Friends, foes mark WWII’s beginning in Poland

[saskganesh]

but you can have equality under the law, equality of rights,  both egalitarian concepts and not antithetical to freedom.

[The Minsky Moment]

for starters, we did not take any land from czechslovakia, yugoslavia and romania. We took back what was ours. We choosed an abysmal ally to achieve that, true, but the fact remains: we were taking back what was ours.

Your entire country belonged to the Habsburgs; keep up this stuff about "taking back what was ours", and we will be forced to turn over all you rascally rebels to that antediluvian fathead Otto.

[Razgovory]

but you can have equality under the law, equality of rights,  both egalitarian concepts and not antithetical to freedom.

Except the Freedom to be unequal.

[Tamas]

I am not going to waste energy on debating the claim that a society where 100% equal distribution of wealth could be free, or even just. That's utter naive stupidity. Even anarcho-capitalism, my utopia of choice has more sense of reality, and I am the first to admit that if it was to put to practice it would end up as feudalism in a matter of weeks.

Communism, especially if "done right" is a nightmare.

[ulmont]

anarcho-capitalism, my utopia of choice

[Ed Anger]

I am not going to waste energy on debating the claim that a society where 100% equal distribution of wealth could be free, or even just. That's utter naive stupidity. Even anarcho-capitalism, my utopia of choice has more sense of reality, and I am the first to admit that if it was to put to practice it would end up as feudalism in a matter of weeks.

Communism, especially if "done right" is a nightmare.

Commies want free stuff.

[Savonarola]

Commies want free stuff.

They're still destroying America:

[Ed Anger]

I wish I could pull off wearing yellow and green socks.

[Razgovory]

anarcho-capitalism, my utopia of choice

Double

[Martinus]

For joining Germany, for taking it's piece of the Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and Romania.  Hungary invaded the Soviet Union with it's eyes wide open.

You are right on the first part but Germany had to arrange for the Soviet airforce to bomb Hungary to get the Hungarians to declare war on the USSR.

Romania was the only Axis ally eager to join in the attacking of the Soviets, but only to get the territory Stalin took from them back.

Since Hungary and Italy had no interest in getting any Soviet land they were less interested.

Heh.  Hitler also got the Poles to take a German Radio station...

[Martinus]

Incidentally, Holocaust was not a part of the "nazism theory" any more than gulags were part of the "communism theory".

I disagree with that assessment. Genocide is a core tenet of Nazism, whereas it is only coincidental with Communism.

The Kraut has the right of it.

The systematic murder of "undesirable peoples" is simply the consquence of taking nazism to its logical conclusion.  Literally a final solution to the problem the ideology defines at the outset and sets out to overcome.

Communism as an ideology does not as a matter of pure logic require mass murder, it just so happens that mass murder is one of the few techniques that is sufficiently effective for coercing human beings into complying with the system, and hence is often resorted to by communist regimes that want to stick around for more than a few weeks.

Ok I'm willing to concede your observation on nazism when it comes to people like homosexuals, the mentally disabled etc (but then again such groups were persecuted, albeit not to the same degree, by the contemporaries of Hitler even in Western democracies). However, I'd argue that when it comes to ethnic minorities, such as Jews, the Roma etc., nazism does not absolutely require their systematic murder - a removal from the territory of a nazi country would be enough - that is why the nazis seriously entertained the preposterous notion of shipping off all the Jews to Madagascar.

The nazi ideologues want to achieve a perfect society through a "racial purity" - that involves a removal of ethnic minorities, but not necessarily their physical annihilation, I'd say. I think that's actually how many Germans were deluded into passively supporting the nazis.

[Warspite]

a removal from the territory of a nazi country would be enough - that is why the nazis seriously entertained the preposterous notion of shipping off all the Jews to Madagascar.

I find it hard to believe an ideology that was seriously convinced that international "Jewry" was an existential threat would have truly been satisfied with merely exiling them.

No, I'm afraid annihilation was the only possible outcome for the Jews under Nazism. This was a regime that would rather use rolling stock to transport its victims to the death camps even in the dying days of the war when they could have been used for precious ammunition and supplies.

[The Minsky Moment]

However, I'd argue that when it comes to ethnic minorities, such as Jews, the Roma etc., nazism does not absolutely require their systematic murder - a removal from the territory of a nazi country would be enough

Ultimately it wasn't enough, and that was no accident.  It wasn't enough to simply remove individual Jews from the territorial limits, because that would still leave the threat of "der erwige Jude".   thus, emigration and expulsion were regarded as "provisional" or temporary solutions in the absence of other effective remedies.  Once the nature of the War in the East made physical killing on a mass scale a feasible option technically and politically, the Nazis immediately jumped to adopt it.  One of the most interesting things about Wansee is that none of the attendees questioned or were even surprised at the notion of physical elimination.  Stuckart raised issues about mixed marriages and Neumann complained about labor shortages but no one stood and said - "hey what's all this about final solutions - isn't expulsion enough"?  Nothing like that happened, b/c the "solution" of mass murder was recognized for what it was - the most logical and natural method for implementing the Reich's ideological imperative.

[Razgovory]

I don't think the Madagascar thing was seriously considered.  And I believe the idea was to keep them in prison camps there.

[Martinus]

Ok but I think we are comparing apples and oranges here.

The claim that "communism is not murderous in theory" is based on whose theory? Stalin's? He advocated mass murder. Lenin's? He advocated international revolution that was to be bloody. No, the claim is based on writings of Marx.

If so, then comparing this to Hitler's "Mein Kampf" really doesn't make sense, since Hitler would be the nazi equivalent of Lenin or Stalin, not of Marx. Admittedly, there isn't the same kind of "father figure" for nazism, but you'd be more correct looking at one of the late 19th century German philosophers than Hitler for the "theoretical foundations of nazism".