What are some debatable accounts of history? - Page 28

On February 12 2011 01:37 Treemonkeys wrote:


To the US government, but it was not so great for the US population.

Personally I am skeptical of most things in modern history, even the holocaust and the moon landing. So the majority of people would consider me crazy/ignorant or whatever, but that is okay with me. I don't see anything crazy about being skeptical when there are good reasons to be skeptical. The government has more incentive to lie and deceive than just about anything else, it is not a trustworthy organization which is strange because this causes some disconnect in society, where everyone accepts that the government lies on a regular basis but somehow think they only lie about smaller things?

On February 12 2011 01:57 Hawk wrote:


no, any schmucko recognizes that the govt has plenty incentive to lie on a day to day basis on any number of things. Skepticism is good and it's natural.

But it's not the same thing denying the holocaust when there's fucking mountains of evidence for that, or believing that the pentagon was hit with a predator missile on 9/11 (because there's 100 American passengers just chilling in hiding somewhere living a new life) That's called being an idiot.

On February 11 2011 18:19 Jayme wrote:


The systematic firebombing of any German city of note was not so much targeted at civilians but because a fair few of them had a whole lot of war industry in them. Please remember that this was a war. As much as people wanted to be humanitarian within it....when a worlds survival is at stake there are going to be bad points to it. You cannot avoid this. While they could have been more PRECISE in their bombing and they could have avoided strategic targets with heavily civilian presence...I don't think they quite qualify as atrocities. You could say war as a whole is an atrocity if you want, that I would be far more willing to agree with.

The atomic bombs are FAR FAR more complicated. For some reason people tend to believe that the atomic bombs on Japan were a complete unnecessary loss of life and that they were an unneeded overkill.

I highly doubt that a land invasion would have been any "better." In fact going by evidence, culture, and how difficult it would be to invade Japan I can fairly safely say that a land invasion would have had far more civilian casualties...hell casualties in general than the atomic bombs did.

The Japan of WW2 is the same country that invented the Kaiten suicide submarine and had absolutely no qualm about flying their airplanes into ships and sacrificing themselves. They would have fought to every last man, woman, and probably child if it came down to it. The ONLY reason Japan even surrendered after that second atomic bomb was because they falsely believed we had more bombs to use and the military still threatened a coup because they were so pissed off at the surrender. Japan was more than willing to fight to the absolute death instead of surrendering. Do you honestly believe this would have been a better outcome?

War sucks. A lot of people die in them. Any alternative leads to death.

On February 12 2011 01:31 Treemonkeys wrote:


Yes this is completely true, if the US had stayed out of WWI, it would have been more of a stalemate and the treaty would have been more fair for Germany, then WWII might not have even happened but the US government wanted both wars, and smartly so because they emerged as a world power because of the wars.

On February 12 2011 02:13 Aurocaido wrote:


There is in my mind no question that events such as the fire bombing of Desden, Tokyo, and Cologne and the droping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not just attrocities but war crimes. The holocaust is considered particularily "evil" (if something can be classified as such) not just because of the number of people that died, but the deliberate and systematic way in which it was done by an industrialized modern state.

Many people condone the carpet bombing of Germany and Japan by claiming it was to target military targets. However, it is well known that it was allied policy to directly target civilian targets in order to crush the fighting spirit of the Axis states. What is the difference between the Nazi targeting of Jews and Slavs and the allied targeting of civilians? Sure, many will argure that the Nazis needed to be stopped and I agree whole heartedly with that. Yet the manner in which the allied war effort was conducted leads me to question the superior morality of the allied nations. There is a fundamental difference between the deaths of soldiers and of innocent women and children.

There is the argument as well stateing that if these bombings of civilian targets had not occured the war would have been dragged out for years. This is an assumption from the years I have spent studying history to be exagerated. Even before the all out allied bombing campain against civilian targets, the Soviet Red Army had the German Wehrmacht in full retreat. It is estimated that upwards of eighty percent of Germanys fighting capacity was focused on the eastern front. It seems unlikely that the allied bombing of civilian targets contributed to the speady collapse of Germany in any way except morale. Which at that time point German public support was already going against the Nazis.

I have never been a firm believer in the end justifies the means. Especially if the means is in no way morally superior to the present circumstance. That is just my take on it.

On February 12 2011 02:22 Krikkitone wrote:



If WWI had been more of a stalemate, WWII would Still have happened just later*.


*If nuclear weapons had been developed and demonstrated that Might have prevented a second world war like they prevented the third world war.

On February 12 2011 01:58 Treemonkeys wrote:


Were you trying to make an argument? or just wanted to mouth off?

On February 12 2011 02:26 Krohm wrote:


Yeah that's something about WWII that has always bothered me. The Axis powers are permanently flagged as "evil" and they are known for killing innocent people. But no one seems to remember the firebombings of all major German and Japanese cities. Cities full of civilians. Tokyo was practically leveled, especially the residential areas. The atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima is debatable as well.

