While the United States’ interventionism in Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam has been disputed pretty openly between people, most people I know believe that - whether or not Japan attacked us and were sided with Germany - we should have intervened in the domestic affairs of Nazi Germany because of the ongoing Holocaust. It’s quite hard to think that we should have done nothing in my mind, although I am against non-interventionism for the most part. Can anyone make non-interventionism during WWII sound more legitimate than I possibly can so that no one says to me, “You would have just let everyone die?”
Also, if any actions were to be taken by the government when it comes to interventionism in general, what do you think would be the best way of doing things as opposed to sending in troops and setting up military bases? The only thing I can think of is dropping machine guns (or any other type of gun) near the ‘safe’ civilian locations so that they can fight back on their own.
I tend to see it this way: If the U.S. didn’t intervene in WW1, there would have been no Treaty of Versailles (or as bad), and thus no Nazi’s. Probably no Bolshevik’s either.
The holocaust had nothing to do with why America entered the war. The holocaust as moral imperative for WWII is a post-ww2 narrative.
Who is we?
Ask yourself if non-interventionism equates to that. If it doesn’t, don’t worry about what other people say. If it does, then your friends have a moral imperative (by their own argument) to intervene in every conflict in the world, and to accept foreign interventions into American domestic conflicts like the civil war and genocide of the plains indians.
It is very hard to talk to many Americans about war. A lot of work has been done to propogandize all American aggression as necessary and righteous. I’m reminded of this every time someone defends the use of nukes on Japan.
Wars are not like weather, they don’t just “happen.” The European wars of the early 20th century were only superficially different from other wars. Despite being among the first examples of total war in human history, these wars were still power-struggles between the European elites for control over Europe and its colonies. The tendency to focus on Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and other populist leaders is a mistake since it discounts the other 90% of power that lies below the surface. It’s superficial history, just like the Biblical accounts of the actions of the Israelite kings. “Such and such king tore down the high places to please God.” No, he did it to please the priests at the temple in Jerusalem. Ideology has always been part of war and the ideological nature of the wars of the early 20th century was only different in degree, not in kind.
I don’t yet understand European politics of that time (and before and since) well enough to formulate a cohesive competing theory of these wars but I am planning to start by understanding the fall of monarchy, which is a lot more complicated than what you learned in high school history. The high school history books make it out like everybody suddenly “woke up” during the Enlightenment and realized that monarchy is insane and that was the end of it. This is far from the truth and is based on a serious misunderstanding of the actual nature of European monarchy. The European monarchies are actually a group of Royal Houses, some of which have ended, others which still survive, which have ruled over the various regions of Europe as sovereigns at one time or another. Some monarchs still retain formal authority, as in Britain, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc. And even in the countries where there is no monarch with formal authority, the royal families still retain considerable influence in politics. And the blood of Royal Houses which currently hold no throne is still in power - that is, someone from that house is married to someone of another house who is sitting on a throne. The British crown is, in fact, a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which had been changed in Britain only to “Windsor” in 1917 as a result of anti-German nationalist sentiment. Elizabeth will be the last British royal of this house, her son Charles and his sons William and Harry are, in fact, members of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (yeehaw!), the change-over being the result of the fact that Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - Elizabeth’s consort and Charles’s father - is a member of this house.
In other words, royalty is a lot more durable than modern scholarship gives them credit for. And perhaps they prefer it that way.
Wow, I really got off on a tangent. My point was that, since wars don’t just “happen”, we shouldn’t think of them like natural disasters like a hurricane where we’re doing a service to humanity to dispatch resources to those who have been hit by it. It’s a shame that the masses are so easily duped into fighting wars on behalf of their betters but there’s nothing that whipping up the masses here to go fight a war on behalf of our betters can do to solve the problem.
I understand that. But it’s kind of like the War in Iraq how people are now saying that we had to go to save the citizens from Saddam even though entering the war had nothing to do with that. People argue to me that we should have done something no matter what in order to stop the Holocaust from going further. That’s why I said to ignore the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Axis-Allies idea.
Feel free to replace it with ‘the then-government’ or anything like that. I’m just used to saying ‘we’ still.
That is something I haven’t thought about doing yet. I never thought about bring it back to home and asking if they would have liked Germany to intervene during one of those times. Thank you for the idea.
We should have intervened in the domestic affairs of Nazi Germany because of the ongoing Holocaust.
I probably shouldn’t open my mouth, but what evidence did we have before and during the war of any holocaust? As far as I know during WWII we had no knowledge of anything like that. It wasn’t til after the war that such “evidence” surfaced.
