Nazi Morality

[split from the Dresden Bombing, Holocaust thread]

I think you are wrong, the nazi regime was squarely against the moral corruption of western democracies.

Yeah the third reich stand against any contamination of its Racial purity sure was moral!!

Euthanasia for the mentaly ill and physically handicaped.

Its opposition by force against all who were not willing to toe the Party line.

Its political re-education camps, which were in place before the extermination camps.

The control of the population through terror.

Sure sound like they had the "morals" of the German people at heart.

So much so the decided to expand their "Moral" ideas to other countries whether or not they were asked to.

Kevin in Deva.

The nazi regime stood against the proponents of gay rights, sex changing operations and abortions for example.
Among those proponents the most prominent being Dr Magnus Hirschfeld, Dr. Levy-Lenz, Dr. Felix Abraham.
Hirschfeld fought to repeal the section of the German penal code that criminalized homosexuality, campaigned for abortion rights etc. Dr. Levy Lenz and Dr. Felix Abraham did the first gender change surgery in the world.
While their HQ, the "Institute for Sexual Research", flourished in Weimar democracy and their sex changing operations went on, in Nazi dictatorship their HQ was closed and their propaganda stopped.
I would say that is a clear example of standing for some clear social and moral values, left to rot [or deliberately targetted] in western democracy.

p.s. all the doctors listed were (surprisingly or not) jewish and that fact didnt escape the nazi attention

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld

http://me.in-berlin.de/~magnus/institut/en...en/pers_11.html

take care

This post has been edited by Imperialist on October 03, 2006 03:28 pm

I think you are wrong, the nazi regime was squarely against the moral corruption of western democracies.

I don't know, because while the Nazi regime was against some things that might be considered amoral, this only applied to non Nazi party members. If you were important in the regime you could do anything, including abortion, homosexuality etc. the gauleiter Julius Streicher (might not have spelt this correctly) was notorious in this respect.

As in most dictatorships the important thing was that it was impossible to supervise or gain knowledge of what the Nazis in power were doing, so financial corruption increased. There are many examples of this: Robert Ley, head of the Labour Front, Ribbentrop etc. but this went down to a very low level. Nepotism etc. as well was left to run unchecked.

Secret police denunciation also increased massively, encouraging people to spy on their neighbours.

The administration and public bodies were wasteful, corrupt and chaotic in the way they spent people's money, and people had no say in how it was to be spent anyway.

Undermining or discarding the rule of law in favour of arbitrary power. Corruption and destruction of Judicial independence. A big example of this is the law that made anything Hitler decided to be legal automatically legal, brought in after the Rohm purge.

Encouraging disregard for moral values in favour of bigotry and reactionary attitudes: blaming the jews for all problems, encouraging people to see anyone who is different as a threat and a menace, imposing on everyone the standards and values of narrow minded bourgoisie, with no democratic mandate. Encouraging a mindset and attitude among the people in power which would lead to genocide and crimes against humanity.

Destruction of civil liberties, freedom of expression, democratic rights.

Waging aggressive war for territorial and national aggrandisement, and genocide.

So, while the Nazis had a down on homosexuality, (I don't think that is automatically imoral anyway), were they guardians of morality in any of the above, much more significant and meaningful, areas? This is what I was thinking of when I made the original post.

Victor,
Perhaps a new thread could be opened to put this discussion in? Called the 'Moral Corruption of Nazi Germany?' or something like that?

I didnt want to say they were morally perfect or something, just that they didnt push all the worst tendencies in the West to the extremes, like you said.
In regard to the 20th century, well, the nazi regime was over half way through the century and yet the world is still engulfed in cronic corruption, administrative wastefulness, arbitrary power.

An off-topic post was deleted. Hel;mut von Moltke, current political enviroment is not relevant.

that was started in the United States, you know.....

so if one questions the nazi morality one must also question the US morality....

Hi Imperialist,

As far as I am aware, "Western European democracy" did not have a collective view on any of these subjects and I can say with certainty that in Britain at least homosexual acts and abortion were still illegal for decades after the Nazi era. I also seem to recall that the first sex change operation in the UK was performed on an ex-Battle of Britain pilot. If so, this also cannot have been the practice in the UK during the Nazi era. (This last bears double checking).

I put it to you directly that your purpose in starting this thread was to saddle Jews with blame for practices that offend your personal morality.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of Romanian mililtary history.

Please justify yourself.

Cheers,

A deeply disappointed Sid.

I did not start the thread and had no decision as to what name it should have. As for me "saddling the jews", I only stated the facts.

that was started in the United States, you know.....

so if one questions the nazi morality one must also question the US morality....

