Should Russia seek apology for soviet war-crimes in germany

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Christian Ankerstjerne
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#46

Post by Christian Ankerstjerne » 21 Dec 2002, 20:47

Well, the Soviet union were behind the battles against Germany, and the Soviet union is dead - so why should Russia apologize?

Christian

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Angelo
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#47

Post by Angelo » 21 Dec 2002, 21:32

Basically, owing to the plain fact that when a company takes over, they
take in all debts and all credits too.

While this is not applicable to individuals (for selfevident reasons whereby
each one his to be held responsible of his own actions), it is quite reasonable when referred to institutions. Those crimes were committed
under the supervision of a State and as such can't just be liquidated by
a dissolution or administration changes.

That easy.

Angelo


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Deathshead
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Don't forget Japanese war crimes.

#48

Post by Deathshead » 21 Dec 2002, 23:06

I am not talking about the Russian people as a whole, not all Russians committed war crimes. I am talking about the ones who did committ these crimes and the former leaders of the Communist party. Just like the trials for German war criminals, not all Germans committed crimes. The should be no exceptions. The same with Japanese war criminals. How many Japanese war criminals have been punished for what they did in China? How about what they did to American POWs? These crimes have gone unpunished for too long. Yet there are monuments in Japan dedicated to these criminals. It seems like the Germans were the only ones to be punished after the war. Why is this? Hitler murdered 7,000,000 people. Stalin murdered 70,000,000+ in his lifetime.

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Antti V
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#49

Post by Antti V » 21 Dec 2002, 23:48

Christian Ankerstjerne wrote:Well, the Soviet union were behind the battles against Germany, and the Soviet union is dead - so why should Russia apologize?

Christian
Sorry, I need to ask:
Nazi-Germany is also dead, so why should democratic Germany apologize to the victims of holocaust if we are following that logic? Or do you think Germany shouldn´t apologize?

Political systems are gone, people aren´t. Some of those people who murdered other peoples as well the victims of war crimes are still here. They should get some compensation just like holocaust victims I think.

Or it is really so that all methods are acceptable as long as those are the methods used by winners and they can say who is guilty for what? :|

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Angelo
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#50

Post by Angelo » 22 Dec 2002, 00:50

Antti V wrote:
Christian Ankerstjerne wrote:Well, the Soviet union were behind the battles against Germany, and the Soviet union is dead - so why should Russia apologize?

Christian
Sorry, couldn´t resist but:
So is Nazi-Germany too, why should Germany apologize to the victims of holocaust if we are following that logic?
I mean political systems are gone, people aren´t. Some of those people who murdered other peoples as well the victims of war crimes are still here. They should get some compensation just like holocaust victims I think. :|

Or it is really so that all methods are acceptable as long as those are the methods by winners?
No, NOT ALL methods are acceptable, and the victors' methods may turn
out acceptable if they equitably value the defeated's guilt using the same
weights and logic by which they value their own's guilt. Or are they guiltless at all ?
If that was done, fine, let's clap our hands and sing, but if it wasn't, let's
at least hammer day in and day out that it should have been and that it
must be. If that means CHANGING the current PARAMETERS, let's do it,
if that means starting raising children with the idea that there's nothing more unjust than to believe that the enemy is ALWAYS THE BEAST and we are always THE STAINLESS FLAGBEARERS OF CIVILIZATION (whatever is meant by that), let's start right now instead of depicting such
IDEALS as sweet dreams, or wishful thinkings.
A hundred years ago, women's rights and life were INCOMPARABLY neglected and yet they have reached a level today, that though far from
perfect, is definitely more ACCEPTABLE than it was then.
But it took a deep and radical CHANGE OF MIND by all involved, parents,
schools, churches, press, and most of all women.
Here we are at a ridicule stage: all complain (and rightly so) about the
bloodshed and when you present them with the unique way out, they
start their highly "intellectual" derisory pseudo-justifications to cover up
for their TOTAL UNAVAILABILITY to start out on the road that's right
in front of them.
Let's move out of this trap and we'll be proud one day we had the courage
to lapidate the wrongs we had been subscribing to before, and give ALL
OF US AND OUR CHILDREN the chance to feel proud for better achievements than just RECKLESSLY KILLING EACH OTHER leaving their
successors the option to chose who was the best of the former dead fighters.
Let's try to stop becoming fatalists to the point of saying that "it would be
real nice, but nature is nature...." Nature can be corrected, if we mean to
do it. Oh, yeah, wasn't it natural that women should be treated like
door mats for over 2000 years ? Why bother than ? When it took some
few decades of real devotion to the cause to show the world that it wasn't
natural at all. It only implied a RADICAL CHANGE IN the then current
philosophy of life and a totally different approach in educating the new
children as they grew up.
We can really reach that goal but it won't be no war to stop all wars that
will make it happen. Just equity and honesty to all.

Regards.

Angelo

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Christian Ankerstjerne
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#51

Post by Christian Ankerstjerne » 22 Dec 2002, 01:12

Antti V wrote:
Christian Ankerstjerne wrote:Well, the Soviet union were behind the battles against Germany, and the Soviet union is dead - so why should Russia apologize?

Christian
Sorry, I need to ask:
Nazi-Germany is also dead, so why should democratic Germany apologize to the victims of holocaust if we are following that logic? Or do you think Germany shouldn´t apologize?

Political systems are gone, people aren´t. Some of those people who murdered other peoples as well the victims of war crimes are still here. They should get some compensation just like holocaust victims I think.

