Teens Now Look Favorably On Torture Because Media Teaches Its Morally Acceptable

[Malthus]

Did you include the 3/5 factor for the relative worth of a Russian life?

It really does fucking suck to be a Soviet soldier.

I wonder what the odds of an 19 year old infantryman in some rifle division on May 30th 1941 being alive come 1946 were....has to be pretty terrible.

My wife's maternal grandfather died, as far as anyone knows, on the very first day of Barbarossa - at least, he was a soldier serving in the Red Army in occupied Soviet Poland on the front lines, and he was never heard from again.

[DGuller]

It should be possible to point out that, for example, only 1 million died instead of 10 millions claimed by someone, without defending the deaths of the 1 million.  Otherwise, once someone kills even one person unlawfully, everyone else can inflate the body count up to a billion without being challenged, which would be at the very least lead to bad knowledge of history.

Someone claimed that 10 million out of 3.5 million were killed?

I can see why that would upset you.

No need to troll.  Please note the phrase "for example".  That phrase denotes that a hypothetical situation is about to be discussed.

[Berkut]

Which makes one wonder why you feel the need to apparently faux defend Soviet practices in regards to POWs.

Similarly, it makes one wonder why you're so zealous to equate Soviets to the Nazis.  Surely it just can't be a tribal propaganda of its own, can be?

Huh?

Why would I care to do that? I am citing numbers and facts - are you disputing the fact that the Soviet Union was responsible for the deaths of well over a million POWs in their hands?

If not, then what is your contention with my position that both sides were largely equivalent in intent? Both sides treated their prisoners with either completely callous disregard for their well being at best or actively tried to kill them after extracting as much labor from them as possible.

This resulting in about a million dead Germans (out of 2+ million taken) and 3.3 million dead Soviets/Poles/etc ( out of some 5.5 million taken). The Germans certainly took a lot more prisoners, and even at that they killed more of them - but trying to conclude that there was a difference in kind in how the two regimes treated their prisoners is a bit hard to swallow.

All these numbers are pretty rough, of course. But they would have to be VERY off for the differences to really indicate much of anything that would cause an objective observer to think "Oh yeah, the Soviets really did treat their prisoners much better than the Germans..."

You are arguing for a pretty thin distinction between degrees of horrific.

[DGuller]

Why would I care to do that? I am citing numbers and facts - are you disputing the fact that the Soviet Union was responsible for the deaths of well over a million POWs in their hands?

As a matter of fact, yes, I am disputing it.

[Razgovory]

All these numbers are pretty rough, of course. But they would have to be VERY off for the differences to really indicate much of anything that would cause an objective observer to think "Oh yeah, the Soviets really did treat their prisoners much better than the Germans..."

You are arguing for a pretty thin distinction between degrees of horrific.

Yes.  But your numbers could very well be VERY off.

Take for instance this

According to a book by Anne Applebaum, the official Soviet number was 570,000 deaths (the mortality rate is between 14% and 30%, depending on low and high estimates of deaths and total POW numbers).

Or

Rűdiger Overmans and British historian Richard Overy say that 374,000 out of 3.3 million German prisoners of war died in Soviet labor camps

[Berkut]

Another example:

230,000 Poles taken captive by the USSR in their invasion of Poland (the first one, before they were fighting the Germans).

82,000 survived.

Tell me again how it is "offensive" to suggest that the Soviets were just as brutal as the Germans in their treatment of POWs?

[The Brain]

Rűdiger Overmans and British historian Richard Overy say that 374,000 out of 3.3 million German prisoners of war died in Soviet labor camps

OTOH many terminally ill POWs were removed to the burial sites outside the camps shortly before they died. This may impact the numbers a bit.

[The Brain]

Another example:

230,000 Poles taken captive by the USSR in their invasion of Poland (the first one, before they were fighting the Germans).

82,000 survived.

Tell me again how it is "offensive" to suggest that the Soviets were just as brutal as the Germans in their treatment of POWs?

You're grasping at Poles, Berk.

[Berkut]

Why would I care to do that? I am citing numbers and facts - are you disputing the fact that the Soviet Union was responsible for the deaths of well over a million POWs in their hands?

As a matter of fact, yes, I am disputing it.

Of course - better to deny the numbers than accept that your conclusion might be wrong.

I suppose you have a source then?

[DGuller]

Why would I care to do that? I am citing numbers and facts - are you disputing the fact that the Soviet Union was responsible for the deaths of well over a million POWs in their hands?

As a matter of fact, yes, I am disputing it.

Of course - better to deny the numbers than accept that your conclusion might be wrong.

I suppose you have a source then?

Do you have your source?  As for the numbers as I remember them, see Raz's post.

[Berkut]

Why would I care to do that? I am citing numbers and facts - are you disputing the fact that the Soviet Union was responsible for the deaths of well over a million POWs in their hands?

As a matter of fact, yes, I am disputing it.

Of course - better to deny the numbers than accept that your conclusion might be wrong.

I suppose you have a source then?

Do you have your source?  As for the numbers as I remember them, see Raz's post.

So your source is Raz?

I think we are done here.

[DGuller]

So your source is Raz?

I think we are done here.

Again with the trolling?  Raz was not presenting the results of his own original research.  Rather he was quoting other researchers.

[Razgovory]

And Berkut has already shown himself to be disingenuous with numbers.

Uhh, no, I made no claim at all about the numbers, other than that there were a lot of them.

I certianly do not think it was anywhere near 50%.

A few posts earlier

Hey, not EVERYONE was murdered or sent to a prison camp! Just most of them! Errrh, or a bunch but probably not more than 50%. Or maybe a lot of them. Or the undesireables. Or the politically questionable.

Why, there were some that were not even punished for being captured AT ALL! It wasn't so bad!

[DGuller]

Berkut is done with the debate, quit kicking the dead horse.  He held out politely for a long time, but finally our obnoxiousness wore him down. 

[Berkut]

Raz, why are you lying?

You are quoting me paraphrasing someone else, and further quoting me even in the paraphrase stating that the numbers are "probably not more than 50%", so why would you insist that I said I thought it was more than 50%, even after I explicitly stated that I do not think that is the case?

How can I be more clear than to say "No, I do not think that more than 50% of Soviet POWs sent back to the USSR were punished"?