I only have one question to ask here: what's with all praising of Nazism in the last few years?

I must admit that as far as WW2 goes I totally dig German military and technology ( being how I am literally in love with war stuff and I totally adore German Tanks and Panzergrenadiers, I dig Armageddon and Krieg because of this ), but this is as far as I go. Their ideology, dogma and the things they did in concentration camps disgust me. I know that others are not less guilty ( Stalin killed his entire army stuff and Japanese terrorized Chinese and others ) but as far as WW2 goes Germans have committed the greatest crimes against Humanity in that war, killing others just because they were of different 'race'?

You would think that people would learn their lesson from this, but as far as I seen they have learn nothing. Nationalism in our country is great and our members are using Hitler's "Main Kampf" as a reference to their ideology, our neighbours too. They go as far as using their flags and greetings. Then there is one of my friends who is constantly arguing with me that WW2 Germans didn't do any crimes at all, that all that happened in camps and genocide was all Jewish plan. Going as far as saying that UN are under Israel command, same goes for blue helmets.

Then there was incident in our 40k group where one guy posted a picture of Dred with swastika all over it, he was confused on why everybody were displeased with his miniature and why everyone criticize him. And when admin removed his picture he argued how we know nothing and how we don't tolerate other people's opinion and taste. I am sorry, but how can we tolerate something that is connected to such disgusting part of our modern history? That would be like posting a picture of Bin Laden in New York art gallery ( while praising him as freedom fighter ) some 50 years from now and wondering why is everyone arguing with you.

I don't know why people are returning to this all of a sudden? Didn't they learn nothing in school or in history classes? I am guessing that victims of that war are very pleased with this, not to mention those who survived concentration camps...

What is everybody's opinion on this?

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:
I only have one question to ask here: what's with all praising of Nazism in the last few years?

I must admit that as far as WW2 goes I totally dig German military and technology ( being how I am literally in love with war stuff and I totally adore German Tanks and Panzergrenadiers, I dig Armageddon and Krieg because of this ), but this is as far as I go. Their ideology, dogma and the things they did in concentration camps disgust me. I know that others are not less guilty ( Stalin killed his entire army stuff and Japanese terrorized Chinese and others ) but as far as WW2 goes Germans have committed the greatest crimes against Humanity in that war, killing others just because they were of different 'race'?

You would think that people would learn their lesson from this, but as far as I seen they have learn nothing. Nationalism in our country is great and our members are using Hitler's "Main Kampf" as a reference to their ideology, our neighbours too. They go as far as using their flags and greetings. Then there is one of my friends who is constantly arguing with me that WW2 Germans didn't do any crimes at all, that all that happened in camps and genocide was all Jewish plan. Going as far as saying that UN are under Israel command, same goes for blue helmets.

Then there was incident in our 40k group where one guy posted a picture of Dred with swastika all over it, he was confused on why everybody were displeased with his miniature and why everyone criticize him. And when admin removed his picture he argued how we know nothing and how we don't tolerate other people's opinion and taste. I am sorry, but how can we tolerate something that is connected to such disgusting part of our modern history? That would be like posting a picture of Bin Laden in New York art gallery ( while praising him as freedom fighter ) some 50 years from now and wondering why is everyone arguing with you.

I don't know why people are returning to this all of a sudden? Didn't they learn nothing in school or in history classes? I am guessing that victims of that war are very pleased with this, not to mention those who survived concentration camps...

What is everybody's opinion on this?

Time to break out the Mosin and lie down in a slit trench. Bring it Hitlerites! For the Motherland!

Well as a fact the NAZI symbol was actually taken from one of the Eastern Religious symbols of peace and prosperity (and I also think it was justice as well), this is the one with the 4 arms.
Also the Golden Eagle was taken from Ancient Rome.
I'm like you though. I respect the Germans in their tactics, their engines and their commanders. But the fact that they committed genocide because they believed Christianity was the one true religion and the Jews were less than human is disgraceful and should be regarded with disgust.
Just as a side have any of you figured out that Buddhism is really the only older religion I think of that hasn't started a war.

I give it... 2 pages. 3, tops.

This is not a sudden thing.

In particular Anti Semitism has been around for many years preceding the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP programme. In Europe in particular Jews have been scapegoated for many centuries. As have other elements of society, including gypsies.

Nationalism and race hate has been a fixture of some Eastern European thinking since before the War. Post WW2 it could be argued that nothing really changed, some peoples perceptions may have hardened further.

It is easy for certain individuals and groups to latch onto NSDAP/Hitlerite ideals, particularly, as is now, in times of financial hardship. (one of the many reasons Hitler was able to start his rise to power). Times of distress and hardship make it easy for hate propaganda to spread. Coupled with entrenched thinking and views it makes it easy for radical aspects to appear.

As for adding swastikas to minis, the connotations of that symbol are clear, regardless of it's history pre Hitler. Just feel pity for the guy and enlighten others. Some opinions you cannot change.

As others have, said, the events of that particular part of human history are not unique. During the first crusade, I believe, the Templars gathered every single Jewish inhabitant, forced them into a synagogue and burned it to the ground, killing anyone who escaped. The shocking part of WWII was the incredibly elaborate way in which it occurred.

Also, I'm sad to say, it is their political belief. Even if we don't agree, it doesn't make it illegal. When it becomes militant, of course, but punishing people for their beliefs is so remarkably similar to their ideology it has an almost ironically cruel twist. You can try to show them otherwise, but again, it's their beliefs.

However, I have to agree with Mr. Burning. Even though it's a free forum, it is in the rules that inflammatory or offensive images are not allowed, and the general interpretation of the Swastika isn't the most positive...

 baxter123 wrote:
Well as a fact the NAZI symbol was actually taken from one of the Eastern Religious symbols of peace and prosperity (and I also think it was justice as well), this is the one with the 4 arms.
Also the Golden Eagle was taken from Ancient Rome.
I'm like you though. I respect the Germans in their tactics, their engines and their commanders. But the fact that they committed genocide because they believed Christianity was the one true religion and the Jews were less than human is disgraceful and should be regarded with disgust.
Just as a side have any of you figured out that Buddhism is really the only older religion I think of that hasn't started a war.

Not really.
Japan - Zen Buddhism....
What is the hand of one hand clapping? SLAP!

Considering the depression led to the rise of Nazism and helped spread communisim in Europe, I'm not surprised.

 baxter123 wrote:
. But the fact that they committed genocide because they believed Christianity was the one true religion and the Jews were less than human is disgraceful and should be regarded with disgust.

Just reread this thread.

The genocide wasn't down to Christianity (You can argue that historic religious intolerance planted one of many seeds). Jews were indeed viewed as subhuman- and not Germanic- The genocide of Jews, and others came about through a fairly convoluted process.

I think the mistake many make is to think of ‘Nazism’ as a unique event in human history. Regimes with a similar pattern of behavior to the Nazis have been a relatively regular occurrence in history. Not all of them wielded the sort of power that the Nazis did and so thankfully where often largely confined to their own borders, but ultra nationalist, xenophobic and authoritarian governments have cropped up time and time again. Even today there are more than a few.

