No better than them

[Koga No Goshi]

Pure History Channel revisionism, bud. Churchill fought to preserve the British Empire and FDR fought to dismantle it and and build an American one. WW2 was a power play, pure and simple. Had Hitler not started it in '39, Stalin would have steamrolled Europe soon after. The three competing ideologies and the rivalries within them did not fight for good or evil, but for dominance.

None of this changes the fact that the Nazi ideology was evil and that the graveyards of the world would be much larger if they had won, and the genepool much less diverse.

[PanzerJaeger]

None of this changes the fact that the Nazi ideology was evil and that the graveyards of the world would be much larger if they had won, and the genepool much less diverse.

Whoa, slow down there. In my "dream world", Hitler would have died from whatever disease was ailing him far earlier in the war. Neither Himmler nor Goebbels would have had the ability to control the military like their boss did, and a comparitively more moderate military coup would have taken place. The holocaust would have never happened. Germany would have settled with the Western Allies, denounced Japan, and joined forces against the far more dangerous communists. After the war, Germany would continue to moderate and act as the dominant power in Europe and counter balance to America.

Of course none of that happened. So do I wish that the Germans had won the war under the leadership of Hitler and his henchman and continued the Holocaust? Absolutely not.

[Koga No Goshi]

It is interesting though (freaky, I'm conspiratorially speaking to Panzer), isn't it, how the concept came from the reservation system and how the U.S. dealt with its "undesirable internal ethnic group", and the Nazi admiration for systems begun right here in the U.S., ey? Thankfully, the whole ordeal had the effect of, once and for all, denouncing biological racism as an acceptable thing amongst civilized nations. Not that it was the end of biological racism, of course, but it was a crushing blow to its credibility among rational minds.

[PanzerJaeger]

It is interesting though (freaky, I'm conspiratorially speaking to Panzer), isn't it, how the concept came from the reservation system and how the U.S. dealt with its "undesirable internal ethnic group", and the Nazi admiration for systems begun right here in the U.S., ey? Thankfully, the whole ordeal had the effect of, once and for all, denouncing biological racism as an acceptable thing amongst civilized nations. Not that it was the end of biological racism, of course, but it was a crushing blow to its credibility among rational minds.

Indeed, and I don't think that the intense focus on Holocaust is necessarily a bad thing, as at least it teaches a valuable lesson about genocide. I just wish people would acknowledge the multiple ethnic cleansings that were taking place simultaneously around the world, and that most Germans did not know what was happening. As I said before, how many Americans knew what was really happening to the Japanese that were rounded up, or care? Americans were just as easily swayed by racist propaganda into allowing the government to haul away their fellow countrymen to internment camps. Thankfully things turned out differently for them.

[HoreTore]

and that most Germans did not know what was happening.

THAT is not true. Of course they knew about the massive oppression, they saw it every day and participated in it themselves! They might not have know about the industrial killings, but they sure as hell knew about the arrests, the torture, the concentration camps, etc. They knew and saw more than enough to know that their government were murdering, torturing and oppressing innocent people.

To put it another way; they knew about 100.000 of the 6 million jews killed. And that should be way more than any person requires to know that their government is a tyranny.

But they chose not to act. The vast majority, at least. You're vastly underestimating the extreme racism of those days, PJ. The question isn't whether they knew; the question is 'why should they care?'

I saw an interview with a former wehrmacht soldier who participated in some massacre of innocent civilians in Russia. The interviewer asked him why he did it, why he didn't question his superiors, his orders. His response? 'They were only jews...'