I wonder if the Nazis killed anyone in Soviet territory or did anything particularly heinous that would disgust anyone.

(I kind of wonder if Quora should be disallowed cause it's just easy pickings)

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Winston-Churchill-oppose-killing-SS-officers-after-the-war-Did-Stalin-want-them-dead-for-revenge-or-to-stop-a-future-Nazi-Germany

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    58
    5 months ago

    i dig the instant and brazen conflation of "SS Officers" with "german soldiers", Jim Wayne, Duke University alum. more like Dooky University.

    in war time Germany, officers were like 3% of all military personnel; a 33-to-1 ratio of not-officers to officers. 50,000 SS officers would mean the SS was officer heavy compared to regular army, which is very on-brand for a highly-political and tightly managed military group, representing >6% of the total SS force. today's bloated US officer corps is around 19% for reference, and people write white papers about how it's either an organizational crisis or cool, actually.

    anyway, SS as an organization had 800,000 individuals, while the ww2 german army had 13.6 million members. those 50,000 criminals would represent the hardened core of ideologically committed and experienced killers. no doubt they were crucial in western containment of socialism.

    • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
      hexbear
      11
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Bigger ratio of officers and especially NCO's to rank soldiers is normal in peacetime, it gives army room to rapidly expand in case of war, though 19% officers is still very excessive. It is a crisis which is characteristical for armies losing their military proficiency and turning into bloated bureocracies. What's unusual in this particular case is that they are in constant war, but they only do one sided agressions against weak victims so majority of the army is free to wallow in corruption and stagnancy while minority is responsible for carrying the abovementioned acts - therefore this minority is the real military and the rest are likely just ballast - again characteristical thing for decaying colonial empires, compare especially with post-WW1 France.

  • viva_la_juche [they/them, any]
    hexbear
    48
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Show

    My mental gymnastics: nazis should die and stalin wisely knew this

    Stalin feared opposition to being a dictator mental gymnastics: that shit ^

    • voight [he/him, any]
      hexbear
      22
      5 months ago

      Please think about how much harder Stalin made it to defend the USSR to British people in light of this 😭😭😭 the USSR is gone but socialism in one Britain can still happen!

  • invo_rt [he/him]
    hexbear
    46
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Churchill opposed it because he was totally cool with Germany doing N*zi shit up until it threatened Western Europe. He was an ardent anti-communist and had his generals draw up a plan to attack the USSR at the end of WW2 "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire".

    Stalin was joking, but really, they had been invaded twice in a few decades, just lost 20M people, and engaged in all-out total war for multiple years. Even with 50K officers executed, it wouldn't come close to the scale of the USSR's losses. If Stalin was truly concerned, Zhukov would've been taking afternoon tea in London.

    • CTHlurker [he/him]
      hexbear
      11
      5 months ago

      Whenever I occassaionally try to remove some of the brainworms of the people around me, whenver they talk about "stalin and hitler being the same", i mention the fact that if Stalin had been as brutal/genocidal as Hitler had, there would have been no Germans left in any of the Soviet occupied territories. Nazi Germany killed more than 20 million civillians, and if Stalin had actually sought revenge there would not have been anything left of Germany east of the occupation line.

  • @Sinistar
    hexbear
    44
    5 months ago

    He's right that SS officers would go on to oppose the Soviets (after they were put in charge of NATO and West Germany)

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    hexbear
    41
    5 months ago

    If the SS oppose you, you're probably doing something right

  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
    hexbear
    40
    5 months ago

    I wonder why anti-communist leaders didn't want to kill the most credentialed anti-communist troops on the planet thinking-about-it

      • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
        hexbear
        36
        5 months ago

        Imagine escaping justice by the skin of your teeth after taking the biggest L in history only to find yourself on the frontlines of taking two more massive L's afterwards.

        • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]
          hexagon
          hexbear
          21
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          I recall a documentary a (French?) person did who secretly filmed an ex-Nazi who served in (I believe) Africa admitting to atrocities committed as a mercenary after WW2. These people got to escape being hanged for war crimes and had the opportunity to reflect and repent, but ultimately Nazis only ever deserve to be <redacted> <redacted> <redacted>.

      • casskaydee [she/her]
        hexbear
        34
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        anakin-padme-1 some French Foreign Legion guys told me about how former SS officers tried to help them prevent communist revolution in Vietnam and it really changed my perspective

        anakin-padme-2 changed your perspective.. about anti communism right?

        anakin-padme-3

  • Dolores [love/loves]
    hexbear
    34
    5 months ago

    I kind of wonder if Quora should be disallowed cause it's just easy pickings

    yeah its a cesspool so if people started posting Quora regularly it'd literally fill up your whole feed. there's single question threads that could lol. but apparently we're too well adjusted and self-loving to torture ourselves so, we love our beautiful hexbeariens don't we heart-sickle

    • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
      hexbear
      45
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Yes, as a response to Roosevelt joking in fact. The (likely apocryphal) anecdote goes, while meeting at the Tehran conference in 1943 Roosevelt suggested unseriously that after the war they should execute 10,000 Nazi officers, Stalin replied 10,000? Why not 50,000?

      Then Churchill stormed out in a huff because "they were just honorable men defending their nation".

      • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]
        hexbear
        31
        5 months ago

        Churchill, the only man with the charisma that would make him come second in a likeability contest with a former Georgian peasant judged by a descendant of the closest thing the US has to an aristocracy

        "He's so cool he had to write down his insults ahead of time" fucking genocidal loser

        • CascadeOfLight [he/him]
          hexbear
          25
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          Truly the historical figure that makes me angriest thanks to his mainstream historical perception as a lovable roguish wholesome chungus, versus his actual nature as an oafish brutal bloodsoaked demon - especially compared against the heap of trash piled on the name of Stalin.

          Liberals will accuse you of falling for "cult of personality propaganda" and then act like Winston doesn't have a place in hell right next to Adolf.

          • PKMKII [none/use name]
            hexbear
            23
            5 months ago

            I just fall back on “ask the Bengalis what they think of Churchill.”

          • @GinAndJuche
            hexbear
            11
            5 months ago

            But DAE le epic “good for him it was bloody cold out”?

  • Rojo27 [he/him]
    hexbear
    30
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Britain's enemy's would use it to justify killing British soldier who are in their control.

    Huh, well when you put it like that, maybe those imperialist foot soldiers should diebrow

  • Torenico [he/him]
    hexbear
    23
    5 months ago

    Duke University and graduated in 1967, producing such shitty arguments. That's ameriKKKan's top education right there.