Speaker: How to Look Good as a Nazi
457 Responses
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But at least they are alive to talk about it sixty years later. Should we feel sorry for them? I prefer to feel sorry for the 25 million dead, innocent and defenceless most of them, victims of their aggresssion in the East.
I don't think it's an us or them issue. Isn't that what we, the Allied democracies, claimed made us different (as much as the lines were very much blurred by area bombings etc)?
The Soviets suffered horrendously during the war but I'm uncomfortable using that to justify anything, and perhaps, although equally irrelevant, it's worth pointing out they were no slouches when it came to atrocities and no innocent party in the years leading up to June 1941.
It was the same problem I had with the right's justification of the horrors of Iraq. Our atrocities are more righteous than your atrocities simply doesn't work on any level. They are still atrocities.
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Inspired comment (james #21) by a Stuff reader on the esteemed paper's in(s)ane story du jour, a reportage entitled Save the Planet: eat a dog. The commenter observes:
Let's face it, if global warming is real, then it is GOING to happen. Like it or not, nothing on this earth will stop it, nothing. Nothing short of a genocide of 3 billion people, and I don't think that's an option given the museum uproar.
So you see the museum uproar was good for something.
(I'm kind of curious to know which three billion he was intending to get rid of.)
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Elsewhere, I came this close to agreeing with John Minto, until he had a massive attack of poo in mouth disease:
There’s no doubt what they did was silly, stupid and insensitive but that’s all it was. They weren’t expressing support for fascism or intentionally mocking the suffering of so many who faced genocide at the hands of the Nazis.
They weren’t intending disrespect to the Jews, gypsies, communists and homosexuals who all faced Nazi extermination efforts. Surely we need to lighten up a bit here.
The same applies to the Lincoln University students who dressed up as Nazis and Nazi victims for a fancy dress party a few weeks back. There were howls of rage and profuse apologies all round and disciplinary action followed.
Was the same action taken against those who dressed up as Osama bin Laden, Idi Amin or George Bush? All of these figures could rightly be condemned for war crimes and genocide.
Oy... I know he's got to get the obligatory denunciation of George Bush and Israel (read on) in somewhere, but something really got lost on the way. Meanwhile, I do hope John will just lighten the fuck up when I pull on my special sheet, torch a cross and sing some old Southern American folk songs with a few mates.
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Elsewhere, I came this close to agreeing with John Minto, until he had a massive attack of poo in mouth disease:
Yes, thank you. I was going to comment on it earlier today but I lacked the fortitude.
What a piece of shit.
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Ae, what a doofus. Use of the phrase "lighten up" is seldom a good sign.
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It was a very close thing and only failed because of several disastrous decisions on the part of the Nazi leadership, and the luck of chance that Britain, thanks to it's leadership, decided to hold out rather than roll over. If Britain had sued for peace in 1940 the world would be a very different place.
In other words, because Nazi-ism was run by Nazis, it failed. Which is I think the point; maybe if Nazis hadn't been in charge of Nazi Germany Nazi Germany wouldn't have lost, but then it wouldn't have been Nazi Germany.
And it was hardly chance that Britain held out in '40; it was a series of foreseeable decisions made by an exceptionally transparent British leadership .
But the Nazis lost: the SS may have been man for man the best fighters in the world*, but wars are not fought man to man, they are fought by nations, and it turns out that the Ruhr was no match for the Dneiper and Detroit and the Clydeside, and that Nazi actions resulted in the utter levelling of Germany.
* though I doubt this; part of the point of combined arms is that man for man you needn't be that impressive.
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Keir, I'm having trouble finding the logic in your argument.
I'm utterly confused by your 'series of foreseeable decisions made by an exceptionally transparent British leadership' line. Most of the battles as to whether to concede in the UK were made behind closed doors and were anything but transparent. The British public had no idea what was going on.
It was Churchill and almost Churchill alone for a while that gathered the British to carry on. Many powerful figures in the the UK establishment, including Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, wanted to fold in 1940 and if the UK had not had Churchill or a similar flag waver it would likely have been a very different story. It was a very happy chance that someone like Churchill was leading Britain in 1940, especially when one considers the shitty standard of the other politicians that filled the front benches of Westminster at the time. The Nazis did not choose to go to war against the man, it was a lucky chance that when war came, Churchill was there.
If Roosevelt had not been re-elected in 1940 the likely outcome would have been a Nazi victory in Europe as Britain would have been bankrupt by April 1941, long before Pearl Harbor.
If the storms in the channel in June 1944 had arrived a little earlier, a week or two, then there is a very strong chance the the Germans could've thrown the Allies back into the sea.
One wonders what would have happened it the Americans hadn't repeatedly overrulled and ignored Churchill's demands in 1943 and 1944. Many were as potentially disastrous as those pushed through by the German leader..Winston had a history of bad military decisions and many of his generals were buffoons.
