Well, knowing this is intended to be just funny I have to point out a few things:
> All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.
Germany was drowned in serious economic depression that was deep enough to trigger a huge social response. Plus we cannot forget about the humiliating Versaille Treaty.
> they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese
Holocaust was not intended to wipe out all other races, only those that stood in the way. This includes Jews and Romani people for inhabiting "incorrect" lands, East European nations for inhabiting fertile lands. Hitler was happy to jump into one bed with Hungarians or Italians for example, although it is not obvious what would happen later had he won.
> Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts (...)
And Hitler was not far from taking over Moscow in 1941. Of course the failure of Operation Barbarossa was huge, but there was a point when Stalin must have been really afraid about the future his capital (end of July 1941, before Nazi troops diverted north for Leningrad and south for Kiev, following an order from the Furer himself; his generals strongly opposed this order).
Hitler was willing to be opportunistically flexible with his definition of the "Aryan race." For instance, he recognized Iranians, Arabs, and Turks as "Aryans"[1] in so far as they supported his war efforts. He also dubbed the Japanese "Honorary Aryans," whatever that's supposed to have meant. (Hirohito was about as fanatical over "racial purity" as Hitler was, and perhaps Hitler saw in him a kindred spirit, in addition to a military ally. Extant records and writings suggest that Hitler viewed the Japanese as more reliable allies than the Italians, whom he was planning to double-cross at some point down the road. This is probably because Italy shared a border with Hitler's Germany, by way of Austria, and hence, was "in the way," while Japan was not. Hitler's writings and track record suggest that, had he won the war, he'd have turned on pretty much any country at any time, should they have proved inconvenient for any reason).
[1] Leaving aside the obvious, of course, which is that Iranians are arguably more "Aryan" than Middle-European Caucasians. That is to say, if we use the historically accurate definition of the term, and not the Nazi-racist-mythological definition of the "Aryan" people.
Regarding the definition of Aryan, Tolkien trolled a Berlin publisher wonderfully on that score.
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully,
“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”
The whole fixation on Aryan race was less about racial purity than it was about psychological transference. The combination of abusive child rearing practices, the Treaty of Versailles and the economic depression left many, if not most, Germans very angry with no logical outlet for that anger. Hitler was able to channel that anger towards minority groups, particularly Jews. The other, somewhat controversial theory for why he targeted Jews was the possibility that he was actually 1/8 Jewish and he was targeting the part of himself that he considered shameful.
Regardless, the fixation on the Aryan master race was never about the belief that there should only be one race. It was about needing to feel powerful when others had made them feel victimized. It was the cycle of child abuse played out on an international scale. It didn't need to be ideologically consistent so long as it soothed that hurt that both Hitler and much of the German people felt.
For anyone interested in the psychological explanations for the war, Alice Miller's "For Your Own Good" is any excellent exploration of that subject.
A lot of that is true, but I don't think it's a wholly sufficient explanation.
Unfortunately, the "master race" rhetoric served a tidy political purpose, as well, even outside of Germany. Throughout much of European history, there hadn't been a great deal of "German" history to speak of. The peoples we currently recognize as German were fragmented across hundreds (at one point, thousands!) of independent polities and micro-states. These peoples were scattered across a large portion of Central and Eastern Europe, even after the unification of Germany as a nation-state. Hitler was able to play the "Aryan race" card as a pretext to invading and occupying any countries or territories that happened to have German-speaking inhabitants of any appreciable number (Czechoslovakia, Poland, and so forth). Interestingly, his phrasing started off as being more about the "German people" or "German folk." When he set his sights on other quasi-Germanic countries, like Norway and England, he talked about the "master race," a broader and more strategically flexible concept.
The "master race" concept also won him a small, but vocal number of adherents in the UK and US, particularly among the upper classes, in which racism and eugenics had become fashionable for a time.
No question Hitler's psychology was deeply troubled (and troubling). But it's tough to cleanly separate his personal beliefs from his political opportunism. He seemed to act upon each in almost equal measure.
I think there's a ton of truth to that; for example, the Jews provided a very convenient excuse for the loss of WW 1 and the overall current (perceived) plight of the German people.
