Uh, what planet are you from, seriously? Are you just wasting time on this site or are you really this many marbles short of a full bag? I mean that in all due respect.

I am full blooded German and speak fluent German, and I can tell you from my homelands’ history/books that Hitler set out to crush both Jews and Communists (hated equally in Nazi eyes). After gaining power in 1933 Hitler and the Party immediately began the implementation of the plan to eliminate Jews from Germany and ultimately all of Europe. The first stage was persecution, then came the striping Jews of citizenship (when boat loads left Germany), and the ones that never got the hint or never had the opportunity to leave Germany were sent to concentration camps. Even the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918 was viewed by many Germans (and practically all Nazis) as a Jewish/Communist conspiracy (in German, Dolchstosslegende). Maybe that crap about Hitler and developing an Arian Race (Uebermensch) was revisionism!! I’m still laughing at your quote!! – “There is little evidence that Hitler intended to kill all the Jews in Europe.”

2) “The idea that the second world war was first all about exterminating the Jews and then all about saving them is historical revisionism.”

Where did I ever say WWII was about exterminating Jews or the US having the responsibility to save them? Hitler first declared war on the US. The Allies goal was defeating Nazism and Hitler. Please re-read my posts above. The topic was – intended and unintended consequences of war. Here’s what I wrote before – “Hitler’s intent on wiping out all Jews from conquered territories did fail (Hitler’s intended goal). Hitler was removed (Allies intended goal) – therefore saving remaining European Jews from extermination.” Hitler had intent, and so did the Allies. Re-read, “Hitler was removed”, that doesn’t say Allies intended to save Jews.

3) “Sarcasm is lost on some people.”

Did you forget that you brought Charles Manson into this conversation? You have a canny way of either easily forgetting or avoiding (with intent or without).

This right here:
"The idea that the second world war was first all about exterminating the Jews and then all about saving them is historical revisionism. Posted by: Martin Brock | Aug 11, 2008 8:00:46 PM"

Is why most of us have such contempt for your lack of intellect and intellectual debate. It is why I personally realized that with you it is all about the mulberry bush and the round and around game.

Methinks nor anyone else said anything at all about Jews being the impetus for Hitler starting his war, it was his strawman, nor does anyone make any claim that confronting Hitler was all about saving the Jews.

You take an idiot's interpretation of someone's words and then head for the mulberry bush with your irrational comments and ideas.

Hitler could have and would have been stopped dead in his tracks had the allies sent troops to force him to back out of the Sudentland instead of acquiescing in his seizure of it. That led him to invade Czechoslavlia unopposed and with their capitulation doubled his airforce in number of planes and doubled his ground combat machinery. At either of those two points had intervention with real armed troops been offered by the allies, Hitler was not in a position to engage in all out war.

Furthermore, Methinks is quite correct in that some 20 million Russians died in WWII in slaughter by the Germans and by their own madman leader, especially in the early days of the German invasion.

She is also correct in that the Iron Curtain descended across Europe because FDR, being the commie symp he was, did not support Churchill in confronting good old "Uncle Joe".

Actually it would be more succinct to say that Methinks is pretty much correct and Matinduck is pretty much screwed up and just leave it at that.

No, he would have calmly worked them to death or killed them over many more years and enslaved Slavs and other lesser humans, as was his plan. That would have been a better outcome. Right?

You have no idea what he would have done, and neither do I, but we may speculation however we like. He surely would have worked more of them in the slave labor camps, but he might also have made good on the well documented plans to deport more of them. Regardless, unintended consequences are unintended. Only in the self-serving retrospectives of statesmen are they inevitable.

The claim that beating Hitler gave rise to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe is Monday morning quarterbacking.

No. It's an historical fact.

Stalin's future domination of Eastern Europe was not a given at the time the U.S. entered the war.

It wasn't even much contemplated, even by Stalin himself. Do you have a shred of evidence that Stalin had any intention of invading Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe before the war?

There was some probability, but there was a much higher probability that Hitler would dominate Europe, given information available at the time.

For a while maybe. How long did the Soviet Union dominate Eastern Europe? The Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight. We know that now. What makes you think that Hitler's Reich would have lasted a thousand years? Because he said so?

Let's not forget that inaction led to Stalin's control over Eastern Europe. Churchill wanted to drive him out and no action was taken. So, let's not ignore that.

Churchill was in no position to drive him out, and driving him out was hardly a foregone conclusion.

Volatility of outcomes for longer term decisions tends be quite high.

Absolutely. That's precisely why the megalomaniacal global engineering of statesmen is so tragic. When the rest of the world was destroying itself this way, the U.S. entered the fray late in the game and came out a winner. We lost a lot of men, but our productive infrastructure was hardly touched, while the much of the rest of the developed world needed a generation to recover. No one much planned it this way, but that's how it happened. It's not happening so this time. Comparing every new military campaign to the second world war only feeds the statesmen's grand illusion.

Hitler’s intent on wiping out all Jews from conquered territories did fail (Hitler’s intended goal). Hitler was removed (Allies intended goal) – therefore saving remaining European Jews from extermination.

There is little evidence that Hitler intended to kill all the Jews in Europe, but even if he did, many of their deaths, as they occurred when they occurred, were unintended consequences of the Nazi defeat as it happened it happened. The Holocaust is not less real for this reason.

