Holocaust denial

[Mechaman]

Anti-Semites grasping at straws/lying through their teeth.

And the idiots naive enough to believe them too.

I've known a few people, educated people who didn't hold grudges against Jews before, who accepted the Holocaust denial story just because they went on a Holocaust Denial website and they were swayed by the pretty little graphs and distorted facts.  When I tell them that, after four months of Holocaust Studies in 12th grade of my Senior year that the Holocaust was most definitely real and that if anything people undersell how truly horrible it really was, they respond that I am a victim of public school propaganda forced onto the American public by the Bilderberg Elite or some crap like that.
There are some people in this world who no matter how hard you try will want to believe that there is something else beyond the tin can label.  Well, in the Holocaust that's just it: PEOPLE F***KING DIED.
Why this fact is continued to be denied beyond me other than it being propagated by anti-Jew racists and being bought and sold by idiot "New Believers".

[Mechaman]

What do you consider holocaust deniers?  Because its a very touchy subject to me as a German Catholic with Jewish family members.  I believe that, unlike in most books, Jews, though specifically targeted for destruction, were not the only ones killed, and represent only (bad word choice) about 6 million of the 18 million people killed in the Holocaust.  Nazis would've gone on to kill the Catholics, (which they began to), and would've eventually wiped out everyone who wasn't a white aryan atheist.  Furthermore, I believe that textbooks unfairly single out Germans as the sole participants in the Holocaust (when many civilians of Poland, France, Estonia, Latvia, and more participated voluntarily in the execution of thousands of Jews and other races).  Finally, books and museums (particularly the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. which I went to on a field trip) use the terms Nazi and German a little to interchangeably for my comfort.  A German, by definition, is a resident or descendant of a resident of Germany.  I am proud to be a German.  A nazi, by definition, is someone who prescribes to an anti-semitic, nationalist-socialist ideology.  Furthermore, a Nazi, to me, is an advocate of Hitler's policies, including those in regard to the Holocaust.  Now, my grandmother and her brother and mother lived on a farm in Germany during the 1930's and 1940's.  Her entire family, with the exception of one of her uncles and great-aunts, was anti-Hitler.  Does this make her a Nazi?  She did not even know about the Holocaust until she came to America in 1954.  My great-uncle, her brother, was an officer for several weeks, serving not in the death camps or guarding hitler or beating civilians, but involuntarily serving a boring guard duty in Poland.  When his squadron was en route to defend Berlin, he jumped out of a moving vehicle to escape, feeling that Americans and the Allies represented liberty from Hitler, whom he had quietly opposed from the beginning.  (He and my grandmother were particularly upset with his restriction of Catechism).  He nearly died, pretended to be dead, and the car kept moving.  It turns out he got out right before they began branding all the soldiers as S.S.  He was not a Nazi, in my opinion, that vile label is reserved for the pigs at the top of the chain of command.  Now I've given my rant.  Feel free to comment.

Jersey, I don't think there is a soul on here who holds the Germans as a whole responsible for the terrible actions of the Nazis.  Okay, maybe a few really stupid troll posters, but I think anyone who is anywhere near rational does not.
But yeah, the Holocaust was a wholly horrible event for more reasons than the fact that it targeted Jew and it was flamed on by people, both in Germany and outside of it, who enabled Hitler's plan.

But yeah though, I agree that it is unfair that Germans as a whole get the Nazi label or that people continue to joke about them all as Nazis or nationalistic types or people who wear black suits and shot "heil!".

[Mechaman]

Again, I agree it's kind of unfair how history subjects are presented sometimes.

