If you changed anything, the world would be a much worse place.
- America is no longer a superpower.
- Russia unchallenged.
- European governments never learned humility. Nazis took every atrocity European powers ever committed, including religious genocide which was common to Europe, and turned it on them.
- Moon landing never happened.
- Stealth Fighters never invented.
- UN never established.
- Wars more likely.
- etc.
granted it was a tragedy, but a hell of lot better than the alternatives that could have happened. German technology was advanced, even in the 70s. Without it, technology would be much less evolved as it is today.
EDIT: Also due to the surge in technology, it is entirely possible that we would have not known about climate change (or not have the means to combat it) until AFTER it was too late if WWII never happened.
How dare you sir! It is NOT A HELL OF A LOT BETTER than the alternatives! The holocaust of my people is the greatest crime in human history. Representing the Jewish people on this forum, and everywhere, let me set your facts straight.
I would've changed the holocaust, that would NOT affect the research or the results of WWII, as I would be killing the soldiers stationed at the concentration camps, not researching weapons or fighting the wars, and even if I were to be killing (extremely hypothetical scenario) all it would've done, if it were after pearl harbour, would be to end the war sooner and save more lives.
Now to tell you how all your points are wrong. (the quoted text is above; I'm not going to re-quote each line).
- America is no longer a superpower.
- Russia unchallenged.
- European governments never learned humility. Nazis took every atrocity European powers ever committed, including religious genocide which was common to Europe, and turned it on them.
- Moon landing never happened.
- Stealth Fighters never invented.
- UN never established.
- Wars more likely.
- etc.
-No impact would result on America being a super power
-Russia would still be challenged
-HUMILITY! How dare you! The holocaust has nothing to do with 'Europe' learning humility, it's about the near genocide of the Jewish people! The Nazi's may I remind you were IN EUROPE!
-Moon landing would've still happened
-Stealth would've still been invented had I not killed the scientists working on experimental jets at the end of WWII
-League of Nations was established well BEFORE WWII, in fact, 1919, the year after WWI was it's founding year (its on wiki, go check).
-Wars more likely? No.
My points stand to say, if the holocaust never happened, but WWII still did, we'd likely be in the same place we are today.
The only history 'what if' you could draw from this, was without the Nazi's pursuit of purity, and if they weren't such an evil nation to begin with, their efficiency combined with their greater resources (i.e. the German Jews that would not have been killed), this might have lead them to defeat the allies. But if they did that, then they wouldn't be the evil Nazis, now would they?
Now, if you could please apologize to myself and my fellow Jews, and restate that you meant 'if world war two didn't happen' instead of your currently perceived statement of 'if the holocaust didn't happen' that would be well received, and frankly, expected.
1. Actually yes it would. The cold war. If America wasn't a super power, the world would be very different. The great depression was ended by WWII. The military wouldn't have grown to the numbers it did. Economics, and military would be entirely different.
2. No they wouldn't, Europe would still be hurting from World War I and even in World War II some countries failed to over come the World War I mindset. France was a prime example.
3. I didn't say it was the cause, but it was a consequence. Europe had every chance to stop another World War, but instead laid the groundwork for another. Why? Self entitlement. If it isn't them, they wont care unless it becomes their business. Look at Europe's history, as long as it benefits them it doesn't matter who suffers. Crusades (which killed 9 million) over trade routes in the middle east, screwing over native Americans, and imposing military and cultural imperialism on weaker nations. WWII was a learning lesson for everyone. A lesson humanity would have learned anyway regardless (Stalin). Every atrocity European powers has done throughout history came back in World War II, except it was used against European powers. If it hasn't happened to the European power itself, it doesn't care. France wanted reparations from Germany, but when anyone else is asked for an apology and reparations, it rarely does anything. The most you would get is a few cheap words, and no reparations "because that would bankrupt us." They don't want bankruptcy through reparations, but gladly forced it on WWI Germany?
4. There was no American or Russian space program. All the tech they used were from World War II GERMANY. It may still happen, but far into the future.
