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Who were the good guys? (O/T )


Childress

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"Good guys" in this discussion refers to entire countries, not individuals.

Fair enough. :)

Can be a bit difficult to distinguish in this thread with all the chatter about Hitler and Stalin. People tend to look at anyone in those regimes to be guilty as well many times simply by association. My grandfather was Dutch and lived in Holland during WW2 and worked as a rail inspector under Nazi supervision. Therefore I tend to want to clarify generalized statements regarding this issue.

As for the rest of this thread about good and bad. Good and bad are man made and therefore subject to ones own perceptions on the matter. From the day one is born you are subject to your environment and society raising you and have to be taught what is good and what is bad. It is one of several things that makes us different from other life on this planet. While the lioness will show her cubs how to kill an antelope she does not teach them to feel bad or good about it or debate whether it is right or wrong to do so. Good and bad and wrong or right is strictly a human emotional dilemma and subject to ones experiences based on society and culture. If the Nazis had won and taken over the world after 2 generations had gone by many people would probably be raised to believe it was the correct thing to do or at least justified. It goes to the old saying that those who win get to write the history books and what one reads and is told by those in charge goes a long way in how one grows up and sees the world. Obviously it isn't anywhere as neat and clean as that but it does account for a large part as to who is running things gets to call the shots one of them being 'education'.

Most everyone is taught that taking another persons life is bad with the exception to those societies raising warrior children. So what happens between learning this and then doing it anyways either over ethnicity, religion, gender preference, or even color of ones clothing? We are simply influenced by events and people around us. Even this forum and thread play to that tune. Meanwhile the lioness just goes out to hunt whenever she feels the primordial hunger urge...and we call them animals.

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Why is this the kind of arguement that gives people the misguided impression that atheism and 'belief' in evolution corrupts a person's sense of right and wrong?

Because, taken casually, it sounds as though you are willing to discard compassion in favour of a cold-eyed 'calculated' morality. All too often I have seen arguments such as this (or easily-constructed strawman equivalents) fall foul of the suggestion that it is symptomatic of 'scientism' or the dehumanisation of mankind through science. It's all rubbish, of course, but I think you left yourself vulnerable to that accusation.

I admit that i didnt use 'Darwinisim' correctly, by its litteral meaning. What i wanted to say that the human beeing, as it is today, developed into a social mamal because beeing social gave us an advantage in survival in the past and still does to day... If you spin that thought further, it is obvious that different societys too are most effective in guranteeing each members saftey and survival if they cooperate.

I understand and can agree with this, to an extent.

Thus Hitlers plan to conquer, exterminate and enslave the western part of Russia was inefficient because it ignored the latter statement. History prove it, the Nazi state could not maintain its own existence because it failed to get along with almost all other societys of that time.

Again, I get what you're saying but I'm not sure it's that simple. If you're saying that the Nazi state could not maintain its own existence because it went ape**** on all its neighbours, then I wholeheartedly agree! :D I don't think the more subtle alternative - that it didn't survive because of the internal social stresses it encouraged - really had time to become a deciding factor in the success or otherwise of Nazi Germany.

I did not want to and did not say that evolution is a set of morale instructions or anything like that. You misunderstood me.

No problem; I think I knew what you were trying to say but, as I've said above, writing it down a bit too casually can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings. A poorly-made humanist argument is music to the ears of some of our less tolerant brethren and it can be fatal to any thread, let alone one as suicidal as this one!

No, it didnt come across as offensive. I mostly wanted to try to steer the thread away from becoming a flamewar by offering a discussion.

Effort appreciated (by me at least) but I think this thread is probably beyond help... ;)

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It is about Stalin? You can't be serious.

I know my country's history is not as pure and clean as the wind driven snow. Most, quote, great, unquote, countries have a bloody past. The Soviet Union is among thee bloodiest in history. Up to and including starving other countries to get what it wants.

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The question is too subjective. A definition of 'good' as it pertains to the question would need to be defined. Even then I'd be hard pressed to put good in a tag line against either Stalin or Hitler's regimes (unless it was to describe how good they were at being a-holes to common people).

-F

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I know my country's history is not as pure and clean as the wind driven snow. Most, quote, great, unquote, countries have a bloody past. The Soviet Union is among thee bloodiest in history. Up to and including starving other countries to get what it wants.

I had written a 1 page size post about "Holodomor" and revolution, but I deleted it. Too much politics instead of history in this thread. For me enough that it is no politics in the game.

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My problem with comparing the body counts of Hitler and Stalin, is that we know Stalin's total body count because he reigned for over two decades until his natural death. Hitler was in power for a shorter time, and his reign was cut short by a bullet. You look at Nazi plans for Russia, the planned extermination of the majority of the slavic population in areas occupied by the Germans, Hitlers body count would have been much higher than what stalin managed had he not been defeated.

