Hiroshima visit, a missed op.

[Karl7]

@Wolfshanze:

Kurt knows that if Germany or Japan had the Atomic Bomb, they would have refused to use it, because it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.

Ha, well… if Germany had been able to get an A-bomb (unlikely I know) before D-day, NOT using it but threatening to use it might have been the optimal strategy.

Would the US/UK have continued the war under the threat of losing London?

Of course, even w/an A-bomb and the US/UK off their back, could the Germans have withstood the Russians?  Production of any German bomb would have likely been slow, so use as a tactical weapon on the eastern front would have been speculative in its effectiveness.

I remember David Glantz saying the damage done on the eastern from was basically equivalent to a theater nuclear war… minus the radiation…

[KurtGodel7]

@Karl7:

Kurt, I respect your thoughts on this. You’ve definitely put a lot into it. Our disagreement is not one of tit for tat. The Allies decimated German cities. I acknowledge that. I’ve seen it. I was in Germany for a wedding and during that time I went to Darmstadt. There I saw some memorials to the allied bombing raids. I was simultaneously repulsed but proud. USA blew in and killed! But then a city was leveled. Not great for USA or Germany, but sadly necessary.

My point is only that when the fighting starts, the gloves come off and the winners don’t care how bloody it gets. That’s all. Indeed, when the casualties start coming in, few if any will care if the violence is “respecting international norms.”  Vengeance is the watch word–meeting out all necessary violence the goal.

You say that the Allies were wrong in the war effort because they leveled greater firepower than was necessary? That’s an after the fact justification. Germany and Japan were deadly strong.  No nation in that situation should be held account for “overestimation” of the amount of violence it needs to dispense to win.

The idea of “proportionality” has got to be one of the dumbest military ideas in history. In the middle of the fight how do you even know?  Winning is all that matters, and if you overshoot, well, so what–as long as you win!

The Soviet government engineered the Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s. That famine killed 7 million innocent people, including 3 million children. The FDR administration’s response to that famine was to whitewash it. Just as the FDR administration whitewashed a number of subversive Soviet activities directed against the United States.

You wrote about how it was justified for the Allied gloves to “come off” once war started. The problem with that is that the Allied had never actually been wearing gloves. Their prewar actions–especially by the Soviet government–demonstrated a brutality rarely equaled in human history.

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths. Did that food blockade have military value? Absolutely! Stalin’s regime was so horrible that, had Hitler been able to actually feed the people within his own borders, many or most Soviets would have gone over to the Nazi side. From the Allied perspective, it was absolutely necessary to convince the Soviet people that the National Socialist government was waging a war of extermination against them–that it was deliberately starving all Slavs to death. Only then would Hitler seem even worse than Stalin. But that propaganda campaign was only going to work if Germany physically couldn’t feed everyone within its borders. Stalin understood this as well, which is why he ordered the removal or destruction of all food supplies and farming equipment as part of his scorched earth policy.

During the early postwar period, the American government instituted the Morgenthau Plan (a.k.a. JCS 1067). In 1947 Herbert Hoover wrote, “There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a ‘pastoral state’. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it.” It is estimated that a minimum of 6 million Germans starved to death during the three years that the Morgenthau Plan had been in place.

Nor was the Morgenthau Plan the only Western plutocratic crime against humanity during the early postwar period. There was also Operation Keelhaul, which most likely resulted in millions of death among refugees from the Soviet Union. And there was the treatment of German POWs during the postwar period, which also resulted in large numbers of illegal deaths.

Allied plutocrats condemned the Nazi government using morally universalist language. But the Allied plutocrats were not moral universalists. They themselves had no objection at all to murdering millions, or even tens of millions, of innocent people. They committed these murders not just during a time of world war, but for at least the first three years of the postwar period.

[Imperious Leader]

The Soviet government engineered the Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s. That famine killed 7 million innocent people, including 3 million children. The FDR administration’s response to that famine was to whitewash it. Just as the FDR administration whitewashed a number of subversive Soviet activities directed against the United States.

The NAZI government engineered the Hunger Program in the early 1940s. That famine killed 50 million innocent people, including 8 million children. The Hitlers administration’s response to that program was to whitewash it. Just as Hitlers administration whitewashed a number of subversive Nazi activities directed against the world.

[aequitas-et-veritas]

KurtGodel7 wrote:

@KurtGodel7:

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths.

German populations in May '39

79.375.281

German population in Oct '46

65.137.274

Wierd isn’t it :?

So you see Kurt, your statement is wrong.
You are talking about an invisible foodblockade.

[Imperious Leader]

Kurt is referring to the NAZI HUNGER PLAN, which used the faux appearance of a “economic blockage” to excuse genocide and wars of exterminations against many people.Kurt knows this but because he likes them, defends them to the point of looking ridiculous.

[KurtGodel7]

@aequitas:

KurtGodel7 wrote:

@KurtGodel7:

The food blockade the Allies imposed on Germany resulted in 20 - 30 million deaths.

German populations in May '39

79.375.281

German population in Oct '46

65.137.274

Wierd isn’t it :?

So you see Kurt, your statement is wrong.
You are talking about an invisible foodblockade.

