Auschwitz was liberated 77 years ago

"Nazis certainly had some policies that would of been considered left wing at the time, but they were also traditionalists, mainly of the Pagan or Christian variant. Glock is right in saying that the Allies would of held similar views on race, as did most of the Western world."

The Nazi policy in terms of looking after the 'Aryan community' certainly had social aspects in common with what we consider leftist state interventions just as in fascist Italy.

What distinguishes the Nazis however is their racial world view. This wasn't just the widespread antipathy towards Jews it was a clear idea of 'the Jew' as a malign force that must be first ostracised, financially dispossessed and eventually eliminated either by forced emigration or extermination.

To say the allies 'had similar views on race' is to equate a culture of anti-Semitism with a policy of classification and extermination based on pseuo-science.

You say the far right but in actual fact a lot of Nazi policies were actually very left wing. Huge infrastructure spending like the Autobahns, the fiscal and other incentives to workers, work programs etc...

They weren't called the National Socialists for nothing. The irony is despite banning trade unions they put in some the very policies they had long advocated for their members.

So I don't think it's an accurate description to describe them exclusively as far right.

And the reason it's problematic is because it's an attempt to white wash the other evil in society at the time, communism.

Very moving programme on more 4 now (so all4 later) called Auschwitz Untold: In Colour.

It includes interviews with 16 Holocaust survivors and restored archive footage.

Indeed, the Soviet Union wasn't a particularly racist state. Those executed by the Soviets or sent to Gulags tended to be dissidents or people who were viewed as opponents of the regime (the Nazis were doing all of this as well of course, but made a conscious decision to murder every Jewish person in Europe, even people who posed them no threat whatsoever i.e. the overwhelming majority).

Definitely not millions (you must have misread the article), more like thousands or possibly into five figures.

The levels of rapes and atrocities by the Red Army were on a different scale (but the Germans themselves bear considerable responsibility for this....regarding their Russian opponents as sub-human and refusing to surrender to them. Much of the brutality in the East was directly provoked by Nazi brutality and cruelty).

The link does say:

"The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million" - If you want to dispute the source, ok then, but it does say up to 2 million.

Good point.

The Allies really, really care today about the Holocaust because they are under huge pressure by Jewish groups to care.

😆

Well, this thread went well.

Is 77 supposed to be a landmark year or something? Why is a big fuss being made of it now? 75 or 80 fine, but why 77? Do we have to do this every year?

Who's making a big fuss? People are just discussing something interesting for a change

Whether the modern right find it hard to swallow or not, the fact is that the Nazis and Hitler were right wing and no amount of weasel words will change that.

No it wasn't. Not even close. You demean the memory and nature of the camps and belittle their true horror by even suggesting such a ridiculous thing.

I once tried to argue with a Japanese online friend, who would have been born not long after the end of the war, that perhaps the US could have demonstrated a bomb offshore of Tokyo and said surrender or the next one's a direct hit, and she cut me off and said that wouldn't have worked and that the bombs were necessary and justified. I was floored that a native Japanese person would think that and it changed my perspective.

what does your comment say about the innocent people murdered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki ?

Since you are not even being subtle in suggesting I am lying - go ahead and email her and ask if it's true: http://tomoko-yamamoto.com/

Don't be fooled by the arty side, she also has a physics degree, or two, and taught that subject at a university in the US, before she moved to Austria. She's a big fan of Bach.

Going by some of the replies in this thread? Yes.

what a strange view, as is your response to Tony in relation to one person you spoke too, but each to their own i guess we can agree to disagree.

How is that suggesting that you were lying?

The Soviet Union was an oppressive dictatorship and probably murdered (or caused the deaths of) tens of millions of people.

I suppose what sets the Nazis apart though is that they systematically murdered millions of people who didn't even pose the slightest threat to them, including millions of women and children. I agree that both regimes had little or no regard for human life, but in terms of being purely evil, cruel and sadistic, the Nazis take the prize.

Well maybe because they would then have to mention stuff like this:

"After Russia invaded Poland, Stalin deported 1.7 million Poles to slave labour camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Arkhangelsk Oblast in the north, in cattle trucks. Journeys that lasted weeks until they reached camps where the Russians assured them that bourgeois Poland was finished.." http://polishatheart.com/the-wwii-polish-deportations-still-an-untold-story

As many as 30,000 british troops 'liberated' by Russia from German POW camps ended up in Siberian Gulags. Many Russian POW's liberated by allies, commited suicide when they learned they would be focibly repatriated to the glorious Soviet Union. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Over 200,000 liberated Russian POWs were sent to Siberian gulags. The Gulags are said to have killed 1.5 million people.

Hitler is said to have presided over 12 million concentration camp deaths and 30 million due to the war. Stalin is probably responsible for 30-40million deaths, so perhaps the BBC didn't want to open that can of worms.

Did they mention the forgotten hollocaust?

"The saga of the Russian prisoners of war may be the forgotten holocaust of World War II. It was probably the most concentrated killing in human history. The German army killed nearly 3 million Russian prisoners of war in only eight months. From June 1941 through February 1942, the German Army was responsible for the deaths of millions of Russian prisoners through starvation, exposure and summary execution."

https://guardianlv.com/2014/03/russian-prisoners-of-war-forgotten-holocaust-of-world-war-ii/

"Incompetence" !!!? As in by accident !? Jesus...

I have looked into it and to say the millions of deaths under the Soviet Union was just an " oopsie ' is the most brain rotting take I've heard in a long long time.

The establishment and operation of the many gulags, prisons and work camps, the mass collectivisation and transport of all produce/ resources from the countrysides to the urban centres leaving rural people to starve. The operations of the NKVD in arresting, torturing and forcing innocent people to admit to crimes they didn't commit and to name others as co-conspirators then executing many of them and many just disappearing into the system never to be seen again. See The Gulag Archipelago.

And thats just the basic most commonly known stuff.

All an accident .. God help us.

"Soviet Army who freed those in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Birkenau, Chelmno, Belsen, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Sobibor,...not a word"

Probably because the Americans liberated Buchenwald and Belsen was liberated by the British. Treblinka, Chelmno and Sobibor were destroyed by the Germans so weren't 'liberated'. The only camps in your list liberated by the Red Army were Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek.

Edit: I believe Buchenwald eventually ended up in the Soviet zone and became a NKVD camp.....but not a word about that either.