Up in Canada, they shipped a few hundred Ukrainian soldiers from the second world war here who fought the Russians … as part of a German SS army group.
Ask our country’s leading politicians, they just celebrated one of these SS veterans at a public event in our Parliament.
The second world war started as a reaction to growing communism and socialism especially how it affected the wealth of the status quo. Far right fascists who wanted to destroy socialists during that war were the enemy. At the end of the war, it was more acceptable to be a far right fascist than a communist sympathizer or even to have socialist leanings.
Fascism was never a clear cut definition in that war.
It makes you wonder when and if the war ever ended.
That’s not even true. You can say a lot of shit about the USSR but especially given the circumstances they were democratic to a fault.
The whole “they were a dictatorship” is based on cold war disinformation which still persists to this day because nobody even bothers to look into how the soviet union was actually organized. There’s a zillion things to call them out on, no need to make shit up.
Case in point they were voted into power, the people kept them in power until the contradictions that Marxism-Leninism was built on had them voting for Capitalism instead. Gorbachev never would have come into power if the soviet union was actually a dictatorship.
After they redistribution from the farms any pretense at democracy pretty much went downhill. don't get me wrong lenin did a lot of good things. Many good states came out of it eventually. In particular in scandanavia. In the long run, which was not very long, he setup stalin even though he fought to keep him out in the end.
I mean, Putin and other Russian imperialists see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a national embarrassment and the biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. For many in Russia during the Soviet era, any communist ideology was secondary to being able to dominate their neighbors. To the current Russian state, the war in Ukraine is an attempt to rebuild the USSR under the banner of nationalism rather than socialism.
The sad fact is that Marxist-Leninism allows a buildup of nationalist and ethnonationalist sentiment within their states, even though the goal should be to unite the workers from all socialist states against the owning class. The biggest threat to socialism beyond capitalism is national and ethnic identity influencing the leadership of the movement. They favor their own in group, which breeds discontent in the out group, which can’t be addressed in the system due to the centralization of power under democratic centralism, which leads to more nationalism from people who’s self interest is not being addressed.
This is why Americans during the Cold War would refer to Soviets as Russians. They might not have been able to articulate a single thing wrong with communism, but they could still recognize that the Soviet Union seemed to represent the self interest of Russians more than any of the other states.
The claim that tensions between those holding power in the capitalist system and the growing communist forces caused the second world war is a pretty hot take as someone who grew up in Germany. Do you have sources on professional dissemination of the facts that arrives at this conclusion? I’m genuinely curious because I hadn’t heard of that interpretation yet.
Lots of information and research over the past 20 - 30 years points to that direction
About half of all deaths in WWII occurred in the eastern front of the war between Germany and Russia … a protracted fight because the allies took their time and about an extra year before they decided to help out the war and open the western front in Europe … all while they all knew that Russians were being killed and the entire Russian countryside was being destroyed … it’s been described as equivalent at the time in the 1940s as killing everyone and destroying cities and towns from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast in the United States. … in total about 10 million military deaths and about 10 million civilian deaths (just for the Russia allied side!) … the Germans basically bled on this front too and lost about 5 million themselves … considered the bloodiest theatre of war for all of WWII
Here’s a dramatic explanation and description of who died and from which country.
US industrialists were in league with Nazi Germany … Henry Ford is a prime example who even accepted a civilian medal of honor from Hitler and the Third Reich … Ford even helped the arms build up during the lead up to the war by supplying military vehicles - and just to avoid their name being attached to all this, they created a subsidiary company called Opal that went on to become a major truck manufacturer for the German Nazi army … there were other examples in chemicals, technological and industrial support
US bankers were in league with Germany … a lot of the money produced and collected by the Nazis made its way to North America where it could be kept safe … the grandfather of President Bush … Prescott Bush was a known banker that worked closely with Nazi loyalists … the Duke of Windsor, the British king that abdicated from the throne was in a money laundering scheme with a Swedish banker with Nazi ties to send millions of their funds mixed with Nazi wealth in Mexico (the deal was so convoluted and risky that it is believed it led to the murder to Sir Harry Oakes, one of the wealthiest men in the world at the time, in the Bahamas making it one of the biggest murder mystery scandals during the war)
All because industrialists and capitalists didn’t want the war to affect central Europe all that much … but instead destroy and cripple Communist Russia
It’s even evident in what happened at the end of the war … it was far more acceptable to be a Nazi or a fascist than it was to be a communist
The US space and technological industry was built on bringing in and accepting known Nazis scientists … look the term ‘Operation Paperclip’ … Wernher von Braun basically led the US space race and built rocket technology … even though he was a known Nazi that led slave labour camps to build his rockets at the end of the war … the US spy agency was basically filled with more former Nazis who went on to fetch even more of their Nazi friends all in an effort to fight communists
Even the post war era is just a continued storyline of US leadership just frothing at the mouth to fight communism, even though communists probably didn’t have the ability to take over the world … they had the bomb but not the will or probably any further military ability to do so anyway … meanwhile, the US spent about 20 - 30 years basically supporting fascism or creating fascist governments in South American, Central America, southeast Asia and Africa … look up the history and actions of Allen and Foster Dulles, two of the most evil men in modern history from my point of view, they basically singled handedly messed up world politics for decades through all the terrible things they put into motion in the name of stopping communism.