Now I'm not condoning what the Axis powers did, it's just there is really two sides of evil. The Allies won though and are regarded as heroes.

On February 12 2011 02:32 Treemonkeys wrote:


No it wouldn't have, Hitler's rise to power was entirely based on the suffered caused by the treaty of versailles.

On February 11 2011 17:14 mcc wrote:

That is crazy, Stalin was definitely power-monger and knew pretty well about most of the deaths that are attributed to him, of course he did not kill them personally, but saying he just chose a bad people and was a good reformer wanting the best dor the country is not true. You might try to argue that about Lenin, but Stalin was a thug that got to power, as thugs often tend to do, and can be blamed a lot.

On February 12 2011 02:26 Krohm wrote:


Yeah that's something about WWII that has always bothered me. The Axis powers are permanently flagged as "evil" and they are known for killing innocent people. But no one seems to remember the firebombings of all major German and Japanese cities. Cities full of civilians. Tokyo was practically leveled, especially the residential areas. The atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima is debatable as well.

Now I'm not condoning what the Axis powers did, it's just there is really two sides of evil. The Allies won though and are regarded as heroes.

On February 12 2011 02:36 Aurocaido wrote:


Not entirely correct. Hitlers rise to power had more to do with the economic suffering caused by the great depression than by the Treaty of Versailles. Although it certainly played a part and was used as fuel for the fire.

On February 12 2011 02:37 Treemonkeys wrote:


The economic suffering in germany was caused by the treaty not by the depression.

On February 11 2011 15:51 jello_biafra wrote:
Basically everything that is stereotypically Scottish is made up, for example kilts weren't invented until 400 years after William Wallace died and were created by an Englishman, there were no clan/family tartans, they were made up for tourists in the 19th Century, haggis was eaten by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The whole Samurai honour code didn't exist, the Bushido code we know of today was created by the Japanese government during WW2 to boost the citizen's fighting spirit.

Islamic fundamentalism as we know it today (lack of women's rights, hatred of the west etc.) didn't exist until the 1950's.

The American thanksgiving holiday didn't exist until 1863 and was created to try and avert the Civil War (which obviously did not happen lol). in 1941 it became a standardized holiday with Turkey and such.

Pretty much all medieval torture devices like the rack, iron maiden etc. did not exist. Again made up in the 19th Century to try and portray the people of that time as far more brutal and inhumane than they actually were.

The wild west really wasn't very wild, in fact you were a lot more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than in Tombstone, AZ in 1881. The image of bandits having shootouts in the streets every day was created by a few famous gunfighters like Billy the Kid (who killed 4 people in his life) and others who wanted to further the image of a living in a really badass, dangerous place. This passed into popular culture then movies etc. leading to the misconception today.

On February 12 2011 02:42 Aurocaido wrote:


Every North American and European nation was hit incredibly hard by the great depression including Germany which had been recovering up until that point. I refer you to the primary source written by Heinrich Hauser "With Germnay's Unemployed." Durring the great depression Nazi vote totals skyrocketed from 810,000 to 6,400,000 from 1928 to 1930. It is estimated that upwards of 40 percent of Germanys workforce was unemployed due to the depression. It turned public opinion forever against the Weimar Republic. The main thing the Treaty of Versailles hurt was German Pride.

On February 12 2011 02:42 Aurocaido wrote:


Every North American and European nation was hit incredibly hard by the great depression including Germany which had been recovering up until that point. I refer you to the primary source written by Heinrich Hauser "With Germnay's Unemployed." Durring the great depression Nazi vote totals skyrocketed from 810,000 to 6,400,000 from 1928 to 1930. It is estimated that upwards of 40 percent of Germanys workforce was unemployed due to the depression. It turned public opinion forever against the Weimar Republic. The main thing the Treaty of Versailles hurt was German Pride.

On February 12 2011 01:58 Treemonkeys wrote:


Were you trying to make an argument? or just wanted to mouth off?

On February 12 2011 03:01 Treemonkeys wrote:


No it was much more than pride when they had to pay billions of dollars in reparations - that is a huge economic drain, on top of losing control of some of their industries and being forced to deliver coal to other european countries, that is what destroyed their economy. With or without the depression happening in the rest of the world Germany would have been much better off without the treaty and that is fact, the reason they voted for the nazi party was because the nazi party was willing to disregard the treaty.

On February 12 2011 02:57 semantics wrote:

Don't forget Italy which was not hindered by that treaty of Versailles in-fact was a benefactor was the first to coin a fascist, Mussolini. It was due to the nature of the world during that period not from some oppression at the treaty of Versailles it didn't help but it was not at all the root cause.