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[SolidusDave]

It's only mentioned in passing in this video, but the devastation that the 2nd Sino Japanese war (no sense in scoping it down to the WW2 period) brought on mainland China cannot be overstated, and unlike the Soviets, they didn't get to exact revenge on them.

Murdering and raping yourself through a civilian population is not really the kind of revenge that achieves justice....


But I agree that stuff went horrible wrong with dealing with Japan. Part of why no one bats an eye when they white-wash their history more and more.
Imagine if Josef Mengele had been placed as the new chief of whatever post-war research medical center...



btw.: When will we reach the point in time that shows how the trend of wars/numbers of casualties was reduced for such a long time (that Peace period indicate din the video) that WW2 will be listed as good/necessary by being a wake up moment for humanity?

 

[JB1981]

It's sobering to think that, due to the Cold War, much of our media and history texts portray WWII as primarily a conflict between the UK and Germany, but the war would have been completely lost without the Soviets.

I was thinking the same exact thing.

 

[Measley]

The Soviet deaths are really staggering. However, so were the German deaths. As an American I view Pearl Harbor as a shocking and horrible event, but that's nothing compared to Leningrad, the urban bombings in Britain, and the firebombing of Germany.

Also I had never even heard of the flooding of the Yellow River. Pretty despicable act on the Chinese by other Chinese.

 

[WeAreStarStuff]

That was a very well put together video. Those Soviet loses are just staggering. Here in America; we never much focused on the other losses in the war (at least from experience.)

 

[Ecotic]

btw.: When will we reach the point in time that shows how the trend of wars/numbers of casualties was reduced for such a long time (that Peace period indicate din the video) that WW2 will be listed as good/necessary by being a wake up moment for humanity?

It's not pre-ordained that this peace will last. It's held in place by hegemonic stability of the United States and NATO, and the inability of other nations to challenge it. Something that won't last many decades longer.

 

[Fliesen]

when they reach the soviet numbers... it's like one of those videos where you see scale of our solar system's planets compared to the sun.

 

[Prez]

It's not pre-ordained that this peace will last. It's held in place by hegemonic stability of the United States and NATO, and the inability of other nations to challenge it. Something that won't last many decades longer.

I'm not quite sure if most countries would be able to get young men to take arms these days. Most young people have a life of comfort and luxury that's never been seen before and are well enough educated on history to realize how utterly pointless it is to fight another developed country.

 

[Vampirolol]

And to think that just a single life has no price. I will always be grateful to te poeple that fought for freedom back then, I wouldn't be here.

 

[PeskyToaster]

The Wehrmacht is just as guilty of Nazi war crimes as anyone else in that regime. I've seen the documents myself and the testimonies.

Fun fact: Men who were part of the killing squads (Einsatzgruppen, reserves, police battalions) were explicitly told that they could be assigned to another task.

Fun fact 2: There is no documented evidence that anyone was punished for refusing to kill as part of the Holocaust. No one was punished for not denouncing a neighbor to the Gestapo.

The Nazis didn't have the manpower to enforce their will on an entire nation, they required widespread grassroots support from the population and they got it, at home and in occupied nations as well.

 

[Bit-Bit]

Holy shit, that was amazing. I freaking love watching data be visualized. But to see it about WW2... it's just so sad.

 

[Ecotic]

I'm not quite sure if most countries would be able to get young men to take arms these days. Most young people have a life of comfort and luxury that's never been seen before and are well enough educated on history to realize how utterly pointless it is to fight another developed country.

Yeah, well that's certainly true for western democracies. 50 years from now though you could have a dangerous situation where China, India, and maybe even Nigeria have achieved aggregate GDP superpower status but the general population remains poor and uneducated.

 

[CouchMaster]

That rising tower of Russian death toll and realizing that each dot represented a thousand souls. Man, hope we never see anything like this ever again.

 

[StayDead]

I'm not quite sure if most countries would be able to get young men to take arms these days. Most young people have a life of comfort and luxury that's never been seen before and are well enough educated on history to realize how utterly pointless it is to fight another developed country.

See that's how I see it as well and I also believe it's near impossible to turn people against each other thanks to the internet and globalisation meaning the majority now know that people from other cultures andplaces are exactly the same as you just with a different government and upbringing.