The fight has always been about communism … it never stopped and continues today … none of this means I love or support modern day Russia which is basically just another capitalist government no different than the Americans or the Europeans … to most supporters of the left, it’s not about communism, it’s just plain old social democratic ideas of sharing the wealth and making a more equitable society … but even that is far too dangerous for wealthy capitalists who want to rule over everything and own everything and everyone.
So the ukrainians. A few hundred. Fought in WW2 as part of the german SS? So assuming 17 in 1945 the youngest they could be now would be 95. So canada shipped over a few hundred 95+ year old ukrainians who used to be part of the german ss army group for what exactly. I mean Im really surprised you can find that many 95+ year olds of any nationality that furthermore were part of a group that would be an even smaller subset.
Seems like 1950. Here’s a excerpt from the Wikipedia article
Critics of the commission have pointed out it’s many failings. In a 1989 article for the Ottawa Citizen, writer Sol Littman explained, the All-Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group of the British House of Commons found that screening was virtually “non-existent” for Ukrainian SS veterans who entered Canada in 1950. The SS veterans had been allowed into Canada from the U.K. based on false assurances that they were not war criminals. The Foreign Office lied to British parliament in 1947, that the SS volunteers had undergone “a very exhaustive screening process.” In a 1997 interview with 60 Minutes, Irving Abella stated that getting into Canada for SS members, was as easy as just showing their SS blood type tattoo which indicated that they were reliably anti-communist.
You get reform through changing the material conditions that got them where they are. Do you think a thief who got to keep all their loot will ever be reformed? or do you think it’s more likely that the only thing getting reformed is their public image. Just something to think about.
This is a common tankie talking point. NATO has some Nazis in it, and it largely exists to oppose Russian imperialism, therefore Russia must be good and justified in its attacks on NATO and countries looking to join. Similar justification for the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has some Nazis in it, therefore conquest and genocide are necessary and good. Plus I peeked OP’s profile and they are very much a tankie
NATO was literally started and headed by a nazi, what the fuck. Downplay of a decade. Well now we know you’re using the neoreactionary definition of tankie, in case that wasn’t abundantly clear to everyone here.
Also, nice ban baiting attempt. Sorry, this isn’t reddit. You can’t just gesture at the mods to remove people who say shit you don’t like.
Dang I wish I could, there’d be a lot fewer tankies here if that were the case
Idk what a neo reactionary is, I’m just a lefty who hates the Russian government and wants them to not try to take over all their neighbors for the xth time
I don’t exactly like them either. Great comment which goes into the reason why the USSR was a failed socialism and what Russia plans to do today to get back into power. (It’s not pretty)
Yea I wouldn’t comment something like this in a vacuum, but based on comments they made and the fact that nazis being in nato is a common justification for russian imperialism among tankies, op definitely is a tankie
Oh wait you’re a hexbear user, fuck Idk why I bothered explaining myself to you lol
Hmm it’s really weird that your post doesn’t mention the 2500 Nazi scientists that the USSR recruited/relocated during Operation Osoaviakhim. I’m sure that’s just an innocent oversight though!
Funnily enough, it was one of the favourite rhetorical tricks of the USSR: they would deflect all criticism from the US, no matter how valid, with whataboutisms including “but you hang negros”.
But the whole meme is pointless. Seems like calling out that these people shouldn’t have been allowed to be part of a new society after the nazi state was destroyed. It’s not that easy no matter how much people like to draw history and the world as a whole as black and white.
For example Hallstein: He was never a member of the NSDAP. Yes, he fought in WW2 for the Germans but after the war he was a leading figure in the new democratic German academia and afterwards worked towards having Germany integrated into international institutions.
For anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to punish every last one who was part of a criminal, even cruel and inhumane movement: Look at Iraq. So many people who were part of Saddams party, even teachers, bureaucrats and whatnot… They where mostly expelled from society and a potential rehabilitation. And the direct consequence of these actions was the formation of ISIS because these people didn’t have a perspective in the new state and society. So being very consequential, as all things, can have very unforeseen (but actually quite forseeable) consequences.
