a19999577 -> RE: Von Paulus (8/27/2004 5:17:34 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: dinsdale quote:
Not quite. I am not comparing 1945 Hitler with Bush, I am comparing 1933-1938 Hitler's foreign policies with Bush only as far as their General's 'moral duty' to depose them is concerned. I insist that it is unfair to give German Generals the ability to foresee what was going to happen and thus hold them morally responsible for not preventing it. So none of them read Mein Kampf, knew about the Nuremburg Laws, or knew of any attrocity carried out in Germany, Austria or The Sudentenland. Must have been a very lazy set of officers to be so unaware of their leader's grand design and the actions being carried out by their troops. quote:
Right now we can debate our heads off on whether Bush is going to lead this world into an age of Atomic 'terrorism' due to his warmongering policies, but we don't know he will, just as anyone in 1938 didn't know Hitler would lead the world into another World War. No, no one was aware of the Z-plan, or had partaken in militarist expansion between 1936 and 1938 at all [8|] I'm sure the war came as a huge surprise to the German military, somehow less of a surprise than to Britain and France who began war preparations before the ink on Munich was dry. quote:
Sure, with the information available in 1938 or early 39 they could have argued that he would, but at the time it was mere speculation. ... Would it be fair of me to DEMAND Colin Powell lead a military insurrection against Bush in order to prevent what I speculate might happen? It was most certainly more than mere speculation in 1938. If the scenario you propose today were as clear-cut as that, then it would be a duty of Powell et al to prevent it from happening. Apologies for my part in derailing the thread. I care nothing for what others may think of Bush, but whenever the comparison to Nazi Germany is made it cheapens the suffering of that regieme's victims, and the cost in lives to remove them from the earth. I repeat, I am not comparing Nazi Germany to any other regime. I am pointing out that most German Generals [except, of course, Beck] had a more 'sensible' [at the time] reading of Hitler's future. His anti-communist and anti-semitic rhetoric was seen as posturing that wouldn't go much further. If they had been convinced of what was going to happen, then sure, hold them responsible, but talking about genocide and whole-scale war and war crimes in 1938 would, at the time, seem mostly alarmist exaggeration. As for 'comparing' the Nazis with anyone else being off-limits, I do realize that that is what people think now, but it is far from the way it has to be. I, as a historian, don't have anything off limits for dissection, and I don't need to say that Genghis Khan was a 'big, bad, meanie' when talking about his statesmanship. I, too, apologize for derailing the thread, and don't have much more to say on the topic. If anyone wants to continue blaming us for not getting rid of anyone we think might develop destructive tendencies in the future, that's ok with me.
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