Which has 0 to do with US Marines flying a Nazi flag under a US flag in Afghanistan.
Marines Pose with Nazi SS Flag?
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vikingBerserker
Lieutenant General
My ancestor's fought against the British in the Revolutionary War as well as the War of 1812. At the college I attended there is a memorial that is the only shore installation in the U.S. permitted to fly the Royal Navy Ensign. I do not feel this in any way disrespects my ancestors. IMHO if we go back far enough in any of our respective county's history we would probably find events today we would not be too proud of that might even approach those of the SS, yet we refuse to let these events define it.
Not comparable really. The War of Independence was in some ways a civil war,the revolutionaries had all been subjects of the crown up until their unilateral declaration of independence when they became,technically,traitors. Something they were fully aware of,had they lost they'd have been hanged and they knew it. They won and are quite correctly seen in a more favourable light
I'm not aware of the Royal Navy ever having run or staffed extermination camps in the colonies.
Steve
michaelmaltby
Colonel
"... Which has 0 to do with US Marines flying a Nazi flag under a US flag in Afghanistan."
Except behavior that was disgraceful ..... duh.
MM
Except behavior that was disgraceful ..... duh.
MM
michaelmaltby
Colonel
"... I'm not aware of the Royal Navy ever having run or staffed extermination camps in the colonies."
Sorry ... I forgot that the British Government OUTSOURCED the transfer of "criminals" to Australia .... so 'technically' you're right.
Concentration Camps were first used by the British in The Boer War .....
History is a bitch, eh Stona.
Chairs,
MM
Sorry ... I forgot that the British Government OUTSOURCED the transfer of "criminals" to Australia ....
so 'technically' you're right.Concentration Camps were first used by the British in The Boer War .....
History is a bitch, eh Stona.
Chairs,
MM
Sounds like we're agreeing on something.
michaelmaltby
Colonel
We are.
MM
MM
The deportation of criminals to Australia is not in anyway comparable to the genocide committed by nazi Germany in the extermination camps. Such a comparison is disgraceful.
The use of what have been referred to as concentration camps during the Boer wars is not a particularly pleasant episode in British military history. They were however concentration camps,not extermination camps.The intent was not to exterminate the Boer people but to isolate their "Commandos" from the support of their "Volk". The camps were not dismantled because the Boer peoples won their "Engelse oorlog" but because in a democratic system they were eventually deemed,in the UK parliament,to be unacceptable. Not likely to happen in nazi Germany. The military authorities in Southern Africa couldn't hide such a thing from the people back home,even at the turn of the 20th century,indefinately. Politicians in a democracy HAVE to be wary of public opinion. Again,no comparison.
Every nation that ever fielded an army has an Amritsar or a My Lai in its history. These are not things we can be proud of but they are not national policy.In that sense history can indeed be a bitch. We should seek to learn from it.
In making such petty comparisons you singularly fail to grasp the enormity of what happened in Europe in the 1930/40s.
Steve
The use of what have been referred to as concentration camps during the Boer wars is not a particularly pleasant episode in British military history. They were however concentration camps,not extermination camps.The intent was not to exterminate the Boer people but to isolate their "Commandos" from the support of their "Volk". The camps were not dismantled because the Boer peoples won their "Engelse oorlog" but because in a democratic system they were eventually deemed,in the UK parliament,to be unacceptable. Not likely to happen in nazi Germany. The military authorities in Southern Africa couldn't hide such a thing from the people back home,even at the turn of the 20th century,indefinately. Politicians in a democracy HAVE to be wary of public opinion. Again,no comparison.
Every nation that ever fielded an army has an Amritsar or a My Lai in its history. These are not things we can be proud of but they are not national policy.In that sense history can indeed be a bitch. We should seek to learn from it.
In making such petty comparisons you singularly fail to grasp the enormity of what happened in Europe in the 1930/40s.
Steve
Freebird
Master Sergeant
Where most of them began new lives as productive citizens, escaping poverty a grim life in old blighty.
MM[/QUOTE]
Which is not the same as extermination camps.
The
michaelmaltby
Colonel
".... In making such petty comparisons you singularly fail to grasp the enormity of what happened in Europe in the 1930/40s. "
Apparently ........ at least by your standards. But I assure you, stona, that the blood of Canadian-born relatives who fought '14-18 and again '39-45 was just as righteous as any being shed by your lot.
"... They were however concentration camps, not extermination camps."
Two words: communicable disease. It (they) took the lives of Boer women and children ... and disease took 1,000's in the Nazi labour camps. You kill 'em, you bare responsibility for 'em. If that was the rule for the Nazis then that's the rule for Britannia -- no finessing the 'logic', friend.