Britain imposed a food blockade shortly after Churchill came to power. The National Socialist government recognized it did not have the food with which to feed the people within its own borders. The plan was to place a much higher priority on feeding Germans than on feeding Slavs or Jews. The majority of the victims of Churchill’s blockade were Slavs.

The Hunger Plan that IL keeps referring to really did exist, though of course all his claims about it are fictitious. It didn’t kill the 50 million people that he made up, nor even the smaller number the Nazis had wanted to kill. The idea behind the Hunger Plan was to starve captured Soviet cities, thereby freeing up the food necessary to prevent starvation in the rest of German-held territory. The Hunger Plan was a failure: Germany lacked the manpower it would have needed to cordon off captured Soviet cities. In the absence of that cordon, food continued to flow from captured Sovied farmland to captured Soviet cities.

The failure of the Hunger Plan did not lessen the death toll caused by the Allied plutocrats’ food blockade. the failure of the Hunger Plan meant that the German government did not obtain nearly as much food from the captured Soviet countryside as it had planned. (That food instead went to captured Soviet cities.) Because the German government didn’t obtain the expected quantity of food, it was impossible to carry out Hitler’s order to feed the Soviet POWs. Those POWs had been conscripted to work in German weapons factories, and were an essential part of the German war effort. Hitler’s order to feed them was based on military necessity, not racial ideology. The fact that millions of Soviet POWs starved to death while in German captivity was the result of the Allied food blockade, and a result of the failure of the Hunger Plan.

[Imperious Leader]

Britain imposed a food blockade shortly after Churchill came to power. The National Socialist government recognized it did not have the food with which to feed the people within its own borders. The plan was to place a much higher priority on feeding Germans than on feeding Slavs or Jews. The majority of the victims of Churchill’s blockade were Slavs.

That might be because Hitler caused a world war? and England did the same thing she did in the Great War, except not as successful since Germany conquered France this time and had alot more resources to feed Herman Goering with. The Majority of the 23 million deaths that Germany caused during the war by deliberately shooting and starving proves the success of their Hunger plan.

The Hunger Plan that IL keeps referring to really did exist, though of course all his claims about it are fictitious. It didn’t kill the 50 million people that he made up, nor even the smaller number the Nazis had wanted to kill. The idea behind the Hunger Plan was to starve captured Soviet cities, thereby freeing up the food necessary to prevent starvation in the rest of German-held territory. The Hunger Plan was a failure: Germany lacked the manpower it would have needed to cordon off captured Soviet cities. In the absence of that cordon, food continued to flow from captured Sovied farmland to captured Soviet cities.

:roll:  The facts that the German Hunger Plan was hugely successful, as it tricked the world outside Nazi occupied territories that Hitler was not effected by food shortages until The Allies could capture more resources that were currently held by the Nazis, which came to a crescendo only until late 1944.The fact is Germany,  Italy and all the satellite minor axis partners had no issues with food shortage. Kurt knows this but alas has never read any book not written by Hoover. In Greece, Poland and Holland the Nazis starved many tens of thousands. Germany controlled the shipments to all occupied areas, which made the plan such a success at fooling only Kurt until latter in the war when the Allies took alot of territory back. The ignorant statement about “cordoning off” captured cities is another myth Kurt is fooled by. In reality, if so many Soviet citizens, Polish, and Jews didn’t die by Einsatzgruppen and interior security forces, basically Kurt is a Holocaust denier and should be ashamed of himself.

[KurtGodel7]

@Imperious:

That might be because Hitler caused a world war? and England did the same thing she did in the Great War, except not as successful since Germany conquered France this time and had alot more resources to feed Herman Goering with. The Majority of the 23 million deaths that Germany caused during the war by deliberately shooting and starving proves the success of their Hunger plan.
:roll:  The facts that the German Hunger Plan was hugely successful, as it tricked the world outside Nazi occupied territories that Hitler was not effected by food shortages until The Allies could capture more resources that were currently held by the Nazis, which came to a crescendo only until late 1944.The fact is Germany,  Italy and all the satellite minor axis partners had no issues with food shortage. Kurt knows this but alas has never read any book not written by Hoover. In Greece, Poland and Holland the Nazis starved many tens of thousands. Germany controlled the shipments to all occupied areas, which made the plan such a success at fooling only Kurt until latter in the war when the Allies took alot of territory back. The ignorant statement about “cordoning off” captured cities is another myth Kurt is fooled by. In reality, if so many Soviet citizens, Polish, and Jews didn’t die by Einsatzgruppen and interior security forces, basically Kurt is a Holocaust denier and should be ashamed of himself.

There are a few needles of truth in your post, mixed in with whopping haystacks of error. You are correct to assert that Britain imposed food blockades in both world wars. The British food blockade was instrumental in the Entente’s victory, having resulted in 400,000 - 750,000 civilian deaths in Germany and Austria. Even more importantly (from the Entente perspective) the food blockade lowered the Centrals’ morale, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Kaiser’s government. Hitler had learned from the Kaiser’s mistake, and was determined to do whatever it took to prevent starvation among the German people, even if that meant starving Slavs.

Europe was far less able to feed itself in WWII than it had been in WWI. That was due to population growth, urbanization, and (in the east) Stalin’s industrialization. The Ukraine, for example, produced a much smaller food surplus in WWII than it had in WWI. Overall, the western Soviet Union ran at a food deficit. The same could also be said about Germany, and every major nation Germany captured. Even France ran at a food deficit, due in part to the fact that the British blockade cut Europe off from external fertilizer imports. Poland also ran at a food deficit.

