Valuing Genocide

[Rodion Romanovich]

Do you believe additional supplies would have turned the tide - or would they only have slightly delayed the inevitable defeat?
I think it is pretty clear that the latter is true. And I think that you could argue that any delay of the defeat would rather have caused more casualties than less (especially among civilians).

If the Germans hadn't carried out the Holocaust, the Blitz and the unrestricted uboat war, would they fear the consequences of surrender so much that they would keep on fighting for as long as they did? Moreover, would the British really care as much about continuing to pump in resources and lives of young men into the conflict if Germany had only been carried out a war of revenge against the actions of Napoleon I, Napoleon III and similar? After all, the French pre ww2 had the "drang nach osten" policy as well... There were additional factors however, that made hard British devotion to the war necessary: the Germans had made no secret of plans to create a "Grossmacht". The Holocaust and Blitz were the most crucial reasons why such strong opposition had to be mustered and the war had to be fought until unconditional surrender of the Germans, rather than a less extreme peace treaty being made in 1941 or so.

Regarding the second - do you have anything to back up the assertion that the Holocaust was a main driver for the US to join the war against Germany (the country that actually declared the war - not the other way around)?

The German and Japanese philosophy in the war was one of attacking first before being attacked. They wouldn't have declared war on the US unless they wanted an excuse for launching a quick series of early strikes. Hitler also hoped to receive Japenese support for dealing with the British in India, because the British had refused to make peace because of the Holocaust, Blitz and German "grossmacht" plans which made it necessary to fight to the end rather than making a peace with Germany that would allow Germany to build up industries and economy to begin a new war against the British, this time with enough resources to defeat them. While this might seem like a long chain of assumptions, I think it's quite clear how it ties everything together. Simplify the entire model by just assume that amount of neutrals that will join the war against you is proportional to how much atrocies you commit, and the amount of effort put into the war by the opposition is proportional to number of atrocies as well.

The rule is [...] that a war of aggression (with genocide or without) usually does not pay off in the end and that the "risk" of failure seems to increase with the scale of the war.

I think this rule applies as well, of course with a small number of exceptions as always.

[Ser Clegane]

If the Germans hadn't carried out the Holocaust, the Blitz and the unrestricted uboat war, would they fear the consequences of surrender so much that they would keep on fighting for as long as they did? Moreover, would the British really care as much about continuing to pump in resources and lives of young men into the conflict if Germany had only been carried out a war of revenge against the actions of Napoleon I, Napoleon III and similar? After all, the French pre ww2 had the "drang nach osten" policy as well... There were additional factors however, that made hard British devotion to the war necessary: the Germans had made no secret of plans to create a "Grossmacht". The Holocaust and Blitz were the most crucial reasons why such strong opposition had to be mustered and the war had to be fought until unconditional surrender of the Germans, rather than a less extreme peace treaty being made in 1941 or so.


The German and Japanese philosophy in the war was one of attacking first before being attacked. They wouldn't have declared war on the US unless they wanted an excuse for launching a quick series of early strikes. Hitler also hoped to receive Japenese support for dealing with the British in India, because the British had refused to make peace because of the Holocaust, Blitz and German "grossmacht" plans which made it necessary to fight to the end rather than making a peace with Germany that would allow Germany to build up industries and economy to begin a new war against the British, this time with enough resources to defeat them. While this might seem like a long chain of assumptions, I think it's quite clear how it ties everything together. Simplify the entire model by just assume that amount of neutrals that will join the war against you is proportional to how much atrocies you commit, and the amount of effort put into the war by the opposition is proportional to number of atrocies as well.


I think this rule applies as well, of course with a small number of exceptions as always.

Now you are adding a lot of additional stuff into the mix - "Blitzkrieg", "Großmacht"-plans - all things I completely agree with.
But please let's stick to your original assertion (the one that I doubt):
That it was the Holocaust (and not just the war of aggression as such) that led to a backlash of even higher casualties among the Germans and that was a main driver for the allies to get involved in the war.

It seems that you are trying to back up your assertions by just making additional claims and assumptions and mixing other issues into your reasoning.
Please note that I do not consider myself to be an "expert" in WW2 history and am certainly open to receiving a lesson in this field - but this lesson should be based on some facts and not claims.

I can't help the feeling that you made up a theory based rather on gut feeling and then - after a number of cases that do not support the theory have been pointed out - try to make the facts somehow fit the theory instead of the other way around and/or declare "special circumstances" for the most obvious "exceptions" (e.g. military superiority - would that mean that genocide only really works if you are stronger than your opponents? Not really an eye-opener, is it?)