The WW2 style of propaganda used to turn people against each other just simply wouldn't work in todays society. Although the increasing amount of idiocy regarding the Muslim faith being spread by right wing media and idiots in Europe somewhat worries me. Although maybe just like modern day peace time is represented in the video the sane side of those arguments is rarely talked about as it isn't really necessary and doesn't drive ratings and hits that the media crave.

 

[ClosingADoor]

I'm not quite sure if most countries would be able to get young men to take arms these days. Most young people have a life of comfort and luxury that's never been seen before and are well enough educated on history to realize how utterly pointless it is to fight another developed country.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Once things get going, it is very easy to have groups start hating each other in a short time. Propaganda is a powerful tool, certainly when a conflict is already going. Just look at Russia for example over the past year.

Fighting between Western powers seems out of the question for the foreseeable future. But that is not the case for the whole world, and we never know how things will develop. Alliances and economic interests make this also a tricky thing and can make a conflict spiral out of control.

I don't think we will see anything on the scale of WWII for some time (and luckily so!), but the possibility is always there. It only takes one big event to get things going. Who knows who the major players are in a 100 years in the world and how they run their countries.

 

[Randam]

The Wehrmacht is just as guilty of Nazi war crimes as anyone else in that regime. I've seen the documents myself and the testimonies.

Fun fact: Men who were part of the killing squads (Einsatzgruppen, reserves, police battalions) were explicitly told that they could be assigned to another task.

Fun fact 2: There is no documented evidence that anyone was punished for refusing to kill as part of the Holocaust. No one was punished for not denouncing a neighbor to the Gestapo.

The Nazis didn't have the manpower to enforce their will on an entire nation, they required widespread grassroots support from the population and they got it, at home and in occupied nations as well.

Sources for this?

 

[thenexus6]

Great video, well put together. That long peace bit hurt my eyes though!

 

[Prez]

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Once things get going, it is very easy to have groups start hating each other in a short time. Propaganda is a powerful tool, certainly when a conflict is already going. Just look at Russia for example over the past year.

Fighting between Western powers seems out of the question for the foreseeable future. But that is not the case for the whole world, and we never know how things will develop. Alliances and economic interests make this also a tricky thing and can make a conflict spiral out of control.

I don't think we will see anything on the scale of WWII for some time (and luckily so!), but the possibility is always there. It only takes one big event to get things going. Who knows who the major players are in a 100 years in the world and how they run their countries.

Unless everyone is starving or use of nukes is involved, I don't see an entire generation willing to give up their comfy life, partake in a grand scale war and likely die for an insane ideology. Thanks to the internet and decent education we all know better than that. Any western government who tries to pull that shit will quickly be overturned by its own people and they know it. You'd need a completely isolated dictatorship like North Korea to be able to brainwash the population into supporting an all-out war. Propaganda alone won't do much with the internet and free speech around.

 

[Lord Thrappleper The 49th]

Good video, but I would guess that the long peace is not because humanity realised the horrible atrocities of war, but because nuclear weapons were a reality. Every would be invader realised that their glorious occupation of the enemy would be rendered moot because some countries are crazy enough to destroy anything then change governments and official languages.

The long peace is not peace itself, but more fear that whoever acts first will be responsible for destroying the world.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Unless everyone is starving or use of nukes is involved, I don't see an entire generation willing to give up their comfy life, partake in a grand scale war and likely die for an insane ideology. Thanks to the internet and decent education we all know better than that. Any western government who tries to pull that shit will quickly be overturned by its own people and they know it. You'd need a completely isolated dictatorship like North Korea to be able to brainwash the population into supporting an all-out war. Propaganda alone won't do much with the internet around.

Thing is, you are talking about a Western government starting something then. I don't think in the foreseeable future any Western country is going to start a major war. Yes, you have them starting or involved in conflicts in the Middle-east and Africa and such, but not with major world players.

The thing is, in a few decades the balance of power will have shifted at least partially away from them. And when other major players by that time start something, it can spiral out of control and get a lot of countries involved. I'm not saying this is guaranteed, but it is always something that can happen. After World War 1 a lot of people also thought 'never again' and then World War 2 happened (some see it as just a continuation of WW1, but that is another discussion).