As someone who had a pretty proud Ukrainian American AP World History teacher and later Holocaust Studies teacher I do admit that I am often troubled by how less of a focus that History teachers (at least in America) put on other horrible events.  When I was 17-19 years old I was obsessed with learning about the Soviet Union, especially about the Stalin era atrocities.  When I learned that Stalin actually killed like a gazillion people as well, maybe even more than Hitler, I was shocked and wondering why my history teachers tended to shy away from him.
I asked my AP World History teacher why in my previous history studies Stalin's crimes were scarcely mentioned while people glossed over Hitler's like he was the Babe Ruth of genociders (yeah, I know, a little dorky).  My teacher looked at me and laughed, then she responded: "I really have no idea.  Frankly, I would love for every American schoolchild to know what he did."
Admittedly, I myself wondered, as someone who is part German and part Irish, why American History teachers talked about the Know Nothing Movement, probably one of the few American political movements that got the closest to all out fascism, was talked about for like five minutes while we spent 7 months on slavery (for the record, I am not at all denying the horribleness of slavery.  Slavery was extremely horrible and no amount of repenting from Americans will ever make it right.  Even if we gave every African American $7 million it still wouldn't make things right.  Just thought there was a little too much focus.  Sure, more focus should go to it than say a temporary thing like the Know Nothing Movement that was nowhere as oppressive or bad, but I would've appreciated more than an index card factsheet quiz over it with statements like "the Know Nothing Movement was opposed to immigration").  Or why learning about Andrew Jackson was so goddamn important but Grover Cleveland was just "that President who was elected to non-consecutive terms and thus made the Presidential Portrait room look really weird!" or William Howard Taft was known simply as "His Royal Fatassness".
I've come to learn that history is mostly what people make of it, and considering that most of the population is like "Oh my gawd!  Who needs to know about the past!?  That is like so lame!  I think I'll go over to my friends house and play the new gay Halo game/paint my nails (gender neutral mockery)"!  Which is really a shame because if you don't know your history you are doomed to repeat it.  I mean holy hell Batman, under Bush (and now Obama) people are scoffing at privacy rights, DESPITE THE FACT THAT PRIVACY RIGHTS HAVE BEEN VIOLATED MULTIPLE TIMES IN AMERICAN HISTORY.  People want to tell themselves "well, we'll never become Nazis so History is not important."
But as you have pointed out, people don't have to be Nazis in order to be evil.  Evil is something that any person of any nationality of any race of any religion of any creed of any economic class is capable of.  Those who believe otherwise are incredibly naive.  Sure, the idea that the American government would kill millions of it's own citizens may seem absurd to more than a few of us one here due to lack of history education, but how many Germans in 1912 do you think thought it was possible that their government would actively seek out and attempt to exterminate various ethnic/religious/whatever groups?  Hell man, how many Germans in 1928 were thinking "oh my god, the government is so close to wanting to just go out and kill millions!"
So sure, you might say that America is a constitutional nation, a nation of civil rights and liberties and nowhere near the weakness of state as Weimar Germany.  Granted, but that doesn't mean "KAPOOF!" we are safe from all evil and corrupt politicians.
I guess the best explanation I can come up with is that some subjects in history just sound a lot sexier than others (yes I know that invites some screams of "OMG YOU BIGOT!" but hey, it's just a theory).  Or that Hitler and the Nazis were just so out there, just so OMG COMIC BOOK VILLIANRY! that people in the education industry tend to put more of a heavy emphasis on them because they had bitching eyepatches or whatev as opposed to the Soviets who wore like boring corduroy green army outfits and furry hats that had the red Texaco star thing on them or something.

But now I'm just flat out f***ing ranting here.  I'm sure I was about to make a point or what not, but I guess I got too caught up in my utter disgust at the average American high school/college student's disgust of history.  God, those ingrates just really piss me off!

As for your last comment, understandably a lot of people will probably get pissed off reading that.  But I do get the context of what you're saying there.  There will probably be seven or eight more people who are like "OMG!" before this post is sent to the thread, which will probably be a shame.  I for one don't have a disdain for African Americans, but I can understand how anti-(insert ethnicity here) bigotry can be strong with a person due to previous experiences.  This is a pretty widely accepted psychological truth here.  It's not a very popular truth, and I might get brownie points taken away because of pointing it out, but there is some truth that a lot of racial/ethnic resentment stems from a perceived injustice from the other group.  I guess it's easy for me, coming from a family of White Southerners, to relate to situational circumstances that might make racism attractive to some.  Again, for those who might take that statement out of context, I DO NOT SUPPORT RACISM, I just can understand how one can develop racist ideas out of life experiences.
But yeah, obviously there are a lot of evil dicks out there who have killed as much if not more than the Nazis did.  And yes, it's really bizarre that a lot of teachers ignore the crimes of these other people.  Yes, if I were a history teacher I would put a bunch of focus on evil dicks of all stripes.  And yes, American education makes me cry like a little 8 year old girl sometimes.

