German and Soviet contribution to the starting of WW2

This doesn't directly answer your question Sid, and I can't quote chapter and verse on an author who does exactly what Dénes described. But I would still submit that it is indicative of the way that Naziism and its victims are accorded a unique status.

As you probably know, Hitler's victims have a museum memorializing them in downtown Washington DC, established by US law. Do Stalin's victims have such a museum? No. Mao? Communism in general? Pol Pot? Rwanda? Bosnia? Armenia? No to all of these. What about the American Civil War, or the opening of the American West, pivotal events in US history? No again. Actually, while the US has monuments, I'm not aware of any other federally-funded museum in the US dedicated specifically to one event. And this is an event that the US was associated with mostly through its role in helping to defeat the Nazis, not as a perpetrator or a victim.

Holocaust. What does this word evoke? It did not always refer to the victims of Naziism. It was just an utterly destructive, all consuming event, usually by fire. Now consider the genocides I mentioned above. Have any of them been given ownership of a word from the English language? Stalin has his "Great Terror", but by itself out of context these words do not make most people think of Stalin, or the Soviet Union, or communism. "Cultural Revolution" misses too, as it was the name given by the Chinese themself to this period of their history, and it does not refer just to the murders committed. If anything, it has been reduced to kitsch culture -- I can buy Mao's face on a t-shirt, but I haven't seen Hitler's or Himmler's. "Killing Fields" comes close, but this is due in large part to the film by that name and may fade as the events become more distant. "Gulag" is the only word I can think of that is directly associated with a specific episode of repression, but this wasn't an English word to start with.

I would say Hitler and Naziism are definitely accorded a unique status. As with anything else, each is entitled to his or her own view as to whether they deserve this. Ultimately, every historical event is unique in some sense.

I didn't say it did. It just depends what you mean by 'Major' role.

Anyway, if you read what I posted...I thought in crude terms USSR might have played something like a 40% role, Germany 60% in the actual outbreak of war in 1939:


************USSR 40%*************

That is quite a major role.

You could try reading books about foreign policy in the 1930s, and which Nations had aggressive and expansionist plans that they were quite open about.

You could also ask to what exactly the USSR agreed with Germany.

I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying, I am DEFINITELY NOT TRYING TO SAY THAT THE USSR HAD SOME MORAL OBJECTION TO AGGRESSION, just that they never planned on aggression on the same scale as Germany.

This is better only in some much as the USSR was not a deeply commited to as warlike and aggressive foreign policy as Germany.

The problem with Nazism, which makes it different to many other aggressive Nations in moral terms, is that aggressive conquest on a world scale was at the heart of it's policy, was one of the main aspects of it's policy, that war and conquest is a good in itself.

Many Nations in the past have conquered and attacked their neighbours, they just generally don't do it in such a vast and gratuitous way as the Germans.

I think this happened because the Nazis had attacked two of France and Britain's allies, Poland and Czechslovakia. Also, Britain and France had made themselves look ridiculous by trying to appease Hitler in the years leading up to the war (Munich Agreement etc.), which only encouraged his aggressive intentions.

There is no problem with saying that it is the individual that matters. If you are a citizen of one of the smaller Nations it will be extremely bad to see your country conquered and destroyed, in the same way as a citizen of a large one.

But, in France, the UK, Greece, Belgium, etc etc. there are simply a lot more individuals than in Finland etc. Millions and millions more. So, attacking so many individuals must have a greater weight than attacking a smaller number, if they are in all other ways equal.

Also, if only part of your country is attacked, you are still left with your capital city, your culture and government, the chance of getting back what is lost. Not if your whole country is subjugated. This also makes the actions different.

It is easy to say why Germany is considerably worse: though in legal terms France and Britain declared war on Germany, Germany had put them in a position of being obliged to do so by attacking their allies Poland and Czechslovakia, knowing France and Britain would then be forced to declare war.

It is wrong also to say that the countries USSR attacked had no quarrel with the USSR, when they had all fought wars with the USSR in the recent past, and all the territories involved had until 1918 actually being ruled by Russians, or part of the Russian Empire.

This doesn't directly answer your question Sid, and I can't quote chapter and verse on an author who does exactly what Dénes described. But I would still submit that it is indicative of the way that Naziism and its victims are accorded a unique status.

