• HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    The US praised the Nazis for killing the communists. They supported their “cause” riiiiight up until they started attacking western Europe AKA the countries that actually matter.

    The US also hired tons of Nazi “scientists,” including granting them immunity for their roles in the Holocaust. They also granted the head of Unit 731 immunity (specifically from the USSR who rightly wanted him executed) in exchange for the human experimentation data. NATO coincidentally also has a ton of Nazis in its leadership.

    The US went as far as installing prominent Nazi figures back into West Germany in the same way they let confederates go back to their lives after the civil war. Whereas the Soviets executed Nazi leaders in East Germany because that’s what they fucking deserve. The US then claimed that the executed Nazis were victims of communism and included them in their “communism death toll” numbers.

    This isn’t an error. The US has always been sympathetic to Nazis, before, during, and after the war. They only begrudgingly pitched in against them because they viewed western Europe as slightly more important.

    Finally, the US didn’t even fucking do that much. Certainly nowhere near enough to justify their claim that they “saved the world” in WWII. The USSR and UK each did far more yet the US seems to think the USSR was fighting for the Nazis and the UK was a scared poodle hiding in their island until the heroic Americans came to save them, when in reality, the tide had already turned against the Nazis by the time the US joined. They also nuked Japan just because they could, it had nothing to do with the war because they already had intelligence that Japan was about to surrender.

    • lautre@jlai.lu
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      3 days ago

      The Nazi eugenics program was also strongly inspired by what the US was doing at the time.

      It’s just that the Nazi went a bit too far, too obvious (and mainly they lost the war). It was one of the arguments of the defense in the Nuremberg trial that the German eugenics differed little from what was practiced in the US.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      Minor correction: the US nuked Japan so the Soviets couldn’t be credited for Japan’s surrender as well as Nazi Germany. It was a calculated move by the US to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians just so that Socialism wouldn’t spread as much as it could have after the war due to the Soviets saving the world. The US paid the price of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilian lives in order to benefit its own standing after the war.

      • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Oh, it wasn’t because of the fanatical dedication of the Japanese armed forces that were so dug in it would have taken years and cost thousands of American lives to defeat them, island by island? It was because they didn’t want the Russians to hog all the glory? Never heard that one before

        • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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          the first bomb was dropped on 6 August, the Soviet Union declared war on the 8th. But contrary to American expectations and post-war claims, the author’s diligent research in the Japanese sources demonstrates conclusively that it was the Soviet declaration of war, not the atomic bombs, that forced the Japanese to surrender unconditionally.

          Geoffrey Jukes review Racing the enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the surrender of Japan by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          That justification was made after the fact. The truth is that Japan was already going to surrender. This isn’t a conspiracy theory either, it’s modern historical consensus, even the US Navy’s museum admits so. The USSR had just taken Berlin and the Nazis surrendered on May 8, and declared war on Imperial Japan on August 8 after both Japan and the US had seen the Red Army pivoting to their East, towards Manchuria.

          On August 9th, the Soviets invaded Japanese-controlled Manchuria, and Japan announced surrender on August 15th. The nukes were launched on the 6th and 9th of August, because the US didn’t want Japan to go Soviet, the US had plans of reforming Imperial Japan as a subsidiary Empire, maintaining Japan’s colonization of Korea and other Asian countries while profiting off of Japan, in a form of double Imperialism, and a Soviet Japan wouldn’t let that work. Their plan was thrown to dust with the Korean War that followed.

          While publicly stating their intent to fight on to the bitter end, Japan’s leaders (the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, also known as the “Big Six”) were privately making entreaties to the publicly neutral Soviet Union to mediate peace on terms more favorable to the Japanese. While maintaining a sufficient level of diplomatic engagement with the Japanese to give them the impression they might be willing to mediate, the Soviets were covertly preparing to attack Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea (in addition to South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) in fulfillment of promises they had secretly made to the US and the UK at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences.

          Right on Wikipedia.

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        3 days ago

        There were also 400,000 soldiers who died fighting fascists under the US flag, who were not responsible for their government’s decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons, nor Operation Paperclip, nor any other major government decisions.

        • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          Appreciate your comments. My grandfather fought Nazis, but then he stayed in the Navy through the Korean war. Guess which one haunted him the most.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          I’m aware, and am not trying to downplay that. My comment was about the US gov’s decision to bomb Japan, not to downplay the lives given by US soldiers in the fight against the Nazis.

          • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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            I hear you, I just feel like the meme was about the ordinary soldiers rather than the government. Fully respect wanting to correct the record regarding the government, just felt it was worth a reminder that there were people like the soldier in the meme who did sacrifice a lot fighting for a worthy cause and who do deserve respect, and our criticism of the government shouldn’t overshadow that. Just a small pushback on that, but one I felt was important.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              That’s a fair point to push back on. It wasn’t my intention to downplay the many brave US soldiers involved who were genuinely antifascist, but if my comments gave off that impression, then it’s good that you spoke up. My main critique of this comic isn’t even with the US, but with how (in my view) it treats liberalism and fascism as distinct, and not as the twins I understand them to be. The ending of the comic gives the impression that the former US was a bastion of antifascism and the modern US failed to get the memo, but the reality is that the fascists were always there, and the anti-fascists too. I wanted to add more materialism to the picture, and if in doing so I accidentally downplayed the role of the brave antifascists in the US Army that gave their lives fighting the Nazis, then I made my point poorly.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          The Red Army was responsible for 90% of Nazi deaths, and took Berlin. The Soviet Union paid by far the biggest price in winning World War II, and was by far the most responsible for ending it. I’m not going to apologize for being a Marxist, it sounds like you wished the other side won World War II.

        • Xoriff@lemmy.world
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          I’m anti-tankie as the next guy. But pick up a history book. Soviet Russia did a huge amount of the work during WW2.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              The Soviets were never “with the Nazis.” The Soviets spent years trying to get the West to form an allied pact against the Nazis, insteas the West gave the Nazis Czechoslovakia. The non-aggression pact was paid to buy time, as the USSR was a developing country and Germany a more developed one. Nazism and Communism are diametrically opposed and cannot coexist, in the years of the Nazis rise the Nazis murdered the Communists in Germany first, and the Soviets were constantly warning about the Nazi threat.

              The surprise attack by the Nazis was swift, brutal, and with genocidal intent. They took land quickly, but were pushed back into a stalemate, and then rapidly the Nazi line collapsed. Lend-Lease equipment arrived after the Red Army had stabilized, it certainly helped but was not critical to the success of the Red Army, they weren’t crumbling. Repeating Goebbels “Russian hordes” anti-Slavic racist talking points doesn’t help you either, there are no records of “wave tactics” as was reported by the Nazis. Those records came largely from pre-Soviet Russian tactics, not the tactics of the Red Army.

              They didn’t “fuck over” a bunch of countries either.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  I never rewrote anything. There were many pacts between Western Powers and Nazi Germany before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, including non-aggression pacts from Nazi Germany with Estonia, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Britain, Italy, Denmark, and more. The Nazis broke the vast majority of these treaties, and it was only when war was on the horizon and the pleas from the Soviets to form an alliance against the Nazis that they conceded to the fact that the West was never going to willingly ally with the Soviets unless they had to.

                  Further, the large majority of those who lived in the USSR want it back. This is extremely well-documented, because 7 million people died due to the fall of the USSR and the economic crisis that came with that collapse, along with the elimination of the social welfare that people depended on.

                  The “meat shield” line is straight from Nazi propagandists using anti-Slavic racism (coincidentally, this line has carried over to today). The Red Army was very competent and didn’t rely on “wave tactics” as a part of their battle strategem.

                  This is nonsense anti-communism.

            • Xoriff@lemmy.world
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              I didn’t say I was anti-marxist. I’m anti-authoritarian. In all it’s forms.

              • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                All it’s forms? So you oppose national borders? Private property ownership? Do you think Donbas should be allowed to leave Ukraine?

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                2 days ago

                “Tankie” is just a pejorative for Marxist, though, like “commie” or “pinko.” Marxism is “authoritarian” in that it expressly calls for flipping the Capitalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie into the Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat, ie turning from a society where the Capitalists are oppressing the working class via the state into a society where the working class wields the state against the Capitalists.

                This isn’t a real “dictatorship” in the modern sense, but a descriptor for where the balance of power lies, in the working class or Capitalist class, via Public ownership or Private ownership being primary. Socialism is still democratic, but will use the power of the state against the bourgeoisie. All states are authoritarian, what matters is which class is in control of the authority, and how we can move beyond class and thus the state.