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would. Churchill knew full well this was the case when he opted to impose a food blockade on Germany. The resulting food shortages are described in Adam Tooze’s book Wages of Destruction. Tooze was awarded the Wolfson History prize. The book has been praised by The Times (London), The Wall Street Journal, and History Today, and is rated 4.5 stars on Amazon. For those unwilling to buy this magnificent history book, there is always the Wikipedia article.

---

As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe’s 525 million people was dire. With the food supply reduced by 15% by the blockade and another 15% by poor harvests, starvation and diseases such as influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhus and cholera were a threat. Germany was forced to send 40 freight cars of emergency supplies into occupied Belgium and France, and American charities such as the Red Cross, the Aldrich Committee, and the American Friends Service Committee began gathering funds to send aid. Former president Herbert Hoover, who had done much to alleviate the hunger of European children during World War I, wrote:[33]

The food situation in the present war is already more desperate than at the same stage in the [First] World War. … If this war is long continued, there is but one implacable end… the greatest famine in history. . . .

In January [1941] Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[52] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels . . . of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children’s food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . . Hoover said that his information indicated that the Belgian ration was already down to 960 calories – less than half the amount necessary to sustain life – and that many children were already so weak they could no longer attend school.

---

[Imperious Leader]

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would.

Or he could just make peace for the world war he caused, moving forward entails getting anything he deserves from the Allies in spite of the Genocide Hitler caused.

There are a few needles of truth in your post

That might be because Hitler caused a world war?

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would.

There are a no needles of truth in that post. Rather Hitlers secret only lasted till the end of the war when everyone with half a brain understood that the Nazi hunger plan was an excuse to exterminate countless millions, while making it seem that ordinary Germans were starving on anything different than England was doing…Thats called “rationing food”. This rationing was followed by every participant in the war only you make up lies and got fooled by Nazi propaganda about Herman Goering actually losing weight because some B-17 dropped bombs and wiped out the sausage factory. I suggest you read something else perhaps?  In hoovers book, he offers many Chicken recipes that everyday Germans could have prepared, but no… they had to have sausage!

Europe was far less able to feed itself in WWII than it had been in WWI. That was due to population growth, urbanization, and (in the east) Stalin’s industrialization.

At least you didn’t blame it on the Allies and that bogus “food blockade”.

Hitler made no secret of the fact that if he had to starve Slavs to feed Germans, he would

Wrong again. He made it no secret that he wanted to exterminate what he considered “subhumans” and use any excuse for doing that and not have anything written down on paper regarding this truth so that people ( like Kurt) could be fooled into thinking some basic economic embargo would cover up Genocide. That worked only until the world found out the truth.

Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[52] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels . . . of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children’s food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . .

Hoover wanted to sell more Chicken cook books. Belgium was liquidated and no longer any semblance of " small democracy". It was destroyed like everything else the Nazi jackboot entered. Hoover should have been more concerned with ending the war before Germany killed any more people, not selling cookbooks. Germany would have taken all that food to Germany. Are you really so dense as to think the food would be distributed by the German army to feed the Belgiums? You are from Pluto.

[KurtGodel7]

@Imperious:

Or he could just make peace for the world war he caused, moving forward entails getting anything he deserves from the Allies in spite of the Genocide Hitler caused.

That might be because Hitler caused a world war?

There are a no needles of truth in that post. Rather Hitlers secret only lasted till the end of the war when everyone with half a brain understood that the Nazi hunger plan was an excuse to exterminate countless millions, while making it seem that ordinary Germans were starving on anything different than England was doing…Thats called “rationing food”. This rationing was followed by every participant in the war only you make up lies and got fooled by Nazi propaganda about Herman Goering actually losing weight because some B-17 dropped bombs and wiped out the sausage factory. I suggest you read something else perhaps?  In hoovers book, he offers many Chicken recipes that everyday Germans could have prepared, but no… they had to have sausage!

At least you didn’t blame it on the Allies and that bogus “food blockade”.

Wrong again. He made it no secret that he wanted to exterminate what he considered “subhumans” and use any excuse for doing that and not have anything written down on paper regarding this truth so that people ( like Kurt) could be fooled into thinking some basic economic embargo would cover up Genocide. That worked only until the world found out the truth.

Hoover wanted to sell more Chicken cook books. Belgium was liquidated and no longer any semblance of " small democracy". It was destroyed like everything else the Nazi jackboot entered. Hoover should have been more concerned with ending the war before Germany killed any more people, not selling cookbooks. Germany would have taken all that food to Germany. Are you really so dense as to think the food would be distributed by the German army to feed the Belgiums? You are from Pluto.

You have embraced a number of outright fabrications in this thread, including the claim that I’d cited neo-Nazi sources, the claim that I’d denied the Holocaust, and now the claim that there was no Allied food blockade during WWII. (Even though I’ve provided rock solid sources to prove there was such a blockade.) Your attempt to lighten the nastiness and deceptiveness of your posts by making jokes about Goering’s corpulence has fallen flat.

