Nitpick: not that many blacks. There were just a few hundred blacks that were permanent residents of pre-war Germany, IIRC.
I don’t know if this is what MC is saying, but the Nazis did consider all Roma and Sinti to be asocial and criminals. So, even though the groups were targeted for racial reasons, they were classified as “asocial”.
As to the “Gypsy Theme Park”, I’ve done some web searches, and there seem to have been an order issued by Himmler, one on October 13, 1942, distinguishing the Roma from the “Racially pure” Sinta and Lalleri, and saying that the latter should be given certain rights and allowed to live, and put on reservations. Martin Bormann wrote him saying, “What the hell are you doing? Hitler wouldn’t like it”, and the idea was kiboshed.
I’m not sure about how you mean that Pol Pot made Stalin look like Capt Kangaroo.
As far as I can tell Stalin had Pol Pot beat in sheer numbers.
It is scary how quickly a societies basic prejudices can be capitalized on by those in authority.
Someone mentioned the initial days after 9/11 and how some people went out of their way to make examples of Arabic looking people (a few East Indians were also attacked as Arabs).
Luckily all authority figures at the time urged people not to attack their fellow Americans… imagine if they said nothing, or gave tacit approval. Tell me actions would not have escalated. Tell me neighbourhoods would not have been burned down and families not murdered in the streets.
I think what makes the holocaust more frightening to us Westerners rather than say Rwanda and those of the Kamir Rouge, is that there is a perception that We don’t behave like that. We aren’t “savages” That is what those people do. So when a modern industrialized western nation takes it upon itself to slaughter people en masse we really become frightened because of what it really says about us.
Of course you still have people trying to distance themselves by pretending that it is some flaw in the make up of Germans. But I feel they are in denial.
You’ve got to remember, though, he had a lot more people to kill. And he did it for longer.
Only 5 more years.
Again I agree.
Guess Yugoslavia showed us how easy it is for a normal modern western society to revert back to barbarism, when not kept in check.
Civilisation is indeed just a thin veneer.
You can get a lot of killing done in 5 years.
Stalin does not look like Captain Kangaroo when compare to anybody.
Stalin didn’t fit in the excess 40 million deaths in those five years.
**
[list=1]
[li]Stalin 1.79 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Adolph Hitler 1.75 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Yahya Khan 1.50 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Tojo Hideki 1.00 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Mao Tse-tung 0.72 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Vladimir Lenin 0.57 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Chiang Kai-shek 0.43 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Pol Pot 0.13 mil / yr[/li]
[li]Josip Broz 0.03 mil / yr[/li][/list=1]**
Regarding Stalin and Pol Pot - it’s worth considering that Cambodia only had a population of 6-7 million. The decisions on who to kill were also a lot more outlandish (if that word can be used properly when describing mass murder). Glasses = sign of education = death.
Either way, comparing bodies counts of such a degree is IMO at least, a bit of an exercise in futility.
Ahh. Maybe that’s what was meant. a percentage of the population and rationale for their murders.
How about a change of tact? The capacity to kill the “others” is inately human. Okay. The common motto after The Holocaust has been “Never Again.”
But what have we learned? Specifically have we learned how to make “never again” a reality? I here do not mean specifically for any particular group targetted in The Holocaust, whether it be Jew or Romani, but in the generic sense.
I haven’t seen evidence of it.
When do we leave countries alone to their internal affairs and when do we all intervene and how?
I disagree. Though I’m not sure what the point is in arguing it. It doesn’t line up at all with what I’ve read about the fall of Germany.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/8_19/entertainment/23239-1.html
The Allies were toward the East, liberating work and prisoner camps at they went…the Russians intended to reach Berlin before the West, and they did. Eisenhower after seeing his first camp called for journalists and officials to come immediately and record the evidence. My grandfather was one of those troops, his path went from Bastogne to Auschwitz, so I’m reasonably sure of that account and the “surprise” factor. This evidence was causing the Allied troops to be less-than-sympathetic towards the population. Whatever that means in practice. There’s a picture here of a forced walk of German civilians by a line of dead Jewish women, “starved during a 300-mile march.” I have no idea what else went on.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the German citizenry were fucked, literally and figuratively, from every direction at this time.
I think you miss the big distinction that must have played on her mind. She was married to a high profile party member. If The average German woman was in fear for their life she would have felt it tenfold.
Her stress was higher because her stature meant she and her family would have been singled out for “special treatment”. In her mind she knew the Russians would take out revenge on Party members much more harshly than they would at the population in general.