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To: txzman

Sorry, but there’s no moral equivalence here. Take the fall of Budapest, for instance. The majority of Soviet troops who finally took the city were Romanians; there was little or no nazi activity in Romania and, for that matter, Hungary was largely uncooperative with the Nazi pogroms until Hitler replaced the government toward the end of the war. The Soviets (again, mostly Romanians) raped at least 200,000 women in Budapest alone and probably another 50,000 in the rest of Hungary. Many were tortured and killed. This had nothing to do with anything the Germans did in Romania or Russia (or Ukraine which, incidentally, saw the Germans as liberators).

There is little or no evidence of systematic rape on the part of the Wermacht or the Waffen SS at any time during the war. To be sure, there were atrocities and roundups of civilians to the camps. And total war is a brutal thing by itself. But the use of mass rape as a war strategy is and has been a consistently “eastern” phenomenon that probably I believe was adopted by the Russians and other slavs during the Mongol invasions. Even today, you only hear of such things occurring in places like former Yugoslavia and Georgia.

Of course the Japanese also committed the horrific “Rape of Nanking” during which time anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000 Chinese women were raped, tortured, then killed and dumped in mass graves. That was a somewhat unique historical episode that to-date, no one has sufficiently explained.


8 posted on 10/25/2008 8:12:17 AM PDT by Ilya Mourometz
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To: Ilya Mourometz

I don’t think of the Japanese as being an unusually violent people. However, I’ve read that the Japanese army had training programs which encouraged cruelty and atrocities by their troops. I also suspect that alcohol was a factor in atrocities by the Japanese and Russians, just as drugs are used by African warlord to encourage frenzies of cruelty by their forces.


13 posted on 10/25/2008 8:48:20 AM PDT by hellbender
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To: Ilya Mourometz

“in places like former Yugoslavia and Georgia.”

ack! I wish they’d change the name of that place. (Georgia)


19 posted on 10/25/2008 9:02:06 AM PDT by DeLaine
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To: Ilya Mourometz

*Take the fall of Budapest, for instance. The majority of Soviet troops who finally took the city were Romanians; there was little or no nazi activity in Romania and, for that matter, Hungary was largely uncooperative with the Nazi pogroms until Hitler replaced the government toward the end of the war.*

Romania and Hungary had/have irredentist claims on each other’s territory. SE Europe at the time was a total mess. Stalin solved a lot of this by forced migration, of course.

*Of course the Japanese also committed the horrific “Rape of Nanking” during which time anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000 Chinese women were raped, tortured, then killed and dumped in mass graves. That was a somewhat unique historical episode that to-date, no one has sufficiently explained.*

It’s easily explained. The Japanese considered the Chinese life to be worth less than a dog’s. They literally encouraged murder of Chinese with sticks, stones, clubs and/or swords because using bullets was a waste of ammunition. This didn’t mean that Chinese women weren’t looked at as potential conjugal fun, of course, nor did similar Japanese ethnic superiority attitudes towards Koreans inhibit them from impressing an Army of Comfort Women from the Korean peninsula either.


28 posted on 10/25/2008 2:16:17 PM PDT by j-damn
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To: Ilya Mourometz

I’m not talking about systematic rape. Systematic murder and other nasty things. Yes.


34 posted on 10/25/2008 7:36:21 PM PDT by txzman (Jer 23:29)
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To: Ilya Mourometz

Not consistently Eastern. After all, Beast Butler certainly didn’t qualify for that status.


59 posted on 10/29/2008 10:55:31 PM PDT by Constantine XI Palaeologus ("Vicisti, Galilaee")
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