Sputnik was cool. Stealing US nuke designs was pretty based. Part of the problem is many Soviet secrets are now NATO secrets.
They also invented an OWP (which thankfully they did not deploy) and a way to monitor weather by satellite at the poles. (That is to say they developed a usable alternative to geostationary orbit to keep a satellites over a spot on the Earth. NASA uses their method today)
Also the Ruskies were the first ones to think Maybe we should find a way to get along with the capitalist imperialists.
Equally though if you killed/imprisoned them all it’d pretty much be genocide though, it’s hard not to be a member when it’s effectively necessary to stay alive
50 years isn’t enough time to prove that they weren’t all bad? When an entire country follows a movement you think they don’t deserve rehabilitation? Just nuke the lot I guess. Jesus Christ.
Maybe what happens was this step between „all nazis to power“ and „imprison them all“ and those examples you have shown were outliers and not the norm.
As far as I know the allied forces tried to find out how deep you were ideological or if you were „just following commands“. Not the prettiest solution and of course there were wrong decisions made, but in my opinion it was the best possible option without imprisonment of like half of the population.
And as you can see from the Nürnberg-Trails and other similar judicial processes there were many Nazis punished (in severe cases by death) for their deeds.
Wtf is this Nazi apologia thread. This is not cash money.
For some reason you jumped to imprisonment and genocide. Sure, fine, it isn’t the best idea to imprison a large population but we aren’t talking about randos. These were decorated men or officials for NAZIS. Don’t give them power. That’s it.
And JFC, they are actual criminals and imprisoning would be justified. Don’t go comparing them to actual genocides of the Jews, Armenians, Uighura, or trans people.
This is one of the worst commenta i didn’t expect to see on here.
Yeah it wouldn’t be comparable to the genocides of Jews, Armenians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs etc. where it was mass extermination, but putting (almost) everyone from a country/culture in reeducation camps like the US did with the Japanese or China are with Uyghurs is still cultural genocide, no matter how careful you are about it or how noble the cause.
The fact that the scientists the US removed and most of the population no longer showed support for Nazism shows that the majority of problem people were the leaders and politicians, and people working for them or supporting them because they had few other options were just doing what they had to do to get by, just like how any class traitor (repo person, police etc.) isn’t doing something admirable and in an ideal world they’d be doing something else for a less evil boss, but at the end of the day they have to live with the way society works.
This thread is literally about the leaders and politicians you yourself said are the problem though. Noone mentioned “(almost) everyone from a country/culture”, the meme specifically shows high level nazis who are now (or were) high level decision makers in world governments.
Millions died to stop the Nazi regime. There were, adaik, about 40 attempted assassinations on Hitler? Why not these mfers? They’re so smart and special they just get to sit back and do nothing, and history must judge them favorably?
When the entire state is in on genocide, it’s a little difficult to punish millions of people… then again, maybe the war and it’s destruction was punishment enough.
The Morgenthau Plan was a proposal to weaken Germany following World War II by eliminating its arms industry and removing or destroying other key industries basic to military strength. This included the removal or destruction of all industrial plants and equipment in the Ruhr. It was first proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. in a 1944 memorandum entitled Suggested Post-Surrender Program for Germany.[1]
That would’ve just crippled the economy and not done much about the Nazis…?
For the Versailles treaty, we punished them enough to piss them off but not enough to stop them from doing something about it. Didn’t help that we didn’t stop them from demilitarizing and such.
Hitler wouldnt have cared if ther versailles treaty was even worse and forbid any form of militarization.
The versailles treaty was bullshit anyways and caused Hitler.
While understandable from a pragmatic standpoint (what do when everyone was in more or less?) Germany still struggles with this old Nazi-coteries in vital bodies of the state, like judiciary, the Verfassungsschutz, police and the military.
What pains me most - not only in Germany - is that everybody acts as there cannot be any Nazis as they were defeated in 1945. Quite on the contrary, it is evident today that the fight against fascism is a constant and deliberate effort of any free and democratic country.
What? We’ve been saying for years how the republican party turned into nazis and in germany there’s “einzelfälle” which is being mentioned everytime nazis in authority positions happen to do anything illegal.
The f-ing AFD is almost winning a spot in german politics.
Who said nazis dont exist anymore? US Americans in 1995?
That is the thing with these „Einzelfälle“: Germany is deliberately turning two blind eyes to structural racism and fascism even though it is more than evident by now there are large parts of legislative, jurisdictional and executive bodies that not only sympathise with right-wing ideas but full on support nazi politics.
