Holocaust denial

[Jerseyrules]

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.

[Jerseyrules]

Jersey, question.  You complain about use of "German" and "Nazi" interchangeably during the context of the Second World War, arguing that it leads people to attribute what the Germans as a whole did in the war with the actions of the NSDAP.

A.  Isn't it fair to do so in the context of the war?  Referring to the Wehrmacht as "German soldiers" or "German forces" makes a lot more sense than saying "Nazi forces," given that they were the army of, well, Germany, which happened to be under a Nazi regime.  I'm not arguing for collective blame, but I am saying that the actions that happened in the war can't be brushed away with "the Nazis did it," because many atrocities were committed by people that weren't in the Nazi Party or, in fact, weren't even Germans themselves (such as Lithuanian, Romanian, etc. Nazi auxiliaries, collaborationists all over Europe...).

B.  Do you take issue to people referring to the Imperial Japanese Army or Imperial Japanese Navy as "Japanese" rather than "Imperial Japanese forces" or whatever?  Sometimes people end up with this weird "the war against the Nazis and the Japanese" phraseology that implies that with the Germans we were only at war with the bad lot running the show but in the Pacific theater we were at war with the entire Japanese nation.

A. German army, yes.  But to label everyone of those men, who were drafted at sixteen years of age, as Nazis, monsters, and ruthless brutes, is unfair.  As I said, my opinion is that a Nazi is anyone who prescribes to the national-socialist, white supremacist, anti-Semite ideology, or who participates directly in assisting them or directly furthering their cause.

B. I am saying that everyone labels the nazis as the worst people ever, when, as you said, Japanese forces were as ruthless, and nearly as brutal.  Also, the Chinese killed their own in Teananmen Square; none of these get the coverage that the Holocaust did.  The horrors that are occurring in the middle east and Africa are disgusting; children being raped and killed by the thousands like animals.  Meanwhile, the Soviet soldiers raped over two million German girls - and of the ten million casualties of the March on Berlin, three mullion where girls who were killed during (or committed suicide after) rape by Soviet soldiers.  Meanwhile, countless similar atrocities were committed during the Japanese internment here in the U.S., livelihoods were destroyed, and more.  Now, I really don't like it when people cry "racism" or "unfair", but these other stories deserve to be told.  My grandmother often tells me of a neighbor caught listening to BBC on the radio, who was carted away never to be seen again.  She also tells me of Moraccon soldiers burning her neighborhood to the ground, as she watched in horror, six years old, cowering behind a cow in her barn.  The Moroccan soldiers also were infamous for the rape of many young girls, and for intentionally leaving their prints on the bedsheets of houses they would pillage in order to leave fingerprints.  She tells me of a girlfriend she had growing up, who slept with her mother in the same bed to hide from the enemy soldiers.  The Moroccans came into her house, and the girl fled from the room, jumping out a window to escape.  She broke her leg, and it never healed right.  My Oma has recounted how she once observed the doctors re-breaking the leg, and yet nothing they could do would help.  The girl died at eighty scarred emotionally and physically handicapped for life, with a limp for nearly seventy years.

Are you starting to see why my grandmother maintains a streak of disdain for African-Americans?

[Jerseyrules]

I really doubt that a Catholic like Hitler wanted to kill all Catholics.

Well, what would he have done when he was finished with the Jews?  Sat down and read a book?  He would've descended further and further into insanity, wiping out everyone who he deemed unfit for life, or who got in his way.  Who would be his new scapegoat?  The gypsies?  No, not a high enough population.  The Turks?  Not really present in modern Germany.

[Jerseyrules]

What is this.

What is what?  My Al Pacino speech, or these fine people I am conversing with?

[Jerseyrules]

What is what?

The genuinely bizarre and utterly novel argument that you just spewed out.

Think about it from the standpoint of a crazy person.  Or even any dictator.  We need someone to blame when things get bad.  The Jews were scapegoats for centuries.  Who would the government blame if they succeeded in wiping them out?  If it still doesn't make sense, put on your crazy cap.

[Jerseyrules]

What is what?

The genuinely bizarre and utterly novel argument that you just spewed out.

I was about to PM you about this thread.  I've read six books about Nazi Germany within the last three months, and...well...as you can see from my earlier response, I wasn't about to touch most of this s**t.  You can if you want.

Which argument?  If you're referring to my grandmas prejudism, I'm not defending it, just offering explanation.  I'm tired and moving on of it's something else.

[Jerseyrules]

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.

So did I