 LuciusAR wrote:
I think the mistake many make is to think of ‘Nazism’ as a unique event in human history. Regimes with a similar pattern of behavior to the Nazis have been a relatively regular occurrence in history. Not all of them wielded the sort of power that the Nazis did and so thankfully where often largely confined to their own borders, but ultra nationalist, xenophobic and authoritarian governments have cropped up time and time again. Even today there are more than a few.

Zimbabwe comes to mind

I think Nazis just used Christianity for political purposes. They called theirs Positive Christianity to promoted racial purity and nationalism. Hitler wanted to replace religion and god with his views and and him as the figure head. Nazis were very much into the Occult to be mainstream Christian.

 chaos girl wrote:
I think Nazis just used Christianity for political purposes. They called theirs Positive Christianity to promoted racial purity and nationalism. Hitler wanted to replace religion and god with his views and and him as the figure head. Nazis were very much into the Occult to be mainstream Christian.

Whilst there are incidences, the occult card is over hyped. particularly with regards to Himmlers hunt for the origins of the Aryan race.

The Nazis did usurp common myths and folklore, much like others have and continue to do so.

The NSDAP views on religion changed over time. Hitler invoked gods name in certain speeches and alluded to the divine rights of the German race.

There have been many other types of genocide, many of which where condoned by either god or government.
That thing that makes the Holocaust so horrific is it was almost machine like. It was meticulous in its doing. Names where recorded.
And pertaining to the symbol, yes it used to be a holy symbol meaning peace, that doesn't matter anymore. It is now a symbol meaning you think you are superior. Those who do wear it and try to pass it off as "Zen Budda" crud are just trying incite rage and seem smarter then others when they point out what it means before hitler.
Now, I'm off to do my Germen homework, Why they heck do you guys have two different versions of the word "you"?

Modern Nazi's tends to have little in common with the NSDAP (beyond the most basic aspects of 'we hate these guys cause they're not us and we should purge them). Most often, you find that racist groups in countries around the world (US, Russia, Mongolia) take up the symbols and the 'ideology' of the Nazi party and simply use it to enhance their own racist beliefs.

Take American Nazism. It's almost about hating African-American's more than Jews. It isn't about the German Aryan, as much as Anglo-Saxon 'Aryan.' In Russia, they define Aryan as ethnic-Russian, the opposite of what the NSDAP would espouse.

The two don't have as much in common as might be believed. Really this is more about taking up a history that backs up their cause, than about the cause itself. They take Nazism's ideas and transfer them to their own 'struggle' adapting at as need be to suit their needs.

Hence how you end up with Mongolian and Russian Nazis.

 LordofHats wrote:
Modern Nazi's tends to have little in common with the NSDAP (beyond the most basic aspects of 'we hate these guys cause they're not us and we should purge them). Most often, you find that racist groups in countries around the world (US, Russia, Mongolia) take up the symbols and the 'ideology' of the Nazi party and simply use it to enhance their own racist beliefs.

Take American Nazism. It's almost about hating African-American's more than Jews. It isn't about the German Aryan, as much as Anglo-Saxon 'Aryan.' In Russia, they define Aryan as ethnic-Russian, the opposite of what the NSDAP would espouse.

The two don't have as much in common as might be believed. Really this is more about taking up a history that backs up their cause, than about the cause itself. They take Nazism's ideas and transfer them to their own 'struggle' adapting at as need be to suit their needs.

Hence how you end up with Mongolian and Russian Nazis.

Well said. A marriage of convenience then?

In my reading yes. You'll also note that US Nazism had its biggest explosion during the Civil Rights movement. A direct reaction to the push for equal rights by the actual target of American Nazi's at the time, though of course we here in the US of A aren't unfamiliar to antisemitism either. These days its usually about anyone who isn't a native born White American (or a Jew. Can't be a nazi and not hate them I guess)

I and no one else should care about the symbol or the word unless the intent was to proclaim or shed favorable light on the holocost.

When I see it, I simply see everything except the holocost.

The Swastika and the word Nazi also represents the well educated thousands who flocked to elect Hitler and follow his followers. These turned Hitlers musings (often ill directed ramblings) into actions and law.

Not including the opportunists who saw the NSDAP as a stepping stone to further their own aims

The harsh fact is that these people always exist and will flock to an ideal that suits them. As we all do.

Didn't I read somewhere that there are some Israeli extremists who have the hots for Hitler?; I'll have to search.

Nope http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/10/israel.internationalcrime Russian emigrees to Israel. A very odd sack of beans indeed.

"The tragic irony in this is that they would have been chosen for annihilation by the Nazis they strive to emulate." The ADL said that the phenomenon appeared to be marginal and was more a reaction to anti-Russian discrimination in Israel.

Irony indeed.

Another article http://www.opinion-maker.org/2012/12/israeli-nazis/
I don't know the authors history to check his views but it's an interesting read.

The potential for extremism and extreme xenophobia exists everywhere.

The NSDAP got into power predominantly by appealing to the forgotten and deeply impoverished agrarian class of Germans. Last time I checked, the Common Agrigultural Policy was busy stuffing farmers' mouths with money, so I think we should be okay.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 LuciusAR wrote:
I think the mistake many make is to think of ‘Nazism’ as a unique event in human history. Regimes with a similar pattern of behavior to the Nazis have been a relatively regular occurrence in history. Not all of them wielded the sort of power that the Nazis did and so thankfully where often largely confined to their own borders, but ultra nationalist, xenophobic and authoritarian governments have cropped up time and time again. Even today there are more than a few.

Zimbabwe comes to mind

The Catholic Church comes to mind.

 GalacticDefender wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 LuciusAR wrote:
I think the mistake many make is to think of ‘Nazism’ as a unique event in human history. Regimes with a similar pattern of behavior to the Nazis have been a relatively regular occurrence in history. Not all of them wielded the sort of power that the Nazis did and so thankfully where often largely confined to their own borders, but ultra nationalist, xenophobic and authoritarian governments have cropped up time and time again. Even today there are more than a few.

Zimbabwe comes to mind

The Catholic Church comes to mind.

Indeed made infamous by their rounding up of millions of protestants and gassing them?

i) anti-semetism was rife at the time. Did this have a good reason other than good old sectarianism?

ii) When I was in school ~14 years ago the holocaust was estimated to be 6million dead as a result. Now its 6 million jews + misc others whom we don't really hear about.

iii) I'm completely against Israeli occupation. It was/is a stupid idea and frankly if the whole place was rendered radioactive by a nuke for 100 years it might give everyone time to chill the feth out.

iv) poverty/recession = rise in extremes.

 baxter123 wrote:
Well as a fact the NAZI symbol was actually taken from one of the Eastern Religious symbols of peace and prosperity (and I also think it was justice as well), this is the one with the 4 arms.
Also the Golden Eagle was taken from Ancient Rome.
I'm like you though. I respect the Germans in their tactics, their engines and their commanders. But the fact that they committed genocide because they believed Christianity was the one true religion and the Jews were less than human is disgraceful and should be regarded with disgust.
Just as a side have any of you figured out that Buddhism is really the only older religion I think of that hasn't started a war.