But in acting this way you are actually providing a service. Not a service you intended to provide. But a genuine service nonetheless.

Will you succeed in leading many astray? Absolutely. The tenor of your posts exactly corresponds with the highly propagandistic approach to WWII always taken in Western schools and the Western MSM. That gives you an enormous head start in discussions such as this. Most of those reading this want to believe you, and don’t want to believe me. For someone in that position, believing your posts represents the easy choice.

Anyone with the strength, courage, and intellectual integrity necessary to make the right choice is a person well worth knowing. I’m sure there are also plenty of people worth knowing whom you and others like you have misled. But that isn’t the point. The point is that if one could gather a group of people who reject every word you and others like you have ever written, you’d have a very good group of people! Smart, not easily deceived, intellectually honest, strong, altruistic.

In a world where true statements were also popular, the above-described group would get plenty of bandwagon followers. Such followers are unnecessary, and represent subtraction by addition. Getting rid of such bandwagon followers is much easier with your help, and the help of others like you, than would have been the case without.

[Imperious Leader]

You have embraced a number of outright fabrications in this thread, including the claim that I’d cited neo-Nazi sources, the claim that I’d denied the Holocaust, and now the claim that there was no Allied food blockade during WWII.

Germany imposed a food blockade on England, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Holland, and may others. Do you think any nation will just let her enemies receive food shipments during wartime?

Your attempt to lighten the nastiness and deceptiveness of your posts by making jokes about Goering’s corpulence has fallen flat.

But since he didn’t lose weight, doesn’t that mean he had enough food?

Even though I’ve provided rock solid sources to prove there was such a blockade.

You provided nothing to support your claims. The Allies did what they have been doing since Napoleonic times… Economic blockade. If anything Germany tried to blockade England by her U-boat campaign.

Anyone with the strength, courage, and intellectual integrity necessary to make the right choice is a person well worth knowing. I’m sure there are also plenty of people worth knowing whom you and others like you have misled. But that isn’t the point. The point is that if one could gather a group of people who reject every word you and others like you have ever written, you’d have a very good group of people! Smart, not easily deceived, intellectually honest, strong, altruistic.

Their is no “courage” in being misguided by bogus facts. And especially how you never acknowledge the Nazi’s as doing anything wrong. I have never seen any post from you that focus on Nazi atrocities, while when that topic is taken by another member, you go into this soapbox rant about how bad the Allies were worse, typically making Churchill look like the devil. Churchill had real courage during the war, while the Nazi’s were punk cowards who just made up garbage lies to cover up crimes against humanity. Then you make up this nonsense of how Hitler the good guy needed to murder tens of millions to save “starving Germans” you are so disingenuous to a fault, you might as well put your head in the sand and pull out a white flag. The exact methods of counterpoint and propaganda are the ones that the Nazis used as arguments. In each case, you subscribe to the same lies the Nazis used to cover up horrific acts of violence.

Germany started the war in the first place, so if they were starving don’t you think its their own fault for continuing the war when they could just surrender before Europe is destroyed and everyone is starved to death? Germany created the problem from the get go, then you defend them for how the Allies responded knowing fully well that Hitler was making this lie about “oh poor us we are starving” as the excuse for extermination against many groups under Nazi control?

How do you buy hook, line, and sinker all Nazi propaganda during the war Kurt? Everything you say in this manner is the exact things Germany made as propaganda slogans.

Every view you have is basically the wrong one. All the resources you cite were ones that you found that confirm ridiculous outcomes and conclusions. So essentially, you just found books
( bought and read) that follow that reasoning. In reality, those books were written to sell fringe ideas so people will buy them since the truth is boring these days, people favor controversial ideas to excite reading the obvious truths. Thats why today you see alot of these " If Hitler would have defeated Stalin Europe would be like this" types of books. People love the “what if factor”.

[KurtGodel7]

@Imperious:

You provided nothing to support your claims.

Of the lies you told in your post, I’ll focus on the one quoted above. I’ve made two claims relevant to this discussion: 1) That Churchill imposed a food blockade on Germany, and 2) That this food blockade caused massive starvation in German-held territory during WWII.

I’ve cited three sources in support of the first claim: a book written by a former U.S. president, a book written by an award-winning historian, and a Wikipedia article containing 87 references. The latter two sources also support my second claim. But time and again, you conveniently ignore or misrepresent facts you don’t like, or that don’t fit your chosen narrative. You are not responding to what I’m saying. You are testing the waters to see how much distortion you can get away with before people other than me start calling you out.

Below is a quote from p. 541 of Tooze’s work Wages of Destruction.

---

Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers [mostly Soviet POWs] be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population.

---

[Imperious Leader]

Below is a quote from p. 541 of Tooze’s work Wages of Destruction.

---

Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers [mostly Soviet POWs] be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population.