The soviets were no way good guys, but its pretty clear IMO who was the worst on the eastern front (it was the Nazi's).

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The soviets were no way good guys, but its pretty clear IMO who was the worst on the eastern front (it was the Nazi's).

You are wrong. It is the French. Bastards got me hooked on Foie Gras which San Francisco banned. All a plan to force me to go there and spend my hard earned dollars as a tourist. Evil cruel bastards.

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My problem with comparing the body counts of Hitler and Stalin, is that we know Stalin's total body count because he reigned for over two decades until his natural death. Hitler was in power for a shorter time, and his reign was cut short by a bullet. You look at Nazi plans for Russia, the planned extermination of the majority of the slavic population in areas occupied by the Germans, Hitlers body count would have been much higher than what stalin managed had he not been defeated...

This is a really good point. The Nazis laid waste to the lands under their control in a murderous frenzy that went beyond even the admittedly terrible barbarism of the Soviets.

Although evil at the level of Hitler and Stalin is impossible to quantify (who was 'worse', who could measure that?), the ordinary German was a lot more likely to engage in atrocities than were Soviet troops, and the atrocities were a lot worse.

However, with all the horrors of modern history - Japan in China, the European powers in Africa - societies do tend to highlight the actions of the Nazis to draw attention away from their own dark histories - though the term scapegoating is hardly appropriate, since Hitler and pals were anything but scapegoats.

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Again, if we are given two choices, the USSR and Nazi Germany, and told to assign one a white hat and the other a black hat--the ONLY answer is a quick, decisive, unreserved black hat to Nazi Germany.

Yes, Stalin killed a lot of people and was one tough, ruthless SOB. But...uh...how well would a weaker leader have kept the USSR together under the German attack? And yes, there were true believers among the communists and many people died because of it.

However, as I said before, the nature of evil in the two systems is not the same. First, again, much of the death and destruction experienced in the USSR was largely the result of old-world power dynamics under the new veneer of communism. And, communism itself, while a misguided attempt to force humans into accepting unnatural and unworkable value systems and behavior patterns to achieve a utopian vision of equality, is not the same thing as an outright murderous, racist utopian cult--which is what Nazism was.

We know what Russian children were like after several generations of Soviet indoctrination (http://myperestroika.com/). They ended up being not all that different from kids in the West, really.

Now, ask yourself...what would little Gunter and Grettel likely be like after say, three generations of Hitler Youth in a successful 3rd Reich? We know that during the war they were turning in their parents to the Gestapo and the rate of true believers was high. The girls were ready to be breeders of warriors and the boys swords in the army of the Fatherland.

Remember also, that the soldiers of the regular Wehrmacht were still heavily influenced by pre-nazi society. Now, what if the army had existed to a point where it was largely composed of soldiers who had known nothing but pure Nazi indoctrination? What would THOSE soldiers have been capable of?

At the time it happened, extreme precautions were taken by the Nazis to keep the Holocaust a secret--both for international AND domestic political reasons. Now...again...what if the international audience was irrelevant and the domestic one was composed of people like, say, Hitler Youth Generation-X? At that point, you might have had open discussions in school about the benefits (or just efficiency?) of the ovens in the early days and the best uses of eugenics and experimentation on the "lesser races" going forward.

Let's not kid ourselves. While it can be hard to get past what we felt during the Cold War years about the USSR being the enemy, and the staggering numbers of dead as a result of Soviet politics and policy, the root nature of the evil and its natural progression are simply NOT in the same league as that of Nazi Germany. Given more time, it would have killed many more people and led the world into a darkness like nothing humanity has experienced.

Yes, ABSOLUTELY, the Soviets were the good guys on the East Front.

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Hitler had Germany convinced that it was fighting for it's very existence [against the Soviet Union], that the war was about the survival of the German people and that a loss would mean their being wiped out. He was wrong, but Germany needed to lose the war to obtain the proof of that.

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Again, if we are given two choices, the USSR and Nazi Germany, and told to assign one a white hat and the other a black hat--the ONLY answer is a quick, decisive, unreserved black hat to Nazi Germany.

Yes, Stalin killed a lot of people and was one tough, ruthless SOB. But...uh...how well would a weaker leader have kept the USSR together under the German attack? And yes, there were true believers among the communists and many people died because of it.

However, as I said before, the nature of evil in the two systems is not the same. First, again, much of the death and destruction experienced in the USSR was largely the result of old-world power dynamics under the new veneer of communism. And, communism itself, while a misguided attempt to force humans into accepting unnatural and unworkable value systems and behavior patterns to achieve a utopian vision of equality, is not the same thing as an outright murderous, racist utopian cult--which is what Nazism was.