To claim that the Nazis were any sort of Christian is disingenious. It was a severe perversion of Christian values that could not in any way be called what it used to be.

IIRC Hitler was fond of a bled of old Norse religion with some Christian things thrown in.

 Spyral wrote:

 GalacticDefender wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 LuciusAR wrote:
I think the mistake many make is to think of ‘Nazism’ as a unique event in human history. Regimes with a similar pattern of behavior to the Nazis have been a relatively regular occurrence in history. Not all of them wielded the sort of power that the Nazis did and so thankfully where often largely confined to their own borders, but ultra nationalist, xenophobic and authoritarian governments have cropped up time and time again. Even today there are more than a few.

Zimbabwe comes to mind

The Catholic Church comes to mind.

Indeed made infamous by their rounding up of millions of protestants and gassing them?

i) anti-semetism was rife at the time. Did this have a good reason other than good old sectarianism?

ii) When I was in school ~14 years ago the holocaust was estimated to be 6million dead as a result. Now its 6 million jews + misc others whom we don't really hear about.

iii) I'm completely against Israeli occupation. It was/is a stupid idea and frankly if the whole place was rendered radioactive by a nuke for 100 years it might give everyone time to chill the feth out.

iv) poverty/recession = rise in extremes.

The Catholic Church opressed Europe for centuries. They burned people at the stake for believing different ideas than theirs, they rejected all new ideas, and they held back our technology for over 2 centuries. They church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. The numbers have probably been lost to time, but the number of people executed by the Catholic church easily numbers in the millions, and in many cases they were executed in the absolute most brutal way imaginibale(Arguably. But fire would be a terrible way to go). Think of how many people that could have otherwise been progressive "renaissance men" that were killed by the Catholic Church.

The Japanese were just as evil as the Nazis. It was so messed up that the soldiers were instructed to "Use local provisions" when in China. Yes, they ate people, after raping them to death with bayonets.

And anyone who tries to say otherwise is trying to censor history to make themselves feel better for being human.

 GalacticDefender wrote:

 Spyral wrote:

 GalacticDefender wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 LuciusAR wrote:
I think the mistake many make is to think of ‘Nazism’ as a unique event in human history. Regimes with a similar pattern of behavior to the Nazis have been a relatively regular occurrence in history. Not all of them wielded the sort of power that the Nazis did and so thankfully where often largely confined to their own borders, but ultra nationalist, xenophobic and authoritarian governments have cropped up time and time again. Even today there are more than a few.

Zimbabwe comes to mind

The Catholic Church comes to mind.

Indeed made infamous by their rounding up of millions of protestants and gassing them?

i) anti-semetism was rife at the time. Did this have a good reason other than good old sectarianism?

ii) When I was in school ~14 years ago the holocaust was estimated to be 6million dead as a result. Now its 6 million jews + misc others whom we don't really hear about.

iii) I'm completely against Israeli occupation. It was/is a stupid idea and frankly if the whole place was rendered radioactive by a nuke for 100 years it might give everyone time to chill the feth out.

iv) poverty/recession = rise in extremes.

The Catholic Church opressed Europe for centuries. They burned people at the stake for believing different ideas than theirs, they rejected all new ideas, and they held back our technology for over 2 centuries. They church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. The numbers have probably been lost to time, but the number of people executed by the Catholic church easily numbers in the millions, and in many cases they were executed in the absolute most brutal way imaginibale(Arguably. But fire would be a terrible way to go). Think of how many people that could have otherwise been progressive "renaissance men" that were killed by the Catholic Church.

The Japanese were just as evil as the Nazis. It was so messed up that the soldiers were instructed to "Use local provisions" when in China. Yes, they ate people, after raping them to death with bayonets.

And anyone who tries to say otherwise is trying to censor history to make themselves feel better for being human.

The Catholic Church tried to take political control over Europe for centuries. They never had an active program of extermination where a specific group of people were rounded up, tortured and killed. You could argue the Muslims were targeted in this fashion but it was not so much a hatred of them for them as a hatred of them not being us. All religions have had this attitude in the past. As far as I know, the Church never rounded up every Muslim (and their descendants) and threw them in camps to be slaughtered in an organized, state supported and funded fashion. Muslims could convert to Christianity. The Nazis never offered the Jews such a chance.

The Japanese did terrible things, yes. Terrible things that shouldn't be ignored.

Your assertion that anyone that disagrees with you is wrong is a flawed argument. Example: If you disagree with me, you are a troll and shouldn't be listened to. See how this works? Anyone can make that statement without any real backing.

As for Hilter, he was an incompetent military strategist, a master orator and a very hate filled man. He led his country into ruin and got an entire generation of people killed and then some. Reapplying his ideals is only going to repeat history... again.

Why the recent rise in Nazism?

Because history DOESN'T repeat.


It just rhymes with itself a lot.

ALL of this has happened before, and will happen again. It's a design flaw and I'd get onto the manufacturer about it.

There is a difference to Catholicism and Nazism though, and that is change. The Catholic religion has done terrible things and Romans did equally terrible things to them when St.peter's followers were a minority and so and so forth. Today though, you don't see many Catholics burning people at the torch and have become a peaceful organization that wishes to forget the skeletons in the closet. Nazism today is still very anti-everything not white christian, and are still based on anger and aggression.

Perhaps Nazism seems more popular today (not sure if it is) is because many of the people who fought them and experienced the war are dead. Maybe we see Hitler's powerful war machine, but forget just how dark and brutal that machine was. "lest we forget" comes to mind.

Plus, people always blame the Jewish community when things are bad.

TheCustomLime wrote:


As for Hilter, he was an incompetent military strategist, a master orator and a very hate filled man. He led his country into ruin and got an entire generation of people killed and then some. Reapplying his ideals is only going to repeat history... again.

The fact we should remember is that without support Hitler would just just be a surname on the bottom of some very poor paintings. A man who could be noted only for a failed attempt at a putsch.

 Mr. Burning wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:


As for Hilter, he was an incompetent military strategist, a master orator and a very hate filled man. He led his country into ruin and got an entire generation of people killed and then some. Reapplying his ideals is only going to repeat history... again.

The fact we should remember is that without support Hitler would just just be a surname on the bottom of some very poor paintings. A man who could be noted only for a failed attempt at a putsch.

Well, he started out as a pretty good leader, being one of the first countries to put restrictions on smoking, helping bring the country out of poverty. Many other leaders thought he was a good guy and they even had the Olympics in Germany during his reign.

Then he went crazy and started a war with everybody at once.