But, yes, industrial might played it's part, but reflect on those figures for German military production, without ever, unlike the Allies, even touching upon civilian and consumer production until late 1944. And the sophisticated machinery being designed and built in German factories right until the very end. Nazi design continues to be utilised conceptually in aircraft wings to this day. Thank god the Soviets cut the fuel lines and the Swedes finally cut off their mines (albeit only when it was clear the Germans were about to lose).
If we are to stand back and hopefully prevent a drift into something similar happening again, I really think we need to look a little further than the argument that we won because we were not Nazis and they were, some sort of mid 20th Century variation of Manifest Destiny. There are lot of reasons we won and they lost, including the failures of the Nazi leadership, but it's dangerous to assume that the sole reason was an ideological failure or a national deficit on the part of Germany.
After all, one of the victors of that war was the equally odious Stalin.
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Simon, I presume that you're familiar with Robert Harris's Fatherland. While I don't claim any expertise, the hypothetical sanitised postwar Nazi state he portrayed gave me the impression that he'd been down this particular path in some detail. What do you think?
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After all, one of the victors of that war was the equally odious Stalin.
Plus I wouldn't underestimate the fact that another fascist, Franco, got to die in his bed. These forces don't just implode and defeat themselves.
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I wouldn't underestimate the fact that another fascist, Franco, got to die in his bed. These forces don't just implode and defeat themselves.t
Another example of state slave labour, carried out in peacetime, and sanctified by the supposedly liberal Pope John XXIII.
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I've been there, a truly atrocious place.
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And just for Friday morning fun, Chris Carter's terminal case of both feet in mouth disease takes a turn for the worse.
The bright side is that Carter's post -- and inept attempt to hide the evidence -- is too LOL-somely dumb to really be offensive.
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The wiki article you linked to uses the rather throwaway phrase 'built by political prisoners'.
'State slave labour' is closer to the truth. Mostly those who fought on the republican side in the civil war.
Franco's post-war purges were not on the same scale as Stalin's but were extremely vicious and sustained.
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The demise of C Carter is pretty sad. He’s in serious need of a long holiday; as long as he pays for it.
BTW, finding this thread very informative.
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Plus I wouldn't underestimate the fact that another fascist, Franco, got to die in his bed. These forces don't just implode and defeat themselves.
Franco and Suharto, like many other tin-pot dictators, were Cold War allies of the West, so their atrocities were wilfully overlooked in the fight against Soviet Communism. The film Balibo, which was @ the Film Fest earlier this year, partly illustrated the two-facedness of such policy.
"But Stalin killed more people than Hitler!" has become something of a cliché in neo-con circles.
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The bright side is that Carter's post -- and inept attempt to hide the evidence -- is too LOL-somely dumb to really be offensive.
And yet, watch me be offended.
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And just for Friday morning fun, Chris Carter's terminal case of both feet in mouth disease takes a turn for the worse.
Because the right is totally above that sort of thing.However, lets all talk about Chris Carter, if it saves you having to defend privatising ACC.
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Yeah, sorry, but Craig's post was on topic and timely seeing as it happened today. "They also do it" isn't an acceptable defence. If you want to Godwin a discussion on ACC privatisation from the start, be my guest, but it doesn't fly either.
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Because the right is totally above that sort of thing.
Sadly, Tom, not at all. And considering the amount of grief I've gotten from the usual suspects defending Helen Clark against thoroughly fuck-tarded Stalin and Mugabe comparisons you're not only trying to de-rail the thread but well out of order.
And yet, watch me be offended.
Fair enough too, Gio. A less than ideal choice of words on my part -- it's just that watching Carter open his mouth and saying something stupid isn't much of a surprise anymore. Which is a shame.
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Whoa! Back up the Savio Marchetti! In the spirit of formenting happy mischief, I should like to point out no has mentioned the big N word just yet in relation to ACC. A few assorted strutting Italian clods don't cut the mustard with those Northern Aryan types.
And anyway, we all know Rodders makes a near perfect Duce, John Key would be more like a certain failed chicken farmer who rose to great heights.
All in the spirit of happy mischief, of course ;)
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I should like to point out no has mentioned the big N word just yet in relation to ACC
That's because it's not.
If you're going to give it an emotional label, call it Thatcherite.
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However, lets all talk about Chris Carter, if it saves you having to defend privatising ACC.
Standardistas similarly unamused at the distraction. Some whipping in order?
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Standardistas similarly unamused at the distraction. Some whipping in order?
Sigh... for all the sneering at DPF that goes on in that quarter, there's something awfully familiar about the basically sensible initial post degenerating into wingnut butter in no time flat.
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What do you think?
I thought of that book when I looked at these images.
The question that remains unanswered happily, is how the Nazi state would have existed if it had won and I'm not sure if that bland state was possible for any extended time. It needed continuous conflict. That was a part of it's essence, with roots deep in Prussia.
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It needed continuous conflict.
Not unlike other states one could name, however.
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