Haha, read the post I just made above yours. I don’t think we had any evidence, but everyone who argues with me insists that we should have gone to end the Holocaust no matter what, and additionally assuming that we knew what was even going on. I’ve heard a lot of things regarding Stalin and FDR and their desires to start the war. I’m just slowly getting into Viktor Surovov’s book Icebreaker, so hopefully it will be informative. I realize how corporatist the New Deal was, but are there any quotations of FDR supporting communism? I feel like his 90% tax rates show a lot, but I’m just curious.
I don’t think we had any evidence, but everyone who argues with me insists that we should have gone to end the Holocaust no matter what, and additionally assuming that we knew what was even going on.
No one knew, because it probably didn’t really happen. I’m very skeptical about the holocaust. Even in a school history class they discussed that there was no talk or anything of a “holocaust”, and the term wasn’t coined til after the war. As far as we knew they were engaging in policies to remove populations of Jewish people outside of Germany.
What about how many accounts there are by people like Elie Wiesel and so on?
Just on a side note, here is a video that you might be interested in while we’re on the subject of Hitler/WWII. Not too much to do with the Holocaust per se, but Hitler mentions his reasons for the war. I think the video says something about the New York Times drafting an incorrect translation of his declaration of war when he made it, but I can’t remember since I haven’t seen the video in a while.
I’ll take a look at the video later. Have you ever read Did Six Million Really Die?. I’m sure there are better, more scholarly works on the subject, but it’s pretty interesting.
I haven’t read that yet. I have a few books I’ve been meaning to read, but I’ll put it on my to-read list. Anyone else who’s reading this thread, there’s a PDF of the book here.
Not necessarily. It is possible to belong to an Abrahamic religion while questioning the objectivity of the authors of the Hebrew Bible (and other religious texts). Probably the best book I’ve read on this subject is Steven McKenzie’s King David: A Biography. He paints a pretty unflattering picture of King David but the real value of McKenzie’s book, to me, was not so much for understanding David as understanding the authors of the chronicles of the ancient Israelite kings and the nature of the motivated historical revisionism of court recorders. A critical reading of the Biblical accounts of the kings of Israel leaves one of two possibilities - either the kings of Israel and other important persons of that time were unlike ordinary human beings in almost every conceivable way or the authors of the court histories of the kings of Israel were not objective and even, in some cases, downright dishonest. I think the second possibility is far more likely.
Bert ~ I’ll be more interested in reading this subject from an author who isn’t part of the BNP.
I am curious how you’ll respond to all the various testomany of the people who witnessed their family and friends die in concentration camps. The bones found, accounts of various people … I am assuming this was all made-up?
Bert ~ I’ll be more interested in reading this subject from an author who isn’t part of the BNP.
Would you not read a book on communism written by a communist, or a book on Keynesian economics written by a Keynesian?
I am curious how you’ll respond to all the various testomany of the people who witnessed their family and friends die in concentration camps. The bones found, accounts of various people … I am assuming this was all made-up?
You must not make hasty accusations. The Jewish people were given chance to leave Germany. Those who remained were put into labor camps that are now called “concentration camps”. It’s counter-productive to exterminate your work force. The chambers they had were cremation chambers for those who died. I’m not denying anyone died. It’s how they died and in what circumstances. As far as testomonies go that can go on and on. I can only suggest reading over that book (it’s really short) and then making a judgment.
Learning how to reverse an argument is very effective. The issue with this sort of logical inquiry is that people generally react very badly to having their contradictions exposed, so if you’re going to play that card, understand it might kill the conversation.
Do you have any book recommendations that teach you how to argue more efficiently (i.e. techniques like reversal, etc.), or is it just something you pick up as you debate with people more and more often?
It’s not counter-productive to exterminate your workforce if your primary goal is to exterminate your workforce.
I’d much rather listen to the testimony of people who were there and saw over the revisionist history of neo-Nazis.
Jews and many others outside of Europe were aware of the Holocaust. Not the details and the degree obviously, but they knew well that the Nazis were doing terrible things to the European Jewish population–that’s why American Jews agitated for war with Germany and enlisted in such disproportionate numbers.
You should really read something on the subject by someone other than a neo-Nazi. Find your local synagogue or JCC and talk to an educated man on the topic. And stay away from those Neo-Nazis.
Skimming through the pamphlet, it’s pretty ridiculous. It’s neo-Nazi propaganda, nothing more.