Which really shows how blind people were. His book was quite revealing, a best seller even, and yet somehow nobody saw WW2 coming

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:


As for Hilter, he was an incompetent military strategist, a master orator and a very hate filled man. He led his country into ruin and got an entire generation of people killed and then some. Reapplying his ideals is only going to repeat history... again.

The fact we should remember is that without support Hitler would just just be a surname on the bottom of some very poor paintings. A man who could be noted only for a failed attempt at a putsch.

Well, he started out as a pretty good leader, being one of the first countries to put restrictions on smoking, helping bring the country out of poverty. Many other leaders thought he was a good guy and they even had the Olympics in Germany during his reign.

Then he went crazy and started a war with everybody at once.

He was never a good leader. ever see the party speech where he states he doesn't have a plan for Germany. What he had was people in place who would listen to his ramblings and then act on them. He didn't write anything down, his subordinates did what they thought 'the will of the fuhrer' was, but since Hitler believed in a kind of Darwinism he set departments against each other.

Look up the T-4 programme to see what a good leader he was in the early years. Actually look up T-4 to see how easy it was to implement.

In reality other leaders thought they could appease him, with the great war fresh in their minds.

Mr Nobody wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:


As for Hilter, he was an incompetent military strategist, a master orator and a very hate filled man. He led his country into ruin and got an entire generation of people killed and then some. Reapplying his ideals is only going to repeat history... again.

The fact we should remember is that without support Hitler would just just be a surname on the bottom of some very poor paintings. A man who could be noted only for a failed attempt at a putsch.

Well, he started out as a pretty good leader, being one of the first countries to put restrictions on smoking, helping bring the country out of poverty. Many other leaders thought he was a good guy and they even had the Olympics in Germany during his reign.

Then he went crazy and started a war with everybody at once.

The Olympics were decided long before he came to power and I think it was stated they wouldn't of given Germany them if he was in charge then

I think one of the key things to keep in mind is that Catholicism was not really that different from any other world religion in the past. It's easy to judge them by modern standards as the epitome of evil, but comparing them to the Nazi's is horribly narrowsighted.

At best, the Papacy had limited oversight. Many of the 'Inquisitions' were taken under local initiative, sparked by power struggles between secular and religious authorities and deeply rooted into tensions going all the way back to the Roman Empire. Even the crusades had some of that. Take witch hunts in 15th century Germany. The Pope got that started, not necessarily because he cared about witches, but because he didn't like how the church in Germany was more under the Holy Roman Emperor's control than his (and the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor went at it like two old married people who'd grown tired of each other after the first ten years). Throw in a very zealous witch hunting Inquisitor and a Pope who wants to flex his metaphorical muscle against the Holy Roman Emperor and you get a bunch of people being burned at the stake. Not so much malice on the part of the church as tragic uncaring.

It's just not comparable to a specific targeted execution, where officials at the top initiated everything and have oversight to make sure they didn't miss anyone they wanted dead or suffering.

A little Off-Topic.

I just finished "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder. It's a comparative study of both the crimes of the Nazis and the Soviets, and how they interrelate. Amazing read if you want a look at mass killing from a different perspective. Really well written and fact checked. For me it was huge departure from some of the other books I've read about the subject as the author has this ability to really make statistics hurt. Several times I had to put the book down and walk away. Not because of overly descriptive stories about the atrocities (which are most assuredly in there), but rather his use of statistics. Its much more personal than some of the other things I've seen. And at the end you see why he went that route. Overall a really, really good book.

This is not a sudden thing.

In particular Anti Semitism has been around for many years preceding the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP programme. In Europe in particular Jews have been scapegoated for many centuries. As have other elements of society, including gypsies.

 GalacticDefender wrote:
The Catholic Church opressed Europe for centuries. They burned people at the stake for believing different ideas than theirs, they rejected all new ideas, and they held back our technology for over 2 centuries. They church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. The numbers have probably been lost to time, but the number of people executed by the Catholic church easily numbers in the millions, and in many cases they were executed in the absolute most brutal way imaginibale(Arguably. But fire would be a terrible way to go). Think of how many people that could have otherwise been progressive "renaissance men" that were killed by the Catholic Church.

The Japanese were just as evil as the Nazis. It was so messed up that the soldiers were instructed to "Use local provisions" when in China. Yes, they ate people, after raping them to death with bayonets.

And anyone who tries to say otherwise is trying to censor history to make themselves feel better for being human.

I will agree with you on the Japanese part.

The Catholic part... sure, some Catholics have done wrong but your facts are way off the mark. Millions put to death? Really? From your vehemence, I take it you can't be swayed by facts but I'll try anyway.

I'm by no means defending the crimes perpetrated by the Catholic church in its 2000ish years of existence, but your numbers are way off on casualties and you fail to recognize that the Church played a huge part in preserving knowledge that was lost from sucessive barbarian invasions as well as from the slow grinding down of the Byzantine Empire by centuries of Muslim aggression. If you call this "censoring history" then I would love to know where you were taught this knowledge and why you accept it so conclusively.

In regards to holding back technology/science, I'll leave you these lists of close minded, anti-science individuals from across the centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_scientists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_cleric–scientists

Also, if wikipedia isn't your style : http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html

A humorous, modern/secular take of the Catholic church and its attitude towards science on the first part.

If I can help you with any other misperceptions you have, please list them.

 NELS1031 wrote:
Also, if wikipedia isn't your style : http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html

Huh. Well my respect for Cracked has gone up a bit. But then my lack of respect was pretty petty to begin with

Love the bit about knights. The only meaner people in the Mediterranean were the Seljuks

 LordofHats wrote:

 NELS1031 wrote:
Also, if wikipedia isn't your style : http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html

Huh. Well my respect for Cracked has gone up a bit. But then my lack of respect was pretty petty to begin with

Love the bit about knights. The only meaner people in the Mediterranean were the Seljuks

I really enjoyed that article, gelled with everything in my Medieval history class this last semester.

Yep. Love they're choice for #1. That's probably the greatest historical myth period imo. If you look back and eliminate all the women who died in child birth and all the children who died before the age of 16, you realize human life expectancy, really hasn't changed that much. A healthy adult man or woman would live upwards to 70+ so long as they were fed and didn't get pillaged

It is worth noting that everything probably did stink a whole hell of a lot more though. Regardless of individual bathing habits, sewage and modern waste management were fascinating concepts. Add in that the primary non walking mode of transport or heavy hauling put out a lot of feces per mile and you have a gakky situation in the making.

#2 just makes me angry. It reminds me of my most hated thing in the middle ages. De Troyes of the Court of Marie of France, the Countess of Champagne. First off he's the creator of Lancelot, arguably the worst part of the legend of King Arthur (this is twelfth century mind you, also a french addition to English legend/history/mythology bites? Shocker eh?) Well any way De Troyes was an poet in the days when that was in all reality useless and you had to do a lot of tail kissing to survive. In his case the Countess Marie, Marie was disappointed with the men in her courts (specifically the knights) they all acted like knights usually did in the middle ages, and Marie wanted them to behave more like a romance novel. So she told De Troyes to put quill to paper and write some poems for her with adventure and romance, emphasizing chivalry and what came to be called "Courtly Love".