5. Again, stops technological development.
6. The league of nations was a joke. It was only AFTER WWII did the United Nations (not the league of nations) was founded.
7. Yes it would. The UN tends to step in and interfere in some cases. Not to mention the alliances formed by countries started World War I, not prevented it. It creates a false sense of power "because i got my big buddies backing me up." Its easy to be brave when you're standing behind walls of foreign soldiers fighting your battles for you. Not to mention Stalin had planned to do what Hitler did, but was beat to the punch.
8. WWII without the deaths or persecution of the Jewish? You assume that it would play out in Germany's favor, and with a different culture. The anti-Jewish attitude was widely known throughout history, essentially making it an inevitability. Jews have been demonized and used as scapegoats since Roman times. Germany would also not win against the allies, even if they did they wouldn't be able to extend beyond Europe. The costs of maintaining an empire that spans multiple continents is astronomical.
1. Actually yes it would. The cold war. If America wasn't a super power, the world would be very different. The great depression was ended by WWII. The military wouldn't have grown to the numbers it did. Economics, and military would be entirely different.
No, no it bloody wouldn't, read my post again, and I still expect an apology.
Ultratwinkie said:
2. No they wouldn't, Europe would still be hurting from World War I and even in World War II some countries failed to over come the World War I mindset. France was a prime example.
You better draw the line that you're talking about the war and NOT the holocaust.
Ultratwinkie said:
3. I didn't say it was the cause, but it was a consequence. Europe had every chance to stop another World War, but instead laid the groundwork for another. Why? Self entitlement. If it isn't them, they wont care unless it becomes their business. Look at Europe's history, as long as it benefits them it doesn't matter who suffers. Crusades (which killed 9 million) over trade routes in the middle east, screwing over native Americans, and imposing military and cultural imperialism on weaker nations. WWII was a learning lesson for everyone. A lesson humanity would have learned anyway regardless (Stalin). Every atrocity European powers has done throughout history came back in World War II, except it was used against European powers. If it hasn't happened to the European power itself, it doesn't care. France wanted reparations from Germany, but when anyone else is asked for an apology and reparations, it rarely does anything. The most you would get is a few cheap words, and no reparations "because that would bankrupt us." They don't want bankruptcy through reparations, but gladly forced it on WWI Germany?
Your point that reparations from the Great War did lead us to World War II is certainly valid. But it has nothing to do with harbouring a Nazi and the fact they played part to mass genocide of the Jewish people!
Ultratwinkie said:
4. There was no American or Russian space program. All the tech they used were from World War II GERMANY. It may still happen, but far into the future.
This is still completely irrelevant to the holocaust! Yes, WWII lead to breakthroughs in jets, and nuclear science, but the holocaust could've EASILY been avoided, whilst still achieving this, in fact, had they harnessed the rich and the intelligent Jews, we might be much further ahead technologically - The holocaust can only be seen as an atrocity
The league of nations wasn?t a joke, go read your history again, without the league of nations we wouldn?t have the united nations we have today.
Ultratwinkie said:
7. Yes it would. The UN tends to step in and interfere in some cases. Not to mention the alliances formed by countries started World War I, not prevented it. It creates a false sense of power "because i got my big buddies backing me up." Its easy to be brave when you're standing behind walls of foreign soldiers fighting your battles for you. Not to mention Stalin had planned to do what Hitler did, but was beat to the punch.
Yes it would? There's no direct link I can see between this statement and the fact the holocaust could've been avoided.
Ultratwinkie said:
8. WWII without the deaths or persecution of the Jewish? You assume that it would play out in Germany's favor, and with a different culture. The anti-Jewish attitude was widely known throughout history, essentially making it an inevitability. Jews have been demonized and used as scapegoats since Roman times. Germany would also not win against the allies, even if they did they wouldn't be able to extend beyond Europe. The costs of maintaining an empire that spans multiple continents is astronomical.
Yes WWII without the holocaust. YES, bloody oath it would play out better, see my previous posts as to why. An inevitability! That is disgusting sir, and I now demand an immediate apology for myself and my fellow Jewish people for the disgraceful notion, that our near genocide was 'an inevitability'.
