Nazi Evil

I think IMHO that this thread has lost its target. What exactly are the debating sides focusing on pointing out? I remember posting here that the nazis did evil deeds, but if they were to win those deeds would have been "cleaned" by portraying them as necessary deeds in the fight against evil. Because they portrayed their fight just like that when they were in power. "Evil" is a politically loaded term, whose version of evil is THE evil? Maybe we should step back and see the whole sharade of fight against evil as EVIL, because usually it's nothing but propaganda to cloak fight for interests and power.

take care

Which was exactly my point. this whole sharade about "nazis were evil" is mostly political. nothing more.

If evil is recognised, as being the person of the nazi party or Hitler, well, there is a subtle nuance pointing at the fact that somewhere in the world there is also the personification of Good.

and who might that be?

Evil is a religious term. nothing to do with politics. if a politicians starts using the word evil, i suspect foul play = imperialistic tendencies and bigotry.

This post has been edited by Suparatu on November 03, 2006 09:04 am

I quite like the sausagedefranchise name, it's about as daft as the name saudadesdefrancesinhas in the first place.

With your encyclopedic knowledge of the West I would have thought you would have known what saudadesdefrancesinhas meant anyway.

But, 'Superlube' is definitely a name you should consider using!

I don't think I have run out of arguments, just I can't be bothered anymore. Your last post was, ...., interesting? as paranoic documents go.

I am guessing your age but I would say about 14-16...

I quite like the sausagedefranchise name, it's about as daft as the name saudadesdefrancesinhas in the first place.

With your encyclopedic knowledge of the West I would have thought you would have known what saudadesdefrancesinhas meant anyway.

But, 'Superlube' is definitely a name you should consider using!

I don't think I have run out of arguments, just I can't be bothered anymore. Your last post was, ...., interesting? as paranoic documents go.

I am guessing your age but I would say about 14-16...

TROLL.

OK lets all play Word Games:

Does the Superlube means Droll, maybe as in:

Directory > Words > Thesaurus droll: adjective,

Arousing laughter: amusing, comic, comical, funny, humorous, laughable, risible, zany.

Or his he calling you a Troll?? as in:

2. n. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, “Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll.”

But maybe he thinks you are a TROLL:

In Norse mythology, repulsive dwarfs who lived in caves or other hidden places. They would steal children and property but hated noise. The troll in the children's story “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” for example, lives under a bridge and is enraged when he hears the goats crossing the bridge.

OR

A troll is a creature that lives in the mountains. They are very large, ugly, small brained, and they have very bad tempers.

But somehow I believe the answer is behind number 2, but by using just the single word hopes to avoid being reprimanded by the admisnistration because he did not refer to you as a person with:
no real interest in learning..., Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics,...... they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net.

That could be considered a personal attack and earn a reprimand.

How childish, seems like the response to Superlube's post will be one word as well:

"IMMATURE"

and in case Supertube dosent know the meaning its:

Not fully grown or developed. either mentaly or physically

Marked by or suggesting a lack of normal maturity: silly, immature behavior.

Being in an early period of growth or development: green, infant, juvenile, young, youthful.

Of or characteristic of a child, especially in immaturity.

We will let the readers decide which fits.

N C R,

"And you can call me anything you like, but dont call me to early in the morning"

Old Sarcastic Irish Proverb.

This post has been edited by New Connaught Ranger on November 03, 2006 09:23 pm

" I remember posting here that the nazis did evil deeds, but if they were to win those deeds would have been "cleaned" by portraying them as necessary deeds in the fight against evil."

I think one point I raised about this was that this was not necessarily how the Nazis, or at least Hitler and the Nazi leadership were thinking. I made a few quotes to back up what I was saying.

I will look them up again if it will be helpful in the discussion.

I am thinking, that in respect of the Nazis, the whole ground of the idea would shift slightly. I don't think, a lot of the time, the Nazis would actually have thought it necessary to justify what they were doing as 'necessary deeds in the fight against evil'.