I think you are making a mistake if you are trying to approach genocide from the "logical" side (i.e. the perpetrator does not benefit from it) - it's (unfortunately) just not as simple as that.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Difficult to predict exactly where the line is drawn, i.e. what needed to not happen to make a difference. I'm merely making a very rough assessment of the potential outcome with none of these things, comparing it with what happened with all of them. Exactly what would be the result of something in between I think is very difficult to predict, it requires more complex models. In short however, there is a quite strong correlation between increased unprovoked atrocities and bad end results for the one who does that.

The main idea is that atrocities strengthens the fighting spirit of the opponents and makes neutrals more tempted to join the opponent's side. More often than not, with the end result that the one who committed the atrocity is overwhelmed by superior force. This obviously fails in the cases where the one who is guilty of the atrocity has extremely superior forces before this occurs, to the point that no alliances can be formed against the aggressor in the nearest future (i.e. Native Americans and some colonialism examples). That doesn't exclude the possibility of a counter-atrocity occuring one or a few centuries afterwards, especially if the problem and reppression still remains by that time.

What are you basing this numerical argument on?

This is common sense. Say one group contains 10K people, and it wages war with 10 groups with each 10K people. It slaughters and genocides many of these groups, say kills 1K people in each. In each conflict it suffers 300 casualties (such casualty ratios are uncommonly good compared to historical examples). In total the reppressive group suffers 3K casualties over the period, compared to 1K per the same amount of people in the other groups. Basically you need to have excessive, impossible, unrealistic kill-loss ratios to lose less than your opponents if you have many opponents. You can do this calculation more exactly by looking at population sizes and calculate their respective casualties compared to the roman ones.

[econ21]

The main idea is that atrocities strengthens the fighting spirit of the opponents ...

I think there's a lot of truth in that. I am not sure the Holocaust against the Jews had a marked affect on the war with Germany. However, there was a definitely lagged effect, with the determination never to let it happened to them again being a major factor behind the Jews fighting like tigers to establish and defend Israel. Moreover, Germany definitely suffered from its harsh treatment of Russian prisoners of war and occupied parts of the USSR. The early mass surrenders of the Red Army soon stopped when it was realised how bad the survival chances of Russian POWs were. It is also argued that the brutal German occupation alienated non-Russians and other subject people who were no lovers of Stalin.

The Rwanda example is also a case of genocide encouraging opponents (the RPF) to fight harder. An RPF battalion was in Kigali and held out under siege. The main force cut their way through to the capital all the faster because they knew every day lost meant thousands more innocents were butchered.

...and makes neutrals more tempted to join the opponent's side.

I am less sure of that point. I doubt it mattered much in WW2 (or with Israel). In Rwanda, the genociders targeted the neutrals (the UN blue berets) to terrorise them into withdrawing. France only increased its intervention when it was clear those committing genocide were losing and even then it came perilously close to protecting them.

[Orb]

'Well again the romans are an example of extreme military superiority - a set of legions and auxilia which in total numbered 500,000 men with proper difficult to pierce armor against poor weapons from smaller, separated tribes conquered one at a time.'

Which time period are you looking at? You'll find that their enemies normally had decent weapons and armour too, and when they didn't, it was normally due to Roman oppression or aggression earlier.

'And I oppose to your view on the roman empire case being an exception. Surely it fell after centuries, but over that period many more romans than non-romans got slaughtered per population size.'

This seems unlikely. You also neglect that those killed of the populations of those other people are too dead to breed, and many of the survivors no longer have property, a high standard of life, or often liberty. Numbers of deaths over the entire history of the empire/republic may well be higher than for their enemies, but that was generally because their enemies ceased to exist as independent peoples in the long term.

'The romans elected the strongest of their population to man the legions, these got killed en masse. Other people did the same, but while suffering more casualties in total, suffered fewer per population size. The roman empire also caused a dramatic change in world politics outside the empire - smaller tribes which had previously had no reason to ally did so. Out of smaller Germanic tribes, the Franks and Allemanni were formed, for instance. No doubt the romans suffered more in the end.'

No. There were plenty of nations, not 'smaller tribes' at the time they started. The Celts also selected their best men. Thanks to the attrition of the Roman war machine and their own civil war, they almost all died.

[Rodion Romanovich]

'Well again the romans are an example of extreme military superiority - a set of legions and auxilia which in total numbered 500,000 men with proper difficult to pierce armor against poor weapons from smaller, separated tribes conquered one at a time.'

Which time period are you looking at? You'll find that their enemies normally had decent weapons and armour too, and when they didn't, it was normally due to Roman oppression or aggression earlier.