But I think this common explanation oversimplifies what was clearly a complex issue. Hitler may not have had a concretely defined notion of what was Aryan and what wasn't, but he did have a strong notion of superiority and inferiority, as did most of his followers.
> Stalin must have been really afraid about the future his capital
After French took Moscow in 1812, and then subsequently lost the war, it was not such a big deal.
Everyone knows, the further you invade Russia in summer, the longer is the way back in winter.
It's the same reason why fictional commandos like Rambo and buddies have less kills and not so daring achievements as some historically documented cases.
Fiction writers try to push the limits of what readers will [try to] believe, while reality simply ignores those limits.
>He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a POW camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. Describing his experiences in World War I, he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."
Veteran of the French and Indian wars. At the age of 78 he participated in the Battle of Lexington and Concorde, where he was bayoneted, beaten and shot in the face. He recovered and died of old age at 96.
After escaping a German concentration camp and walking 93 miles to Italy he was redeployed to Burma, but Japan surrendered before he could make it to India: "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years."
...
In later years, Churchill served as an instructor at the land-air warfare school in Australia, where he became a passionate devotee of the surfboard. Back in England, he was the first man to ride the River Severn's five-foot tidal bore and designed his own board.
Seems like the only reason no one has made a movie about him is because no one would believe it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_C._Vouza Native of Guadalcanal, tied to a tree, tortured, stabbed, and left for dead by the Japanese when he was found with a small American flag in his loincloth. Chewed his way through the ropes and staggered several miles to the Marines to warn them of the Japanese battalion he encountered before being hospitalized. Later served as a scout for Carlson's Raiders.
Speaking of which...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Carlson Marine officer who went to China and lived alongside Mao Zedong and studied guerrilla warfare. Later formed and led a special Marine unit that was organized as a Maoist guerrilla unit.
Well, to be fair, Rambo was tasked with taking photographs and not engaging the enemy at a time when there was supposedly no active military action against Vietnam.
> middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be?
Sneakily, except for the reams and reams of writing the National Socialists had written about conquering Russia to use their land as Lebensraum, and how that was the whole point of their war.
At a small liberal arts college, a long time ago, our senior year capstone class topic was "The Holocaust" where all 750 or so of us, took the same class from different liberal arts instructors as a synthesis across all branches of liberal arts. So we all had a little art and a little lit and a little philosophy and ... although my specific section was taught by a lit prof who thought my thesis about nazi era architecture was really boring but still worth a "B" (in those days before grade inflation that "B" wasn't even all that bad) Anyway Hitler's book was VERY creepy to read because virtually the entire book rhymed with what later happened in WWII but was slightly off key, making it really weird, like a hazy memory.
What I'm getting at is they telegraphed pretty much exactly what they actually did everywhere, its not unique to double crossing Russia. There were some differences. From memory more than a decade ago he had peculiar ideas about the Americans, for example.
I always wonder about the History Channel...the programs are a good piece of entertainment but it's never seemed to be well researched/thought out enough to act as a serious academic resource of any kind.
"Bird wasn’t the first person to notice the dinosaur tracks, and selling the sauropod and theropod tracks was a cottage industry in the vicinity of Glen Rose. And a few local people carved fake human tracks in the same stone. Bird actually saw a pair of such forgeries at a trading post in Gallup, New Mexico, along with dinosaur tracks removed from the Glen Rose area, shortly before he left to investigate the site himself."
That's completely ridiculous! I'm surprised the Smithsonian is putting it's good name behind this sort of trash. Do you know how far Gallup, NM, is from Glen Rose? It's nearly a thousand miles! Certainly, no trading post dealer is going to travel that sort of distance to tote some rocks around! Not even the most dedicated 12-year-old tourist would do it.
It had junk from all around the world. I imagine they utilized package delivery services (further sarcasm omitted) as much as they carried stuff around themselves.
But sure, let's be more cynical about Smithsonian Mag than History.
Drang nach Osten! starting from the times of Teutonic order, and some time before if we remember the Polabian Slavs.