                • Xoriff@lemmy.world
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                  Oh really? My bad. I’ve always heard it used specifically to talk about corrupted implementations of Marxism. E.g. Animal Farm.

                  Err, maybe I’m confusing Marxism and socialism.

                  I’m still not exactly clear on how any of it avoids corruption. At the end of the day, somebody decides whose street gets paved first.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                    Marxism is a branch of Socialism. The other major branch is Anarchism, and both Marxism and Anarchism have many sub-branches. For example, I am a Marxist-Leninist, which is generally the ideology guiding Cuba, the PRC, former USSR, etc. These are not “corrupted,” they are real and thus face real problems that systems that only exist in the minds of dreamers don’t have to. Marx would scoff at such dreamers that let perfection be the enemy of progress. I have an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list you can check out, if you are curious and want to glance through it to get an idea of what Marxism-Leninism is all about.

                    Secondly, Animal Farm. If you have the time, I think it would be worth reading A Critical Read of Animal Farm by Jones Manoel, and On Orwell by Roderic Day. Animal Farm is a work of fiction, written by an anti-Marxist Socialist. Orwell worked directly with British Intelligence to out Socialists and Communists, and kept a list of people he suspected were Jewish, due to his anti-semetism.

                    Orwell is magnified by Western Countries because he’s useful, he’s someone that at least pretends to be Left but spent more time attacking the Left than anything. Even his comrades in arms in Spain, when he fought alongside the Anarchists against the fascists, questioned why he wasn’t fighting on the other side. Animal Farm is chiefly a story about how the Russian Working Class was stupid and illiterate, and thus destined to be taken advantage of and could never hope to understand Marxism. Orwell spends an absurd amount of time describing just how stupid the non-pigs are, as describing poor, working folk as incapable of knowing their own interests is his critique.

                    As for corruption, Marxist Socialism solves it with recall elections and broader extension of democratic input. Democracy in the workplace is utter fantasy in Capitalism, but is very real in Socialist countries. Even if this democracy often is flawed, and runs into the real problems that real, existing systems run into just like any other, it still forms a higher degree of public control.

                    Hope that clears some things up for you!

                  • TheRealKuni@midwest.social
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                    3 days ago

                    No, you’re not wrong. They’re muddying meaning of the word “tankie.”

                    “Tankie” does not mean “commie.” Not all commies are tankies.

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      They also granted the head of Unit 731 immunity (specifically from the USSR who rightly wanted him executed) in exchange for the human experimentation data.

      “Experimentation” data that was entirely useless, if I remember correctly.

      • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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        Which might be understandable if they were lowly conscripted soldiers, but the ones that got into NATO were high ranking officers and other leaders in the Nazi party, many of whom architected the Holocaust.

        It takes years and a ton of personal effort and commitmemt to climb the ranks of any military or party. Even if you did get conscripted, why did you keep going?

        “Help I’m being forced to use my own cruelty and demonic propensity for making people suffer to organize a genocide after I spent years proving that I was the right person for the job! My only hope is if a peaceful, civilized, Western military alliance hires me once this ordeal that I’m in no way enjoying or benefiting from is over!”

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
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      I know, see Operation Paperclip and I also know that the end of the nazi Germany is mainly thanks to Rusia and allies, US entered when the main task was already done. Without the French and British resistance, USA couldn’t even have managed to enter Germany.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        Zionism is anti-semetic, ironically. The Zionists were anti-Yiddish and collaborated with the Nazis (yes, you’re reading this right). Further, the Zionist mythos depends on fostering anti-semetism abroad, so that there seems to be legitimacy in having a “safe country for Jewish peoples,” even if that country is a genocidal settler-colony.

        I recommend reading To Stop Marx, They Made Zion.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        Zionism is the one thing where anti-semites and Jews (at least zionist Jews) agree.

        Zionist Jews want it because it gives them their own country where they are not persecuted.

        Anti-semites want it, because it means that the Jews are not in their country.

        That’s why even the literal Nazis supported zionism. Every Jew in Israel was one less Jew in Germany.

        You get the same thing still today with the most right-wing politicians supporting Zionism/Israel. On the one hand because it’s a way to keep Jews far away and on the other hand because it can be used as a “I’m supporting Israel, so surely I can’t be a Nazi. Anyway, let’s go shoot some Muslims.”-kind of excuse.