The Roman Empire and the British Empire are two right off the bat I can name that successfully maintained massive empires for hundreds of years. The German's may have been able to do it, with better strategic planning, better morals, and less waste. But again, had they been a smarter, less violent, more noble nation (eg. No Hitler), they might not have rebuilt themselves as quickly and as efficiently as they did either.
I want an apology to the Jews and myself now, thank you.
1. It was an inevitability but not in your context(that prejudice could lead to violence against Jews in that time, if you haven't noticed it didn't mean extinction). Why? Jews have been used as escape goats for everything. Europe persecuted (and heavily used genocide against) protestants, Muslims, and Jews before. It was only a matter of time before another religious oriented war or persecution broke out. Hell, now Muslims are being persecuted out of fear. People attack them, demonize them, and mistreat them. Religious tolerance isn't exactly something Europe has been known for, even now. In fact, hate crimes against Jews rose in 2000. Why? Old hatred coupled with hatred of religion over the past (crusades, despite Judaism not being responsible for it. People believe all religion is bad even though Christianity isn't the only religion). It has nothing to do with Jews themselves, but violence against them was inevitable given Europe's habit of blaming Judaism, heightened tensions, and the cycle of prejudice and violence. Anti-Muslim attitudes are rising, and the same still applies. Violence was bound to happen due to cultural prejudice. Want an example from CNN?
Anti-anything attitudes rise, violence against the party that the culture (of the time) despises is inevitable. It's a tragic mechanism in the psyche of humanity, but such as human nature it can't be changed. Many tried, but human nature is too corrosive.
2. The league of nations was a joke. It's threats were empty, and the incentive to work out their problems were damn near nonexistent. It failed, and was criticized for it.
3. The Anti Jewish hate was at an all time high after World War I. A scapegoat situation. Desperation, hatred, etc. All that anger took one person to point to anyone for everyone to blame them. The same situation Europe (and in one case I know of, China) repeated over and over and over.
4. Where did i say harboring a Nazi? I said that changing the past would only negatively effect us. You seem to bring out points completely unrelated to what i said, and try to link them in some blinded rage. You seem to try every logical fallacy in the book to twist what i said. A strawman argument does not work, nor does crystal ball logic.
5. Rome collapsed over becoming too large. Britain only put the colonies, and basically created a protectorate smaller state to cut down on costs. Germany expanding to multiple continents would never work, not to mention the rioting people in the newly conquered cities. It would spread Germany too thin.
Where is the apology to the Jewish people in all of this? Your comments are outlandish, make up for it now with an apology, 'please'.
1. Your comments are near irrelevent. Yes, many of us are aware that being jewish wasn't exactly popular, and I'm sure without me reading through the soup of a paragraph you wrote you list various examples why.
2. In your opinion needs to be stamped all over that paragraph. Regardless of how they acted, disregarding their fundemental involvment in the formation of the UN is a mistake.
3. Are you a neo-nazi? No seriously? If you want to look into the art school that rejected Hitler, which had jewish association, go ahead, but the bottom line is, Hitler's hatred for Jews stemed from the lack of success he had as an artist, and the jewish communities rightful option to decline him.
4. Exactly, where did you say it? You're going completely off topic by not mentioning its relevance. Strawmen and Crystalballs? How about, not linking your arguments directly to mine, and instead writting an eight and five point list trying to defend your position that the holocaust was necessary for human evolution, its disgusting.
5. Ever heard of a concept known as 'sacking'? It's where an invading army, once defeating the defending army, essentially raides the enemies village, rapes the women, steals the resources, and enlisted total soverign domination of the people there. If successful, they could easily have bent the people to obey them, how about how they treated the French during the war? They were occupied (yes, it is great that the French resisted the Germans, but I'm not aware of evidence that without the allies support they could've over thrown the German occupying forces.