The story didn't start with Hitler and didn't end with him. 200 years from now comparing Eastern Europe political maps of 1984 vs. 2014 it would be pretty obvious that the Eastward expansion has greatly succeeded this time, surprisingly [relatively] peaceful this time and only the most eastward end of the push caused a mild local military conflict - Ukraine-Russian war in Donbass.
It's funny; I was just sitting here thinking about dropping software dev to become an anthropologist and then I run across this. I have to give the author credit in that anything viewed in the right light is absurd, but I think he misses the point that that "show" invented the tropes he accuses the show of having.
There's a similar page around somewhere on the implausibility of the Falklands War, starting with the absurdity of the conflict over tiny resourceless islands, through things like the transatlantic bombing run and putting all the helicopters on one ship which was sunk immediately. Then there's Thatcher ringing up Mitterand in the middle of the night to demand the remote disarm codes for the Exocet missiles France had sold Argentina, involving threats to nuke Buenos Aires.
"Plot holes" - brilliant term I've been looking for to explain conspiracy theorists' obsession with finding ludicrous explanations in mundane/petty inconsistencies normal in the real world.
Conspiracy theorists are the people that come up with the inept cash-in "non-canonical" sequel and dreadful fanfic that make the official story seem quite compelling by comparison.
I totally agree with all the other explanations posted, but here's another one: popular history as a retelling of real events gets the same tropes applied to it as fiction does.
Heavy-handed attempts by the writers to insert some "balance" into the story. Hmm, we show these guys as so good, it's not believable, how can we show them as flawed? Oh, I know, let's have them refuse to take in some refugees for no apparent reason, the very same people they later fought to save. It's just amateur hour in the writers' room.
If you want to discuss ridiculous stories, he claims he watched this WWII historical stuff on "the history channel" but I checked the schedule for tonight (honest!) and tonight is a three hour "Pawn Stars" marathon, tomorrow has more pawn stars followed by what appears to be a horror-reality crossover called "the curse of oak island" and wednesday night has a marathon of "american pickers" and thursday is, I kid you not, another marathon of "pawn stars". So I suspect he never saw anything other than blue collar workers screaming at each other and at customers on this so called "history channel". Its the same pablum on TLC, discovery, syfy, etc. The only way to tell TV channels apart in 2014 is to check the name, there's really only one channel.
(That said, I'd recommend the 60s era BBC WWII series if you can find it in the usual locations, legal or otherwise)
I thought this was making the point that WW2 is often reduced to a simple coherent narrative for the purpose of documentaries concerned more with their viewing figures than historical rigour/the truth.
These simplifications are distorting the mainstream collective memory of these events. This is particularly prevalent in the UK with regard to the First World War; a popular satirical comedy series has shaped a widely held view of mindless muddy bloodbath which does not do justice to the complexity of reality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder_Goes_Forth).
It'd be nice to see the History Channel et al delve a little deeper.
Edit: I'm not totally sure if he's making this point or not frankly.
Hmm, this made me think: do people who believe America was right to drop the atom bombs on Japan also believe they should have been used in subsequent wars? If not, why not?
I don't think this is the right place for such a debate, but if you google "did the atomic bomb save lives", you'll find people that make the case that it was the right choice.
I suspect the response to your "why not?" would be that we haven't had any war since then where the threat was significant to warrant the horrific impact of their use (which nobody seems to deny). Plus, ever since shortly after WWII, there was always the possibility of nuclear weapons triggering a nuclear response.
I'm not fully decided on the question of the atomic bombings of Japan but I think I qualify as one of the people you refer to. I do not think they should have been used in subsequent wars.
First, the war against Japan and Germany was about as close to an unambiguous fight against evil as you can find in the real world. The post, while trying to paint them as unrealistic caricatures, still manages to understate it. Ultimately, the war was justifiable and winning it was the best outcome for everybody.
If we accept that the war had to be won, then winning it in the most efficient way possible, in terms of time and lives, is best. I think the atomic bombings accomplished that. It's debatable and can probably never be known for sure, but it seems likely that Japan would have held out much longer without them. Even with them, there was a nearly successful palace coup aimed at preventing the surrender. Even ignoring the Allied lives that would be lost in an invasion, many more Japanese would have died by the time the war was over.