I appreciate Mrs. Faeser’s recent crack-downs against neo-nazi groups, but this were only the most extreme excrescences. What’s happening f.i. inside Hesse’s state police, once again an “Einzelfall” as uncovered by Jan Böhmerman’s team, is exemplary.
Other groups may act more cautiously but they are letting their hair down more and more. Just look at how the rhetoric of the CDU leadership changed in regard of the AfD!
It is tragic, but, consider the alternative for a moment, Iraq
One of the key reasons why Iraq fell apart post Saddam is precisely because the Bush admin tried to completely lock out the former Baathist leadership.
IE, they tried building a state with nobody that had the experience or knowhow of what that state was in any way capable of.
So those folks who were previously responsible for building Iraq into a state capable of fielding the 5th largest military in the world, as anemic and ineffective as said military turned out to be, just became the insurgency trying to topple the new state the US was trying to build, and if they lasted long enough, members of future terrorist groups like ISIS.
And for all that trouble of keeping the badmen baathists out the US got a cardboard state that folded to Iranian influence a millisecond after the US began even stepping towards the door. Like just look at a map of historical Iranian kingdoms and try to tell me you wouldn’t have seen that coming from a mile away without a serious buildup on already existing foundations.
The Nuremberg model of complicit party elimination seems to be the winning combination. Remove the decision makers and most zealous potential future troublemakers, and then when you’re left with the “just following orders” guys, just give them new orders to follow.
I see the necessity in the moment and I do not blame the original set-up of the federal structures by the allied forces. In fact they were expertly carved out to on the one hand minimise the chances of a second “Hitler” while on the other hand maximise governmental and economic efficacy.
My point is rather that we must not underestimate the long term influence these people and their ideology exert. They may not have been the top devision makers, but over time they will attract likeminded people and foster parallel structures. If not actively managed/eliminated they will, on the long run, try to employ the same tactics again in order to come to power. And this is, what we see today in many western countries, not only Germany.
I see the necessity in the moment and I do not blame the original set-up of the federal structures by the allied forces. In fact they were expertly carved out to on the one hand minimise the chances of a second “Hitler” while on the other hand maximise governmental and economic efficacy.
My point is rather that we must not underestimate the long term influence these people and their ideology exert. They may not have been the top decision makers, but over time they will attract likeminded people and foster parallel structures. If not actively managed/eliminated they will, on the long run, try to employ the same tactics again in order to come to power. And this is what we see today in many western countries, not only Germany.
Oh yeah absolutely, my point is that those legacies are a result of the right process not being applied thoroughly enough.
When you track modern legacies of systemic racism in western Europe you’ll usually be able to track it back to a collaborator or Nazi officer who slipped through the cracks. The brutality of the modern French national police being a key example.
You could do something similar with the US, as modern legacies of systemic racism often track back to confederates and confederate sympathizers, or important figures within especially bad administrations like the Jackson Admin, the Wilson Admin, the Reagan Admin, and the Nixon Admin.
Wilson in particular I hold responsible for the sheer scope of America’s foreign policy atrocities and failures, he was the one who coined the infamous world police narrative when he didn’t want to look like a flip flopper joining WWI after being against it. You can draw a straight line from Afghanistan and Iraq all the way back to that shitbag’s bad decision making.
The US won because of its truly massive industrial base that was equipped to develop and churn out military materials at a rate that is simply mind boggling.
Nope. The american stuff was stellar, and so was some of the german stuff (for their limited capabilities while being besieged), just not the soviet stuff (I mean, they just started industrializing 2 decades earlier).
Even if both sides had built the same machines, the side that pumps out 10x the amount will inevitably win.
They had to renounce “jewish science”. Can’t have Einstein be right about anything. Ideologies like that only stand in the way of proper science. Ergo Nazis = dumb
For example, Walter Hallstein was drafted into and artillery unit for Nazi Germany in WWII. After about 2 years he was captured by the Allies and sent to a POW camp in Mississippi. As part of a project to re-educate German POWs (the Sunflower Project), he attended an “administrative school” at Fort Getty, where teaching included the principles of the Constitution of the United States.
Post-war he worked for the German Foreign Office where he instituted the “Hallstein Doctrine” of diplomatically isolating East Germany.
That’s what everyone says “Times were different then”. Bullshit, everybody were so happy to accept nazi scientists and pardon them for their crimes just as long as they got their tech. It’s horrible to see Nazi apologism here on Lemmy, go back to Reddit! I don’t know why the admins allow shit like this to be posted.
That’s not what everybody says and the guy you’re replying to most certainly did not say.
