically a part of their own people, including women and children.
Surely the genocide of the Jews by the Germans is the worst of all:
enormous number of victims, and industrialization of the process.
However, it seems that the only completely successful genocide has been
the genocide of the Tasmanians by the Australian settlers, last century.
Jean-Pierre PharabodT9AA@SDSUMUS.BITNET (Dave Jacoby) (02/21/90)
I don't know what to say about the other powers, but I know that russia killed off between 20 and 30 Million of it's own people before the war. Or doesn't that count when it's inflicted against it's own people? I know that Cambodia was like that "It's a Holiday In Cambodia, Where people dress in Black!" Dead Kennedys **************************************************************** * The Unbelievable Dave Jacoby * Kill For Thrills (Megadeth) * * T9AA@SDSUMUS.BITNET * Die With A Smile (Appleseed)* **************************************************************** * Be Someone * An Eye For An Eye Makes Everyone Blind * * Kill Someone * (Martin Luthor King, Jr.) * * Be A Man *********************************************** * Kill Yourself * <0> Mutants for * Fight the Powers * * (Sex Pistols) * \___/ Nuclear Power * That Be (PE) * ****************************************************************
PHARABOD@FRCPN11.BITNET (02/22/90)
Dimitri Vulis writes (Tue, 20 Feb 90 09:46:00 EDT): >Re genocide: if you read Solzhenitsyn, read the part about small ethnic >groups (crimean tartars, kalmyks, et al) being rounded up solely because >of their ethnicity, put onto trains and sent not into camps (which is where >Solzhenitsyn was, and he writes mostly about what he himself saw) but into >central asian desert. 60% of the deportees died during the deportation >itself, presumably mostly the children and the elderly. Agreed, I think I will add the Crimean Tatars and the Kalmyks on my list (however, was it a "systematic" killing? I mean: had a "final solution" been decided?) One has to be very careful when speaking of genocide. For example, there cannot be a genocide of "officers", because the officers are not an ethnic group - there are few women and no children, and they differ from the other men only by their profession. Also, though about 20% of the Poles have been killed by the Germans, it was not a genocide, because Hitler had not decided to kill all the Poles. Jean-Pierre Pharabod
PHARABOD@FRCPN11.BITNET (02/23/90)
Dimitri Vulis writes (Wed, 21 Feb 90 12:01:00 EDT): >I really don't recall the definition of genocide from the convention, but >I have no doubt that someone should look it up. There are three different >things involved here: >* An attempt to kill every member of a certain ethnic group (examples: Hitler >and the Jews, Hitler and the Gypsies, imprerial Russia and Siberian natives, >imprerial Russia and North-Caucasian natives, Turkey and Armenians (the latter >prompted by the previous)). >* An attempt to round up every member of a certain ethnic group and deport >them in some barely inhabitable place, which deportation kills most of them >(example: Hitler and the Jews before about 1943, Stalin and assorted Soviet >minorities between 1937 and 1949). >* An attempt to forcibly assimilate an ethnic group by executing or deporting >the more educated representatives and encouraging settlement by another >ethnic group. Dimitri, thanks for this very clear analysis and/or proposal. However, I will stick to the first definition. Otherwise, one could speak of genocide of the Sauk (1804-1832), Seminole (1832-1842), Cherokee (1838-1839 "Trail of Larms"), Potawatomi (1846), Modoc (1872-1877), Ute (1878-1881), Chiricahua Apache (1883-1886), etc.. And the USA would become one of the "genocidist" nations. Jean-Pierre Pharabod