The main point here, if you wouldn't mind getting back to it, is that the holocaust was a horrible tragedy that was NOT necessary for human development. Correct yourself immediately, please, and state that it was infact the second world war which contributed greatly to technology of the 20th century, and we can end this back and forth. But I'll carry on writting till my fingers are bare until you apologize, or a mod closes this thread.
Even if he wasn't sorry for what he did...I refuse to turn in this man. Hollywood, Israel, and the Jewish people have villianized these people just for the sole sake that their ancestors were killed and it makes me sick.
Has the man apologized to God? Has he confessed his sins to Him alone? Has he said "God, Jesus...forgive me?". Even then, what right are you to judge in the midst of warfare?
The man is innocent until death in my eyes.
It's only because we've been force-fed that image so many times in our lives, via movies, via war films, via Hollywood...that we actually believe this shit that we're often told. Was it bad? Yes. But it's been overstated as to how "horrible" it really was. I see their deaths as no different than the deaths of soldiers.
Signed.
A man with German ancestry and other "untermenscht" mixings.
Now if your just talking about being 'German', thats fine. I have always felt bad for modern age Germans that have had to live with 'Nazi guilt'. This is unfair. Not all Germans were Nazis and not all Nazis were evil. The clearest example of this can be seen in the case of 'Field Marshall Rommel' a leading Nazi general that down to his core was an honourable soldier.
Now you say that we are fed dramatic images of the 'evils' of the Holocaust in Hollywood and by descendants of those that were lucky enough to survive. This is also true, Nazidom has been very villified in Hollywood and throughout the world. However, what you are blindly ignoring is that the reason why Nazis are seen as the 'ultimate evil' is because they did many, many terrible things. I know this because I have studied the Third Reich for many years. If you need some basic's on the evils that the Nazis did, i suggest you search 'Josef Mengele' known as the 'Angel of Death'. Modern horror, as in torturous experimentations on innocent victims, dervived from very true stories in many of the cases. For instance, I remember reading a story were doctors chose to cut off one of the testicles of a disabled man, no numbing agent, simply because they wanted to see what would happen.
"I see their deaths as no different then the deaths of soldiers".
WOW. Last time I checked soldiers were usually given weapons to defend themselves (Now I know you could find cases in which this is not true, note: Soviet Union-Eastern Front. But it usually is the case) However, as horrible as it is for a soldier, atleast they are fighting. In the holocaust, men, women and children were all executed because they were seen as inferior life forms. NOT because they were combatants of a war. The Nazis specifically went out to annihilate these people.
I really need to do work so I'm going to stop writing, but here are some points to dwell on:
-'War of Annihilation' - Nazis invade Eastern Europe and Soviet Union in an effort to gain 'lebensraum' or 'living space'. Hitler declares that the 'rules of war' do not apply here and that any soldier who kills, rapes or does anything else to CIVILIANS will not suffer penelties.
-'Aktion T4 - Killing of the Handi-capped' - Before the Holocaust, the Nazis who deemed disabled people inferior begin killing. hundreds of thousands are killed starting with babies, then children, then adults.
The Nazis stood to wipe out anyone that did not fit their 'perfect' bill, soldier or civilian.
The purpose of punishing someone is to force them to change their ways, to deter other people from committing the same crimes and to separate the unrepentant from the rest of society. The man was repentant, he most likely wants people not to repeat his actions. Remorse is punishment enough.
I always wondered, why is it that German WW2 soldiers can't say "just doing my job" (which I see as a completely legitimate reasoning. If people came to me, gave me a gun, and said, go kill this person or else we will kill you AND your family, I'd do it.)...
But the US pilot who murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with a nuclear bomb...
Or the Allied bombers murdering thousands of civilians in Dresden...
Or the Russian soldiers raping thousands of women and murdering even more thousands of educated polish men...
... where just doing their jobs?
This is hypocrisy to the top. Allied atrocities are okay, because they won, but everybody on the Axis side, including people who did not know about it, are all guilty?
I'm not a fan of the Nazi's, in fact I'm quite happy the Allies won. But this hypocrisy makes me mad.
