Posted on 11/26/2005 3:37:52 PM PST by blam
Napoleon's genocide 'on a par with Hitler'
By Colin Randall in Paris
(Filed: 26/11/2005)
A French historian has caused uproar by claiming Napoleon provided the model for Hitler's Final Solution with the slaughter of more than 100,000 Caribbean slaves.
In The Crime of Napoleon, Claude Ribbe accuses the emperor of genocide, gassing rebellious blacks more than a century before the Nazis' extermination of the Jews.
His accusations refer to the extreme methods used to put down a ferocious uprising in Haiti at the start of the 19th century. Then known as San Domingo, the colony was considered a jewel of the French empire and to save it troops launched a campaign to kill all blacks aged over 12.
"In simple terms, Napoleon ordered the killing of as many blacks as possible in Haiti and Guadeloupe to be replaced by new, docile slaves from Africa," Ribbe said yesterday.
He said he had found accounts from officers who refused to take part in the massacres, especially the use of sulphur dioxide to kill slaves held in ships' holds.
His book is already provoking controversy prior to its publication on Thursday. The newspaper France Soir juxtaposed images of Napoleon and Hitler yesterday before asking: "Did Napoleon invent the Final Solution?"
But in an editorial, it condemned the "inanity" of Ribbe's argument. Ribbe, 51, who is of French-Guadeloupe extraction, said he was unrepentant.
"I want the French to know exactly what happened in that period," he said. "As for the good things Napoleon did, that is irrelevant. Hitler developed the autobahns and inspired the Volkswagen; are we supposed to excuse him for his war crimes?"
Ribbe, who was recently appointed a human rights commissioner by the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, added: "I was taught to think of Napoleon as a superstar. To mention his crimes against humanity has been a taboo."
Still waiting for the French to acknowledge the crimes against humanity committed by Muslims....won't hold my breath.
Napoleon does get the kids glove treatment by too many historians.
I'm having trouble equating 100,000 with up to 10 million.
This was in a time of less effective weapons - I'm sure he did the best he could with what he had.
Napoleon got his butt kicked by the Haitian blacks, with their highly efficient yellow fever virus auxiliaries. He lost pretty much the entire army he sent over.
As an interesting side note, this army was to reoccupy Haiti merely as a forward base for moving into Louisiana and perhaps an attack on the United States.
You can make a decent case that the major reason Boney sold Louisiana to Jefferson was that his army had been destroyed in Haiti and he knew he could never hold it anyway.
If nappy really tried to wipe out the Hatians, he really did a p*ss-poor job. It was the French who got wiped out.
Let's think about the mechanics of this.
Gassing people in the holds of ships requires you to then haul the bodies up out of there before disposing of them. Sounds like a lot of unnecessary work.
The French Revolutionaries had developed quite efficient methods of mass murder. A favorite was loading a barge to the max with bound people and then sinking it.
I would have found this much more believable...had it been a French Botanist describing the flowers and weeds growing up in the trigger guards of abandoned weapons strewn across France.
LOL!
Ribbe and the "journalists" at France Soir might want to re-read Thucydides.
He was one of the great monsters of history.
Upwards of 75% of the French Army that went to Haiti died there. Not a particularly successful campaign.
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