This is not a source. The same thing was going on in England et al , except they are talking about normal citizens working in factories as opposed to forced and or slave labor. The same message was probably discussed in 1940, 1941 by British leadership to induce more rationing since Germany was sinking vast amounts of shipping. The discussion in Germany’s case is “how to keep feeding slave labor enough food so they don’t die” It has nothing to do with the German people, except they are being rationed ( like in every Allied and Axis country) so that all these slaves can continue to work without dying. The entire problem that Tooze points out is among other things, Hitler and National Socialism tried to set up Germany preparation for war by “will and technology” and not realizing that globalization was a main ingredient to sustaining an economy. Hitler was never prepared for war and the “Speer Miracle” is bogus. In reality, Germany suffered or would have suffered in any war because they relied on military answers rather than proofing economic ones. Hitler didn’t want women to work in factories ( they were expected to raise families) and men were serving in the military. Leaving only forced and slave labor to produce ( and obviously normal production would be depressed from this labor). So in the end, the effects that Germany suffered were not from Churchill, but a direct result of the failed preparation of Germany for general war. The “Victory on the cheap” was Hitlers only solution and success related to vanquishing smaller nations, then ran into huge logistical problems when trying to conquer nations with larger populations and greater propensity to ramp up economy during wartime and failed…it was their own fault. Funny how you didn’t get this from Tooze, which is his main point. I guess its true that you only read what you want too.

Adam Tooze’s controversial new book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period to explore how Hitler’s surprisingly prescient vision- ultimately hindered by Germany’s limited resources and his own racial ideology-was to create a German super-state to dominate Europe and compete with what he saw as America’s overwhelming power in a soon-to- be globalized world. The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that is already setting off debate in Germany and will fundamentally change the way in which history views the Second World War.

This is how they characterize his book because it sells more copies to have a radical idea. He is not mainstream and he only presents a theory.

Even this Tooze sums up that Germany was attempting to win “war on the cheap” with limited resources even prewar and nothing is really in his book that " Germany had all these food shortages caused entirely by the Allies", rather Germany compounded her problems with each new country she invaded. Thats Germany’s fault, not the Allies who responded whatever way they could. This is how your argument fails entirely. He further says Germany didn’t have the infrastructure or was prepared for war, and since England didn’t surrender in 1940, Hitler was forced out of economic necessity to attack the Soviets. Hitler caused all his own problems by starting a war he could not finish because he was not ready economically for war. Thats the gist of that book.

[Karl7]

Wow!

Sorry I’ve been away from this discussion!  I’ve been on summer vacation for several weeks.

So, I’m not really sure what arguments are being made on a theoretical level.

Kurt, you’re saying the UK put in place a food blockade?  Yes, and…?  That’s war.

You are basically arguing that the Allies were hypocrites.  They condemned Nazi Germany for “human rights violations” and yet committed them themselves.

Well, yes an no.  What’s a “human rights violation” and when was it declared such?

You are engaging in a basic logical/historical fallacy liberals always engage in which is: liberal democracy that respects human rights has always been achievable and thus the baseline on which all historical-national actions must be judged.

That is a load of nonsense.  Reality/history is the absolute opposite: violence, meaningful or arbitrary, against the weak to dominate or exploit them is the real rule of humanity.  It has only been by the extraordinary striving of counties like the US and UK that even a semblance of “international law/human rights” has gained ground, even if superficially.  There’s no absolute truth or requirement for the respect of “human rights” when its violation has been the historical norm.  There is no thing as some “natural state” of human rights.

The reality is that few people really care about that stuff.  And if push comes to shove, it’s all out the window.  If you are a nation that strives to achieve the “rule of law” domestically and internationally and are confronted with an external power that absolutely doesn’t care, what are you going to do?  You’re seriously not going to blockade them? You’re seriously not going to bomb their cities–the center of that nation’s power?  What if you lose?  Then all that high minded shitt is out the window.  No one cares.

Come on Bro… that’s just dumb.  You’re inviting victory-- against yourself!  :-P

The highest best possible position is to say: we believe individuals have rights, but when a group of individuals collectively or individually act otherwise, they will be dealt with by all means NECESSARY.  That’s it.

An by necessary, forget this “proportionality” nonsense.  The “necessary” aspect is determined and judged by the power that conducts the act.

That is all.

Debate closed.

Thank you for coming.

[Imperious Leader]

Whats even more ridiculous is he uses references to support his point, but if you read further those same references argue against his points!

Its too funny.

[KurtGodel7]

@Karl7:

Wow!

Sorry I’ve been away from this discussion!  I’ve been on summer vacation for several weeks.

So, I’m not really sure what arguments are being made on a theoretical level.

Kurt, you’re saying the UK put in place a food blockade?  Yes, and…?  That’s war.

You are basically arguing that the Allies were hypocrites.  They condemned Nazi Germany for “human rights violations” and yet committed them themselves.

Well, yes an no.  What’s a “human rights violation” and when was it declared such?

You are engaging in a basic logical/historical fallacy liberals always engage in which is: liberal democracy that respects human rights has always been achievable and thus the baseline on which all historical-national actions must be judged.

That is a load of nonsense.  Reality/history is the absolute opposite: violence, meaningful or arbitrary, against the weak to dominate or exploit them is the real rule of humanity.  It has only been by the extraordinary striving of counties like the US and UK that even a semblance of “international law/human rights” has gained ground, even if superficially.  There’s no absolute truth or requirement for the respect of “human rights” when its violation has been the historical norm.  There is no thing as some “natural state” of human rights.