That establishes the (fairly standard) reasoning for using the atomic bombs on Japan. How about afterwards?
None of the subsequent hot wars were anywhere close to being as black and white. The post mentions Vietnam as an example where the lack of atomic weapons made for a glaring plot hole. But really, are you going to use atomic weapons on a country that poses no threat to you whatsoever, in a conflict which is basically a war of independence where you're fighting on the side of the colonial oppressors? I'm not going to argue that Communism was a good thing for Vietnam or that victory by North Vietnam was a good outcome, but it doesn't look like our side was particularly in the right. Would lives have been saved by nuking Hanoi? Would evil have been defeated? I don't think so.
And even ignoring all that, the practical realities of the world order prevented it. Maybe you could win Vietnam by nuking Hanoi (although I'm not sure how the one follows from the other exactly) but it's hard to see a scenario where that doesn't quickly turn into an all-out nuclear war between the superpowers, where nobody wins and everybody loses big. The only time it was remotely feasible was for a few years after 1945 until the Russians had enough nuclear capability to make it an unwise choice, roughly 1955 or so. What does that leave us with, using nukes in Korea like MacArthur wanted to? I don't know if that wins the war either. (Mao was famously welcoming of nuclear war, believing that China's massive population meant they would weather it and win it.) And even if it did, would it be worth it? I don't see the balance of lives working out in favor of dropping a hydrogen bomb on Beijing the way it did with Japan.
One more thing to consider: if WWII had been won without nuclear weapons (either because the choice was made not to use them, or the project took a little longer than it did in reality) then my guess is that we wouldn't have seen the subsequent restraint in using them afterwards. Rather than the first (and so far only) use in war being two small bombs, it might have been an exchange of hundreds, with the participants realizing what a terrible idea that is only too late. This has no bearing on justifying the decision in 1945 (how could they be expected to know all these future consequences?) but it's interesting to consider that the timing of the development and use of nuclear weapons may have been extremely lucky.
Well, considering the Japanese actually tried to surrender before the bombs fell to the Russians is totally not important... and that they found out about the 2 N-Bombs only after they surrendered to the Americans. /s
The sarcasm falls flat when you realize that a lot of what he is talking about really is wrong. That is not what happened, that is a collection of misconceptions people gathered which are only loosely based on actual history. Germany was not simply racist, they had declared jews to be their enemies. Not "people who aren't white". The German military was the most racially and religiously diverse military force involved in WW2. There were plenty of Wehrmacht soldiers with brown skin, wearing turbans, or carrying copies of the Quran given to them by Hitler as gifts. A shocking number of people are under the impression that the US joined the war because Germany attacked France and was killing jews. It is no wonder that people have a comic book view of WW2 given how little actual history they've been taught.
Although Nazi Germany did co-operate with various (for want of a better term) brown people, Hitler and the rest of the Nazis certainly held racist attitudes towards them. It would be misleading to suggest that the Nazis were "only" racists with regard to Jews.
(Of course virtually everyone on the allied side was also racist.)
Even in the eyes of racist Europeans, the Japanese held a privileged place, having defeated the Russians -- a "white" race -- in a war in 1905. (Later, South African apartheid would also make a special exemption for the Japanese.)
>Hitler and the rest of the Nazis certainly held racist attitudes towards them
Why is that certain? I'm not aware of anything that would support that claim. High ranking nazis and even Hitler himself made positive statements towards plenty of other ethnic and cultural groups. A belief that ethnic groups should have pride in their culture and stay "pure" by only breeding with other members of the same ethnic group may not be popular now, but it is not racist.
>A belief that ethnic groups should have pride in their culture and stay "pure" by only breeding with other members of the same ethnic group may not be popular now, but it is not racist.
That wikipedia article supports what I said. And I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but when speaking with others you do need to use the actual definitions of words. If you pretend words mean things they do not mean, then communication is impossible. Racism requires the belief that one or more races are inferior or superior to others. Not merely an acknowledgement that races exist.