Courtly Love if you look into it can basically be blamed for why human courtship sucks today in much of the west.

It is however to be noted that the web of political and social intrigue greatly favored the ladies of the court, giving them a rather impressive amount of political power to exercise in the case of higher ranked nobles at court.... like a countess for example.

Some of the rules of courtly love as cited here: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/rules_of_love.html

1. Marriage should not be a deterrent to love. (Kinda makes sense, love was a relatively new concept still, especially in the higher social circles where marriages were most often political in nature.)

2. Love cannot exist in the individual who cannot be jealous.

3. A double love cannot obligate an individual.

4. Love constantly waxes and wanes.

5. That which is not given freely by the object of one's love loses its savor.

6. It is necessary for a male to reach the age of maturity in order to love. (...I'll buy that actually. Takes awhile for that whole frontal lobe thing to kick in for us)

7. A lover must observe a two-year widowhood after his beloved's death. (Remember, this isn't your wife, or even a girlfriend, this is your piece on the side)

8. Only the most urgent circumstances should deprive one of love.

9. Only the insistence of love can motivate one to love.

10. Love cannot coexist with avarice.

11. A lover should not love anyone who would be an embarrassing marriage choice.

12. True love excludes all from its embrace but the beloved.

13. Public revelation of love is deadly to love in most instances.

14. The value of love is commensurate with its difficulty of attainment.

15. The presence of one's beloved causes palpitation of the heart.

16. The sight of one's beloved causes palpitations of the heart.

17. A new love brings an old one to a finish.

18. Good character is the one real requirement for worthiness of love.

19. When love grows faint its demise is usually certain.

20. Apprehension is the constant companion of true love.

21. Love is reinforced by jealousy.

22. Suspicion of the beloved generates jealousy and therefore intensifies love.

23. Eating and sleeping diminish greatly when one is aggravated by love.

24. The lover's every deed is performed with the thought of his beloved in mind.

25. Unless it please his beloved, no act or thought is worthy to the lover.

So remember, do thinks ye olde school. Infidelity and jealousy are the ticket!

Edit: I was grabbing dates and stuff for this off the wiki, and they had a line that some scholars actually think this is an origin point for BDSM. Rereading these rules I'm gonna have to give that the "plausible" stamp.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
also a french addition to English legend/history/mythology bites? Shocker eh?)

...the entire English aristocracy was French. At the time you speak of, they still spoke French and knew barely any English.

How's that history course going?

And those "myths" are dubious. Other than "everyone in the middle ages smelled" they weren't really known to me. Everyone as a kid is told that knights were awesome and cool, then when you get a little older you learn the truth. Those guys were an entire class of land-owning people, of course they weren't all living saints. But the idea of "chivalry" is a lot more child-friendly than the Sack of Byzantium.

They also deliberately wrongly define the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages were dark because they came after the Roman Empire. Culturally and economically, Dark Ages Europe was a shadow of its former self - Europe would only return to Roman era levels of sophistication by the 19th century.

Also I agree with Hitler about not smoking and being nice to animals.

 BryllCream wrote:


How's that history course going?

And those "myths" are dubious. Other than "everyone in the middle ages smelled" they weren't really known to me. Everyone as a kid is told that knights were awesome and cool, then when you get a little older you learn the truth. Those guys were an entire class of land-owning people, of course they weren't all living saints. But the idea of "chivalry" is a lot more child-friendly than the Sack of Byzantium.

They also deliberately wrongly define the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages were dark because they came after the Roman Empire. Culturally and economically, Dark Ages Europe was a shadow of its former self - Europe would only return to Roman era levels of sophistication by the 19th century.

Um, that is the wrong definition of the Dark Ages. It's the one the Enlightment folks loved because it made them feel more awesome, but then they also weren't as good at historical study just yet. The Dark Ages were over by the 10th century. Most historians of the period won't even use the term anymore because its too loaded with ideas contrary to known facts. By the time the Crusades were launched in 1095, Western Europe had surpassed Rome in most ways (in the words of Kenneth Harl, Europe went into the Crusades in the Romanesque and emerged from them in the High Gothic).

Western Europe (depending) had achieved an economic parity with the late Empire by the 10th century (Northern Italians had gotten there way sooner) and the population had recovered from the big plague that swept Gaul, Iberia, and Britannia in previous centuries. Education was more limited, but hardly unheard of. The idea that it took hundreds of years to catch up to Rome is a horribly outdated idea. By the end of 12th century Western Europe had surpassed Rome by any meaningful measure. Economics, technology, art. The Dark Ages ended when the Carolingians came to power and restored a modicum of order to Western Europe that evolved into Western Christendom.

 BlapBlapBlap wrote:
As others have, said, the events of that particular part of human history are not unique. During the first crusade, I believe, the Templars gathered every single Jewish inhabitant, forced them into a synagogue and burned it to the ground, killing anyone who escaped.

Well, that's a horrible yet perpetuated misconception. The burning happened, but during the first crusade (1096 - 1099) by secular crusaders when they first reached Jerusalem. The Templars were founded in 1119, who allowed the muslims to pray within the walls of their fortress and eventually negotiated for the jewish so they could pray at whow is the wall of lamentations.

Even on antisemitism, St Bernard, founded or the order of the Cister which rules were followed by the Templrars said that "He who hits a jew is hitting Jesus himself".

Now, go on with nazis, just wanted to make that one thing clear.

 LordofHats wrote:

Um, that is the wrong definition of the Dark Ages. It's the one the Enlightment folks loved because it made them feel more awesome, but then they also weren't as good at historical study just yet. The Dark Ages were over by the 10th century. Most historians of the period won't even use the term anymore because its too loaded with ideas contrary to known facts. By the time the Crusades were launched in 1095, Western Europe had surpassed Rome in most ways (in the words of Kenneth Harl, Europe went into the Crusades in the Romanesque and emerged from them in the High Gothic).

Well urbanisation was far higher in Roman Europe, especially Latium. And while they lacked the crop development of the middle ages, they also had access to prime agricultural land (Egypt) and factories/industrial developments that would not be seen again until the 19th century.

Here's a graph of global lead production, according to greenland ice sheet records:


Note the huge spike in Roman times.

Similar production levels are reported for iron, copper, gold and silver (for reference, the amount of silver in Ancient Rome was 5 to 10 times larger than the amount of silver in Europe and the Arab world in 800AD).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita#Roman_and_Byzantine_Empires
GDP per capita hovers around $600 (1990 dollars). Now if we take the assumption that GDP per capita was about 50% higher in Italia than the rest of the empire, our figure for there is about $900.

