a few minor revisions
I have promised to show why I think Nixon was the worst modern president, but I am not going to do it here. In part, because few of you care, in part because the project is too long to keep promising and I want to do it slowly, and in part because there is a better place to do it. So, go there if you care.....But now, all this research into Nixon's
( Read more... )
Just looking at the numbers is revealing. In 1943, Germany had approximately 80 million citizens. So, over the three years of its existence, the Volkgerichtshof handed out death sentences/arrests to 10,000 people. Let's assume that there were many more resisters who were either shot anonymously, did their resistance either successfully or so quietly to be under the SS radar, etc. Maybe 80,000 Germans were active resisters (although I doubt it, but okay). If that number is close, then 1 German in a 1000 was a part of the resistance movement and suffered ramifications from that. Almost all Germans said nothing (in fear, and other reasons), or did worse, and participated.
On the other side, 6 million Jews were killed, and as many more Non-Jews, but still undesirables, as well (Gypsies, Poles, etc.) Wanna bet the ratios of population suffering was equal to 1 in 1000? No?
A story is the German Resistance, and it is an interesting one, well worth telling. But if the telling minimizes the emotional charge of the statistical ramifications of the Atrocities, if that story is told to give a misleading impression, then maybe it wasn't worth telling in the first place.
More Germans died in war actions against the Allies in EVERY SINGLE MONTH you say the VOLKSGERICHTSHOF censured in their entire period. More Jews were killed by Germans (on average) in every single week of the war (after 1940) than Germans censured by the Volksgerichtshof during its entire operation. And to boot, some of those killed were merely enemies of Hitler, not actual resistance to the war. I'll bet Hitler used that committee to take care of some other business as well. That is the nature of evil empires.
So, as a person who appreciates quantification in understanding many matters, 10000 Germans is very little balance against 10 million victims, and another many millions of actual war casualties. Yes, I call the July20 Plot insignificant, and the rewriting of history as if there was more than a tiny overt resistance to Hitler as dangerous revisionism. The numbers don't work.
I do very much thank you for responding, very much. Thanks!
Reply
But I give you one point why it is significant and significant beyond Germany: Looking forward, people will know that standing up is the right thing to do. That you end up playing the percentages betting your own life against slim chances of success is something that doesn't enter the equation in deciding to stand up.
Reply
In fact, this last comment will moderate my view a bit, after some thought, I think.
If this movie makes your point to even some (enough) people, maybe it was worth the historical fudging. (I'll point out that the movie "Schindler's list made that point while still keeping a sense of Hitlerian reality in focus, but then, that was a better movie.) I really hope you are right. I am an idealist (apparently) and some part of me thinks that if the German people had stood up en masse back in 1938, history would not have suffered the holocaust.
I apologize for my underlying bitterness. I'll try to sublimate that more.
Thanks a lot!
Reply
Leave a comment