Do you think Hitler was in the wrong?

@Plumblossum In all honesty, the Japanese internment program was a great injustice... but you seriously can't compare it either to Hitler to to the genocide of Native Americans. They're barely even on the same spectrum.

@QuixoticSoul Not allowing people to have their crops or leave is an intentional act. If "those were the times" then you've also excused Germany. Poland's invasion of Russia was before WWII

More importantly, "Nazism" ceased being a viable political ideology after WWII. Not so with Stalinist style communism See: Cambodia, Mao's China, North Korea.

@QuixoticSoul According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,366 persons, of whom 681,692 were shot – an average of 1,000 executions a day

@SW-UserIt's about the goal, not the agency - the difference between collateral damage and a war crime.

Collectivization, or something like it, was necessary - and it needed to happen overnight. The existing agricultural system was incompatible with an industrialized society. The program was mismanaged on many levels, and priorities were cruel - industry first, at all costs. That mindset ultimately won the war, but human costs were horrific. But making mistakes and accepting losses is not the same thing as setting out to kill millions. Mens rea.

Yes, those were the times, the entire continent was a cauldron - and no, you can't apply modern standards because everyone was making moves to survive the looming massive war. But ultimately Soviet invasion of Poland was a cynical, yet defensive move to build a buffer while Hitler was looking for lebensraum and staging an attack on the USSR - and there was a massive difference between how Soviets and Nazis treated the Polish people.

Those weren't puppets - and in some cases not even really friends. Soviets didn't control what they did, and all of these nations had different ideologies when it comes to it. Actual Soviet puppet governments in the Warsaw pact, were far milder than your examples.

Yes, that was the Great Purge. Those same archives record about a million dead in the GULAG system between 1934 to 1953.

@humongous 😮

@QuixoticSoul Thanks. I’ll watch.

@SW-User It really is a fantastic lecture with rare explanatory power, and just about anyone who is interested about the period will learn a few things. I was not a fan of Bob Dole when he ran for office, but his little institution? think tank? puts on some interesting events.

The Prussian ethos of following orders must have been a central weakness of grand strategy. It is reasonable that Prussian officers would not have had an ethos of independent advice. However, that they felt this towards an Austrian corporal is extraordinary.@QuixoticSoul

@Glassysky

Oh, say it isn't so! Are your words not a little harsh?

@swirlie Your idiotic comment was so freaking nuts that I almost missed the fact that you got hitler's ancestry wrong. He was Austrian, not German. And don't try to cover your attempt to compare our president with that pos. You need better material hon, this is too stupid even for you.

@katielass

Ahhh... but it got past you sweetie! I think you're slipping katielass! Just like your hero is slipping... losing his grip actually. Have you two been drinking from the same flask by chance?

There are analogies.@katielass