"... Where most of them began new lives as productive citizens, escaping poverty a grim life "
Sure, just like the Highland Scots Britain shipped out to the fertile clime of Cape Breton after the slaughter at Culloden.
Spin away ....
MM
Apparently ........ at least by your standards. But I assure you, stona, that the blood of Canadian-born relatives who fought '14-18 and again '39-45 was just as righteous as any being shed by your lot.
"... They were however concentration camps, not extermination camps."
Two words: communicable disease. It (they) took the lives of Boer women and children ... and disease took 1,000's in the Nazi labour camps. You kill 'em, you bare responsibility for 'em. If that was the rule for the Nazis then that's the rule for Britannia -- no finessing the 'logic', friend.
"... Where most of them began new lives as productive citizens, escaping poverty a grim life "
Sure, just like the Highland Scots Britain shipped out to the fertile clime of Cape Breton after the slaughter at Culloden.
Spin away ....
MM
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You still can't compare camps that were a heavy handed military solution to a military problem and were dismantled by the government of the same nation whose military had built them with a national policy of genocide. Despite the deaths of many thousands of Boer people in the The South African camps this was not an attempted genocide. Noone in the British government was making coded allusions to a "final solution" of the Boer problem. There are no minutes of anything resembling a Wannsee conference. It is disingenuous and provocative to suggest otherwise.
A small but significant percentage of the present Australian population is descended from deportees. I've visited and worked in Australia on several occasions and they seem alright to me. One of the guides at Melbourne's old gaol did seem to take undue pleasure putting me into a cell but then we had just beaten them at cricket.
Where are the descendants of Polish Jewry? Few and far between and rarely in Poland. Spin that.
Steve
A small but significant percentage of the present Australian population is descended from deportees. I've visited and worked in Australia on several occasions and they seem alright to me. One of the guides at Melbourne's old gaol did seem to take undue pleasure putting me into a cell but then we had just beaten them at cricket.
Where are the descendants of Polish Jewry? Few and far between and rarely in Poland. Spin that.
Steve
mikewint
Captain
Stona, going "off the ranch" here but Michael is correct about british concentration camps: The British had some mastless prison ships in NY harbor during the war. American prisoners (enlisted men) were stuffed into the hold and not allowed to come up on deck for exercise or fresh air. They had to urinate and defecate over the side and, since the ship was anchored, the foul water was only washed away with the tides. They were given small cast iron pots (1 for every 10 men) to cook whatever rancid meat they were given and it had to be cooked in salt water since they weren't given any fresh water for cooking. And the only salt water they could get was the aforementioned water covered with feces. Occaisionally, locals would row out to the ships and donate or sell fresh food to the prisoners. Thousands died under those conditions. Michael also mentions the "civil war" aspects, also true, in many parts of America, the Revolution took on aspects of a Civil War in that families and neighbors of seperate alligences fought against one another out of revenge, greed, spite, or whatever excuse they could find to get some land or possessions. There was a story of a woman down south who was found tied to a tree and her unborn infant had been cut out of her, hung upside down to the tree and a note attached to it saying, "This bastard will never grow up to be a rebel." The Hessians were noted for their lack of compassion to surrendering troops and there are several accounts of them bayoneting Americans asking for quarter. The most famous account was after the Battle of Camden when Banistre "Bloody Ban" Tarleton had his men slaughter surrendering American troops. The ironic thing about that was Tarleton's troops weren't British, but American loyalists who gladly slaughtered their own people.
Sorry, off topic but any and every army/country has and will continue to comit such acts during a time of war/combat
Michael, if you would re-read my post, I agree about the lack of intrinsic power of symbols but you missed my second point, i.e. Symbol bypass the thinking brain and act on a viseral level. Stop your knee from jerking when you strike the patellar tendon. The viseral power of symbols is the very reason they are used
Sorry, off topic but any and every army/country has and will continue to comit such acts during a time of war/combat
Michael, if you would re-read my post, I agree about the lack of intrinsic power of symbols but you missed my second point, i.e. Symbol bypass the thinking brain and act on a viseral level. Stop your knee from jerking when you strike the patellar tendon. The viseral power of symbols is the very reason they are used
michaelmaltby
Colonel
"... Where are the descendants of Polish Jewry? Few and far between and rarely in Poland. Spin that."
Israel. Lots. Canada, more than you'd concede.
Better read "Bloodlands" stona, or re-read if the impact has worn off.