The justification I can imagine being used is more mixed; part of it goes along those lines. The Jews and Russians/bolsheviks/Slavs generally were implacable enemies of Germany, and by extension, civilisation itself, so the threat they represented was so great that any aggressive measures were appropriate.

The other side of it is that doing things to Jews and Slavic people is quite justified by the fact that, since they are racially and intrinsically inferior, they are not worthy of thinking about other than as support and labour for Aryans.

I get the impression that the Nazis did not think in terms of Good and Evil as such, or in the way we understand these ideas now, but that the domination of an intrinsically/genetically superior race was the natural order of nature, and more or less inevitable, but would be challenged and restricted by inferior races if they were given a chance to.

If the Nazis had won, it is probable that such views would have spread and gained a much stronger hold, given that some people in all European countries thought in this kind of way.

What I wonder is: to what extent were these ideas actually founded and securely based in reality? Would they make life better for people?

Were there not serious dangers in applying that way of thinking to reality and human relations, as the Nazis did?

Aught the Nazis themselves to have taken notice earlier of what the theories and ideas were actually leading to?

Generally, using terms like good and evil is not useful, because, in a conflict, each side has a natural tendency to unnecessarily demonise their opponents and those who disagree with them. These terms can encourage that.

I was wondering, however, while this is usually the case, with the Nazis and certain other totalitarian ideologies in the 20th C. things were at stake beyond the usual power struggles which we see at other times in history. Hence the exceptional terminology.

New Connaught Ranger,

That last post you made has just been making me laugh!!

And I was genuinely interested in how old Superlube might be as well and all he does is abuse me for wondering.

If the nazis had won those ideas would have become the norm. They would have enforced their view of history, they would have supressed historical revisionists that would've ran counter to their dogma. State power would have been used to impose their view on issues of good and evil.

Would life be better for people? For some definitely. Until now no system has managed to make life better for people. Some win some lose in all systems, some win only if others lose. I think the winners of the war would surely have obtained the spoils of their enhanced position in the world.

But other power struggles in history also had ideological or religious underlinings. Fact is WWII marks the emergence or confirmation of new world powers. It was a crucial moment in the power configuration.

take care

This is very possible.

Initially, my saying that Nazism tended towards being evil was based on the fact that, having become the 'norm', life would have become significantly worse for the majority of people in Europe. If the example of Nazi behaviour in Europe during the World War is anything to go by, and the ideas in themselves were not, I think, a viable basis for organising society.

But this is a peculiarity of Nazism as compared to many other systems of ideas.

Strangely, though WW2 marked the emergence of new powers in the world, this seems to have been a by-product not really anticipated by many European leaders in 1939/40.

It points to another reason I thought Nazism could deserve to be called evil; namely that the pursuing the kind of goals the Nazis did was irresponsible and destructive.

Comparing the kind of power struggles going on in the world up until the end of World War I, and the power struggles between the US and the USSR after WW2, I thought there were a lot of similarities. In both eras I thought that you could tell that the power blocks were suspicious of each other, and would try and attack each other indirectly, but were fairly reluctant to ressort to armed conflict unless it seemed unavoidable.

The difference with the Nazis in the 1930s seems to be the unusual willingness of Hitler to actively choose aggressive war, and then the manner in which Nazi war aims became increasing ideological, grandiose and impractical.

"Tended towards evil"?


so they are no longer EVIL, no questions asked?

they were irresponsible and distructive for other people, not the nazis.
pursuing goals that benefit one side and severly affect the other isnothing new in imperialpolitics. as a matter of fact, i can say the priciple was followed correctly, even though the means they did it was less than successfull.

...because they both had NUCLEAR weapons. if all they had was tanks and grenades, i suspect that the Fulda gap might have gotten really active in one sunday morning...