I think you are overstating the use of the internet. How many people in Russia believe the annexation of Crimea is a good thing? Those people can also go online, but their media holds major power over what they do see and hear.

And even in Western countries, look at the things networks put in the air and people at up. Even younger generations. The internet is a tool that can be used for education, but it is not a magical thing that will suddenly make people smarter.

Even if a major war stays isolated to a certain continent, due to the amount of people we have now, casualties have the potential to become even higher. If a conflict between China and Japan for example ever starts (I don't think it will anytime soon, but you just can't be sure) even bombing one major city is millions of people there already.

 

[~Devil Trigger~]

oh can we not do this again humanity, please lets not do this again

 

[PeskyToaster]

Sources for this?

I talked about it in the World War II OT but I believe Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is essential reading for anyone in life. The other stuff was from a Nazi Germany document reader. Just a big book of documents trabsalted into English from the era.

 

[Prez]

edit: wrong thread.

 

[Frozenprince]

A well done video.
And while such high level look at casualties can definitely give you some insights, I think it always important to complement it by remember the individual horrors WWII brought upon people.


Stalin had very little regard for human lives, no doubt, but it's also important not to downplay brilliant Soviet commanders like Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsk.
The most important battles of the eastern front (Stalingrad, Kursk) were not won by human wave attacks.

I would never demean the Russian command structure, Stalingrad, Moscow, Kursk, those were won through superior tactics, was just remarking that the human wave tactics are a major reason as to why the body count was so high.

 

[paperboywriter]

The Wehrmacht is just as guilty of Nazi war crimes as anyone else in that regime. I've seen the documents myself and the testimonies.

Fun fact: Men who were part of the killing squads (Einsatzgruppen, reserves, police battalions) were explicitly told that they could be assigned to another task.

Fun fact 2: There is no documented evidence that anyone was punished for refusing to kill as part of the Holocaust. No one was punished for not denouncing a neighbor to the Gestapo.

The Nazis didn't have the manpower to enforce their will on an entire nation, they required widespread grassroots support from the population and they got it, at home and in occupied nations as well.

are you for real?

 

[amar212]

I'm reading Max Hastings 'Inferno' at the moment, and he makes the point that there was really no way the western democracies could have gone through what the USSR suffered. It was uniquely placed both as a society and in terms of its leadership to deal with the Eastern Front.

Yes, I find that thesis100% accurate.

Contextualization is often missing from any historical insigts.

For example, the Allies allowed for massive slaughters of civilians and surendered pro-Nazi persons in Europe in days war was ending. In that time it was seen as normal treatment of Axis suppoters and personnel. Nobody raised an eyebrow. Tens and tens of thousands were killed, even hundreds.

70 years later those evens are seen as brutal reprecussion.

It strongly depends of context, especially context of time.

 

[Cryxo93]

Humbling to say the least...

 

[fizzelopeguss]

The most powerful and wealthiest nations in the history of the globe, dedicating their entire demographic, production, intellectual and scientific efforts to the art of massacre, rape, and plunder. It was never gonna end well.

 

[FStop7]

Soviet Union holyshit..

This is why they take their WW2 memorials and monuments so very seriously (callback to the thread about someone being prosecuted for twerking in front of a WW2 monument in Russia.)

 

[Fuchsdh]

Just asking for people to stop having double standards about this. Boo boo Stalin killed people but a nuke or two is alright.

Our world pretty much operates on the foundation that not all killing is murder, and not all murder is equal. By most people's estimations, murdering millions of your own people is worse than killing the enemy. By many estimates, Stalin easily killed as many or more of his people during his reign than died in WWII. I feel safe saying that yeah, that is worse than nuking or firebombing 500,000 civilians. Even horrible acts accede to scale.

 

[Chichikov]

I would never demean the Russian command structure, Stalingrad, Moscow, Kursk, those were won through superior tactics, was just remarking that the human wave tactics are a major reason as to why the body count was so high.

I think *the* major reason for the high casualty number is that they bore the brunt of the Wehrmacht offensive.
The Germans had the best military in the world, any county who would've had to contend with such attack would've had two options - surrender or suffer pretty damn similar casualty rate.
And the fact that the Nazis fought a war of extermination against them kinda took surrender off the table (not that Stalin would've taken it).