The reality is that few people really care about that stuff.  And if push comes to shove, it’s all out the window.  If you are a nation that strives to achieve the “rule of law” domestically and internationally and are confronted with an external power that absolutely doesn’t care, what are you going to do?  You’re seriously not going to blockade them? You’re seriously not going to bomb their cities–the center of that nation’s power?  What if you lose?  Then all that high minded shitt is out the window.  No one cares.

Come on Bro… that’s just dumb.  You’re inviting victory-- against yourself!  :-P

The highest best possible position is to say: we believe individuals have rights, but when a group of individuals collectively or individually act otherwise, they will be dealt with by all means NECESSARY.  That’s it.

An by necessary, forget this “proportionality” nonsense.  The “necessary” aspect is determined and judged by the power that conducts the act.

That is all.

Debate closed.

Thank you for coming.

The ruling class of any Western nation consists of two categories of people: politicians and plutocrats. Plutocrats are those at the very top of the economic pyramid. They are the ones with the money to buy media corporations, to make large contributions to political campaigns, to pressure universities through their alumni donations, etc. Of the two categories of ruling class people, plutocrats exert more power than politicians.

The actions of the Western nations’ ruling class bear no relationship at all to the values they claim to have. This goes well beyond mere hypocrisy. They are demonstrating every bit as much malignant intent as you’d expect from a hostile foreign occupier. In some cases, more malignant intent!

To give some specific examples: in recent times, the ruling class made it so that declaring bankruptcy no longer protects you from student loan debt. Lenders responded by greatly increasing their willingness to lend. The more money lenders were willing to provide, the more colleges raised their tuition in response. In modern America college has become a money grab–an act of financial predation against the middle class. College degrees are often economically worthless, and graduates labor under a crushing pile of student debt. Few members of the ruling class have shown interest in reforming this broken system. On the other hand, that same ruling class spent over $2 trillion on bailouts to themselves–TARP money, funded by the taxpayers, that went toward further enriching the rich. The near-complete absence of benign intent among members of the ruling class is seen in nearly all aspects of Washington lawmaking: the Omnibus spending bill, the law allowing robocalling to cell phones, immigration policy, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, etc.

The ruling class was every bit as divorced from benign intent during the '30s and '40s as it is today. In 1932 - '33, Stalin used an artificial famine to murder 7 million innocent Ukrainians, including 3 million children. The New York Times helped whitewash that crime by denying a famine occurred. FDR did the same, and extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union within a year of the completion of that famine. Within three years of the conclusion of that famine, France and Czechoslovakia had signed defensive alliances with the Soviet Union.

When Hitler invaded Poland, Britain and France responded by declaring war on Nazi Germany. They did not, however, declare war on the Soviet Union, even though the U.S.S.R. gobbled up the eastern half of Poland in 1939. And even though eastern Poland would lose 10% of its population during 1939 - ‘41 due to Soviet death squads and deportations. Western nations’ ruling class did, however, impose a food blockade on all of German-held Europe. No humanitarian aid was allowed through that blockade. The result was that millions of Poles (and tens of millions of others) died of starvation. Due to Allied victory, all of Poland was ultimately subject to hostile Soviet foreign occupation.

People of Polish descent have every reason to regard the Western ruling class as malignant, because that ruling class’s blockade starved millions of Poles. (While also demonstrating the falsehood of that ruling class’s claims to want to “help” the Polish.) Germans had every reason to distrust the Western ruling class, because of the starvation that ruling class deliberately created in postwar Germany.

But can people in Western nations trust our own ruling classes? The simple answer is that we cannot. The ruling class in almost any Western nation pursues a malignant “divide and rule” strategy against its own nation. The basic game plan is simple. Open the floodgates to immigration, in order to make the population as heterogeneous as possible. That way the nation’s people become divided against themselves. If that alone isn’t enough to divide a nation, stir up animosity amongst the people through race baiting and other means. Get the people so busy opposing each other that they’ll fail to notice (or at least, fail to adequately oppose) the iron grip on power held by the ruling class. The fact this “divide and rule” strategy is an excellent way of converting First World nations into Third World nations is, for the ruling class, beside the point. The ruling classes of Western nations do not have benign intent toward the nations they rule, and are quite content to see First World nations turn into Third World nations. Just as, decades earlier, they’d contentedly watched Stalin murder tens of millions of innocent people, while themselves helping Stalin get his hands on additional millions he’d wanted to kill.

[Imperious Leader]

When Hitler invaded Poland, Britain and France responded by declaring war on Nazi Germany. They did not, however, declare war on the Soviet Union, even though the U.S.S.R. gobbled up the eastern half of Poland in 1939. And even though eastern Poland would lose 10% of its population during 1939 - '41 due to Soviet death squads and deportations.

Typical kurt…

Forgot to mention that most of the Polish people were killed by Germany…then goes to make the Soviets the scapegoat again to make Hitler look “better”

The official Polish government report on war damages prepared in 1947 put Poland’s war dead at 6,028,000; 3.0 million ethnic Poles and 3.0 million Jews not including losses of Polish citizens from the Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnic groups.

Nazi crimes against the Polish nation claimed the lives of 2.77 million Christian Poles,[1] and 2.7 to 2.9 million Polish Jews, according to estimates of the Polish government-affiliated Institute of National Remembrance

So taking the lower estimate, Germany killed 5.47 million, leaving a balance of 558,000 dead by the Soviets. Good job with the facts Kurt. I guess these numbers are also from Hoover?

