By the time anyone realized what the Nazis had in mind, chances are any dissent would result in you getting a bullet to the back of the head, if you were lucky. And enough people, put in the position of being the screwer or the screwee, will do anything to screw others. A lot of the German people (including the current Pope) made the decision for survival, and it's hard to condemn them for wanting to live when it seems like there was nothing to be done from within the Country, considering none of us have had to make that choice.

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This is true, but it doesn't account for all the soldiers who enjoyed being the screwer.

The Japanese, prior to WWII had a "conquer or be conquered" attitude.  They figured, if Asia is going to be conquered, it should at least be done by Asians.

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The Germans had the same attitude, too. Go figure.

 

I agree with Tokytostormwarning about the number of people involved. In the case with the Nazis, only the top were responsible for the war crimes. Most of the Nazis beneath them were just following orders.

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Well, that one's a little tricky. The sheer number of Brownshirts that joined the movement prior to the Nazis' fancy bureaucratic manuvering resulting in the takeover of the Reichstag proved that more than enough Germans were willing to come down on whoever they could blame. On the other hand, they probably wouldn't have been quite so angry if the treaty of Versailles and the Weimar Republic hadn't left Germany with absolutely nothing except a chip on its' shoulder.  By the time anyone realized what the Nazis had in mind, chances are any dissent would result in you getting a bullet to the back of the head, if you were lucky. And enough people, put in the position of being the screwer or the screwee, will do anything to screw others. A lot of the German people (including the current Pope) made the decision for survival, and it's hard to condemn them for wanting to live when it seems like there was nothing to be done from within the Country, considering none of us have had to make that choice. It's asinine to armchair quarterback history based on what could have been from a position of safety.

 

But we shouldn't forget the fact that the first people to fight the Nazis were other Germans, as Philip K. Dick was quick to remind us in Lies, Inc. . .

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I was talking about the war crime part, but yeah, this is informative too.

 

I think it's funny how people learn about the German atrocities in school, but nobody ever hear about the Japanese atrocities in school (case in point, WRX-78's mentioning of nobody ever hear of the atrocities in Vietnam commited by the US).

 

My friend had a theory that it's because subconsciously, we still go by a "racial scale." It's something like this. You can argue that we learn about the Holocaust because it's closer to "our culture" or "our society" because we are predominant European decent here in NorAm. That's why you don't hear much about the stuff happening on the "other side of the world" during WWII. But we hear about how bad it was that we dropped the A-bombs on Japan without talking about the atrocities they've committed or why the bombs were dropped in the first place - part of the reason is to get the Japaneses to surrender in order to stop their killing of civilians in Asia (coming back to our original topic.) According to my friend, we commemorate the deaths of the Jews and the Japanese (both culturally similar to the Western society) but not the other Asians, Aboriginals, and Africans that died in WWII because subconsciously, we see their lives being "less worthy" than those that belong or have ties to Western society.

 

I don't know. War is stupid for the most part. I think killing of people is wrong, and that life, no matter what it is, is precious, but that IMHO and people may think otherwise.

ill show my IQ off by just sayin

WAR SUCKS

nothing good about it

people do bad things, not nice :( me sad

when no war me be happy

me has heard grimlock to much

and me like trying to lighten mood to much

but WAR BAD

when it comes to ww2 they started it and we finished it simple as that. although  ive always thought the president  of the time went over board on the bombings. may god have mercy on his soul

when it comes to ww2 they started it and we finished it simple as that. although  ive always thought the president  of the time went over board on the bombings. may god have mercy on his soul

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I'm sure it had to be done. People were suffering like crazy in Asia (re: my post last time).

Honestly I don't think that within another decade or two we'll have to worry much about China.  Sure they are still the big Red Comunist nation.  But they are also one of hte biggest capalist nations in the world.  And if anyone has been paying attention thats having a dramatic effect on them over all.  The day they reabsorbed Hong Kong China began a shift toward a more western way of life.  They continue to try and block out info from outside but as more and more companies from the west move in for hte cheap labor, and as money and information spread through the country policies change.

 

Human greed is going to eventually change the nations government without the need for war.

 

And Transformers will rule the world:)

when it comes to ww2 they started it and we finished it simple as that. although  ive always thought the president  of the time went over board on the bombings. may god have mercy on his soul

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I'm sure it had to be done. People were suffering like crazy in Asia (re: my post last time).

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Funny how people were also suffering like crazy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after we friggin' nuked them. Last I checked, it was pretty uncool to bomb civilian targets.

Last I checked, it was pretty uncool to bomb civilian targets.

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Like we did in Berlin. :(

I think it's funny how people learn about the German atrocities in school, but nobody ever hear about the Japanese atrocities in school (case in point, WRX-78's mentioning of nobody ever hear of the atrocities in Vietnam commited by the US).

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It's not just the atrocities that gets skipped.  The only time asia got mention in my HS world histroy class was WWII.  Africa was mentioned only as being the homeland of the slaves.  My teacher justified this by saying we had a lot to get through and he wanted to focus on the history that more directly affected us (i.e. Western).  In another US history class, the teacher skipped the US civil war becuase he spent too much time on the revolutionary war and ran out of time.

 

Funny how people were also suffering like crazy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after we friggin' nuked them. Last I checked, it was pretty uncool to bomb civilian targets.

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It is uncool, but unavoidable.  I think the idea was "yeah, we'll hurt some of them, but they'll hurt a lot more of us if we don't."

Funny how people were also suffering like crazy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after we friggin' nuked them. Last I checked, it was pretty uncool to bomb civilian targets.

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It is uncool, but unavoidable.  I think the idea was "yeah, we'll hurt some of them, but they'll hurt a lot more of us if we don't."

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I call BS on that. It was 100% unavoidable b/c the US had no need to friggin' nuke two Japanese cities. The war was practically over at that point anyway.

 

oh BTW your sig is roffle