With that being said, it's without a doubt true that had Stalin didn't purge many of his best commanders, the casualties in the early stages of operation Barbarossa wouldn't have been so high (the battle of Kiev immediately pop to mind) but by the time that we get to the bloodiest battles - Stalingrad, the battle of Budapest, the battle of Berlin, the Red Army is a very well commanded fighting force, and it does not engage in pointless human wave attacks.

 

[Mumei]

Watching this brought me back to this book:

Which is probably the most wrenching work of nonfiction that I've read.

“It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander. It is tempting to say that a Nazi murderer is beyond the pale of understanding. ...Yet to deny a human being his human character is to render ethics impossible.

To yield to this temptation, to find other people inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.”

“The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, some of which we can only estimate, some of which we can reconstruct with fair precision. It is for us as scholars to seek those numbers and to put them into perspective. It is for us as humanists to turn the numbers back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity.”

The numbers are incomprehensibly abstract in their scale, but he forces you to view the victims as individuals. You find yourself grieving over the suffering and loss of that individual, and then he forces you to consider the numbers as individuals in the same way. It's one of the most crushing and powerful books I've read and I can't recommend it highly enough.

 

[Anjelus_]

Sources for this?

Not exactly light reading, but you did ask:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568521332/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[FyreWulff]

It's weird to think after seeing that death count and wondering where we'd be today in terms of population etc if WW2 hadn't happened.

Entire families, country-sized amount of people, just gone.

 

[SirUltimos]

Watching this brought me back to this book:

Which is probably the most wrenching work of nonfiction that I've read.





The numbers are incomprehensibly abstract in their scale, but he forces you to view the victims as individuals. You find yourself grieving over the suffering and loss of that individual, and then he forces you to consider the numbers as individuals in the same way. It's one of the most crushing and powerful books I've read and I can't recommend it highly enough.

That's actually a very powerful and sobering thought. It's easy to look at the deaths just as numbers and forget the human side of it. Forcing yourself to instead picture every single one as a person is something beyond words.

 

[paperboywriter]

Not exactly light reading, but you did ask:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568521332/?tag=neogaf0e-20

can you state the title of the book? I cant open the link.

 

[franbatista123]

Stalin literally just threw waves of humans at German guns to keep them at bay.

And that's the reason we're not speaking German today. Are you aware of Hitler's plan for the Soviet Union? It involved exterminating something like 80% of the population (IIRC) and enslaving the rest.

 

[Randam]

I talked about it in the World War II OT but I believe Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is essential reading for anyone in life. The other stuff was from a Nazi Germany document reader. Just a big book of documents trabsalted into English from the era.

okay, I'm watching a dokumatary about the Einsatzgruppen right now.
german name is "Das radikal Böse".

try if you can find it.
it explaines why a lot didn't refuse to participate in those actions.

german version has a lot of english speaking too though,

 

[Anjelus_]

can you state the title of the book? I cant open the link.

It's called The Good Old Days by Ernst Klee. It's a translation of a German book that amasses the various reports and firsthand accounts from people who participated in or witnessed Einsatzgruppen actions (massacres) after Operation Barbarossa.

 

[temp]

Sure, I guess it's an excuse to go through them again. I'll pm you if I find it. I'm pretty sure I remember it being a weird off-color comment so I'm going to check out my armor books first (T-34 or SU-series) because the book was supposed to be about armor and it touched on that.

Cool, thanks!

Well when your leader says stuff like this:

As far as I know, the guy never said that.

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/

And even if he did, you can obviously read it a few different ways, like so:

That's actually a very powerful and sobering thought. It's easy to look at the deaths just as numbers and forget the human side of it. Forcing yourself to instead picture every single one as a person is something beyond words.

One man's story is more touching than an abstract number.

 

[CountAntonius]

Just asking for people to stop having double standards about this. Boo boo Stalin killed people but a nuke or two is alright.

Double standard? I just saw the graphic and was blown away by his causalities. I only commented on him because of that. There is a pretty large disregard of life from everyone when it comes to war obviously.

 

[iidesuyo]

And to think that just a single life has no price. I will always be grateful to te poeple that fought for freedom back then, I wouldn't be here.

Why?

 

[iidesuyo]

The Wehrmacht is just as guilty of Nazi war crimes as anyone else in that regime.