What, in God's name, can you possibly mean by that? Abortion?
Infanticide?

The former was by no means invented here, and is probably practiced less than in certain European countries. The latter, in contradistinction to some areas of the today's world (read China, India), is rare and has been prosecuted here as murder for as long as there has been a U.S. legal system.

There is no question the U.S. has its moral problems, it's share of domestic bloodbaths (Westward expansion, Civil War) and questionable international involvements (Vietnam, Central and South America, now Iraq).

But we in no way compare morally to the Nazis on these two issues, or in most others, thank you.

(and yes, I'm aware of the firebombing of Dresden, the conventional obliteration of many German cities, the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the March '45 firebombing of Tokyo.....I think some of those were part the original thread here...but this last comment is "off the wall", imo)

Hi Imperialist,

You are right. You did not consciously start this thread and were not responsible for its title. It was split from another.

However, that does not relieve you of responsibility for the content of your posts.

So, to repeat:

"Western European democracy" did not have a collective view on any of these subjects and I can say with certainty that in Britain at least homosexual acts and abortion were still illegal for decades after the Nazi era. Furthermore, the first sex change operation in Britain was performed on an ex-Spitfire pilot in the early 1950s, so this also cannot have been the practice in the UK during the Nazi era. I would suggest that most of the above was also true of the USA during the Nazi era.

Your point is therefore demonstrably spurious in all three instances you quote.

Which then brings us to your motive. I put it to you directly that your purpose in putting this information up was to saddle Jews with blame for practices which offend your personal morality.

Furthermore, after writing "among their proponents" you then went on to list only Jews. Why? Were only Jews proponents of these three things?

Not only that, but in case anyone hadn't deduced this possibility from the names themselves, you then went on to state it explicitly. Why?

You claim you "only stated the facts"? No, you only stated selected facts. Facts that only reflected on Jews. Why?

This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of Romanian military history.

Please justify yourself in this matter.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. There are no rhetorical questions above. Please address each of them individually.

1st - I talked about Weimar Democracy in the message that got you so worked up, not in general.

2nd - The persons I listed were singled out not because they were jewish but because their deeds made them prominent figures in the matters I mentioned.

3rd - Yes, I stated they were jews. So? I told the truth. Why does it make you so mad?

4th - It is not my fault that after checking the main/important persons working for or collaborating with Hirschfeld's Institute I discovered most of them were jews. I didnt look for jews to "saddle", I looked at the persons involved in an activity that was later banned by the nazis. Another thing I discovered was that the books burnt by the nazis that featured so extensively in documentaries were mostly books from H's Institute. Why did the documentaries remain silent about this? Maybe because like you they wanted some things not to be told?

5th - What is the purpose of your interrogatory?

p.s. this is WW2 in General. A lot of things discussed here have nothing to do with Romanian Military History.
I answered your questions though I wasnt obliged to "justify" anything.

take care

that was started in the United States, you know.....

so if one questions the nazi morality one must also question the US morality....

What, in God's name, can you possibly mean by that? Abortion?
Infanticide?

The former was by no means invented here, and is probably practiced less than in certain European countries. The latter, in contradistinction to some areas of the today's world (read China, India), is rare and has been prosecuted here as murder for as long as there has been a U.S. legal system.

There is no question the U.S. has its moral problems, it's share of domestic bloodbaths (Westward expansion, Civil War) and questionable international involvements (Vietnam, Central and South America, now Iraq).

But we in no way compare morally to the Nazis on these two issues, or in most others, thank you.

(and yes, I'm aware of the firebombing of Dresden, the conventional obliteration of many German cities, the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the March '45 firebombing of Tokyo.....I think some of those were part the original thread here...but this last comment is "off the wall", imo)

eugenics was widely accepted in britain or the US (and also practiced) before it was ever a issue in nazi germany. but everybody forgets that since they have to get in the trend of GERMANY WAS EVILLLL rethoric.....


i know americans are raised from young age in that "we are the good guys no matter what JESUS!!/Mary!!/ the flag!!/freedom!!! /democracy!!!" mindset, but saying that nothing america ever did was worse than anything the nazis did is not that correct.

personally i consider the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki morally equal to the holocaust.

OFF TOPIC !! "personally i consider the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki morally equal to the holocaust. "

ANSWER OFF TOPIC AS WELL!! There was only one main reason to use the Atomic bomb, American military planners had calculated (using the resistence encountered in the Pacific Campaign while island hopping, and meeting more resistence the closer they moved to the main islands of Japan proper) that they could take 5 million US casualties in the invasion of Japan and the occupation and subdueing the population.