Oh god, I spent like an hour writing this out and I have an Advanced Federal Income Taxation test tomorrow at nine.  God, I'll never graduate with this kind of slackery.

[Mechaman]

too long; but since I'm the mod for this board, did read

As for why Know Nothingism gets short shrift in U.S. History classes, I suspect that being one of the precursors of the Republican Party may have something to do with it.  Indeed, the paramilitary Wide Awakes the Know Nothings had in 1856 had by 1860 considerably expanded into the Wide Awakes of the Republican Party.  The Wide Awakes were to some degree comparable to the Nazi SA, complete with their own torchlight parades.



Of course, you can draw comparisons out too much, and the Republicans were far from the only party organization in 1860 to have a paramilitary element attached to it.

 

Meh, that is very true.  I've become like a rant machine today for some reason.  I don't really remember what my motivation was for posting all of that BS anyway.  Maybe boredom or acceptance that I'll never graduate with a 3.0 GPA?

Very true.
Both parties benefitted a great deal from paramilitary like organizations to rally the party faithful to the voting booths or what not.

Quite fascinating really.

[Mechaman]

What we're reacting to is the way Jersey and politicus are trying to turn the collaborators and perpetrators of Nazi atrocities into victims and potential victims of said atrocities.  According to the 1939 census, only 3% of Germany was atheist and only 2% were members of "neopagan" cults.  The German nation, an overwhelmingly Christian nation, enthusiastically participated or turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities and war crimes.  Trying to shift the blame onto only Hitler, or only Hitler's inner circle, or only the SS is propagandistic whitewashing of the first order.

I guess I must've had a way different interpretation of Jersey's posts or something.

I thought he was saying how unfair an image German people get because of the Holocaust, not trying to remove the German equation from Hitler's rise to power.

[Mechaman]

Somebody has already pointed this out, but exterminating the Catholics would've been a hell of a task for Hitler.  Before World War II, the Catholic population was 33% of Germany.  That's like a third of the population of the country he is in charge of, something I'm pretty sure would be hard for even an evil genius like Hitler to get away with.

Killing the Catholics off throughout Europe would've made killing off the Jews look like a piece of crumb cake.

[Mechaman]

Why the bizarre hypotheticals?

I was just addressing how impractical it would've been for Hitler to kill the Catholics.

I apologize if that point seems "bizarre".

[Mechaman]

I must say that this is the first time I've come across anything as insane as the suggestion that Hitler was actively scheming to exterminate or even persecute in any way the Catholic population of Western Europe. I can't even see how anyone could have that idea.

To be fair, there were Catholics killed in the Holocaust.  However, I wouldn't really call it an "extermination" of Catholics or that Hitler was planning on killing them all.
A lot of the Catholics that were killed in the Holocaust were mostly clergymen, bishops, and laypeople who voiced opposition to the Nazi regime.  And of course those who happened to have a fraction Jewish blood (like a lot of other groups).
There are some people in the Nazi Government who favored shutting down the Catholic Hierarchy, like in 1941 when authorities decreed the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys in the Third Reich (many of which were already occupied and secularized by SS authorities), however Hitler himself ended that decree on July 30th, 1941, fearing that the increasing protests of the Catholic population of Germany would result in passive rebellions that would harm the war effort on the Eastern Front.
Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs were arguably not Catholic, but I wouldn't go as far as to say he was an atheist or a neo-paganist.  Instead I would say that he had his own religion that brought in elements from pretty much everywhere that was crafted into the Nazi Party.  A religion that he wanted taught in every Protestant and Catholic Christian Church in the Third Reich.  In other words, Hitler was for the consolidation of Church and State, a principle that is wholly at odds with the 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.

I think it would be most accurate to say that Hitler wanted to subvert the Roman Catholic Church.