This is stupid. The Wehrmacht was was made up from the averave conscripts, of course there were war criminals. It was an army of millions of man.

The Allied bomber crews who threw fire(!!!) bombs on Axis cities were war criminals as well. These bombs were not made to destroy infrastructure, they were only designed to kill as many people as possible. Children? Civlian? To the average officer the life of an enemy was worth as much as a fly shit.

 

[30yearsofhurt]

Watching this brought me back to this book:

Which is probably the most wrenching work of nonfiction that I've read.

“It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander. It is tempting to say that a Nazi murderer is beyond the pale of understanding. ...Yet to deny a human being his human character is to render ethics impossible.

To yield to this temptation, to find other people inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.”

The numbers are incomprehensibly abstract in their scale, but he forces you to view the victims as individuals. You find yourself grieving over the suffering and loss of that individual, and then he forces you to consider the numbers as individuals in the same way. It's one of the most crushing and powerful books I've read and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I think this is a very important quote.
People are all too ready to write Hitler and Stalin off as just crazy and evil.
Really they were a product of their times and their societies.
They did what they did for a reason and their countries followed them because they believed in those reasons too.

 

[Africanus]

Regarding the Soviet casualties.
This is the reason the eastern bloc was allowed to form, and why many Russians were angered at Gorbachev in the 1980s and 1990s with the fall of communism.

They felt that they had paid "in rivers of blood" for their land and the ones around them.

Not that it's acceptable to take away sovereignty, but I can only imagine what happens to the mind when over 80% of Russian men born in the early 1920s died.

Another World War shall happen again as these memories fade behind. Already an entire lifetime has passed, and everyone remembers what happens when the last members of a tragic event die out. The lessons are forgotten.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

This is stupid. The Wehrmacht was was made up from the averave conscripts, of course there were war criminals. It was an army of millions of man.

He says some questionable things, but that statement specifically is not off the mark. There is a trend of people saying that the Wehrmacht was essentially separate from Nazi ideology, just regular people, and they it was the SS and other organisations that orchestrated the true atrocities. Sometimes people will argue that the WM was somewhat unaware of the genocide going on. You can see this in a lot of pop culture, the most recent example that springs to mind is Fury where the characters say "oh, the SS, those are the real bastards" and imply that the SS are the evil people and the WM are just regular joes. In reality, the SS was, just like the WM, filled with conscripts, often forcibly conscripted, more so the longer the war went on. Similarly, the WM was responsible for a LOT of war crimes, knowledge of these crimes was widespread, and the formations were filled with many loyal and zealous Nazis.

People will talk about how good Germany has been for owning up to the crimes of WWII, but in many ways they have come to terms with their past by compartmentalising it.

 

[Dinokill]

WW2 was the last total war. Total destruction with disregard of human life(soldiers and civilians) on all fronts that spawned 4 continents. the 1940s was the closest the human civilization will ever get to total collapse until total collapse does occur.

 

[Delta Assault]

I think *the* major reason for the high casualty number is that they bore the brunt of the Wehrmacht offensive.
The Germans had the best military in the world, any county who would've had to contend with such attack would've had two options - surrender or suffer pretty damn similar casualty rate.
And the fact that the Nazis fought a war of extermination against them kinda took surrender off the table (not that Stalin would've taken it).

With that being said, it's without a doubt true that had Stalin didn't purge many of his best commanders, the casualties in the early stages of operation Barbarossa wouldn't have been so high (the battle of Kiev immediately pop to mind) but by the time that we get to the bloodiest battles - Stalingrad, the battle of Budapest, the battle of Berlin, the Red Army is a very well commanded fighting force, and it does not engage in pointless human wave attacks.

I think some of it comes down to interpretation. If you asked Eisenhower if Omaha Beach was a human wave attack, he'd certainly say no, but if you watched the opening 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, somebody in the theater could very well come away with the idea that that was a human wave attack.

 

[PeskyToaster]

are you for real?