We know what Russian children were like after several generations of Soviet indoctrination (http://myperestroika.com/). They ended up being not all that different from kids in the West, really.

Now, ask yourself...what would little Gunter and Grettel likely be like after say, three generations of Hitler Youth in a successful 3rd Reich? We know that during the war they were turning in their parents to the Gestapo and the rate of true believers was high. The girls were ready to be breeders of warriors and the boys swords in the army of the Fatherland.

Remember also, that the soldiers of the regular Wehrmacht were still heavily influenced by pre-nazi society. Now, what if the army had existed to a point where it was largely composed of soldiers who had known nothing but pure Nazi indoctrination? What would THOSE soldiers have been capable of?

At the time it happened, extreme precautions were taken by the Nazis to keep the Holocaust a secret--both for international AND domestic political reasons. Now...again...what if the international audience was irrelevant and the domestic one was composed of people like, say, Hitler Youth Generation-X? At that point, you might have had open discussions in school about the benefits (or just efficiency?) of the ovens in the early days and the best uses of eugenics and experimentation on the "lesser races" going forward.

Let's not kid ourselves. While it can be hard to get past what we felt during the Cold War years about the USSR being the enemy, and the staggering numbers of dead as a result of Soviet politics and policy, the root nature of the evil and its natural progression are simply NOT in the same league as that of Nazi Germany. Given more time, it would have killed many more people and led the world into a darkness like nothing humanity has experienced.

Yes, ABSOLUTELY, the Soviets were the good guys on the East Front.

We can give the oviets credid for defending their country agains Nai agression and, yes, to that extent we can call them the good guys. But beyond that it has been argued that a just war must also be waged in a just (ie as humanely as possible according to the various internationa conventions) and, on that score the Soviets failed badly. However, given what the Germans had done the desire for revenge was an understandable one and it is probably unreasonable to expect every Red Army soldier to refrain from acting on this by killing German POWs or looting/rapng German civillians at the end of the war. Tghere is no way we can condon the actions of the Red Army in 1945 but the actions of the Germans in the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1944 were at least as bad. By these criteria I don't think either side deserves the label of goood guys.

Then again the Western Allies also sometimes committed what we would call war cimes so it could be argued, with some justification that nobody came out of WW2 with clean hands. There were however some who were darker than others even in the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.

However a wargaming site is probably not the place for a continued, in depth depate about the ethics of the conflict so perhaps we might want to wind this discussion up fairly soon. Just a suggestion

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Agreed that neither side can be called the good guys. Its a contest in being bad.

Sure Germany was the agressor but that is not something the Soviets was shy of either.. the baltic states, Finland and Poland knows this.

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At the risk of being banned (again), I must make the following observation: how many leaders would permit the sort of open dialogue we are enjoying in this thread? The Nazis? The Bolsheviks?

Here's to freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

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Jonah Goldberg:

“To eat your own children is a barbarian act.” So read posters distributed by Soviet authorities in the Ukraine, where 6 to 8 million people were forcibly starved to death so that Stalin could sell every speck of grain to the West, including seed stock for the next year’s harvest and food for the farmers themselves. The posters were the Soviet response to the cannibalism they orchestrated.

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You are wrong. It is the French. Bastards got me hooked on Foie Gras which San Francisco banned. All a plan to force me to go there and spend my hard earned dollars as a tourist. Evil cruel bastards.

Too funny, sburke.

Doesn't that make you "un collaborateur"? Just asking.

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Too funny, sburke.

Doesn't that make you "un collaborateur"? Just asking.

You have no idea. First I was dragged before a kangaroo court by a couple cadre from the Culinary Academy, Judge Alice Waters presiding. They then threw me in front of cameras on the Food channel to publicly humiliate me (Guy Fieri complained I was the reason he had to start taking Rolaids) and then finally there was that famous utterance from Martha Stewart:"This is NOT a good thing!". They have ruined my life.

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At the risk of being banned (again), I must make the following observation: how many leaders would permit the sort of open dialogue we are enjoying in this thread? The Nazis? The Bolsheviks?

Here's to freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

The Soviets would allow bashing the Nazis and praising Soviet Russia while the Nazis would allow bashing the Soviets and praising Nazi Germany. In this thread we are allowed to bash both and praise none of the two. Is this freedom? Is total freedom of thought speech even desirable? It could be argued that effective thought control is practically unobtainable and thus attempting to completly & forcibly control peoples thoughts would be a waste of resources, but what about the freedom of speech? Doesnt every single country on earth have laws against saying certain things?

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It's been reported that the Olympics in Sochi cost 50 billion dollars. Much or most of it siphoned off into the pockets of mafiosi, oligarchs, or 'friends of Putin'.(These can be one and the same individual). But... the fact this was reported is a sign of progress. The Soviets concealed these kind of embarrassments.

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