WWII air war myths

I had to look up the 30 year war to understand Balljoint's post.
Glad I did as my knowledge of pre industrial european history isn't great and I was stunned to see another example of the horror that countries and people put themselves through.

Rick65 said:

I had to look up the 30 year war to understand Balljoint's post.
Glad I did as my knowledge of pre industrial european history isn't great and I was stunned to see another example of the horror that countries and people put themselves through.

Click to expand...

That was one of countless protracted wars that plagued Europe over the centuries.

If one looks at the list of all European wars, it's a wonder that Europe has any people left in it.
List of conflicts in Europe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

few match the size and savagery of hitlers war, particularly in the East. Its the sheer scale of the thing that sets the German wars apart from all the others, including bonapartes war.

The 30 years war was possibly a more savage conflict, but both WWII and the 30 years war were fought on ideological grounds, so whatever differences existed, is more logistical than a matter of intent

parsifal said:

few match the size and savagery of hitlers war, particularly in the East. Its the sheer scale of the thing that sets the German wars apart from all the others, including bonapartes war.

The 30 years war was possibly a more savage conflict, but both WWII and the 30 years war were fought on ideological grounds, so whatever differences existed, is more logistical than a matter of intent

Click to expand...

I still don't see how it is a myth. The small group of people that may believe it are a serious minority. In order for something to be a myth, there has to be a large group of people that follow or believe it.

you are probably right, if the definition of a myth is as you say something that enters widespread or general acceptance. To a degree I dont agree with even the notion that it is not a widespread or generally held belief. particularly on the internet, people can say anything, and there will always be someone that believes it. In more normal academic realms, a person may make a serious claim by publishing a paper, backing it up with hard facts, and then subjecting his theary or claim to review and scrutiny by his peers. That seldom happens in the hothouse of a forum. People will often make claims, often with some fact nicely embeded with a lie, and others will inevitably believe the lie. You know the saying....you can fool some of the people some of the time.......

But the definition of myth doesnt really have anything to do with how many people believe or accept the myth. a myth can have just one believer, or even none....

The online dictionary defines myth as follows:


myth
[mith] Show IPA

noun
1.
a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.

2.
stories or matter of this kind: realm of myth.

3.
any invented story, idea, or concept: His account of the event is pure myth.

4.
an imaginary or fictitious thing or person.

5.
an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution.

none of the above require mass acceptance of the myth

It may need mass acceptance, but I still don't see how it is accepted by people (other than maybe an extreme minority), nore has it ever been presented as a myth.

Where in all seriousness are these things believed?

Noplace I've ever heard of, that's for sure.

On the other hand, many Nazis seemingly escaped captivity by the allies somewhere in South America. Maybe it's a myth there.

I'm not sure I'd want to go down and find out.

My foggy memory seems to think it was Bolivia that they were purported to have fled to after the war to escape prosecution.


Wheels

And Uruguay

wheelsup_cavu said:

My foggy memory seems to think it was Bolivia that they were purported to have fled to after the war to escape prosecution.

Wheels

Click to expand...

As well as Argentina, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay each had German residents so easy to blend in.

Many were helped to get there by the Roman Catholic Church.

Many were also helped there by South American countries themselves and the German people within them.

Part I
David irving is one historian that seriously denies the holocaust and , as i understand it claims that Hitler was justified in his reprisals and behaviour

David Irving - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are people in this place that believe in this stuff. Several over the years have claimed that the holocaust was overblown (Kurfurst). one current member, has stated that hitlers regime was justified to go to war. i will not name him.

Justifying Hitler is the flip side of antisemitism, and antisemitism is statistically on the rise again in Europe. The following is from wiki, but it explains very well, why myths such as ive stated are very much thriving and surviving. the two issues, anti semitism and Nazi revisionism, are pretty well inextricably linked, though i admit that they are not the same. The association is what might be called a surogatre measurement......but it is still valid means of estimation

This is from wiki

With the end of World War II in 1945, the surviving Jews began to return to their homes although many chose to emigrate to the United States, Great Britain, and British-controlled Palestine. In many ways, the antisemitism of the Nazi regime was continued in different guises. Claims of blood libel and persecution of Jews continued, in part due to fear that the returning Jews would attempt to reclaim property stolen during the Holocaust or expose the true nature of the assistance given by the local population in the previously Nazi-occupied territories. One culminating example was the Kielce pogrom, which occurred in 1946 in Poland when citizens violently attacked Jews based on a false accusation of the kidnapping of a Christian child.

The postwar period also witnessed a rise in antisemitic feeling in the USSR. In 1948, Stalin launched the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" in which numerous Yiddish-language poets, writers, painters and sculptors were killed or arrested. Also, in the Doctors' Plot issued between 1952-1953, a number of Jewish doctors were arrested and accused of attempting to murder leading party leaders. There were also assumptions, made by modern historians such as Edvard Radzinsky, that Stalin planned to deport the Jewish population of the USSR to exile in Kazakhstan or Siberia.