Once again, Hitler`s choice for a agressive stance was correct. there is no point in warfare to leave your enemy with enough power to strike back at you. Patton said it best - a good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan executed tomorrow.

where i think he made a mistake was when he starded this silly racial thing. i bet his officer staff were truly annoyed by the fact Hitler did not let them go to war as they wanted. instead, thejews were a priority. yeah right. i bet that if hitler used some tuly effective rethoric,claiming he wanted to rid the european continent of the bolshevick plague, he would have to buildairportstohandleallthe aid that wouldcome from the US.

in the end it is only a matter of unsuccessfull imperial tactics. not evil or good.
only unseccessfull or successfull.

one succeeded, thus is "good", the otherfailed,thusit is "EVIL"..

that's bs.

Yes, that is why they were evil. In the end, they were irresponsible and destructive even for themselves and Germany, which just made it worse.

The irresponsibility came from deliberately escalating and expanding the scope of the conflict and making it a matter of life and death for the nations involved. Hitler's policies made sure that the Germans had to win, or no mercy would be shown to them by the people they had attacked and brutalised.

Pursuing goals that benefit one side and severely effect the other is nothing new in imperial politics, but imperial politics tends to be evil in it's effects. The only thing you can say about Imperial politics before Hitler was that is was on a much more modest and limited scale.

Instead of confining his wars of conquest to small nations and peoples, often in distant places and involving very few troops, Hitler chooses to do it in Europe, where there are huge numbers of people.

The aims of the conquest are also openly more backward and extreme than all but the most crack pot 19th Century colonial enterprises. In practice, the methods even ended up being more backward than that.

The actual principles that determined how European countries tried to rule their imperial possessions, and those that applied in the more successful ones, weren't applied correctly by the Nazis anyway.

Finally, European powers could get away with more when confronted by cultures which had not yet developed ideas like national identity in the European sense. Hitler was dealing with 20th century European Nations in his imperial schemes, with all that that implies.

Hitler's choice of an aggressive stance was correct in a tactical sense, if you had Hitler's war aims. But, why did he want to attack Poland in the first place? Were the aims he wanted to acheive 'correct' or reasonable?

The thing his, the racial element was central to the whole reason Hitler and his Generals were prepared to expand the war in the first place. Some Generals did not support Hitler's racist rhetoric, but many did, especially the higher ranking Generals.

Without the racial imperialism there would have been no war in the first place, because the Germans would have had no reason to want to conquer people who had no ethnic connection with Germany, and then to treat them abusively.

Probably, most right wing and democratic regimes would have helped Hitler if he had wanted to attack the USSR. But instead, he wanted to attack both the USSR and every other regime that would not accept German domination at the same time.

It was a matter of Imperial tactics (that were quite nasty in themselves) put into practice in a way, and with results, that made them definitely Evil.

Before Hitler there were not two different sides in Europe. There were the crazy German Imperialists and belatedly their Italian allies. Then there was everyone else, who by default were formed into a heterogenous group with little in common other than that they were against the crazy Nazis and Fascists. The Nazis were known to be evil because this collation won and so made their crimes known. If they had won, they would still have been evil, but people would not have had a chance to know.

Once the ball started rolling it would've been irresponsible for them not to push with all their strength. Since there was no way of stopping the ball, might as well do your best to try to push it to victory.

Did he have any other geographical option? Germany was confined in Europe. The nazis asked in the 30s for Germany's colonies to be returned, but to no avail. At a time when Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the latter by far smaller, had a free hand outside Europe.

I dont think the aims were different.

The situations were different. It was war. The nazis had to organize the possessions to be as quickly as possible integrated in the war effort. Any other considerations in their administration were left aside. Winning the war was the main goal.

There were 2 sides even before Hitler. The winners of WWI and the losers; The bolsheviks and the capitalists.

take care

Hi Guys,

Personally I am not in the habit of using terms such as "evil".

However, the character of a deed does not change depending on who wins. If some are to be believed, the bulk of the German population never knew of the mass extermination attempt on the Jews. If the Nazis though this such a morally positive thing to do, why did they not publicise it at the time? The answer is that they knew it was not "good" and transgressed the moral principles of the great majority of the German population.