I realize that (in your words) : ... (I) singularly fail to grasp the enormity of what happened in Europe ..." but what in truth I do grasp is the enormity of the struggle for and against communism in the years you have identified. The mindless slaughter by Soviet politicos in the Ukraine, later in Poland and elsewhere is just as monumental and horrific as anything you want to lay on the Germans - and I don't give a rats ass if the Reds held a conference about it or not.
IIRC, in 1939 the Allies went to war against Nazi Germany - this war was about a number of issues and unilateral acts of aggression. Liberating European Jews was only one item on that list of issues. Post WW2, increasingly the War in Europe is being portrayed as the war against the Holocaust. The Holocaust is symbolic and I appreciate the sacrifice the Holocaust embodies -- but it is NOT why most Allied service people fought.
Do you endorse this revisionist portrayal of WW2, stona?
Israel. Lots. Canada, more than you'd concede.
Better read "Bloodlands" stona, or re-read if the impact has worn off.
I realize that (in your words) : ... (I) singularly fail to grasp the enormity of what happened in Europe ..." but what in truth I do grasp is the enormity of the struggle for and against communism in the years you have identified. The mindless slaughter by Soviet politicos in the Ukraine, later in Poland and elsewhere is just as monumental and horrific as anything you want to lay on the Germans - and I don't give a rats ass if the Reds held a conference about it or not.
IIRC, in 1939 the Allies went to war against Nazi Germany - this war was about a number of issues and unilateral acts of aggression. Liberating European Jews was only one item on that list of issues. Post WW2, increasingly the War in Europe is being portrayed as the war against the Holocaust. The Holocaust is symbolic and I appreciate the sacrifice the Holocaust embodies -- but it is NOT why most Allied service people fought.
Do you endorse this revisionist portrayal of WW2, stona?
A mastless prison ship is not an extermination camp. Prison hulks were moored in the Thames estuary at this time. It was a common and accepted solution to a prison problem,along with the deportations equated by some with genocide. I'd be grateful to be sent to Botany Bay compared with the options for a French deportee for example.
Those American prisoners were not being singled out for special treatment. We must not judge the past by present standards. The treatment of those prisoners was a military atrocity. We should all be careful about throwing that stone as we will find that we are all living in glass houses.
Extermination camps are part of a genocide reflecting the national policy of a particular regime. Genocide has become a much overused and devalued word. Look at the appalling atrocities in the Balkans. Despite the use of the word genocide to describe the horror it was not genocide. Ethnic cleansing may be a euphemism for dreadful suffering,terror and dislocation but it is not a euphemism for genocide. Saddam's gas attacks on the Kurds are atrocities,not genocide. He never intended to kill all Kurdish people however much he may have wanted to.
Some people posting in this thread,like some modern journalists,have lost a sense of proportion.
Steve
Those American prisoners were not being singled out for special treatment. We must not judge the past by present standards. The treatment of those prisoners was a military atrocity. We should all be careful about throwing that stone as we will find that we are all living in glass houses.
Extermination camps are part of a genocide reflecting the national policy of a particular regime. Genocide has become a much overused and devalued word. Look at the appalling atrocities in the Balkans. Despite the use of the word genocide to describe the horror it was not genocide. Ethnic cleansing may be a euphemism for dreadful suffering,terror and dislocation but it is not a euphemism for genocide. Saddam's gas attacks on the Kurds are atrocities,not genocide. He never intended to kill all Kurdish people however much he may have wanted to.
Some people posting in this thread,like some modern journalists,have lost a sense of proportion.
Steve
mikewint
Captain
Again I agree with Michael: Genocide is an old tried and true practice used by all countries. And just because we don't manage to kill ALL of them, it is not from a lack of trying. Po-tay-toe or Po-taa-toe. The Pilgrims gave smallpox infested blankets to the indians and the army/railroad slaughtered the buffalo to stave out the indians. Austrailians slaughtered the bushmen. Slalin killed 3X to 4X the number of people that Hitler ever did. Serbs and Muslims, it goes on and on. Does not make it right by any means but civilization is a very, very, thin veneer on our species
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I do not endorse revisionist histories and I have a fairly decent grasp of what the second world war was about. I have never suggested it was a war against the holocaust. It was you who equated the holocaust with transportations to Australia and South African concentration camps.
There were about 3.35 million Jewish people in Poland when war broke out(by statistical extrapolation from the 1931 census figures) and about 2.8 million left in German occupied Poland after the Soviet zone was overrun. Your "lots" should be tens of millions and it is not.