After the foundation of Israel and the escalation of the Israeli-Arab conflict, a new kind of antisemitism began to emerge in Europe as a part of the anti-imperialist struggle of the extreme left. The criticism against Israel as a conquering imperial power and the solidarity between the extreme left and the Palestinian struggle led to a perceived connection between European Jews and Zionism. In some cases, this connection resulted in attacks on the Jewish communities in Western Europe. One example is the German leftist terrorist group "Revolutionary Cells" whose members participated in hijacking the Air France Flight 139 in 1976 (Operation Entebbe) as well as the planned assassination of the head of the German Jewish community, Heinz Galinski and famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.[7] During those years, the antisemitic attacks from various neo-Nazi groups and the flourishing of antisemitic conspiracy theories continued throughout western Europe.

In the 21st century[edit]

Antisemitism has increased significantly in Europe since 2000, with significant increases in verbal attacks against Jews and vandalism such as graffiti, fire bombings of Jewish schools, desecration of synagogues and cemeteries (my emphasis). Those incidents took place not only in France and Germany, where antisemitic incidents are the highest in Europe but also in counties like Belgium, Austria, and the United Kingdom. In those countries, physical assaults against Jews including beatings, stabbings and other violence, increased markedly, in a number of cases resulting in serious injury and even death.[8][9] Moreover, the Netherlands and Sweden have also had consistently high rates of antisemitic attacks since 2000.[10]

This rise in antisemitic attacks is associated one the one hand with the Muslim Anti-Semitism and on the other hand with the rise of far right parties as a result of the economic crisis of 2008. The failure of assimilation of Muslim immigrants communities in Europe together with economic and social problems and the spread of fundamentalist ideas among the Muslim youth in Europe has led to radicalization inside the Muslim communities and especially among the youth. This, together with the escalation of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and the failure of the Oslo peace process, the Jews in Europe were more and more perceived as promoters and favors of pro-Israeli ideas. Thus, the thin line that existed before between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has become even thinner. A number of studies conducted among the Muslim youth in various western European countries have showed that Muslim children have far more anti-Semitic ideas than Christian children- in 2011 Mark Elchardus, a Belgian sociologist, published a report on Dutch-language elementary schools in Brussels. He found that about 50 percent of Muslim students in second and third grade could be considered anti-Semites, versus 10% of others. In the same year Unther Jikeli published his findings from the 117 interviews he conducted with Muslim male youngsters (average age 19) in Berlin, Paris and London.. The majority of the interviewees voiced some, or strong anti-Semitic feelings. They expressed them openly and often aggressively.[11]

A large number of violent antisemitic attacks in Europe were done by Muslims- the murder of 4 Jews in Toulouse in 2012 by Mohammed Merah,[12] the 1982 attack on the Jewish Goldenberg restaurant in Paris that was carried out by Arab terrorists, the kidnapping and murder of the French citizen Ilan Halimi in 2006 by a Muslim gang and the antisemitic riots in Norway in 2009 are a few examples to this phenomenon.[11]

The second cause of the rise in the scope of antisemitism in Europe is the economic crisis that started in 2008 and resulted in the rise of far right parties, anti-immigration and antisemitic ideas.[13] The number of anti-Semitic political parties in European parliaments rose from 1 to 3 during 2012 and a survey in 10 European countries revealed high levels of anti-Semitic attitudes. In June, Greece's neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, won 21 seats in parliament. In November, the radical Svoboda (Freedom) party of Ukraine captured more than 10% of the popular vote, giving electoral support to a party well known for its anti-Semitic rhetoric. They joined the ranks of Jobbik, an openly anti-Semitic party, in the Hungarian parliament.[14] This rise in the support for far right ideas in western and eastern Europe has resulted in the increase of antisemitic acts, mostly attacks on Jewish memorials, synagogues and cemeteries but also a number of physical attacks against Jews.[15]

part Ii (contd)

According to a poll conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2012, anti-Semitic attitudes in ten European countries remain at "disturbingly high levels", peaking in Eastern Europe and Spain, with large swaths of the population subscribing to classical anti-Semitic notions such as Jews having too much power in business, being more loyal to Israel than their own country, or "talking too much" about what happened during the Holocaust. In comparison with a similar ADL poll conducted in 2009, several of the countries showed high levels in the overall level of anti-Semitism, while other countries experienced more modest increases:[16]
Austria: Experienced a slight decrease to 28 percent from 30 percent in 2009.
France: The overall level of antisemitism increased to 24 percent of the population, up from to 20 percent in 2009.
Germany: antisemitism increased by one percentage point, to 21 percent of the population.
Hungary: The level rose to 63 percent of the population, compared with 47 percent in 2009.
Poland: The number remained unchanged, with 48 percent of the population showing deep-seated antisemitic attitudes.
Spain: Fifty-three percent (53%) percent of the population, compared to 48 percent in 2009.
United Kingdom: antisemitic attitudes jumped to 17 percent of the population, compared to 10 percent in 2009.

