the nazis also did genocide and had slave labor, but i suppose it wasn’t chattel slavery with people openly being bought and sold. they were heavily inspired by the americans but thought things like the one-drop rule were going too far.
Now now, that’s going far. You can read plenty of testimony about what the Nazis did e.g. in occupied Poland, the extravagant torture, and Mengele also exists. I think it’s extremely difficult to find anything sicker than Mengele or Unit 731, because they more or less did the worst things they could imagine, with lots of medical and industrial equipment to make it possible.
If we’re insisting on making these comparisons, yes. Just to give one of the most direct comparisons, Unit 731 did “experiments” in which they observed the spread of syphilis, injecting it into male captives and then forcing them to transmit it viaremoved. Mengele sewed twins together to make them artificially-conjoined, which resulted in death by gangrene.
They both did a lot of different things that are bafflingly cruel, and so did the rest of the SS, and the respective fascist armies in general (see Nanjing)
I’d also bring up Pinochet, whose government did many different type of tortures as well, the most infamous of which (besides dropping people from helicopters) is training a dog toremoved women.
Yes, American blacksites have also done elaborate and sadistic things to their captives.
Like, don’t get me wrong, the anglo colonizers were dreadful people and it’s deeply wrong what they did, death to America, etc., but the Nazis and Imperial Japan created “playgrounds” of industrialized torture of the sort that is difficult to explain except by saying that some people seemed to do their best to be as sadistic as possible, keeping prisoners alive only to prolong their suffering for very little reason beyond the suffering itself, as the “data” produced by the “research” programs among these was obviously methodologically unsound, and other instances lacked even that pretense.
I’m sorry for bringing this up; As you might guess from a communist who has suffered through endless litigations on Stalin and Mao, I don’t like atrocity contests, it just really rubbed me the wrong way seeing the Nazis characterized the way Awoo did and I think it had a serious lack of perspective. Even on sheer numbers of humans killed, if anyone wanted to bring that up, I think America is probably still behind Nazi Germany, which is behind Britain, which killed over a hundred million people in India alone over its centuries of occupation, mostly through malnutrition (whether resulting in starvation or fatal infection or otherwise), and it did much else besides. Spain is probably third (behind Britain and Nazi Germany), almost entirely from its extensive killing of indigenous populations. These are just among cases I have at least some familiarity with. I will leave it up to someone else to decide how to consider the various pre-RoC forms of China, because I know almost nothing about that and also I’m just really sick of this subject.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any point in comparing atrocities because there shouldn’t be a “winner” and the outcome is always just reducing the perceived impact of something horrible. I should’ve worded my reply better; I wasn’t trying to imply that plague blankets were worse, just that it seems like the early settlers get somewhat of a pass due to recency bias and the lurid nature of what some Nazis did.
it wasn’t chattel slavery with people openly being bought and sold
It actually was, NSDAP officials in charge of forced labour took bribes from the capitalists to direct the slaves to their factories. There also were literal open air slave markets in rural areas where forced labourers (and stolen farm animals) from Eastern Europe were divided between German kulaks, where also money and bribery played important roles. My own grandma and grandpa were kidnapped and sold like that.
The only reason the Axis Powers didn’t have chattel slavery was because they were defeated in less than a generation (give or take-- Imperial Japan was doing shit to Korea and China for a lot longer than the nazis were in power). The nazis’ overall plan was to exterminate the entire Jewish, Roma, and black populations across the world then enslave all Eastern Europeans who survive in this scenario. Italy and Japan had similar ideas, with Japan being especially notable because of “comfort women.” The term itself is especially disgusting because it was the enslavement of women and girls as young as 9 or 10.
the nazis also did genocide and had slave labor, but i suppose it wasn’t chattel slavery with people openly being bought and sold. they were heavily inspired by the americans but thought things like the one-drop rule were going too far.
yeah ultimately I would still put the nazis at the top of most evil for the use of industrial methods of mass extermination, but it’s not an easy call
The industrial method of extermination is arguably more humane than what they did to the indigenous americans.