Japanese civilians of all ages were being instructed in local Defence Militias, men, women & children to resisit to the death any invasion attempt by the USA or its Allies.

Where-as the notion of surrender was not considered to be dishonorable in the Western mind, it was totaly unacceptable to the Japanese mindset were they were taught from an early age, everbody had their place in soceity and the Emporer was a God. And suicide was death with honour, (Also the Japanese Military had basicaly taken control of the country anyway "in the name of the Emperor".)

Faced with this the USA thought any weapons system that might bring the war to a close was justified, the after effects of the bomb were virtually unknown or at the best speculative at the time.


Another thing there are certain people here on this forum, I notice who seem to go out of the way, to justify the Nazi and Japanese acts of aggression and terror by using the tactic of "the Americans were just as bad, or were even the cause of the war!! Do they really think they would have been better off under the control of the Nazis?ß or are they sour that they ended up under the control of the USSR and hold the west accountable for not coming to their recue??

FACT!!

Nazi Germany, Italy, Vichy France, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, etc were all under the control of men in uniform, who could enforce their will by use of armed force.

The countries that were invaded by the Nazis, (Poland* France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Czechaslovakia, Norway, Estonia, Lituania, Greece, Crete, etc, had their right of self- determination removed by the occupation / invasion.)

* Poland not only got screwed by the Nazis, also got stabbed in the back by Stalin in the name of the Russian people.

Hungary, Bulgaria & Romania rolled over and allowed the Nazi access to their territory because they were to weak or to scared to resist, and then under the puppet leaders of HORTHY, ANTONESCU, PAVELIC, QUISLING, etc (more men who liked to wear military uniforms) helped actively supply & support to the Germans and aid them in their ethnic cleansing of the Jewish peoples, Gypsys and any other sub-humans.

For this support they ended up paying the price by occupation by the Russians, (to the victors go the spoils,) the USA and the UK with Allies were in no position to oposse the Russians (after all Germany couldnt do it. even with all its perceived might) so how could countries who had suffered so many losses in the 5 years of war even attempt it??, and even the USA with all its factorys would not have been in a position to equip a force to take on the USSR.

Great Britain, its Commonwealth, the USA, and most of the allied nations were under the democratic control of the people of those countries, the President of the USA and the Government were voted into the job by the people of the country, as were the British Government, slightly different were the Governments of France, Poland, Belgium, Norway, Greece, ect, who were in exile from their own countries.

There is a tendency here for some people who post to look at the situation in WW2 with a mentality formed with hindsight of history and time that has elapsed since the events.

More than likely the political way of thinking has changed in all the countries involved in WW2 from the way those countries thought in 1930 to 1945, to the way they think today.

Trying to judge what the Americans & British etc did back then with todays mind-set is not so straight forward.

But in any normal country it will be accepted that what NAZI Germany did was EVIL. And not amount of wishing will change that fact.

Nazi Germany started WW2 and lost.

JAPAN under a military Junta holding the Emporer as a GOD declared war & LOST.
They started with the well-planned attack on Pearl Harbour (failing to accieve their planned objective of removing the US fleet in one blow, was in all reality the start of the end for them, and as it also ended their expansionist plans in China, Phillipines and Asia).

With regards:"Euthanasia for the mentaly ill and physically handicaped."

"that was started in the United States, you know.....

"so if one questions the nazi morality one must also question the US morality...."

Are you declaring that the US Government was using a policy of euthanasia on its non-consenting mentally ill and sick? un-declared to the American population, like the NAZIs were??

or are you just stating that the first use of Euthanasia on a consulting individual was used in the USA, and if so please state the year & your references for this.

Kevin in Deva.

This post has been edited by New Connaught Ranger on October 18, 2006 08:03 am

FACT - Antonescu was no puppet leader. shows how much you know.
FACT - Hundreds of thousands of japanese CIVILIANS were MURDERED because somebody in the white house needed to pump his muscles.
FACT - No murder is morraly acceptable.

why then do you use your mindset of today to judge the nazi actions?
smells like double standard.

it is silly to say the nazis were evil because they killed people, which is totally unlike what the americans did, who killed germans or japanese, that were not people, they were evil incarnate, bless the lord oh hallejujah..

come on...

maybe we should start resiting the americans today and kick them out, right? what do you think it would happpen? we would be on bush's shitlist and he might even start bombing us for freedom and democracy...

yes that is what i am saying. at least hitler told everyone what his intentions were, not went around saying he only wants the freedom and happines of the people from ...(insert country invaded by the US here)