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Author Topic: Things that made you sad today thread.  (Read 8577899 times)

XXSockXX

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81975 on: September 24, 2014, 11:32:53 am »

And I am sad, really, really sad because this slew of propaganda is insulting to the memories of both the genuinely heroic Soviets and the victims of their immoral compatriots.
And to that rant I have to say: It's not propaganda. It's not about insulting the memory of anything. It's an issue that wasn't talked much about in the aftermath of the war (out of shame in Germany and for ideological reasons in Russia) and that has gotten more attention in the last few years. Exact numbers are not important, and impossible to get anyway, but nothing comparable happened on the Western Front (even when the French had about the same reason to hate the Germans as the Russians did). And your argument that basically says "it wasn't that bad" is ridiculous and insulting, as there is plenty of proof and testimony.
If someone used your sentence I quoted and replaced Soviets with Nazis, would you agree with it? Because there isn't much of a difference if you think about it. They weren't all bad guys, but pointing out their crimes (they commited as a whole) is not propaganda trying to insult their memory.
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LordSlowpoke

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81976 on: September 24, 2014, 11:45:42 am »

oi sock

is anyone saying that the nazis were actually good in germany?

as in a mainstream political movement?

and that the fields are so polarized that there's basically no middle ground between "nazis were the purest pure men to ever pure" and "nazis were the worst people to ever anything"?

because the lack of middle ground is the point here

and the fact that people are using this polarization for their own needs, basically turning the crimes into propaganda (by either negating them or exaggerating them)

fucking with the whole thing makes it very difficult to get any sort of even semi-reliable research done, but this sentence is a speculation
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XXSockXX

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81977 on: September 24, 2014, 11:57:16 am »

LordSlowpoke:

In Germany you sort of have the inverted situation concerning the middle ground, ie Nazis were the worst, downplaying their crimes is abhorrent, pointing out that not every German soldier was a monster is possible, but requires careful wording (and sometimes reasoning). Saying the Nazis were good is definitely something that will catapult you out of the political mainstream in no time.
Portraying Germans as victims, even if they were victims of mass rape or dislocation, is at least seen sceptically by many. (The argument is essentially: Germans started it, so they can't complain).

On the other hand there still is the cliché that Russians are cruel animals who "don't value human life as much as we do" (today that is mostly directed at Eastern European criminals), which is probably a remnant of the events at the end of WW2.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2014, 11:59:17 am by XXSockXX »
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81978 on: September 24, 2014, 12:00:34 pm »

Got turned away from blood donation because a Korean airport I went through got registered as a malaria hotspot, deferral of one year. Oh well, they won't miss one pint of A+.
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Knit tie

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81979 on: September 24, 2014, 12:43:20 pm »

In addition, most women in their declarations described their rapists as asian, or asiatic-looking, with narrow eyes and flat faces.

My step-grandmother is from somewhere near Stuttgart and an army rolled in that, indeed, was pretty clearly going to rape everyone and looked "Asiatic" (this, after being shot at as she worked in the fields by American planes). She, however, says that she has no idea whose army it was... Kind of strange, huh? My dad postulated that maybe it was a French foreign legion, but who knows...
Stuttgart was captured by General de Gaulle's Free French Moroccan and Algerian auxillaries, the former of which were indeed asiatic looking, as in had squinted eyes and flat faces, and notorious for their mistreatment of the civilians. There's even a word, "Marocchinate", used to describe what they did after the battle of Monte Casino in Italy.

And I am sad, really, really sad because this slew of propaganda is insulting to the memories of both the genuinely heroic Soviets and the victims of their immoral compatriots.
-snip-
I am perfectly willing to admit that the Red Army committed mass rapes and other war crimes, such as looting and burning the German civilians' homes. I also agree that the scale of their war crimes is much larger than that of Allied war crimes, due to both the enormous size of the Red Army and the fact that Wehrmacht devastated their country and they wanted revenge.

My point is that Soviet War crimes, instead of being accepted like the Axis war crimes, or just sidelined like Allied war crimes, are instead repeatedly exagerrated (2 million rapes is an exagerration. Very likely 100,000, maybe even 200,000, but not two million. Hundred thousand rape cases is more than enough to get plenty of traumatized survivors, and we have to remember that the Red Army was accused of mass rapes long before the WW2 even started, so of course there'll be plenty of outright lies regarding that.) and used as an anti-Soviet political beatstick by various factions. It's like if people went around shoving the 9/11 in their political opponents' faces as a proof that their point of view is wrong.