I can’t believe I’m using the word “humane” here but this comparison of monsters creates difficult considerations.
after I hit reply I started thinking about what Columbus and his men did to the Taíno and… fuck I think I need to go have a margarita
Now now, that’s going far. You can read plenty of testimony about what the Nazis did e.g. in occupied Poland, the extravagant torture, and Mengele also exists. I think it’s extremely difficult to find anything sicker than Mengele or Unit 731, because they more or less did the worst things they could imagine, with lots of medical and industrial equipment to make it possible.
But common colonization practices like distributing blankets contaminated with a deadly disease don’t measure up?
i thought smallpox blankets wasn’t really substantiated? they didn’t have germ theory of disease yet.
extreme SV
If we’re insisting on making these comparisons, yes. Just to give one of the most direct comparisons, Unit 731 did “experiments” in which they observed the spread of syphilis, injecting it into male captives and then forcing them to transmit it viaremoved. Mengele sewed twins together to make them artificially-conjoined, which resulted in death by gangrene.
They both did a lot of different things that are bafflingly cruel, and so did the rest of the SS, and the respective fascist armies in general (see Nanjing)
I’d also bring up Pinochet, whose government did many different type of tortures as well, the most infamous of which (besides dropping people from helicopters) is training a dog toremoved women.
Yes, American blacksites have also done elaborate and sadistic things to their captives.
Like, don’t get me wrong, the anglo colonizers were dreadful people and it’s deeply wrong what they did, death to America, etc., but the Nazis and Imperial Japan created “playgrounds” of industrialized torture of the sort that is difficult to explain except by saying that some people seemed to do their best to be as sadistic as possible, keeping prisoners alive only to prolong their suffering for very little reason beyond the suffering itself, as the “data” produced by the “research” programs among these was obviously methodologically unsound, and other instances lacked even that pretense.
I’m sorry for bringing this up; As you might guess from a communist who has suffered through endless litigations on Stalin and Mao, I don’t like atrocity contests, it just really rubbed me the wrong way seeing the Nazis characterized the way Awoo did and I think it had a serious lack of perspective. Even on sheer numbers of humans killed, if anyone wanted to bring that up, I think America is probably still behind Nazi Germany, which is behind Britain, which killed over a hundred million people in India alone over its centuries of occupation, mostly through malnutrition (whether resulting in starvation or fatal infection or otherwise), and it did much else besides. Spain is probably third (behind Britain and Nazi Germany), almost entirely from its extensive killing of indigenous populations. These are just among cases I have at least some familiarity with. I will leave it up to someone else to decide how to consider the various pre-RoC forms of China, because I know almost nothing about that and also I’m just really sick of this subject.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any point in comparing atrocities because there shouldn’t be a “winner” and the outcome is always just reducing the perceived impact of something horrible. I should’ve worded my reply better; I wasn’t trying to imply that plague blankets were worse, just that it seems like the early settlers get somewhat of a pass due to recency bias and the lurid nature of what some Nazis did.
Same order as magnitude definitely
Being awful isn’t a competition lmao
It actually was, NSDAP officials in charge of forced labour took bribes from the capitalists to direct the slaves to their factories. There also were literal open air slave markets in rural areas where forced labourers (and stolen farm animals) from Eastern Europe were divided between German kulaks, where also money and bribery played important roles. My own grandma and grandpa were kidnapped and sold like that.
@Awoo@hexbear.net @miz@hexbear.net
The only reason the Axis Powers didn’t have chattel slavery was because they were defeated in less than a generation (give or take-- Imperial Japan was doing shit to Korea and China for a lot longer than the nazis were in power). The nazis’ overall plan was to exterminate the entire Jewish, Roma, and black populations across the world then enslave all Eastern Europeans who survive in this scenario. Italy and Japan had similar ideas, with Japan being especially notable because of “comfort women.” The term itself is especially disgusting because it was the enslavement of women and girls as young as 9 or 10.