In fact, the "true" figure is probably even greater than that. Those GDP figures are calculated based on food production - essentially dismissing anything that's not food. As can be seen, the Romans had huge material production, easily surpassing pre-industrial Europe. The fact that the state was the largest consumer of these products (since ordinary people by and large couldn't afford them) doesn't make this any less impressive.

According to this table, Western Europe surpassed it shortly before 1500 (about 500 years after the dark ages). And that's the wealthiest part of Europe.

 LordofHats wrote:

Western Europe (depending) had achieved an economic parity with the late Empire by the 10th century (Northern Italians had gotten there way sooner)

Whoops. See above, it took until the 15th century for Western Europe to catch up economically with the Roman Empire. Note that Western Europe does not catch up with the Italian peninsula until the 17th century.

 LordofHats wrote:
Education was more limited, but hardly unheard of. The idea that it took hundreds of years to catch up to Rome is a horribly outdated idea. By the end of 12th century Western Europe had surpassed Rome by any meaningful measure. Economics, technology, art. The Dark Ages ended when the Carolingians came to power and restored a modicum of order to Western Europe that evolved into Western Christendom.

Whoops. See above.

Also note that there wasn't a single European state until the 19th century that had anything like Rome's complex legal system and governmental efficiency.

 NELS1031 wrote:

 GalacticDefender wrote:
The Catholic Church opressed Europe for centuries. They burned people at the stake for believing different ideas than theirs, they rejected all new ideas, and they held back our technology for over 2 centuries. They church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. The numbers have probably been lost to time, but the number of people executed by the Catholic church easily numbers in the millions, and in many cases they were executed in the absolute most brutal way imaginibale(Arguably. But fire would be a terrible way to go). Think of how many people that could have otherwise been progressive "renaissance men" that were killed by the Catholic Church.

The Japanese were just as evil as the Nazis. It was so messed up that the soldiers were instructed to "Use local provisions" when in China. Yes, they ate people, after raping them to death with bayonets.

And anyone who tries to say otherwise is trying to censor history to make themselves feel better for being human.

I will agree with you on the Japanese part.

The Catholic part... sure, some Catholics have done wrong but your facts are way off the mark. Millions put to death? Really? From your vehemence, I take it you can't be swayed by facts but I'll try anyway.

I'm by no means defending the crimes perpetrated by the Catholic church in its 2000ish years of existence, but your numbers are way off on casualties and you fail to recognize that the Church played a huge part in preserving knowledge that was lost from sucessive barbarian invasions as well as from the slow grinding down of the Byzantine Empire by centuries of Muslim aggression. If you call this "censoring history" then I would love to know where you were taught this knowledge and why you accept it so conclusively.

In regards to holding back technology/science, I'll leave you these lists of close minded, anti-science individuals from across the centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_scientists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_cleric–scientists

Also, if wikipedia isn't your style : http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html

A humorous, modern/secular take of the Catholic church and its attitude towards science on the first part.

If I can help you with any other misperceptions you have, please list them.

To whoever made their earlier post saying that Catholics gave people a chance to convert, well, I fail to see the moral distinction between "Die" (the Nazi's policy), and "Join us or die" (The Catholic policy)

I did not mean put to death strictly by outright execution. I meant the deaths they caused through conquest, war, and yes, execution. Also keep in mind that the world's population was significatntly less in the middle ages.

There was one man who was burned at the stake for suggesting that God may have created life elsewhere in the universe. If you do not call that evil and counter to human progress, then I'd love to hear your argument. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet )

There were indeed a great many Catholic scientists. Gregor Mendel, the discoverer of genetics, was a catholic monk. This does not justify or make the actions of the Catholic Church as a whole any less evil. And of course you probably know that the Catholic Church put Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life after he discovered the moons of Jupiter. Another example of anti-scientific ignorance and censorship on the Church's part.

You provided examples of scientists who were members of the catholic church, though still did good things for human progress. Well, here is an example of a scientist who who worked for the Nazis, then went on to help us get to the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

Honestly I fail to see how the leadership of the Catholic Church was any less evil than the Nazis or Japanese.

If you give it an honest assessment, "Join us or die" is a better option than "Die"

We can agree they did commit actions that were morally wrong. But to say the Catholic Church is anything like they used to be is wrong.

At the time, the Church was as much, if not more so, a political organization as it was a religious one. The Church had its own standing army, and could easily call upon the armies of many of the kingdoms in Europe. The threat of excommunication for a king was a political weapon. The Pope could excommunicate you and now your subjects could freely disobey you. No king wanted that.

Still, this is better than the atrocities that were commited by the Nazis and Soviets.

Why are we giving China no mention in the Bloodbath rankings? I saw something on this awhile back.

China Communist Regime, 1949- present, (62 years of Dictatorship) Bodycount 60 million + (10 times greater than Nazi Germany)

Soviet Union Communist Regime, 1922-1991 (69 years of Dictatorship) Bodycount 35 million + (6 times greater than Nazi Germany)

Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 Socialist regime 12 years of Dictatorship: Bodycount 6 million +

China is number one in this regard.

 Zakiriel wrote:

Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 Socialist regime

I hate it when people make this claim. National Socialism is about as Socialist as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic, for the people, or a republic.

If we're going to be that nitpicky it should be clarified that Communist China and Russia were never truly Communist systems.

If we're going incredibly strictly and defining Communism as what was envisioned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their original Communist Manifesto, then no, they weren't.

The point being they were what they were. And people died.

 BryllCream wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
also a french addition to English legend/history/mythology bites? Shocker eh?)

...the entire English aristocracy was French. At the time you speak of, they still spoke French and knew barely any English.
.

Which has what to do with a piece of Pre-Roman Celtic Mythology that said Frenchmen added what is quite arguable the worst character/part of the story to?

I also agree with Lordofhats, and my professor for that matter about your definition of the Dark Ages being innsccurate. Read something other then Renaissance era historians and those influenced by them for slightly less biased opinions on the so called "dark ages". I recommend The Waning of the Middle Ages by Huizinga for a nice wrap up of cultural progression leading into the Renaissance.

 GalacticDefender wrote:
To whoever made their earlier post saying that Catholics gave people a chance to convert, well, I fail to see the moral distinction between "Die" (the Nazi's policy), and "Join us or die" (The Catholic policy) I did not mean put to death strictly by outright execution. I meant the deaths they caused through conquest, war, and yes, execution. Also keep in mind that the world's population was significatntly less in the middle ages.

Your numbers still don't add up. Again... Millions killed? Really?

What wars of conquest did the Catholic church engage in? (Crusades? What else?)

 GalacticDefender wrote:
There was one man who was burned at the stake for suggesting that God may have created life elsewhere in the universe. If you do not call that evil and counter to human progress, then I'd love to hear your argument. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet )

Your facts are wrong. Bruno's views towards Christianity/religion in general were the cause of his execution, not his scientific views. Barbaric by todays standards yes, but you have to omit crucial historical facts for his execution to fit your viewpoint.

 GalacticDefender wrote:
There were indeed a great many Catholic scientists. Gregor Mendel, the discoverer of genetics, was a catholic monk. This does not justify or make the actions of the Catholic Church as a whole any less evil.