When Hitler invaded Poland, Britain and France responded by declaring war on Nazi Germany. They did not, however, declare war on the Soviet Union, even though the U.S.S.R. gobbled up the eastern half of Poland in 1939.

And again in this sentence you make somehow France and England look somehow worse by not DOW against Soviet Union, knowing fully well they had a defensive alliance with them and not acknowledging the greater crime of Hitler starting a world war. Nice job Kurt!

People of Polish descent have every reason to regard the Western ruling class as malignant, because that ruling class’s blockade starved millions of Poles.

Are you again ignoring what Tooze says in Wages of Destruction Kurt? He said Hitler didn’t prepare for war and wasn’t ready for war and easily suffered the effects of war, when it could have been saved any chance of “bogus starvation” claims. It’s Hitlers fault that anybody starved because he didn’t prepare for war. So don’t blame the allies, it was obvious that they weren’t going to let any ship in a German port to deliver anything if any war occurred…Everybody knows this so just blame German leadership.

Germans had every reason to distrust the Western ruling class, because of the starvation that ruling class deliberately created in postwar Germany.

Right. Germany should have never started a world war knowing the potential for this after they lost. Blame Germany for that too.

But can people in Western nations trust our own ruling classes? The simple answer is that we cannot. The ruling class in almost any Western nation pursues a malignant “divide and rule” strategy against its own nation. The basic game plan is simple. Open the floodgates to immigration, in order to make the population as heterogeneous as possible. That way the nation’s people become divided against themselves. If that alone isn’t enough to divide a nation, stir up animosity amongst the people through race baiting and other means. Get the people so busy opposing each other that they’ll fail to notice (or at least, fail to adequately oppose) the iron grip on power held by the ruling class. The fact this “divide and rule” strategy is an excellent way of converting First World nations into Third World nations is, for the ruling class, beside the point. The ruling classes of Western nations do not have benign intent toward the nations they rule, and are quite content to see First World nations turn into Third World nations. Just as, decades earlier, they’d contentedly watched Stalin murder tens of millions of innocent people, while themselves helping Stalin get his hands on additional millions he’d wanted to kill.

Why are you always blaming Hitler and Germany for all these things? All you ever do is talk about how bad Germany was and how they schemed other races out of life. What does Hoover say about that?  I know he had great Chicken recipes and failed as president, and was the preeminent authority on all History on how the Allies were the “Baddies”.

[Imperious Leader]

BTW Kurt, Hoover killed 130 people by starvation. They never got that Chicken recipe in the mail….

President Herbert Hoover declared, “Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes are better fed than they have ever been.” But in New York City in 1931, there were 20 known cases of starvation; in 1934, there were 110 deaths caused by hunger. There were so many accounts of people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief.

He sounds kinda like you. He subscribes to the exact opposite of what is factual.

[Karl7]

@KurtGodel7:

@Karl7:

Wow!

Sorry I’ve been away from this discussion!  I’ve been on summer vacation for several weeks.

So, I’m not really sure what arguments are being made on a theoretical level.

Kurt, you’re saying the UK put in place a food blockade?  Yes, and…?  That’s war.

You are basically arguing that the Allies were hypocrites.  They condemned Nazi Germany for “human rights violations” and yet committed them themselves.

Well, yes an no.  What’s a “human rights violation” and when was it declared such?

You are engaging in a basic logical/historical fallacy liberals always engage in which is: liberal democracy that respects human rights has always been achievable and thus the baseline on which all historical-national actions must be judged.

That is a load of nonsense.  Reality/history is the absolute opposite: violence, meaningful or arbitrary, against the weak to dominate or exploit them is the real rule of humanity.  It has only been by the extraordinary striving of counties like the US and UK that even a semblance of “international law/human rights” has gained ground, even if superficially.  There’s no absolute truth or requirement for the respect of “human rights” when its violation has been the historical norm.  There is no thing as some “natural state” of human rights.

The reality is that few people really care about that stuff.  And if push comes to shove, it’s all out the window.  If you are a nation that strives to achieve the “rule of law” domestically and internationally and are confronted with an external power that absolutely doesn’t care, what are you going to do?  You’re seriously not going to blockade them? You’re seriously not going to bomb their cities–the center of that nation’s power?  What if you lose?  Then all that high minded shitt is out the window.  No one cares.

Come on Bro… that’s just dumb.  You’re inviting victory-- against yourself!  :-P

The highest best possible position is to say: we believe individuals have rights, but when a group of individuals collectively or individually act otherwise, they will be dealt with by all means NECESSARY.  That’s it.

An by necessary, forget this “proportionality” nonsense.  The “necessary” aspect is determined and judged by the power that conducts the act.

That is all.

Debate closed.

Thank you for coming.

The ruling class of any Western nation consists of two categories of people: politicians and plutocrats. Plutocrats are those at the very top of the economic pyramid. They are the ones with the money to buy media corporations, to make large contributions to political campaigns, to pressure universities through their alumni donations, etc. Of the two categories of ruling class people, plutocrats exert more power than politicians.

The actions of the Western nations’ ruling class bear no relationship at all to the values they claim to have. This goes well beyond mere hypocrisy. They are demonstrating every bit as much malignant intent as you’d expect from a hostile foreign occupier. In some cases, more malignant intent!