The idea that the second world war was first all about exterminating the Jews and then all about saving them is historical revisionism. If the U.S. was so concerned about saving the Jews, why did it turn away Jewish refugees by the boatload, literally? For far less than the cost of the war, we could have simply maintained an open door policy to Jewish immigrants. Half of the world's Jews live here anyway. If the other half had been welcome in the twenties, thirties and forties, the state of Israel likely would not exist today, and all of the related middle eastern conflict wouldn't exist, and the U.S. would be that much richer.

That's the new Zion, the shining city on a hill. In our lust for empire, we've forgotten it.

If you have to use Charles Manson’s followers, I’ll put it in those terms too.

Sarcasm is lost on some people.

If only we'd left poor old Hitler alone, he wouldn't have needed to accelerate the slaughter of Jews in concentration camps. No, he would have calmly worked them to death or killed them over many more years and enslaved Slavs and other lesser humans, as was his plan. That would have been a better outcome. Right?

The claim that beating Hitler gave rise to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe is Monday morning quarterbacking. Stalin's future domination of Eastern Europe was not a given at the time the U.S. entered the war. There was some probability, but there was a much higher probability that Hitler would dominate Europe, given information available at the time. Let's not forget that inaction led to Stalin's control over Eastern Europe. Churchill wanted to drive him out and no action was taken. So, let's not ignore that.

There is always some good and some bad that comes from every action and from every inaction. Volatility of outcomes for longer term decisions tends be quite high.

If you have to use Charles Manson’s followers, I’ll put it in those terms too. Charles Manson and his followers’ conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders (their intent) was successful. Charles Manson’s long term intent – start a killing spree (Helter Skelter intent) that would hopefully end in an apocalyptic race war, was a dismal failure. The removal of Hitler and Manson was more beneficial to the masses than otherwise.

… what you don’t acknowledge is that Hitler’s long term goal was the total annihilation of all Jews and enemies of the state.

You don't acknowledge that Charles Manson's followers brutally murdered Sharon Tate by cutting her unborn child from her belly while she was still alive. Are you some kind of Helter Skelter denier?

Hitler's clearly enough stated goal was the removal of Jews from Europe, and this goal led ultimately to the Holocaust; however, millions of Jews died of starvation and curable illness, while others were systematically murdered, mostly in the dying days of Hitler's Reich, arguably to cover up their terrible mistreatment in the concentration camps and to avoid the necessity of feeding them.

Funny Russ, I thought the Nazis came into power by non-violent means, but were forced out of power by violence of the military intervention sort.

As empires almost inevitably will, the Nazis overreached. They largely self-destructed via their own violence, like the Soviets after them. This overreach is not limited to the "bad guys", of course. The British empire also self-destructed, though less catastrophically than some others.

The U.S. is on the same road, but we've thus far had a market sector vital enough to provide a foundation healthy enough to bear the parasitic influence of a militaristic state. I think we're near the end of the road. I don't expect the U.S. empire will collapse catastrophically. If we're lucky, it'll fade away more gradually, like the British empire.

Non-violence only works so long as everyone agrees to it; as soon as one person or group throws it out the window, everyone else has to defend themselves.

The liberal principle of non-intervention is not a principle of non-violence. It's a principle of limited violence, limited to protecting limited claims, like the borders of a sovereign state. Violence and threats of violence can achieve goals, but violence more often achieves few of the intended goals and has many unintended consequences. W.W. II is the "good war" in modern lore, but what did it accomplish? Stalin's domination of Eastern Europe for one thing. Even the Holocaust arguably was worsened by the widening of the war after the U.S. entered it.

Funny Russ, I thought the Nazis came into power by non-violent means, but were forced out of power by violence of the military intervention sort. Non-violence only works so long as everyone agrees to it; as soon as one person or group throws it out the window, everyone else has to defend themselves.

If it writes the socialist scripture …

I discuss the principles of men like Locke, Smith, Hayek and Friedman, and the dittoheads toss around the word "socialist" like they invented it, but they haven't even studied it very much.

If it writes the socialist scripture …

I discuss the principles of Locke, Smith, Hayek and Friedman, and the dittoheads toss around the word "socialist" like they invented it, but they haven't even studied it very much.

I suspect, rather, that there is nothing which would convince you that anything non-violent could overcome anything violent. It may surprise you that non-violent techniques worked on the Nazis, who were obviously not afraid to bring violence to bear. Surprise you, but not convince you, sigh.

Not compelling duckie, but oh so descriptive.

If it writes the socialist scripture, expresses the socialist scriptures, argues the socialist sceipture, resolutely adheres to the socialist scripture, and lies about all the previous(you said you were done here)…its a duck.

Everyone on the blog knows what it is Martinduck, a paraphrase of the old cliche about being what one shows himself to be. A label you earn, not one undeservedly bestowed.

Oops! Off you go to the mulberry bush.

Sorry, ben, my inter-service-rivalry knee-jerk mechanism still works after almost a decade. Write the 'United States Armed Sevices' and I'll concur.

Russ, I might buy the book, but even if I did it wouldn't arrive for a week. You're just dodging an actual debate by refusing to pick an example.

I'm somewhat familiar with nonviolent movements. But while a nonviolent movement may avoid expressly going to war, it achieves its goals by swaying the opinions of decision-makers who command sufficient force.

But without a powerful ally, they are helpless. No one will free Tibet. No one will stop the killing in Darfur. Face it: the greatest force for peace on this Earth is the United States Army.