I am for real. As with most history, almost everything is up for debate and this is one of the most contentious areas of the Holocaust. So, uh, join in!

okay, I'm watching a dokumatary about the Einsatzgruppen right now.
german name is "Das radikal Böse".

try if you can find it.
it explaines why a lot didn't refuse to participate in those actions.

german version has a lot of english speaking too though,

I will try to get a hold of it but I do know of the psychology behind it because that's what they (being German soldiers) all cite in post-war testimonials. The psychological effects of authority and peer pressure are especially active in a military environment but that doesn't exonerate their crimes in my eyes.

This is stupid. The Wehrmacht was was made up from the averave conscripts, of course there were war criminals. It was an army of millions of man.

The Allied bomber crews who threw fire(!!!) bombs on Axis cities were war criminals as well. These bombs were not made to destroy infrastructure, they were only designed to kill as many people as possible. Children? Cilivian? To the average officer the life of an enemy was worth as much as a fly shit.

It was precisely those men of average backgrounds who formed many of the killing battalions. Many weren't even party members but they still killed men, women, and children at point blank range or shipped them off to death camps. I don't precisely know what you're getting at.

I take issue with the fact that you are using the allied bombings as a counterpoint. Post-war Germany struggled with the memory of the war and their own victimization. The bombings were used to equate the deaths of Germans with those in the Holocaust but I find that equality to be very wrong for the civilians themselves are not blameless. They had the power to stop the Nazis and demonstrated it when the T4 Program was ended due to public outcry or the famously failed boycott of Jewish business. The Gestapo and mainline Nazi Party were far to small to enforce their will without widespread grassroots support from the civilian population. Many of these civilians directly benefited from their Jewish neighbors' persecution only a few years before as part of Aryanization efforts by the Nazis.

Edit:

He says some questionable things, but that statement specifically is not off the mark. There is a trend of people saying that the Wehrmacht was essentially separate from Nazi ideology, just regular people, and they it was the SS and other organisations that orchestrated the true atrocities. Sometimes people will argue that the WM was somewhat unaware of the genocide going on. You can see this in a lot of pop culture, the most recent example that springs to mind is Fury where the characters say "oh, the SS, those are the real bastards" and imply that the SS are the evil people and the WM are just regular joes. In reality, the SS was, just like the WM, filled with conscripts, often forcibly conscripted, more so the longer the war went on. Similarly, the WM was responsible for a LOT of war crimes, knowledge of these crimes was widespread, and the formations were filled with many loyal and zealous Nazis.

People will talk about how good Germany has been for owning up to the crimes of WWII, but in many ways they have come to terms with their past by compartmentalising it.

Please feel free to let me know where I went wrong. There's plenty of evidence out there to support any number of sides. I know for a fact though that the Wehrmacht was aware of Nazi crimes and an active participant in them. I've seen the orders and correspondence myself (translated to English). I'm not even an amateur historian, just a history minor who's done some reading so push me in the right direction if I am totally off base.

 

[Megasoum]

He says some questionable things, but that statement specifically is not off the mark. There is a trend of people saying that the Wehrmacht was essentially separate from Nazi ideology, just regular people, and they it was the SS and other organisations that orchestrated the true atrocities. Sometimes people will argue that the WM was somewhat unaware of the genocide going on. You can see this in a lot of pop culture, the most recent example that springs to mind is Fury where the characters say "oh, the SS, those are the real bastards" and imply that the SS are the evil people and the WM are just regular joes. In reality, the SS was, just like the WM, filled with conscripts, often forcibly conscripted, more so the longer the war went on. Similarly, the WM was responsible for a LOT of war crimes, knowledge of these crimes was widespread, and the formations were filled with many loyal and zealous Nazis.

People will talk about how good Germany has been for owning up to the crimes of WWII, but in many ways they have come to terms with their past by compartmentalising it.

Reminds me of a really good Reader's Digest book I read when I was younger about "Untold stories of WW2". One of the story was about Rommel explaining how he wasn't "too" bad. Not saying he was a nice guy obviously but more that he was a true military man that cared about his mens and didn't really approve and/or give a shit about the official party stuff. Also the fact that since he spent a long time in Africa away from Europe that he wasn't really aware of what the Nazis were doing in Poland and other eastern Europe countries.

Could be a load of BS of course but that book was kinda rad. Lots of stories I never heard of before about the war. I should see if I can find it hmmm....

 

[Recidivus Crimen]

Those Soviet numbers are mind-boggling. I heard it was bad, but not that bad.