As you probably know, Hitler's victims have a museum memorializing them in downtown Washington DC, established by US law. Do Stalin's victims have such a museum? No. Mao? Communism in general? Pol Pot? Rwanda? Bosnia? Armenia? No to all of these. What about the American Civil War, or the opening of the American West, pivotal events in US history? No again. Actually, while the US has monuments, I'm not aware of any other federally-funded museum in the US dedicated specifically to one event. And this is an event that the US was associated with mostly through its role in helping to defeat the Nazis, not as a perpetrator or a victim.

Holocaust. What does this word evoke? It did not always refer to the victims of Naziism. It was just an utterly destructive, all consuming event, usually by fire. Now consider the genocides I mentioned above. Have any of them been given ownership of a word from the English language? Stalin has his "Great Terror", but by itself out of context these words do not make most people think of Stalin, or the Soviet Union, or communism. "Cultural Revolution" misses too, as it was the name given by the Chinese themself to this period of their history, and it does not refer just to the murders committed. If anything, it has been reduced to kitsch culture -- I can buy Mao's face on a t-shirt, but I haven't seen Hitler's or Himmler's. "Killing Fields" comes close, but this is due in large part to the film by that name and may fade as the events become more distant. "Gulag" is the only word I can think of that is directly associated with a specific episode of repression, but this wasn't an English word to start with.

I would say Hitler and Naziism are definitely accorded a unique status. As with anything else, each is entitled to his or her own view as to whether they deserve this. Ultimately, every historical event is unique in some sense.

I think Nazism may be accorded a unique status in the Western World, it isn't in China, Japan, the Far East, South America etc, Eastern Europe.
This is because it was a Western European thing.
Nazism probably has special status in the Western World because it is used as a warning and example to the people living there of the sort of thing that can happen in their country.

For places where communism in the main big demon go to Eastern Europe, South America, Taiwan etc.
The evils of Imperial Japan, China and so on.

I would say Pol Pot has a reputation as bad as the Nazis, at least in the UK.

The holocaust is fairly unique because of it's scale and the dedicated and concentrated way they went about it. In very very crude terms in many of the Communist regimes the people were killed by hunger or other indirect means over many years, not about 6,000,000 gassed in a year and a half.

Also, people can see some logic, even if it is twisted, in many of the communist regimes, because they come from social inequality, idealism etc. big social problems in the countries they appear in.

Whereas Nazism just seems wholly negative, when crazy biggoted conservatives go totally ape with bloodletting, like the KKK made into a worldwide totalitarian movement, playing on racism and fear.

Also, I have heard that the Jewish lobby in powerful in the US, and the US has close ties with Israel, that might be part of the explanation for the museum.

Hi Jeff,

Personally I am opposed to special elevation of the so-called "Holocaust". I have no objection to a public Genocide Day, or a public Genocide Memorial, or a public Genocide Museum, but I don't think that one particular genocide, however awful, should be the particular focus, especially in countries not directly involved in its prosecution. I think the focus on the so-called "Holocaust" is being misused to serve the current political requirements of Israel.

That said, there was something uniquely implacable about the attempted genocide of the Jews - a genocide in the true meaning of the word in that it was an attempt to annihilate an entire race by industrial means. There has been nothing like it. There was nothing the Jews could do to "Un-Jew" themselves to escape genocide. They couldn't recant. They couldn't convert. They couldn't re-educate. They couldn't collaborate.

Communism certainly killed an awful lot of people, but that is not necessarily the same as true genocide. Communism's killing, although more widespread (it did, after all, have much longer to kill people over a far wider area than Nazism) was less implacable. Under Communism it was often possible to "re-educate" oneself to accommodate to the system in a way that Jews could not under Nazism. This isn't much consolation to those who did die under Communism, but the fact remains that the Nazis' attempted genocide against the Jews was more implacable than anything attempted by Communism anywhere.

As I said before, we in the West are naturally going to focus more on Hitler than on Stalin or Mao because we fought a hot war against him. What is more, he corrupted a major Western country to carry out his genocide. It strikes closer to home.

But that still leaves open my question, "Where are all the books and authors who contend that Hitler was a unique evil?"

Cheers,

Sid.

Hear,hear.

I agree 100%. Let's try to keep the focus on the victims, or at least on what we can learn from it (in the case of Nazi Germany, that a high level of culture and education is no sure defense against barbarism). It just seems to get mired in claims by those related to the victims against those related to the perpetrators.

I agree. In Stalin's repression, there was at least an attempt to claim that the terror was in response to some threat, or retribution for past misdeeds. Even if it was completely bizarre and paranoid, it wasn't presented as being purely because of who the victims were.