To give some specific examples: in recent times, the ruling class made it so that declaring bankruptcy no longer protects you from student loan debt. Lenders responded by greatly increasing their willingness to lend. The more money lenders were willing to provide, the more colleges raised their tuition in response. In modern America college has become a money grab–an act of financial predation against the middle class. College degrees are often economically worthless, and graduates labor under a crushing pile of student debt. Few members of the ruling class have shown interest in reforming this broken system. On the other hand, that same ruling class spent over $2 trillion on bailouts to themselves–TARP money, funded by the taxpayers, that went toward further enriching the rich. The near-complete absence of benign intent among members of the ruling class is seen in nearly all aspects of Washington lawmaking: the Omnibus spending bill, the law allowing robocalling to cell phones, immigration policy, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, etc.

The ruling class was every bit as divorced from benign intent during the '30s and '40s as it is today. In 1932 - '33, Stalin used an artificial famine to murder 7 million innocent Ukrainians, including 3 million children. The New York Times helped whitewash that crime by denying a famine occurred. FDR did the same, and extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union within a year of the completion of that famine. Within three years of the conclusion of that famine, France and Czechoslovakia had signed defensive alliances with the Soviet Union.

When Hitler invaded Poland, Britain and France responded by declaring war on Nazi Germany. They did not, however, declare war on the Soviet Union, even though the U.S.S.R. gobbled up the eastern half of Poland in 1939. And even though eastern Poland would lose 10% of its population during 1939 - ‘41 due to Soviet death squads and deportations. Western nations’ ruling class did, however, impose a food blockade on all of German-held Europe. No humanitarian aid was allowed through that blockade. The result was that millions of Poles (and tens of millions of others) died of starvation. Due to Allied victory, all of Poland was ultimately subject to hostile Soviet foreign occupation.

People of Polish descent have every reason to regard the Western ruling class as malignant, because that ruling class’s blockade starved millions of Poles. (While also demonstrating the falsehood of that ruling class’s claims to want to “help” the Polish.) Germans had every reason to distrust the Western ruling class, because of the starvation that ruling class deliberately created in postwar Germany.

But can people in Western nations trust our own ruling classes? The simple answer is that we cannot. The ruling class in almost any Western nation pursues a malignant “divide and rule” strategy against its own nation. The basic game plan is simple. Open the floodgates to immigration, in order to make the population as heterogeneous as possible. That way the nation’s people become divided against themselves. If that alone isn’t enough to divide a nation, stir up animosity amongst the people through race baiting and other means. Get the people so busy opposing each other that they’ll fail to notice (or at least, fail to adequately oppose) the iron grip on power held by the ruling class. The fact this “divide and rule” strategy is an excellent way of converting First World nations into Third World nations is, for the ruling class, beside the point. The ruling classes of Western nations do not have benign intent toward the nations they rule, and are quite content to see First World nations turn into Third World nations. Just as, decades earlier, they’d contentedly watched Stalin murder tens of millions of innocent people, while themselves helping Stalin get his hands on additional millions he’d wanted to kill.

Interesting points, but not sure what this has to do with international warfare.  I guess if you are saying war is all an “inside job” meant to sustain elites… well, that isn’t true by a long shot.  The empires of central Europe were swept away by WWI. The Nazis were liquidated. The Japanese militarists were eliminated. The Soviet communist party (although its members changed hats) is gone. Etc…  War is something beyond the “control” of the powerful, because at the end of the day the outcome of the war is determined by factors unrelated to the ruling class’s position within its own country.  Elites may unleash war to secure their position, but that doesn’t mean they will inevitably win the war and survive.

Not to get personal, but I always laugh when people, especially liberals, get hyped up about the “conspiracy of the elites” nonsense. Yes, people with power can abuse it and get sweat heart, inside deals, but the reality–a reality confirmed by my 14 years practicing law and suing or defending such people or companies-- is that the elites are actually more often then not fairly incompetent.  Many people in power are not there because of their diabolical intelligence or scheming, but because they “lasted” the longest. Indeed, I am not so afraid of the evil machinations of some international elite as by their actual stupidity.  Just read “The Big Short” by Micheal Lewis. It tells the tale. Stupidity from top to bottom in such institutions as Goldman Sacks et al reigned, and they blew themselves up. Their only strategy at the end was to cry to the government.  Not smart, or brilliant, just begging.

if you want to talk about US domestic politics and economics, I am game. But that would be another thread all together.  Indeed, I think a thread that would be banned?  :-P

[Gargantua]

I love it when people talk of “Ruling elites” pulling the strings behind the scenes and manipulating/controlling the world.

Sure… there are always influences, and tools of influence, but here’s the truth.

Look at any subsection of society, a work place, a family, a military unit, whatever and look at the social structure.  Pick one that has TOTAL control of it’s circumstances.  A Construction jobsite, sports team, or Military unit are prime examples.

Now go and look at the challenges that social structure has in just trying to achieve basic objectives - even though they have dedicated persons in TOTAL control of the organization.  Mistakes still get made, discipline is never 100%, people have different perspectives and opinions, get-along/or-dont etc.  The outcome is never certain on the micro scale.

The Macro scale is never certain either…