Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Sherman Logan

The Great Purge doesn’t compare, in my opinion. It was the same thing that happened in Cambodia later, but on a comparatively smaller scale than what the Khemer Rouge did. Just a bit more efficiently, due to the existence of Soviet bureaucracy.

I think you are making the mistake of thinking about this in the same mindset of critics of hate crime legislation (which is valid in that context). It isn’t that it was was somehow worse because they were Jews. It was worse because the state bent its penchant for efficiency in every single form to the task of genocide.

In the past, orders were given (or not) to eradicate people. Kill them on the spot, get them buried if you can, use whatever means at hand to accomplish your task.

The Nazis took their purported efficiency that made their autobahns great to drive on, their trains run on time, their institutions respected world wide and cradle to grave efficiency of documentation of their citizens, and bent those efficiencies to the task of genocide.

That is what made it different. Not because they were Jews. It could have been Catholics or anyone else.


79 posted on 09/27/2009 8:10:56 AM PDT by rlmorel (You cannot reap the benefits right now of the planning ahead you didn't do in the past.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies ]


To: rlmorel
My contention is that Nazi methods were remarkably inefficient.

Centralization does not equal efficiency. Sometimes it is less efficient, as in this case.

I've even heard idiots claim the Nazis shipped Jews to the camps to save on ammunition.

82 posted on 09/27/2009 8:13:45 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ("The price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections." Thomas Sowell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson