https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-55173605

Is he funding youth services well?

Is he funding youth services well?

And, what about the punctuality of public transport?

Namibia needs motorways.

Auto-Godwin

Don’t think it applies to this guy but there are lots of unreconstructed Nazis in Namibia of German descent. Because of the history of German rule many escaped there after WWII.

My friend (who is Jewish) works out there and was once invited to a party to celebrate Adolf Hitler (the famous German one)’s birthday. :-/

There’s an interesting bit about the name Hitler in Trevor Noah’s autobiography, they didn’t really know his full history just that he was a powerful leader – there’s a story about being in a dance troupe with someone called Hitler performing at a Jewish school!

Also, worth remembering that in certain parts of the world like Ireland/India Winston Churchill would be put in the same bracket we put Hitler into – ie responsible for genocide.

Comparing Churchill to Hitler. Wow.

The Irish people have, quite rightly, an issue with the atrocities inflicted upon them by the British during the potato famine of the 1840s (Google it if you’re not au fait with what went on).
I don’t think that was during Churchills tenure though.

The Irish people have, quite rightly, an issue with the atrocities inflicted upon them by the British during the potato famine of the 1840s

And before the famine. And after the famine.

Some people (probably incorrectly as it turns out) place some blame on Churchill for the Bengal famine of 1943

but I don’t think grum was suggesting any similarities with Adolf

Not just the Irish either, if you look back at some of the thigs the Allies did you can’t really escape the conclusion that while our poitical ideologies were morally deffensible, the way the war was fought was downright criminal.

Firebombing Dresden kiled 25,000 civilians in 3 nights.

Reclassifying German POWs as “unarmed enemy combatants who had surrenderd unconditionally” and forcing them to clear minefields (spoiler, hundreds died) after the war had ended.

“Mr Uunona said his wife calls him Adolf and he goes by the name in public, and has no plans to change it.”
erm – yes, the name Adolf is perfectly fine, but you know – maybe drop the Hitler part?

Not just the Irish either, if you look back at some of the thigs the Allies did you can’t really escape the conclusion that while our poitical ideologies were morally deffensible, the way the war was fought was downright criminal.

Very easy to completely not get the sense of fear and desperation people must have felt back then. We were at war and to all intents and purposes fighting for our lives and very existence. the Germans were bombing our cities too and we didn’t escape massive numbers of civilian deaths either. We are in no position to pass judgement having not lived at a time where we have been under attack by a foreign force who wanted to kill us and had our backs against the wall for most of the war.

We can look back and study the good stuff and balance it against the bad stuff and it is what it is. War is shit…no shit Sherlock! tell me something I don’t know. But plenty of worse atrocities are ignored and in some quarters even admired and escape the criticism usually because those who are criticising the likes of Churchill are aligned with their political ideals so like to deflect that aspect of humanities unpleasant past by attacking the likes of Churchill. Ultimately the death toll of WW2 and WW1 and the death tolls you can attribute to the British Empire combined pales into utter insignificant next to the piles of bodies built up in the name of the spread of Socialist Dictatorships and Communism which is way up in the hundreds of millions even if you look at the lower end of the estimates. But yet to hear anywhere near as much criticism for all of that and demands the atrocities of the left are tought in school and certainly no apologies coming forthwith from any of the countries involved in those atrocities. It’s just easier to demonise people like Churchill. It’s a privilege only a free society that has not suffered anywhere near like those even only a couple generations before us suffered. We afford to look back on our history and openly criticise it. You can’t do that in China or Russia and many other countries even today.

Look back in history and 99.9% is pretty bad no matter which side of any argument you look. The history of the existence of humans is one of overwhelming misery and cruelty for most over the last 150,000 years. It’s only in relatively recent times in the last 50 or so years that things have actually improved for the vast majority of humans and that is thanks to the likes of Churchill fighting for freedom against tyranny. So criticise them all you like so long as you also recognise the good they’ve contributed and recognised and criticise those they fought against.

He has insisted he has no plans for world domination.

Yeah, but that’s what they all say…

He doesn’t look very happy that’s for sure..

Germans were bombing our cities too and we didn’t escape massive numbers of civilian deaths either. We are in no position to pass judgement

Perhaps we aren’t in a position to judge, but they sure were at the time. Which is why there’s reams of papers from the war cabinets of both the US and Britain about the decision to ruthlessly bomb Germany and Japan, and the many discussions about whether the allies were straying into the realms of war crimes. They certainly well understood the effect it had and It’s one of the reasons Japanese pilots weren’t tried as war criminals for their part in the pre-emptive  bombing of Pearl harbour, (an illegal act) as it would introduce into court the fire bombing campaign of Tokyo and obviously the attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

and while it’s not a counting game; Britain got off extremely lightly when compared to the horrors of the European bombing campaigns of the latter stages of the war

Germans were bombing our cities too and we didn’t escape massive numbers of civilian deaths either. We are in no position to pass judgement

But we are in a position not to continually celebrate events like the Dambusters Raid, which drowned civilians in their cellars..

Well put simon
Easy to judge maybe different if you had lived through it

My point was really just that historical blind spots etc are not exclusive to people in far away places, and our interpretation of the world isn’t universal.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/winston-churchill-adolf-hitler-no-better-shashi-tharoor-indian-politician-post-colonialist-author-inglorious-empire-nazi-a7641681.html

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-hitler-is-not-a-dirty-word-in-india/articleshow/63955029.cms

And yet, everyone has heard how Soviet troops committed systematic rape of German women as they entered Berlin but few know about how the German army had behaved in Russia themselves: three million POWs starved to death, entire villages made to dig their own graves before being gunned down. This was the work of not just the SS and Gestapo but also the ordinary Wehrmacht. There is an extent to which German civilians were culpable in all this by swallowing the ideology and its contempt for non Aryan Germans and turning a blind eye to what was going on.

There is an extent to which German civilians were culpable in all this

And all the Germans I’ve met are more than aware of this, and desperate for things like that to never happen again.

There is an extent to which German civilians were culpable in all this by swallowing the ideology

Things don’t change much do they?

And yet, everyone has heard how Soviet troops committed systematic rape of German women as they entered Berlin but few know about how the German army had behaved in Russia themselves: three million POWs starved to death, entire villages made to dig their own graves before being gunned down. This was the work of not just the SS and Gestapo but also the ordinary Wehrmacht. There is an extent to which German civilians were culpable in all this by swallowing the ideology and its contempt for non Aryan Germans and turning a blind eye to what was going on.

This is a good read:

Blimey this thread has taken an unexpected turn! But then again this is STW so maybe not…

In keeping with the tangent taken could I also recommend a book – Winter by Len Deighton. Fiction and very long but so cleverly written – ‘normal’ just slowly shifts as the Nazi regime takes hold and what would have been horrific becomes standard. Never understood how ‘normal’ Germans could have done what they did until I read that.

“I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal ”
Curtis LeMay

The novel Bomber by Len Deighton is also a compelling read. It doesn’t take any side but just gives a fictitious account of a raid from both perspectives. It’s very much anti war in it’s tone.

Good thread.