But it conclusively disproves your statement that the Church was a repressor of science.

Evils done by members should not poorly reflect on the whole, when it contradicts the mission of the whole. Judging isolated incidents and projecting it onto the whole of something is a simplistic and stunted mindset. Using the privilege of hindsight to do it, without referencing historical norms of the time/place is poor scholastic form.

 GalacticDefender wrote:
And of course you probably know that the Catholic Church put Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life after he discovered the moons of Jupiter. Another example of anti-scientific ignorance and censorship on the Church's part.

Again wrong. Galileo was given celebrity status in Rome after he discovered Jupiters moons. He was put on house arrest, after a lengthy trial in which he could defend himself (a testament to Catholic jurisprudence), because of his views on heliocentrism. His insistence that it was more than a theory, but indeed fact and couldn't prove it (using the scientific method of his time), was what got him into trouble. Galileo also wrote one of his best works while on house arrest, so he was never truly stifled in his scientific endeavors. Indeed, he had a high up Catholic clergyman who sponsored him.

Copernicus came up with the theory of heliocentrism and nothing happened to him. No one that uses Galileo as an example of the Church's so called anti-science repression can answer why that contradiction exists when they frame it like you did. Like your example of Bruno, you need to omit important facts for Galileo's trial and arrest fit your narrative.

 GalacticDefender wrote:
You provided examples of scientists who were members of the catholic church, though still did good things for human progress. Well, here is an example of a scientist who who worked for the Nazis, then went on to help us get to the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

So someone that was forced to join the Nazi party and put up appearances of loyalty to it (according to the article you linked) somehow taints our space program? What were we supposed to do? Repress his scientific knowledge or kill him? Aren't you condemning the Church for doing that?

 GalacticDefender wrote:
Honestly I fail to see how the leadership of the Catholic Church was any less evil than the Nazis or Japanese.

It must be hard to see when all of your facts are wrong or distorted.

Apologies if I come off as snarky or rude, but your factual errors needed to be pointed out and corrected. Anything less is censoring history.

Do you require any more illumination?

 baxter123 wrote:
Just as a side have any of you figured out that Buddhism is really the only older religion I think of that hasn't started a war.

Sorry to burst your bubble-- there were at least a couple periods in Japanese history where there were highly militant sects of, among others, Buddhists. While not organized or long enough to really be categorized as war, Buddhists have definitely been responsible for initiating battles.

Here is a recent report from the liberal bastion of West Point that looks at the increase of far-right extremism in the USA, including neo-nazis, if anyone is interested.

You really can't shrug off the crusades and the MANY massacres attendant to it if you're talking about Catholicism's history. In Europe and in the Middle East the Crusades were pretty brutal. During the massacre after the first crusade conquered Jerusalem one knight wrote that so many of the local civilians were put to the sword (christian, jew, and muslim alike) that the city streets were knee deep in blood obviously a slight over exaggeration, but that's some serious killin'

Note the Catholic Church didn't make the crusaders do what they did. The majority of crusading knights were bored secular knights that joined up because it was an opprotunity for advancement. It was getting to the point where there wasn't any land for a new knight to have for his own.

Knights were also, more often than not, fairly arrogant and violent individuals. They joined the crusades for the opprotunity to get fame and fortune in a distant land. They weren't shining examples of christian morals.

Of course what they did was really no different than what most conquoring armies would do to the lands and people they captured. it just had that one extra bonus that they were foreign infidels with a totally different culture and the Church didn't object to their wholesale slaughter.

The Pope probably wouldn't have cared one way or another what happened to the people that were living in the holy land at the time.


It also needs to be noted that the Muslims were no better behaved towards their opponents than the Crusaders were. Muslim culture in general was a very agressive expansionist power that had been encroaching towards Europe for some time.

 BryllCream wrote:
Well urbanisation was far higher in Roman Europe, especially Latium.

Does a higher Urban population really matter? Urban density may have been higher in Roman Europe, but as a measure of prosperity it's not really a meaningful measure. Especially if we account for the fact Western Europeans couldn't have access to the large population centers of Byzantium or the Near East. If we cut it back just to Western Europe, the Europeans were much father along during the Middle Period than they had been under Roman Rule, baring probably France where the population was shifting North.

Perhaps I should clarify the context of what I mean. I'm not talking about the whole of the Empire. That's something of a pointless comparison as inevitably the Empire had a far greater landmass and access to far more resources. I'm referring specifically to Roman Europe and Post-Roman Europe.

Note the huge spike in Roman times.

Noting that it's a chart of world lead production, and Rome wasn't the only prosperous civilization in the world at the time, I find the chart suspicious. The wikipage using it says its a chart of lead levels in Ice Cores, but is that really a real measure of a preindustrial age? What is the measure being used for it? A quick look on the net leads me to an talk of an article (and only one article) from some scientists working out of Greenland who claimed Roman and Carthaginian Silver mines and smelting processes flooded the atmosphere with lead, so is this just a chart of silver production/lead byproduct? And that article claims atmospheric lead had reached Roman levels by the 15th century not the 19th. But the article is from 2007. No one has corraberated their evidence and no other work seems to have been done to look into the matter from what I can tell (I'll look).

The Middle East and Byzantium certainly maintained a very high level of production which just doesn't sync with that chart. China would suffer little drop off until the 2nd century AD and certainly recovered. IMO, while I lack any means to disprove the chart, I find its presentation highly dubious (so take that for what it's worth ). The chart seems almost too convenient for anyone arguing that Rome had achieved a status greater than anyone until a recent times, which is frankly, absurd. It doesn't mesh with anything we know. While we can debate the Middle Ages comparative to Rome, at least by the 15th century Europe had vastly surpassed Roman Europe in everything by far.

(for reference, the amount of silver in Ancient Rome was 5 to 10 times larger than the amount of silver in Europe and the Arab world in 800AD).

Now that would sync with the chart but it's only a single metal and I've seen Roman Iron production numbers range from the ludicrously low to the ludicrously high so I don't think there's any consensus on Roman mining. Is there any other data you can find? I actually do want to know but the chart provide above is so ambiguous. Going off to see if I can find a more detailed data set XD

GDP per capita hovers around $600 (1990 dollars). Now if we take the assumption that GDP per capita was about 50% higher in Italia than the rest of the empire, our figure for there is about $900.

GDP for the typical peasant in Europe circa 1100 was $1000 US. Don't know what year for the dollar value. My source for it was published 2011.

In fact, the "true" figure is probably even greater than that. Those GDP figures are calculated based on food production - essentially dismissing anything that's not food.

There's a reason for that. Food can be effectively measured through archeology (and tax records). It also by far formed the basis of all world economies until the early modern period and remained the key economic core of most of the world until the mid-19th century. It forms a basis by which economic prosperity can be measured across the world.

Also note that there wasn't a single European state until the 19th century that had anything like Rome's complex legal system and governmental efficiency.

