Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: barkorn45

I just find it interestinglly that some someone can critic it and not have'nt read it ?it puzzles me .

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ORIGINAL: barkorn45

I just find it interestinglly that some someone can critic it and not have'nt read it ?it puzzles me .

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ORIGINAL: barkorn45


Interestingly Hitler stated that if he was to have a son he would like him to be like Degrelle!

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ORIGINAL: Mehring

There's not so much between them, really. One led an empire trying in vain to fight off challenges to its global hegemony, the other led an aspiring economy making its second challenge. Both were ruthless representatives of their respective nation's ruling class.

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ORIGINAL: Mehring

There's not so much between them, really.

England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio Nelson October 1805

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ORIGINAL: molchomor

Regarding the Rudel book, if you are into the airwar, I really recommend the excellent books by Pierre Clostermann and Heinz Knoke.

And nope, none of them were nazis ;)

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ORIGINAL: Mehring

Problem is, there's not a single history book that isn't biased. Every book is written from one perspective or another and, irrespective of any outright invention, gives weight to some information at the expense of other information. History books are replete with "received wisdom" which goes unchallenged by authors because they find no reason to question it. Misinformation and lies are repeated until often they become the bedrock of society's understanding of history. "But everybody knows that's what happened," we are told. Our society differs from others by degree, and the degree changes with time.

Personally I'm heartened that people find Degrelle repugnant and agree it's a shame he wasn't executed. But that doesn't invalidate his book. Even if its primarily fiction- I don't know- it is an historical record of a way of thinking which was produced by historical interests and circumstances. Like Mein Kampf, Churchill's memoirs and every other book for that matter, it needs to be read critically.

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ORIGINAL: Bamilus

I don't need to read Hitler's terrible prose in Mein Kampf to know what he believed. The same goes for Degrelle. I think their actions were sufficient.

@ LRFSS

I don't have problems with the book because it might contain "offensive" content (whatever that means). I question the actual truthfulness of the writing because it is apparent that Degrelle was a fanatical fascist and spent the rest of his post war life trying to deny the Holocaust and legitimize the Third Reich. Anyone who tries to deny the Holocaust loses instant credibility in my book and therefore I put his memoirs in the category of fiction, the fanciful stuff of legend.

Many officers and soldiers who fought for the Axis have written legitimate memoirs of their experiences. Leon Degrelle is not one of them.

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ORIGINAL: ComradeP

I would agree that Churchill in many ways was not the great man pre-war as people would've wanted you to believe after the war, but he certainly can't be compared to Hitler. They were both products of a time and age, but Hitler was also a deranged madman on top of that. At his worst, Churchill just took credit for things he didn't really do or influenced and tried to brush away his not necessarily anti-German pre-war views by writing somewhat revisionist memoirs, but that was par for the course. After the war, everybody tried to prove that he was right, from the worst men of the Nazi and Soviet regimes to the heroes of democratic countries.

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

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ORIGINAL: Mehring

There's not so much between them, really.

Warspite1

How mind numbingly stupid, and spectacularly ungrateful too. Just to be clear you are saying there is not much difference between Adolf Hitler and Winston S Churchill?

Thanks to Churchill you are free to spout such nonsense, but I am also free to ignore. Green button for you.

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ORIGINAL: Steelers708

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

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ORIGINAL: Mehring

There's not so much between them, really.

Warspite1

How mind numbingly stupid, and spectacularly ungrateful too. Just to be clear you are saying there is not much difference between Adolf Hitler and Winston S Churchill?

Thanks to Churchill you are free to spout such nonsense, but I am also free to ignore. Green button for you.

Whilst I wouldn't want to go anywhere near saying that there wasn't much between Hitler and Churchill, I would say that Churchill is not the whiter than white glorious hero he is often made out to be. He had a darker side to him, look up the 1943 Bengal Famine and his recommendations regarding what would become the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act.

Here is a short example of his thinking, the whole article can be found here:


http://www.winstonchurchill.org/support/the-churchill-centre/publications/finest-hour-online/594-churchill-and-eugenics

He wrote to the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, in December 1910, about the "multiplication of the unfit" that constituted "a very terrible danger to the race." Until the public accepted the need for sterilisation, Churchill argued, the "feeble-minded" would have to be kept in custodial care, segregated both from the world and the opposite sex.

In his letter, Churchill told Asquith: "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I am convinced that the multiplication of the Feeble-Minded, which is proceeding now at an artificial rate, unchecked by any of the old restraints of nature, and actually fostered by civilised conditions, is a terrible danger to the race." Concerned by the high cost of forced segregation, Churchill preferred compulsory sterilisation to confinement, describing sterilisation as a "simple surgical operation so the inferior could be permitted freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others."

Churchill's letter to Asquith showed how much he regarded British racial health as a serious and an urgent issue. As he wrote to the Prime Minister: ‘I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.'[8].

To reinforce his sense of urgency, Churchill circulated to his Cabinet colleagues the text of a lecture by Dr A.F. Treadgold, one of the expert advisers to the Royal Commission. It was entitled "The Feeble-Minded-A Social Danger." Written in 1909, the lecture gave, in the words of Churchill's covering note, "a concise, and, I am afraid not exaggerated statement of the serious problems to be faced." Churchill added: "The Government is pledged to legislation, and a Bill is being drafted to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission."[9]

In February 1911, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons about the need to introduce compulsory labour camps for "mental defectives." As for "tramps and wastrels," he said, "there ought to be proper Labour Colonies where they could be sent for considerable periods and made to realize their duty to the State."[10] Convicted criminals would be sent to these labour colonies if they were judged "feeble-minded" on medical grounds. It was estimated that some 20,000 convicted criminals would be included in this plan. To his Home Office advisers, with whom he was then drafting what would later become the Mental Deficiency Bill, Churchill proposed that anyone who was convicted of any second criminal offence could, on the direction of the Home Secretary, be officially declared criminally "feeble-minded," and made to undergo a medical enquiry. If the enquiry endorsed the declaration of "feeble-mindedness," the person could then be detained in a labour colony for as long as was considered a suitable period.


What's the English translation of Arbeit Macht Frei, oh yes, Work Makes one Free as Churchill may have thought.