He says it’s not black and white. You’re telling us that’s it’s very black and white. And you’re screaming to the admins to have him, this discussion removed. Only you can be right, is that it? Discussions, other viewpoints can not exist?
I don’t agree with that. Neither of those takes. It’s just not black and white. The world never was black or white. 0 or 1. Only code is binary in the end. And platforms like this exist to discuss, not to block.
The nuremberg trials where real. People got punished for their crimes. Sure, not everyone. That’s impossible. Some got away. And yes, some where worth more, to better society, alive then dead.
Is that a fascist take? I don’t know. To me it’s not. I’m just grateful my grandparents got through the aftermath of ww2. And I do know that was only possible because not everyone in government got executed for being nazi aligned during the war.
They had knowledge which was worth preserving. Knowledge about science, diplomacy or the ability to govern. Stuff like that was worth a lot: europe and the Pacific where in shambles. Cities destroyed. Industry leveled, infrastructure bombed to oblivion. That preserved knowledge has been used to speed up the rebuilding. Without it millions more would’ve died, suffered in the aftermath.
By the way, this discussion is only possible because of “nazi” tech. Our whole frikkin’ modern world is build on it. No Werner no rockets. No rockets no sattelites. No sattelites no Internet. Etc. Benz, volkswagen, BMW, Siemens, the list goes on and on. German (and Japanese) tech was and is everywhere.
Regarding your take on reddit : this place is a bigger echo chamber then I ever experienced over there. Which is a shame. It stops discussions before they begin and lessen the interaction with the platform.
The thing that kind of sucks about lemmy is there isn’t really any protection against fascists on the site. One of the reasons it took me so long to get off reddit is because there you have access to tools that let you see if someone you’re interacting with is an overt and open fascist, but nothing like that really exists here. In fact, it’s even worse here because the fascists will aggressively downvote to the point where anything directly calling out white supremacy gets absolutely slammed. Now you have a bunch of reddit frogs coming over here and the only real hint that they’re going to cause trouble is if their username ends in @lemmy.world or @feddit.de
The domain block is a bare minimum, I never want the displeasure of having to deal with a feddit,de poster ever again. Another thing they need to do is make votes public so I can clean house of people upvoting blatantly abusive comments or partaking in downvote harassment. Third they need to add tagging and user-level vote counts so you can identify known trolls without needing to commit their usernames to memory. Those three changes would go a long way in fixing a lot of the biggest problems with lemmy as a whole.
EDIT: And blocking a user shouldn’t delete them completely from your client but rather hide them. That way you can follow their comment streams looking for people supporting them and wipe them out in the process. The current system gives every comment below the original carte blanche to say whatever and there’s fuck all you can do about it because as far as you know, they don’t even exist.
The purpose of blocking is to give you control over shit you see or as Hasan put it, protecting your mental health. Besides, I have a policy for blocking so if someone gets taken out it’s always for a good reason. Usually harassment or fashposting. I actually like it when people call me out because i’m almost always wrong and being corrected is how you grow. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences so anyone coming at me with abuse is going to be unceremoniously prevented from sending any more.
I think the admins have a responsibility to the community to block out these fascists and if an instance has a lot of them, block that. Reddit was never really a safe space for us trans people, but hopefully this place can be. Too bad you can’t report nazis to the police or I would have told everyone I know to do it.
The domain block is a bare minimum, I never want the displeasure of having to deal with a feddit,de poster ever again. Another thing they need to do is make votes public so I can clean house of people upvoting blatantly abusive comments or partaking in downvote harassment. Third they need to add tagging and user-level vote counts so you can identify known trolls without needing to commit their usernames to memory.
As far as I'm aware, this all exists on kbin, if still a little buggy - I'm able to block a whole domain, though that doesn't quite work as expected (it blocks posts but not users as far as I can tell), voting activity is visible on posts and comments (though I think sometimes it can take time for votes to federate or something, occasionally I'll see some people say a comment is being badly downvoted but I see no downvotes), and there is an option to tag users (but I'm not sure what you mean by user-level vote counts).
It definitely makes avoiding the scum a little easier.
lol blocking based on domainname is about as biased as it gets, aside from the usual suspects (lemmygrad, most of hexbear). especially naming feddit.de is complete bollocks, those guys don't give an inch to the far right. lemmy.world is kind of a catch-all and resemble more of an average population, so there's some good, some bad; if your that sensitive, you might wanna check if your social media consumption isn't wearing on your mental health too much anyway.
Calling that one out by name because I go hard on the antifascism a lot and there’s a lot of weird germans from there who take umbrage to that. It’s one of those cases where the place itself doesn’t really deserve defederation but I also want absolutely nothing to do with them.
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