The purpose of punishing someone is to force them to change their ways, to deter other people from committing the same crimes and to separate the unrepentant from the rest of society. The man was repentant, he most likely wants people not to repeat his actions. Remorse is punishment enough.
So, the roman catholic priest who raped 100 little boys and girls but who 60 years later is repentant an reformed should not be prosecuted, his remorse is punishment enough, right?
If he's not remorseful, them punish him. If he is truly repentant, then harsh punishment would be no use against him because he already changed his ways. Of course, he should face some sort of consequence for his actions other than the wrath of his victims.
I always wondered, why is it that German WW2 soldiers can't say "just doing my job" (which I see as a completely legitimate reasoning. If people came to me, gave me a gun, and said, go kill this person or else we will kill you AND your family, I'd do it.)...
But the US pilot who murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with a nuclear bomb...
Or the Allied bombers murdering thousands of civilians in Dresden...
Or the Russian soldiers raping thousands of women and murdering even more thousands of educated polish men...
... where just doing their jobs?
This is hypocrisy to the top. Allied atrocities are okay, because they won, but everybody on the Axis side, including people who did not know about it, are all guilty?
I'm not a fan of the Nazi's, in fact I'm quite happy the Allies won. But this hypocrisy makes me mad.
From a Nazi point of view, the holocaust was completely necessary. From a Japanese view, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing was completely unnecessary.
being a german soldier and being a nazi aren't really the same thing, being a US marines doesn't make you a democrat because the president happens to be
Being a German soldier during WW2 kind of defaulted to being a Nazi...
Every soldier swore allegiance to the party and to Hitler and any dissidence was dealt with harshly.
You can argue that swearing allegiance as a mandatory condition doesn't reflect the individual, but when all is said and done, what is the difference between a man who supports an ideology and a man who doesn't oppose it?
They still were not members of the Nazi party, soldiers are payed to fight in the military not support the government, it's why we use things ike axis forces, being a soldier also did not make you a member of the SS either
It's a fairly common distinction to make
and yes since allegiance was mandatory much like the hitler youth, you were automatically no matter your personal feelings, either thoses who fled germany would still be
No forgiveness for Nazis. It's as simple as that. I talked to holocaust survivors. I've seen the numbers. No amount of good deeds could ever fix what the Nazis, and especially the officers, did. No redemption for them, in this life, or any other.
I've spoken to about 3 survivors in my time. Only 1 of them still has any animosity towards the Nazis. The other 2 don't really see them as evil anymore. They don't defend them, but they don't rant about how sick and twisted and demonic they were.
If people who experienced it 1st hand don't have anger left over it, why should I suddenly feel horrified by it and want to punish them?
Obviously can't speak for every survivor, but the ones I spoke to were all too happy to talk about it. They figured everyone should know exactly what it was like to actually be there. With one of them in particular who came to my school once me and him had this really long conversation about it, and I actually asked him point blank: "Do you hate the Nazis for what they did to you and your people?" and his answer, after over half an hour of talking in detail about his experience, was a simple "No." He went on to say that while it was horrific, the stuff that happened, there's no point now still holding a grudge. It was still painful for him to remember all that stuff, but his thinking was that it was done ages ago. There's nothing to be done about it now and since the main high-ranking officers with any real power have been found and executed/imprisoned, there's no point in anybody holding a grudge against the ones that are left.
This discussion aside, what happened was horrible. It seems as if these people you spoke with have truly healed from it, and I am glad to hear it. They deserve peace of mind.
I'd turn him in. I know not every German was a true nazi, and many were acting out of fear for themselves and their family, but he still assisted in the murder of countless innocents. He deserves to be brought to justice.
First of all I'd decline him just for the risk, I wouldn't want to get involved and punished with him. Second of all if he had changed that he should face the punishment for the crimes he did, and hopefully whoever is persecuting him would realize that and give him a lighter sentence. I would speak up for him, but I wouldn't break the law for him (I'm not sure if Canada has an obstruction of justice law or if these are evil cops).
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