The Nazis were going to write the Jews out of history, not boast about it. It didn't much matter who won WWII on this score, because everybody, even the Nazis, recognised that they were engaged in something that was not "good" by any existing moral code. And if it was not "good" by any existing moral code.........

WWII was not between Good and Evil. It was between Better and Worse. Better won, thank heavens!

Cheers,

Sid.

The situations were different. It was war. The nazis had to organize the possessions to be as quickly as possible integrated in the war effort. Any other considerations in their administration were left aside. Winning the war was the main goal.

There were 2 sides even before Hitler. The winners of WWI and the losers; The bolsheviks and the capitalists.

take care

There was no ball involving France, Poland, Britain and then USSR and United States.

Hitler became involved in a war with France and the UK about Poland. But at that time, USSR was not involved, but was an ally of Germany.

Hitler later decided to initiate action against the USSR because he wanted to carve it up and give it to Germans. I consider that this is the point at which Nazi Germany really starts to become evil. There were atrocities in Poland, but that was just the start compared to the USSR.

He did not have any other geographical option IF he was dedicated to Imperial expansion. But, the fact that he was dedicated to Imperial expansion is one of the reasons he was evil, because as far as I know there is no automatic necessity for a country to expand imperially at the expense of others. There is no automatic moral justification for such expansion either.

Also, there were various plans to return colonies to Germany in the 1930s, because many people in every country post World War One were sympathetic to the Germans and the way they had been treated after Versailles.

But, Hitler was not interested in this, because the expansion he aimed at was European, to reverse the result of WWI and make Germany the ONLY European power.

The aims of Nazi imperialism were quite different. Part of European imperialism in the late 19th Century was Nationalistic; we need colonies to be a great Nation and similar ideas. But, most of the empires were formed before that era, and the reasons for them were often mainly commercial and linked to trade. The governments who expanded the empires also had to claim they were doing so for the benefit of the Native populations of the countries they occupied, to spread effective administration and end wars etc. otherwise the people at home turn against expensive colonial enterprises.

The Nazis are somewhere between a throw back to 18th century slave traders and the extreme wing of the Nationalists; the idea is to conquer 'inferior' races to enslave them, destroy any administration and civilisation (Slavic civilisation= worthless to the Nazis) that exists in those countries, and remove the people from the land, and TURN them into backward second or third class citizens.

Also, the Nazis were not only interested in organising their possessions for efficient integration into the war effort. This often ended up at best a secondary consideration. The Germany economy itself was not integrated into the Nazi war effort for similar reasons. As soon as the war started the crazy racial empire plans move to the surface...and Hitler runs the occupied territories in the same disorganised way as Germany.

None of this I am making up out of my mind, or exaggerating about to make a point, the Nazis wrote extensively about all of these things, and Hitler explained his plans openly and in detail, with reference to why he was using this behaviour which he knew to be immoral to make Germany the predominant world power.

That is why Professor Kershaw made the comments he did in the bit of the second volume of his Hitler biography that I quoted.

There were far from being two contending camps after WW1, other than the Bolsheviks and everyone else; but even then, the Nazis allied themselves with the Bolsheviks...

no that is not the reason why Hitler decided to attack the soviet union. the reason was the foreign policy shift of the soviet union from a pro-axis stance towards a more supportive one regarding UK.
by attacking Poland, Hitler lost any freedom of action on the political scene. this went well until after the defeat of France, when Stalin found himself in a much worse situation than ever, having gambled on a prolonged Germany vs. France/UK war, with Germany depending on soviet resources.
as soon the USSR started sending signs of support to the UK by encouraging revisionist claims by Hungary and Bulgaria (thus getting themselves involved in the axis-dominated political sphere according to the Ribentropp-Molotov pact) vs. Romania, it started to dawn that Germany would have to defeat the USSR first before any signifiant military progress could be made against the UK.

Nazi Germany really started to become evil when the decision to implement the "Endlösung" was taken.
All other actions (agressions against neutrals, reclaims of perviously owned territories, active antisemitism, occupation) are not new, not even for Germany,