The Wikipedia article shows Speer making reference to the fact that Hitler considered Arabs racially inferior.
I am not going to argue the semantics of racism with you. You know as well as I do that there are no examples of non-racists opposed to interracial marriage. Such people could conceivably exist in principle, but do not in practice. I am not sure what your motivations are for trying to defend these hypothetical non-racist anti-miscegenationists, but this has nothing to do with the Nazis in any case.
Where on the page does it show Hitler saying that Arabs are not racially inferior to "Aryans"? The page has multiple well-sourced instances of Hitler making explicitly racist comments about Arabs. E.g. "Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples [in the Far East and Arabia] at best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash". And as far as hearsay is concerned, the article notes that similar statements are made in Mein Kampf (which, to state the obvious, was written by Hitler personally).
1) the US contemplated using its mythical superweapon (a) against the Russians after WWII, (b) against the Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean war. By the time the Vietnam war was going badly, the Russians and Chinese had their own superweapons.
2) The Germans allied with the Russians with betrayal in mind.
3) When the Germans attacked the Russians, they didn't have a second front (unless you consider North Africa a second front). There had been an abortive landing at Dieppe, which if anything had bolstered German confidence that their western front was secure. Bear in mind that the US had not entered the war and England's collapse seemed inevitable (and if Rommel had taken the Suez that would have been it for Britain).
4) Every one of Hitler's major offensives had been thought insane by Hitler's own high command (e.g. the British and French outnumbered the Germans in both men and tanks at the outset of the invasion of France), so their very reasonable objections to the Barbarossa campaign fell on deaf ears. Is there anything more plausible than hubris?
My favorite example of implausible actions in WWII was Hitler's declaration of war on the US after it declared war on Japan. That never made sense to me until I read A World At Arms -- a history of WWII that emphasizes politics, diplomacy, and intelligence over battles. The Germans relied desperately on Japan for rubber (even synthetic rubber required a certain amount of real rubber as an ingredient). A fleet of u-boats was dedicated to transporting rubber from Japan to Germany, and Germany needed Japan on side or it was in deep trouble (fighting the Russians with no rubber).
> That is not what happened, that is a collection of misconceptions people gathered which are only loosely based on actual history.
The fact that the folk history many people think they know may be distant from our best substantiated histories doesn't really detract from the point that folk history of WWII may be kindof incredible.
Plus, there's certainly enough incredible but apparently accurate stuff in our best histories.
Also... "actual history?" By which we mean "what actually happened" or by which we mean "the best substantiated narratives we have"?
Because as far as I can tell, "what actually happened" is pretty elusive. Some histories are better substantiated from recorded observation and evidence than others, but all of them are interpolations of one degree or another from a set of evidence that's always more limited than the larger picture we try to paint.
It would have been funner if it had been more truthy.
What actually happened fits very well with that bit of fun narrative. Using a bunch of incorrect stuff detracts from the funness.
my example: the storm troopers didn't wear black. The SS did. But they didn't just wear black, they had runic emblems and skulls and shit. This minor detail is important because remembering details about genocide is probably a good thing.
The SA wore brown. I only know this because my grandmother totally freaked out at me when I once wore a brown shirt (totally oblivious of the historic significance). I stopped wearing brown shirts out of deference for older people's sensibilities.
> All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.
Germany was drowned in serious economic depression that was deep enough to trigger a huge social response. Plus we cannot forget about the humiliating Versaille Treaty.
> they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese
Holocaust was not intended to wipe out all other races, only those that stood in the way. This includes Jews and Romani people for inhabiting "incorrect" lands, East European nations for inhabiting fertile lands. Hitler was happy to jump into one bed with Hungarians or Italians for example, although it is not obvious what would happen later had he won.
> Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts (...)
And Hitler was not far from taking over Moscow in 1941. Of course the failure of Operation Barbarossa was huge, but there was a point when Stalin must have been really afraid about the future his capital (end of July 1941, before Nazi troops diverted north for Leningrad and south for Kiev, following an order from the Furer himself; his generals strongly opposed this order).