One of Europe's first Universities in Bologna was started to study law. Law codes in Europe were definitely behind Rome during the Crusades but come the reign of the absolute monarchs starting in the late 16th century, most law codes had long produced a mix of Roman and Germanic traditions.

Roman government was incredibly corrupt by the Imperial Period. Probably far more corrupt than any later European system for a very long time (when you're working in Feudalism the regional nature makes corruption something of a voided issue). Tax farming is probably one of the most wasteful means of gathering taxes anyone can come up with but the Roman's weren't rolling in options. If anything in terms of tax collection Feudalism and the manor system was vastly more efficient.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Honestly I fail to see how the leadership of the Catholic Church was any less evil than the Nazis or Japanese.

While the Catholic Church might have put 'millions' of people to death. Let's at least recognize that if they did, it took them 1000 years to do it. Nazi Germany beat that record in 10. Does that make it better

Grey Templar wrote:Note the Catholic Church didn't make the crusaders do what they did. The majority of crusading knights were bored secular knights that joined up because it was an opprotunity for advancement. It was getting to the point where there wasn't any land for a new knight to have for his own.

There are a lot of reasons for the Crusades. The Pope was more than happy to show up the Patriarch when the Emperor called for aid. The Holy Roman Emperor was more than happy to show who the real emperor of Rome was, knights wanted to exert their authority, gain glory, kings wanted pillaging knights, especially Normans, off their lands, and some real religious conviction probably goes in there too.

Of course what they did was really no different than what most conquoring armies would do to the lands and people they captured. it just had that one extra bonus that they were foreign infidels with a totally different culture and the Church didn't object to their wholesale slaughter.

This is a common myth. Much of the population in the Middle East at the time of the 8 Canonic Crusades, were still Christians. Muslims were a minority, and the Seljuk Turks were pretty much unpopular with everybody. But yeah, no one in Europe really cared or complained because they thought everyone was a Mouhammadan. The Byzantines complained but they were kind of like

"Sweet the Europeans are here to help us take back Anatolia!"
"Hey Byzantine dude"
"Hi!"
"Bye, off to take back the Holy Land!"
"Yeah- Wait, what! No come back! You're supposed to help us!"

The Pope probably wouldn't have cared one way or another what happened to the people that were living in the holy land at the time.

Agreed.

It also needs to be noted that the Muslims were no better behaved towards their opponents than the Crusaders were. Muslim culture in general was a very agressive expansionist power that had been encroaching towards Europe for some time.

Actually the Abbasid Caliphate had largely ceased expansion. There were those guys in Spain but no one really seemed to care about them except the Spanish You're thinking of the later Ottoman Empire which was the Islamic power that really pushed to take Europe and fought the wars with the HRE and its allies in the Balklands. The Muslim armies hit Byzantium at its peak and lost and kind of didn't get much farther before their own internal issues stalled their westward expansion and halted it.

The Fatamids were actually allies to the Byzantines in the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of way. It was the Fatamids who signed a Treaty with Basil II that assured the protection and safety of Christian pilgrims that grew the Pilgrimage trade. The Seljuks however came it, took over the Abbasid Caliphate, converted, and started a war against the Fatamids that disrupted pilgrimages and was a major social spark for the Crusades. The Abbasids weren't even trying to take Anatolia from the Byzantines. They thought the empire was too strong. They actually took the most ruthless Seljuk tribes and put them on the Byzantine frontier because they were afraid the Byzantines would attack them while they fought the Fatamids (and because those tribes had a habit of raiding the cities in the Middle East). Turns out those tribes went into Anatolia to raid and took the place over in an 'oops didn't mean to do that' kind of way.

The real irony though is that when the Crusaders arrived in the Holy Lands, the Fatamids successors, the Ayyubids had a nominal control over the Sultan who ruled the region and were reinforcing their former treaty with the Byzantines

NELS,

The number of deaths is widely debated (do a search for yourself) but many estimates put the number of deaths caused by the Catholic church to be well over a million. When taking into account the various inquisitions and holy wars that were waged before adequate records were kept, I believe these estimates are quite accurate. The very lowest estimates I have found are well over 8000, and seem to only refer to those directly executed by the church and not killed in a crusade or war. Regardless, even 200 innocent people killed by an organization because of pure ignorance is enough to call that organization evil, is it not? The Catholic church tried to eliminate all who believed differently than them. They were much like the Nazis, though Instead of trying to create a "master race", they tried to create a "master religion".

@NELS "Again wrong. Galileo was given celebrity status in Rome... Etc"

This is completely incorrect. He was considered heretical for beilieving in Copernican ideas. He stood on trial for accusitions of heresey. The Catholic Church conclusively proves in this case that they are actively participating in the repression of science. He did indeed end up better off than Bruno and was celebrated in Rome however, and for that bit I'll give you credit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair



@NELZ "Your facts are wrong. Bruno's views towards Christianity/religion in general were the cause of his execution, not his scientific views. Barbaric by todays standards yes, but you have to omit crucial historical facts for his execution to fit your viewpoint."

In my opinion, there is no difference whatsoever between burning someone over religious ideals or scientific ideas (Which appear to be one in the same in Bruno's case). Burning people simply for their difference of opinion is abhorrent, in all cases.


@NELS "So someone that was forced to join the Nazi party and put up appearances of loyalty to it (according to the article you linked) somehow taints our space program? What were we supposed to do? Repress his scientific knowledge or kill him? Aren't you condemning the Church for doing that?"

No, not at all. I'm saying that the fact that there have been people who have done good things, but were affiliated with an evil group, does not make that group good, or less evil. Gregor Mendel and Von Braun were incredible people who did significant good for humanity.


And yes, of course Catholics today don't believe in executing those different from them. But that does not make the Catholic Church of the dark ages less guilty for their actions. Honestly I don't even know how one can argue that the Catholic Church was progressive.

@Lordofhats

"While the Catholic Church might have put 'millions' of people to death. Let's at least recognize that if they did, it took them 1000 years to do it. Nazi Germany beat that record in 10. Does that make it better?"

No, it doesn't. The Catholic Church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. They just did a better job of taking over the world.

I don't think anyone is saying the Church was progressive back in the so called Dark Ages. They just weren't as repressive as we have been led to believe. At least not universally.

The Church wasn't some well oiled machine keeping Europe under its thumb the whole time. That really didn't start till the late middle ages/early rennaissance. They were a diverse group with plenty of infighting amongst themselves over major issues.

The Catholic Church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. They just did a better job of taking over the world.

The Catholic Church never took over the world. The Pope certainly tried over and over again, but kings and queens, and especially the Holy Roman Emperor, always challenged the Pope butting into their business. Why do you think the Holy Roman Empire was always invading Italy? The Middle Ages can be greatly characterized as a constant power struggle between religious and secular authorities over who was really in charge, with the secular tending to come out on top.

Blaming the Catholic Church outright like it had absolute control over these things is very narrow minded. