The Kaiser's Holocaust

[salesie]

Salesie, you evidently did not fully absorb my comment. I did make the point that the difference was that the Austrian corporal and his minons WERE able to reach a position to implement their prejudices. Hazel (previous post) has explained why this was unlikely to have happened in Britain, the country from whence originated the saying 'How odd of God...'. Britain may not have come even close to implementing such policies - but only because in the 1930's, people like my father and those of his ilk fought against ant-semitism to the extent that it never became (entirely) publicly and politically acceptable.

My main gripe, though, is with those small-minded people who hold to this long-outdated belief that the Germans are - and always have been - somehow inherently and genetically genocidically minded and more racist than any other nationality (seemingly forgetting that it was a late 19th century Austrian politician, Lueger, who made ant-semitism politically repectable, and another Austrian, the corporal, who put his theories into the practice, with the active help - it has to said - of a operational staff at the camps who were often of non-Germanic origin). Anyone who has studied ancient or modern history will know that there are many other nationalities that fit the same particular bill. E.g., look at the history of England in the medieval period. If I recall correctly, the term holocaust was first used to describe the way that the Jews of York were persecuted to a fiery death in, I think, the early 13th century... So, if I found earlier and later examples of the people of York indulging in such genocidal behavior, would it be correct to say that all Yorkist's are inherently genocidal?

As I said, the difference is that the Austrian corporal and his minons WERE able to reach a position to implement their prejudices.

Trajan

I did fully absorb your comments, Trajan, but I certainly don't agree with them – please don’t confuse lack of agreement with lack of understanding. And your last post simply reinforces my opinion that your line of thinking is simply another pathetic attempt to mitigate/excuse the crimes of Germany in the first half of the twentieth century by the use of shallow and inaccurate moral equivalence - it is nothing but intellectual excreta that only appeals to those of a certain mindset.

For example - you speak of the study of history to draw your moral equivalence, yet just a cursory study of what Beveridge advocated will show that his method of implementing his form of eugenics was to take people out of poverty, to form a "safety-net" under which no one should be allowed to fall (and that these ideas of his go as far back as the first decade of the twentieth century, if not earlier). This, of course, is a far cry from what is strongly implied in the article you posted and which you seem to champion. Beveridge's form of Eugenics was so far away from what was put into practice in the Germanic world that to compare them as being somehow equal is ludicrous (I said Germanic to include Austria because you seem hell bent on "blaming" Austria not Germany for Germanic excesses).

Your study of history seems to be a highly selective one, where you pick out the bits that suit your case i.e. you mention the slaughter of Jews at Clifford's Tower in York in the Middle-Ages, but fail to mention that many Jews over the centuries since then actually found a relatively safe-haven in this country after escaping persecution abroad, and many of them prospered so much that we even had a Jewish Prime Minister in the nineteenth century (albeit one baptised an Anglican at the age of 12, but from a long-standing Jewish family nonetheless). And it is true that anti-Semitism is not totally dead even in Britain, but it is also true to say that it only exists at the margins of society (albeit with a small increase since 2000).

You also make a big thing out of the fact that Hitler and his cronies got into a position of power that enabled them to implement their prejudices, and in doing so you strongly imply that this could have happened in any other country so why blame the German people per se. Do you seriously expect us to believe that without the collective assent of the German people, Hitler would still have risen to power? Expect us to believe that somehow Hitler became Chancellor despite such collective assent? Expect us to believe that German culture actually became a product of National Socialism? Come off it, man, Hitler was a clear and unequivocal product of German culture, and a balanced study of history shows it to be so.

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame modern Germans for the sins of their fathers, but to trivialise those sins as you seem hell-bent on doing is akin to attempting to explain the loss of the Titanic without mentioning the iceberg, and thereby attempting to mitigate/excuse the errors that led to their fateful collision i.e. your fancy but highly shallow premise just trivialises the causes of the holocaust to being "just one of those things that could have happened to anyone" - the yanks have a phrase that seems very apt, "go tell it to the marines"!

If you wish history to be your evidence then you need to be far less selective in your sources, because history shows that you are basically talking b*llocks. I won't go on tearing your premise apart; with just a little thought most people can clearly see the flaws in your arguments, and see that at best your kind of arguments/comments stem from either a lack of intellect or a malignant hidden-agenda.

Cheers-salesie.

[keithmroberts]

I'm going to close this thread. We are heading off topic, and I am also concerned than there is a lack of respect for other members being expressed.

Keith Roberts