I'm not going to get into an argument about numbers it is distasteful and disrespectful. Some number crunching is unavoidable.
Are you attempting to deny the fate of Polish Jewry? Your descendants may well be from the 116,000 Jews who left Poland between December 1931 and Sepember 1939 or even the 300,000 who escaped to the USSR after a border was established late in 1939. The fate of those who remained is well known and proven by evidence from the perpetrators. Are you suggesting that many more survived than actually did? If you are we don't really have anything to discuss. That is a strain of revisionism which I will not engage with.
Steve
There were about 3.35 million Jewish people in Poland when war broke out(by statistical extrapolation from the 1931 census figures) and about 2.8 million left in German occupied Poland after the Soviet zone was overrun. Your "lots" should be tens of millions and it is not.
I'm not going to get into an argument about numbers it is distasteful and disrespectful. Some number crunching is unavoidable.
Are you attempting to deny the fate of Polish Jewry? Your descendants may well be from the 116,000 Jews who left Poland between December 1931 and Sepember 1939 or even the 300,000 who escaped to the USSR after a border was established late in 1939. The fate of those who remained is well known and proven by evidence from the perpetrators. Are you suggesting that many more survived than actually did? If you are we don't really have anything to discuss. That is a strain of revisionism which I will not engage with.
Steve
michaelmaltby
Colonel
"... a genocide reflecting the national policy of a particular regime".
TRUE.
But since you sit on such morally high ground, stona, what kind of a "national policy" does Britain's opium policy to China represent. We won't kill 'em, just render 'em useless. Britain tolerated hashish in Egypt (locals only) for the same reason.
"... Some people posting in this thread,like some modern journalists,have lost a sense of proportion."
Who would that be, stona, me ....?
You better read my first post on this thread before it went pear shaped .... of this Marine Nazi flag issue I wrote: "PC BS ... move on"
I suggest we do ....
MM
TRUE.
But since you sit on such morally high ground, stona, what kind of a "national policy" does Britain's opium policy to China represent. We won't kill 'em, just render 'em useless. Britain tolerated hashish in Egypt (locals only) for the same reason.
"... Some people posting in this thread,like some modern journalists,have lost a sense of proportion."
Who would that be, stona, me ....?
You better read my first post on this thread before it went pear shaped .... of this Marine Nazi flag issue I wrote: "PC BS ... move on"
I suggest we do ....
MM
Just a reminder everyone, to play nice. This thread has the content to get out of hand, lets not let that happen.
Now, carry on...
Now, carry on...
Is this a new definition of genocide?
The British were comitting genocide in South Africa in the 1900s? The United States was comitting genocide in Vietnam in the 1960s? The French comitted genocide in Algeria? The Portugese in Mozambique? The British,again,in Kenya? The Burmese?
I don't think so.
Over and out.
Steve
The British were comitting genocide in South Africa in the 1900s? The United States was comitting genocide in Vietnam in the 1960s? The French comitted genocide in Algeria? The Portugese in Mozambique? The British,again,in Kenya? The Burmese?
I don't think so.
Over and out.
Steve
michaelmaltby
Colonel
Genocide takes many forms, stona.
In the end, trying to limit it to "pre-meditation" does the subject (and the victims) great injustice.
Whether you march the men, women and children to a camp - screen them for usefulness then murder the old, sick or 'unproductive' and work the rest to death, OR, eradicate a people by killing the males of sexual age, impregnating the fertile females with YOUR seed and genetically destroying their future as a viable people/culture, OR, hunt them down in their habitat as sport or 'national interest' --- THE END RESULT is .... eradication.
MikeWint is correct to point out the long sad history or eradication.
I did not start discussing the Holocaust .... you warped my Concentration Camps in South Africa into EXTERMINATION CAMPS -- a claim I never made.
"Are you attempting to deny the fate of Polish Jewry? " ......
Nice try.
MM
In the end, trying to limit it to "pre-meditation" does the subject (and the victims) great injustice.
Whether you march the men, women and children to a camp - screen them for usefulness then murder the old, sick or 'unproductive' and work the rest to death, OR, eradicate a people by killing the males of sexual age, impregnating the fertile females with YOUR seed and genetically destroying their future as a viable people/culture, OR, hunt them down in their habitat as sport or 'national interest' --- THE END RESULT is .... eradication.
MikeWint is correct to point out the long sad history or eradication.
I did not start discussing the Holocaust .... you warped my Concentration Camps in South Africa into EXTERMINATION CAMPS -- a claim I never made.
"Are you attempting to deny the fate of Polish Jewry? " ......
Nice try.
MM
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