'And I oppose to your view on the roman empire case being an exception. Surely it fell after centuries, but over that period many more romans than non-romans got slaughtered per population size.'

This seems unlikely. You also neglect that those killed of the populations of those other people are too dead to breed, and many of the survivors no longer have property, a high standard of life, or often liberty. Numbers of deaths over the entire history of the empire/republic may well be higher than for their enemies, but that was generally because their enemies ceased to exist as independent peoples in the long term.

'The romans elected the strongest of their population to man the legions, these got killed en masse. Other people did the same, but while suffering more casualties in total, suffered fewer per population size. The roman empire also caused a dramatic change in world politics outside the empire - smaller tribes which had previously had no reason to ally did so. Out of smaller Germanic tribes, the Franks and Allemanni were formed, for instance. No doubt the romans suffered more in the end.'

No. There were plenty of nations, not 'smaller tribes' at the time they started. The Celts also selected their best men. Thanks to the attrition of the Roman war machine and their own civil war, they almost all died.

That's what Caesar's prppaganda "De bello gallico" says. I don't consider it a very reliable source for figures. He even claims to have killed a million Gauls in the Gallic wars, which is an unreasonably high percentage of world population at that time (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html). Moreoever, don't you think the organization of smaller tribes into larger to fight the romans would have occured quite fast if the romans would have carried out a true genocide each time they conquered an area? Surely terror may have been used to lure out armies avoiding engagement and such, but the ancient figures are as little trustworthy as figures can be - limited plundering is not the same as a genocide. If terror had really been nearly as large scale as the ancient sources imply, then we would damned sure have seen every little child and woman that could walk cut spears to fight the romans. Surely Caesar used terror in his plans, but not nearly to the amount that sources such as "De Bello Gallico" implies, and he hardly had much benefit from it. Even though Caesar's terror was limited, it was enough for the germanic peoples, who had previously been very little united, to unite and massacre the romans in the Teutoburg forest, and the proceed to continually kill roman soldiers along the border. The constant fights on the roman borders led to massive losses of roman lives. The romans also found that they couldn't hold the provinces under roman culture, without allowing the provincial culture to affect rome to a great degree, and let high offices eventually end up in the hands of non-romans. So there was never any total assimilation. In fact, many regions today have several pre-roman rituals and traditions preserved. This couldn't have occured if roman terror had been nearly as bad as in "de bello gallico". I don't know what the DNA guys say either, but my guess is that they'll also find that total destruction of entire peoples as described in some less than reliable ancient sources are vastly exaggerated descriptions of conquests resulting in either integration of the conquered, or their movement to another area.

Again I appeal to common sense: if you have many enemies, say 10, you need to kill 10 times as many of them as you lose yourself, in order to not lose more than them. However, if you can get such good loss ratios, you have certainly no need to use terror to win the war, so if you in such a situation still end up using genocide, you'll send a clear signal to all other countries that you're an absolute maniac that must be dealth with as soon as possible. All neutrals with any desire to live, and any intelligence, will immediately either join an alliance against you, or wait for a time when they can do so. Would you not? Or would you be among those who fall for propaganda such as: "this genocide is an exception, it will never strike you, because YOU are our friend, whereas the current victims are EVIL, UNUSUAL DANGEROUS people" that is so common among people who use genocide?

If you look at sources after the ancient period, the figures are more reliable. They support my model. I'm quite sure that any calculations for the ancient period, with serious figures, will yield the same result. If you have good sources, we could perform a similar calculation to the one I made above, and find out more precisely.

I do understand that it's easy, when looking at history at first glance, to think genocide gives any gains. It's probably cold rationality combined with this incorrect assumption that is the main cause of genocide in history, even though genocides are so harmful for those who carry them out. I've demonstrated here that genocide doesn't give gains, and that more often than not the guilty end up suffering more in the end as a result of their crimes. Hopefully this be clear enough to future potential massmurderers, and more importantly their potential supporters, so that genocides can be prevented at an earlier stage. No dictator can come to power without important initial support to settle in his position. I'm surprised by the eagerness of so many in this thread to show that genocide would come with any gains for the perpetrator. IMO, if you truly believe genocide is rationally beneficial, you must either be a supporter of genocide, or an irrationalist.

[Ser Clegane]

That's what Caesar's prppaganda "De bello gallico" says. I don't consider it a very reliable source for figures. He even claims to have killed a million Gauls in the Gallic wars, which is unreasonable considering that world population at that time was estimated to less than 1 million (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html).

The source your are citing gives a range of 170 - 400 million for the year 1 AD.