Or it is really so that all methods are acceptable as long as those are the methods used by winners and they can say who is guilty for what? :|
Yes, I don't think that present-day Germany should apologize - almost no-one in Germany can be blaimed for what happened previously. When it comes to companies, it is a bit different, but it depends on their degree of involvement.
The German leaders, who I consider the main responsibles, were punished back then. The Soviet leaders are all, or almost all, dead. To demand that they apologize will not only be pointless, but will also destroy a lot of the coorporation between Western Europe and Russia that has been established through recent years

I am not saying that what happened was okay, not for Germany of for the Soviet Union - but as I see it there is no reason to dwelve with the past to such an extent, but rather get on.

Christian

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Qvist
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#52

Post by Qvist » 02 Jan 2003, 14:25

Well, the Soviet union were behind the battles against Germany, and the Soviet union is dead - so why should Russia apologize?

Christian
Christian - Russia is the formal successor state to the Soviet Union, and so carries all of the USSRs international privileges and burdens. The Federal Republic of Germany has similarly accepted such a status with regard to the Third Reich. Thus, the fact that the USSR no longer exists has no relevance for this issue.

cheers

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Roberto
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Re: Don't forget Japanese war crimes.

#53

Post by Roberto » 04 Jan 2003, 01:14

Deathshead wrote:Why is this? Hitler murdered 7,000,000 people. Stalin murdered 70,000,000+ in his lifetime.
Where did you get those figures, especially the one for Stalin?

Question: Who was the Bloodiest Tyrant of the 20th Century?
Answer: We don't know.
That's probably the saddest fact of the Twentieth Century. There are so many candidates for the award of top monster that we can't decide between them. Whether it's Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong or Iosif Stalin is, quite frankly, anybody's guess.

For now, let's just skip over the whole margin of error thing -- reasonable people have studied the evidence and come up with wildly differing numbers. You're free to check my sources, but for now, trust me. I've studied the matter at great length and decided that the most likely death toll for these three are:

TYRANT DEATHS
Mao 40Million
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M

Well, that certainly looks like Mao is our man, but wait. Mao's largest crime is the Great Leap Forward, a bungled attempt to restructure the economy of China which created a famine that killed some 30M. If we confine our indictment to deliberate killings, we get this:

TYRANT KILLINGS
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M
Mao 10M

So it's Hitler, right? Except that most of the deaths on his head were caused by the Second World War. Sure, he started it, but our society does not blanketly condemn the starting of wars (after all, we reserve the right to do it ourselves in a just cause), and we certainly don't consider killing armed enemy soldiers in a fair fight to be a crime against humanity. If we therefore confine ourselves to the cold-blooded murder of unarmed non-combatants, our table rearranges itself again:

TYRANT MURDERS
Stalin 20M
Hitler 15M
Mao 10M

This brings Stalin floating to the top. So it look like once you reduce their crimes to the unjustifiably lowest common denominator, then Stalin is worst; however, you might want to argue that dead is dead so it really doesn't matter if you give your victims a chance to fight back. Fighting an unjust or reckless war is certainly a crime against humanity, so our numbers should go back to:

TYRANT KILLINGS
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M
Mao 10M

... and these are just the problems we'll encounter if we accept my numbers without debate. If we want to use the estimates of other scholars, we can pin up to 50 million murders on Stalin, enough to push him to the top of the list regardless of definition. Or we can whittle him down to 10 million murders if we use the low end of the margin of error, and scrounge several more tens of millions for Mao, or away from him.

So, the answer to the question of "Who is roasting on the hottest fires in Hell?" is "Well, that depends..."
Source of quote:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm

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#54

Post by Von_Mannteufel » 04 Oct 2003, 07:14

IMHO Russia shouldn't apologise for it's crimes but still someone crime on you doesn't give you the right to act the same way on him. Also even though winners make the rules war crime laws should be applied to everyone.

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They shuld apologize

#55

Post by Milkcloud » 07 Mar 2005, 19:44

its really annoying how some survivors of Red Army still brag about it.

No wonder why ex-USSR and ex-eastern bloc countries want NOTHING to do with Russia ... ( Poland, baltic countries ,etc) because of this " we are always right" attitude.

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#56

Post by David Thompson » 07 Mar 2005, 20:26

Milkcloud -- Welcome to the forum. Since the time that the previous comments were posted, there have been some changes in the forum and section rules, particularly regarding opinion posts. The current forum and section rules can be seen at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

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#57

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 07 Mar 2005, 21:04

It's ridiculous that Germany is just about the only country expected to apologize and bow its head in shame for all eternity because of WWII. It sends the message that Jewish lives are more important than anyone else's.

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#58

Post by David Thompson » 07 Mar 2005, 21:32

Beppo -- Nazi Germany murdered many people, only some of whom were Jewish. Intelligent people understand this.

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#59

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 07 Mar 2005, 21:41

So did the Soviet Union, but people don't speak of "collective guilt", reparation payments, and nationalism where Russia is concerned. I'm not advocating that Russia be subjected to that kind of crap, I'm merely pointing out a hypocrisy in expecting Germany to be apologetic to the world for all eternity while no one else has to utter a single regret about anything.

And I don't care for your implications that I'm stupid or less intelligent than yourself. If you don't want us to make personal insults, don't make them yourself.

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#60

Post by Topspeed » 07 Mar 2005, 22:18

I agree with Bebbo...it doesn't take much intelligency to see or know that Nazis killed lotsa people. Why did those clever germans end up doing so does require a lot of intelligency.

Soviets killed also all landowners and priests and officers and their emperor family. Why they did that takes a little intelligency too.

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