Sock, if you want to discuss this issue, I am always willing to argue with you via PM.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2014, 01:09:44 pm by Knit tie »
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XXSockXX

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81980 on: September 24, 2014, 01:18:19 pm »

My point is that Soviet War crimes, instead of being accepted like the Axis war crimes, or just sidelined like Allied war crimes, are instead repeatedly exagerrated (2 million rapes is an exagerration. Maybe 100,000, even 200,000, but not two million.) and used as an anti-Soviet political beatstick by various factions. It's like if people went around shoving the 9/11 in their political opponents' faces as a proof that their point of view is wrong.

Sock, if you want to discuss this issue, I am always willing to argue with you via PM.
No need to PM, I think I already said most of what I wanted to.
Though numbers are not all that important, 2 million is a widely accepted estimate for all German territories occupied by the Red Army, 100,000 is for Berlin alone. These are estimates on the higher end, historians emphasize that these are only estimates, but these are the numbers they come up with. Lower estimates are still in the several hundred thousand range. The true numbers we will never know, as most victims are dead now, and many never talked about it. Also consider that of the 12-14 mio German refugees in the East, more than 2 mio died in the process, many of which were victims of mass rape.
I agree that it is sometimes used as a political beatstick (as opposed to say the destruction of German cities by the British Air Force), but then the acusation usually is that the Soviet authorities encouraged such behaviour or at least let it happen, which seems to have been the case.
I disagree that Axis crimes are sidelined, the Nazis are still the go-to-metaphor for evil people and in Germany itself a lot of effort is put into remembering Nazi war crimes, as opposed to the former Soviet states, where Soviet war crimes are still not talked about a lot.
Shoving 9/11 into someones face seemed like an accurate description of US politics for a time.  ;)
« Last Edit: September 24, 2014, 01:30:15 pm by XXSockXX »
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Kadzar

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81981 on: September 24, 2014, 01:49:07 pm »

Because of the way requesting time off works where I work, I won't be able to meet with my D&D group for the next two weeks.
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Knit tie

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81982 on: September 24, 2014, 02:52:42 pm »

My point is that Soviet War crimes, instead of being accepted like the Axis war crimes, or just sidelined like Allied war crimes, are instead repeatedly exagerrated (2 million rapes is an exagerration. Maybe 100,000, even 200,000, but not two million.) and used as an anti-Soviet political beatstick by various factions. It's like if people went around shoving the 9/11 in their political opponents' faces as a proof that their point of view is wrong.

Sock, if you want to discuss this issue, I am always willing to argue with you via PM.
No need to PM, I think I already said most of what I wanted to.
Though numbers are not all that important, 2 million is a widely accepted estimate for all German territories occupied by the Red Army, 100,000 is for Berlin alone. These are estimates on the higher end, historians emphasize that these are only estimates, but these are the numbers they come up with. Lower estimates are still in the several hundred thousand range.
As a man from a country that has been known to create incredble "estimates" and even "facts" purely for political reasons, I question the validity of any jumber a historian "just comes up with". Shortly after the war, for example, Soviet authorities reported that in the battle of Berlin the Red Army on just one direction destroyed "approximately" three times more tanks than the enemy had in total.