In Eastern Europe anti-Semitism in the 21st century continued in a similar scale of the 1990s. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the instability of the new states has brought the rise of nationalist movements and the accusation against Jews for the economic crisis, taking over the local economy and bribing the government alongside with traditional and religious motives for amtisemitism (blood libels for example).

Most of the antisemitic incidents are against Jewish cemeteries and building (community centers and synagogues). Nevertheless there were several violent attacks against Jews in Moscow in 2006 when a neo-Nazi stabbed 9 people at the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue,[17] the failed bomb attack on the same synagogue in 1999,[18] the threats against Jewish pilgrims in Uman, Ukraine[19] and the attack against a menorah by extremist Christian organization in Moldova in 2009.[20]

Since the outbreak of the economic crisis of 2008 there has been a rise in the scope of antisemitic incidents with the rise in power of nationalist parties such as "Svoboda" in Ukraine although the number of physical attacks against Jews remains low. Eastern Europe was less affected by the rise of Islamic antisemitism because of much smaller numbers of Muslims living in the area . Nevertheless, in areas and countries populated by Muslims, such as the Caucuses there had been an increase in antisemitism as a result of the Israeli-Arab conflict such as the attempt to assassinate a Jewish teacher in Baku in 2012.[21][22]

A statistical analysis shows that 150 million people in across Europe have "serious anti-Semitic" or "demonic view of Israel".[2]

Academic research[edit]

The summary of a 2004 poll by the "Pew Global Attitudes Project" noted, "Despite concerns about rising antisemitism in Europe, there are no indications that anti-Jewish sentiment has increased over the past decade. Favorable ratings of Jews are actually higher now in France, Germany and Russia than they were in 1991. Nonetheless, Jews are better liked in the U.S. than in Germany and Russia."[23] However, according to 2005 survey results by the Anti-Defamation League,[24] antisemitic attitudes remain common in Europe. Over 30% of those surveyed indicated that Jews have too much power in business, with responses ranging from lows of 11% in Denmark and 14% in England to highs of 66% in Hungary, and over 40% in Poland and Spain. The results of religious antisemitism also linger and over 20% of European respondents agreed that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, with France having the lowest percentage at 13% and Poland having the highest number of those agreeing, at 39%.[25]

A 2006 study in the Journal of Conflict Resolution found that although almost no respondents in countries of the European Union regarded themselves as antisemitic, antisemitic attitudes correlated with anti-Israel opinions.[26] Looking at populations in 10 European countries, Small and Kaplan surveyed 5,000 respondents, asking them about Israeli actions and classical anti-Semitic stereotypes. "There were questions about whether the IDF purposely targets children, whether Israel poisons the Palestinians' water supply - these sorts of extreme mythologies," Small says. "The people who believed the anti-Israel mythologies also tended to believe that Jews are not honest in business, have dual loyalties, control government and the economy, and the like," Small says. According to this study, anti-Israel respondents were 56% more likely to be anti-Semitic than the average European. "This is extraordinary. It's off the charts." says Small. The study also found that popular levels of both antisemitism and anti-Israel opinion were lower than expected, and did not equate antisemitism with anti-Zionism.[27[/I]

Antisemitism in Europe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tell me what you're really trying to say in one sentence.

GregP said:

Tell me what you're really trying to say in one sentence.

Click to expand...

I guess it says that anti semitism is still as strong as ever, although anti Israeli might be mixed up in it as well. I remember reading many years ago ( I seem to think it was from the author Len Deighton, of "Bomber " fame ) that "few historians" would disagree that If Hitler had not been anti semitic, the Nazi's would have developed the atomic bomb first, mounted it in a V2, and won the war. The theory obviously being that Jewish scientists, engineers and physicists would have stayed in Germany and worked for the regime. Something of a nightmarish scenario in my opinion.

I know that is what he was saying; just wanted to hear it from the source.

My point parsifal is that serious and intelligent people don't believe it. It is not myth. Turning it into a myth is exagerating how much it is believed.

we probably will have to accept each others pov I guess. I think it was hitler that said something like "the people will believe the big lie more than they will believe a little lie", or something similar . if that is true, then the creed that hitler has been massively maligned and misunderstood by the verdicts of history might be accepted more easily than you would expect. Economic collapse generated the right conditions in the depression years to allow the Germans to make themselves believe that hitler was a good thing for them. We have a smaller, weaker economic collapse on our hands now, and we see already a rise in anti-semitism. People like to blame someone when things dont go right. We fell for Hitlers song 80 years ago, because in our deepest darkest parts of our minds it was easy listening. We were unhappy and hitler offered an easy way to blame someone else for that. Why would it be any less easy to achieve today. And it starts by convincing some of the people out there that hitlers was not such a bad guy......

thats why its important never to let the little lies take hold

GregP said:

I know that is what he was saying; just wanted to hear it from the source.

Click to expand...

Yeah, might talk a bit much sometimes. My apologies for that, but then, ill beat my own drum and claim its great read.......

I always said your humility was one of your greatest traits, Parsifal.