Certainly the Jews could do nothing to "un-Jew" themselves. But neither could the victims of Stalin's ethnically-based repressions escape their persecution. Could a Pole in eastern Poland in 1939 "un-Pole" himself and escape the Gulag or exile? Or a Ukrainian, or Latvian, or Moldovan, or Crimean Tatar? Would the daughter of an "enemy of the people" suddenly not be the daughter of an enemy of the people? Stalin's repressions were at least as sweeping and arbitrary. Certainly with Stalin there was always the possiblity that the winds would shift, and today's enemy of the people be released. After 6 months of persecuting Jews, Hitler didn't suddenly decide that Jews were OK, and he would go after Hessians instead.

First, Korea was a rather hot war for some of us in the West, and I would say we were fighting Mao there. But it wasn't conclusive the way that World War 2 was.

But I don't think that's all there is to it. I think that we like to keep Hitler and the Nazis pure, and say that the fight against Naziism was simply Good vs. Evil. With Communism that is harder to do. Many Western nations had quite substantial communist parties, but Nazi groups were never more than a fringe element and lacked the trans-national appeal of communism. And Marx has always been more palatable as an intellectual godfather than the Nazi's crazy racist rantings. What's not to like about the workers being released from the chains of capitalist wage-slavery?

Very true. It's much harder to say "it could never happen here".

This post has been edited by Jeff_S on July 10, 2006 08:12 pm

Rgr on the first part - however I think comunist russia planned an agression on an even bigger scale - look at Asia, Cuba, Africa.. They tried to impose their regim by force allover the globe. We had the cold war for a reason.

I think I have changed my idea on the USSR's part in starting World War Two.

This debate prompted me to have a look at a couple of books I have to refresh my knowledge on the build up to WWII. I was surprised, for the following reasons:

i) In 1940 the USSR occupied Basarabia and Northern Bucovina as a result of the Nazi Soviet pact.

But...

At the same time Hungary took Northern Transylvania away from Romania as part of a settlement decided by the Germans, which dwarfs the scale of the territories the Russians took. This is discussed in Mark Axworthy's account 'Third Axis, Fourth Ally'.

ii) The attack on Finland. According to the book 'The Winter War' by William Trotter, which is sympathetic to the Finns, the Soviet attack began as a result of a misunderstanding between the USSR and the Finns.

According to this book the Soviet Union did not intend to occupy all of Finland, only small areas near the Karelian Isthmus to protect Leningrad from German attack.

iii) The Nazi Soviet pact apparently came about due to Nazi intitatives, and also after Stalin realised that he could not rely on the Western Allies to support him against Nazi Germany. The alliance, on the part of the USSR was apparently to buy time and forestall a German attack, not a plan to carve up Europe.

iv) Just before World War Two Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, USSR etc. were all invovled in negotiations to occupy disputed territory belonging to their neighbours. BUT...according to a recent biography of Hitler (by Ian Kershaw) only one European statesman was actively determined to start a huge war.

In Kershaw's biography there are pages and pages of info. on Hitler's aggressive intentions, from speeches, things he told his generals, along the lines of war and conquest would solve all Germany's economic problems etc. throughout the 30s.

It is also misleading to claim that the only reason Romania entered the war was to regain territory taken by the Soviets. More significant was impressing the Germans and combating Hungarian influence in order to get Northern Transylvania back.

I would change my ideas about who was responsible for WWII:
Roughly, the allies, the USSR, Hungary etc. contributed about 5% to the outbreak of war.

Germany about 95%.

This post has been edited by saudadesdefrancesinhas on July 11, 2006 08:57 am

What do you mean by Romania involved in negociations to occupy territory just before WW2? What exactly is your source for this claim?

There is something in Mark Axworthy's book about some territory...I think I have made a mistake. I was thinking that Romania was wanting to occupy some territory that had belonged to Bulgaria, but it was possibly the otherway around when I think about it. Was it Romania that had the territory since 1913 and Bulgaria wanted it back?

Also, the Germans offered Romania some of somewhere else, but I don't think wanted it in the end. Was it Czechslovakian territory?

Yes, it was the Southern Dobruja region.

the Soviet Union actively supported hungarian and bulgarian territorial (re-)claims, despite the mutual agreement on "spheres of interest".
this happened right after the axis victory in the west and coincided with a shift of soviet foreign politics away from supporting the axis, with the aim of sending the UK a signal of support.
the Soviet Union was interested in a chaotic Romania which would have caused signifiant problems regarding the oil supply for the german army. which is why they supported bulgarian and hungarian claims.

That was Southern Banat, part of Yugoslavia, in early 1941.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on July 11, 2006 01:44 pm