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The true numbers we will never know, as most victims are dead now, and many never talked about it. Also consider that of the 12-14 mio German refugees in the East, more than 2 mio died in the process, many of which were victims of mass rape.
The number of rape victims, as you agree, is unknown (despite nobody bothering to conduct a questioning of the population to see how many of them knew of/experienced rape when these facts first came to light). I would like to emphasize that this issue is extremely politicized, with no middle ground at all, which cannot help but imply that those authors who do mention the Soviet War crimes at all are most often also interested in exagerrating them, if only because of the pervasive myth about the "eastern barbarism" that so thoroughly penetrates the western minds after decaded of cold war (not that we, Russians, are any better in this regard). The documentary, "Liberators and liberated", from which the figure of 2 million (in the film, 1.9 million) rapes stems, is clearly a politically charged work, born out of historical revisionism that portrays the atrocities inflicted on the Germans by the Soviets distinctly out of context and attempts to victimize the German nation and portray them as fellow sufferers under Hitler's rule that are in no way complicit with the Nazi rule and, therefore, not guilty by association of its crimes. Considering that the authors of the film had a clear political agenda in mind that would clearly be served by exagerrating the number of Soviet atrocities and that they "extrapolated" the number of rapes committed by the Soviets by looking at birth, pregnancy and abortion statistics (which are, as I said above, quite unreliable) in just one place - postwar Berlin - and then applying it to the whole territory of Germany, I am disinclined to trust their figures. Anthony Beevor, whose book "the Downfall" is chiefly responsible for shaping the public perception of Soviet war crimes, said it himself that he simply took the numbers out of "Liberators and Liberated". I suppose you would agree with me that taking unverifiable, but shocking numbers from questionable sources in order to ensure better public reception of your work is a something, unfortunately, very common among historians. If you are interested in a Russian who does that, look up Victor Suvorov AKA Rezun.

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I agree that it is sometimes used as a political beatstick (as opposed to say the destruction of German cities by the British Air Force), but then the acusation usually is that the Soviet authorities encouraged such behaviour or at least let it happen, which seems to have been the case.

Here I am going to disagree with you completely. Some Soviet battlefield commanders, seeing as how many of them were affected by the war and wanted revenge, certainly did encourage or ignored the atrocities against the German civilians byt heir troops. The higher-ups, Stavka, however, took measures to prevent these behaviors. They issued both orders to the political officers to conduct meetings with the purpose of "explaining to the troops that the German civilians are innocent and that a Soviet soldier always should conduct himself with dignity" and orders to the commanders to harshly punish any rape or marauding, both of which were executed. Documents supporting everything I just said definitely exist, including even a directive by Stalin himself, and are well-known, but as far as I know no English-speaking historian has been interested in defending the Red Army and that's why they haven't been mentioned in any western history book so far. As far as propaganda goes, people often cite Erenburg and his "kill the German" article, but they forget to mention that the article was published in 1942, when the Red Army was nowhere near the German civilians, and that he was commonly regarded as rabidly fanatical and hateful even by his contemporaries. If anything, there was even an article published in "Pravda", the main Soviet newspaper, specifically aimed at refuting Erenburg's claimes that all Germans are equally guilty: "Товарищ Эренбург упрощает" - "Comrade Erenburg oversimplifies". And even if we assume that Erenburg's propaganda was indeed what drove the troops to violence against civilians, he never says anything about rape.

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I disagree that Axis crimes are sidelined, the Nazis are still the go-to-metaphor for evil people and in Germany itself a lot of effort is put into remembering Nazi war crimes, as opposed to the former Soviet states, where Soviet war crimes are still not talked about a lot.
Shoving 9/11 into someones face seemed like an accurate description of US politics for a time.  ;)
I never said that Axis crimes are sidelined - only that Allied crimes are. And you'd be surprised at how much effort is put into remembering and talking about Soviet war crimes as well, particularly the Katyn and the atrocious treatment of POWs and alleged "Nazi collaborators" by Stalin. In fact, the current opinion about the war in Russia is that we "buried the enemy in corpses", that is, couldn't fight for shit and just threw conscripts at the enemy until the "human wave" reached them, which is absolutely historically wrong, but still. Ever since Beevor's book has been published in Russian, the rapes have been the centrepoint of the Russian WW2 discussion as well.

Anyway, sorry for the textwalls. My debater's instincts, honed in countless pointless discussions with my dad acted up.

