Hitler's Willing Executioners, p111

[skull_bearer]

As a summary of the past 100 pages:



Seriously dude, where did you dig up this rubbish? Even I know better than this.

Here's a prime example, p71: "During the pre-genocidal era of European civilisation -- when consciousness of the mass human slaughter of the First and Second World Wars, let alone genocide as an instrument of national policy, did not exist --"

WTFBBQ WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING? I can't even start to point out what's worng with this sentance. Pre-genocidal -- PRE GENOCIDAL! What has the human race EVER been pre genocidal? Tazmania you dumb shit! Native Americans! WTF IS THIS FUCKING SO CALLED RESEARCH? Two words: YOU FAIL.

*deep breath* And this is bypassing the fact that he seems to think Germany operated in a hermetically sealed vacum in an Europe where everything was sunshine and flowers for Jewish people. And that Hitler was German. And that no one ever spoke up for the Jews in Germany. SPARTAKUS YOU DUMB GIT SPARTAKUS!

*facepalm x1000*

And he keeps on using "it is obvious that..." without showing sources! And daring people to prove that 'ordinary Germans' were not antisemitic! WTF is that that's CREATIONIST logic! And WTF is an 'ordinary German'?

GOLDHAGEN YOU FAIL AND I HATE YOU!

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

If I'd known you were intending to read Goldhagen, I'd have strongly recommended you not to bother!

Genocide?

English policy in Ireland in the 1630's and 40's
The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
The Albigensian Crusade

How far back would you like me to go? :o(

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

It was on the Royal Holloway reading list. I'd heard about this book being controversial but I wasn't expecting it to tbe so BAD.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Could be they're _expecting_ you to be able to do a hatchet job on it? I've known lecturers work that way :o)

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a controversy that's still going on to this day, we should at least know what its about.

Only reason I'm still reading the blasted thing, btw.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I might note that that I considered that part of the analogy to be flawed in the extreme. Modern society *is* genocidal, it's a darker side of modernity than most people like to think. Genocide, however, required the ability for one society to outright exterminate another as opposed to conquest and enslavement. The previous model was to move in, destroy the local political leadership, instant new-peasantry.

Genocide IMHO requires a degree of both organization and the ability for the perpetrators to do without the victims of the genocide itself. That did not exist prior to the Industrial Revolution. The main exceptions to this were what happened to a lot of the Indigenous Americans in the early phases of colonialism on this side of the Atlantic. However that genocide was due to the lethality of slavery and the epidemics, more of a byproduct of the new civilization than its intent.

The result, however, was close enough that the distinction is purely an academic one.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Look, I was able to pick this guy's theory apart. I don't think you'd have any trouble.

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? Pre-genocidal? *headdesks*

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

There is an assumption that you need industrialised warfare experience and automatic weaponry to commit genocide. Was Goldhagen asleep during what happened in Rwanda or in Uganda under the Amin regime?

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Well, to the guy's defence he was denying that there were genocides before WW1, so i'm not sure Rwanda can be cited as an example.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I refer him to my examples above............

Rwanda was an old fashioned genocide but a highly organised one- mostly machetes, clubs and knives which I think proves a point even though it's post WW1

And then the Czarist pogroms are pre WW1 and I'm sure they're something in which you'll take an interest given where they lead.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the Herero and Namaqua Genocide done not by Nazi Germany, but by Imperial Germany......

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You don't need the kind of warfare, you do however need the mentality that an entire group, including the women and children, can be exterminated and should be exterminated. That mindset did not in any great extent exist too much prior to the Industrial Revolution, however a lot of what happened in practice doesn't make that great a difference.

The really horrible bit about this is what it means about the Herero-Namaqua Genocide, done not by the Nazis but by the Kaiser.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

The Spanish in South America? Although I'd admit that in the end the smallpox epidemic that they unknowingly introduced was a far more effective form of genocide than any of the massacres could possibly be!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They wanted slaves/ready-made-peasants, not to kill them. Not that in the end that made too much of a difference with the outcome, though.