In conclusion, I'd like to mention once more that Soviet war crimes absolutely certainly did happen and that they happened to a much greater extent than on the Western front, but rather than a case of planned genocide, they were an example of brutal mob violence and vengeance in its worst sense.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2014, 03:01:57 pm by Knit tie »
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TamerVirus

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81983 on: September 24, 2014, 03:26:18 pm »

Jesu Cristo! Walls of text all up in the sad thread!

tl;dr
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Bauglir

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81984 on: September 24, 2014, 03:37:15 pm »

Ugh, it looks like I've run out of other work to do. Time to write this paper what's due tomorrow. Hey, guys, got any juicy references discussing the relationship between Comcast and the FCC?
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XXSockXX

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81985 on: September 24, 2014, 03:57:42 pm »

The documentary, "Liberators and liberated", from which the figure of 2 million (in the film, 1.9 million) rapes stems, is clearly a politically charged work, born out of historical revisionism that portrays the atrocities inflicted on the Germans by the Soviets distinctly out of context and attempts to victimize the German nation and portray them as fellow sufferers under Hitler's rule that are in no way complicit with the Nazi rule and, therefore, not guilty by association of its crimes.
The authors (two feminist historians) have come under some criticism for their methods (not so much for any agenda AFAIK). The number they arrived at in their papers (and used in the film) is high, but still widely repeated. A conclusive historic analysis is no longer possible, the issue has long been neglected (their paper is from 1992, so relatively late) for a variety of reasons (victims were ashamed to talk or dead, portraying Germans as victims was frowned upon etc). German historians are not prone to make numbers up, and these numbers are treated as (high end) estimates in scientific circles, not as fact.
Anthony Beevor didn't play a big role in the perception of Soviet war crimes here AFAIK, though the issue was somewhat neglected by historians (not in public consciousness) until the end of the 1980s (and the subsequent discovery of proof for the Sovjet involvement in Katyn).

Documents supporting everything I just said definitely exist, including even a directive by Stalin himself, and are well-known, but as far as I know no English-speaking historian has been interested in defending the Red Army and that's why they haven't been mentioned in any western history book so far.
Such documents are known (don't know about history books or English-speaking literature), it is just assumed that Soviet leadership "inofficially" looked the other way intentionally.

I never said that Axis crimes are sidelined - only that Allied crimes are. And you'd be surprised at how much effort is put into remembering and talking about Soviet war crimes as well, particularly the Katyn and the atrocious treatment of POWs and alleged "Nazi collaborators" by Stalin.
Right, you said "accepted", not "sidelined", and I think I probably misunderstood what you meant by "accepted".
If there is some interest in these issues in Russia today, that is good. Still I think you're still where Germany was at in the 1960s in coming to terms with your own history, at the beginning of the process. That is probably what is fueling the polarization of the debate, as long as there are still people who deny everything, the debate is pretty black and white.

In conclusion, I'd like to mention once more that Soviet war crimes absolutely certainly did happen and that they happened to a much greater extent than on the Western front, but rather than a case of planned genocide, they were an example of brutal mob violence and vengeance in its worst sense.
Agreed.

the "eastern barbarism" that so thoroughly penetrates the western minds after decaded of cold war
BTW I think that stereotype is way older than WW2. It may come from distant memories of the Huns and Mongols, at least it makes callbacks to that. Of course propaganda in WW1 and WW2 used it extensively. It was also applied to the Germans ("the Huns") by the British in WW1. Allegedly Stalin used troops from Mongolia on purpose for shock value, just like the French used their colonial troops for shock value (there are WW1 propaganda posters showing grotesque African soldiers to people who had never seen an African).
« Last Edit: September 24, 2014, 03:59:14 pm by XXSockXX »
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Orange Wizard

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81986 on: September 24, 2014, 04:12:25 pm »

Guys. Take it to PMs. We don't want walls of text here, please.
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Graknorke

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81987 on: September 24, 2014, 04:15:26 pm »

The quest to find out whether I have actually in some way wronged perceived shunner continues.
I am now reasonably sure I'm being avoided but cannot ascertain why since any attempt at conversation is pretty much ignored.

I guess it's time to start the mutual friend interrogation stage.
Okay I was being paranoid. There is no conspiracy.
I'm just really boring apparently.
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Bauglir

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81988 on: September 24, 2014, 04:49:49 pm »

Y'ever stub your toes so badly that you nearly vomit from the pain? Jegus. Fucking dehumidifier.
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“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
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TD1

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Re: Things that made you sad today thread.
« Reply #81989 on: September 24, 2014, 04:53:35 pm »

Guys. Take it to PMs. We don't want walls of text here, please.

I was going to say "It's the politics thread, what do you expect?"

Then, I realised it isn't :P
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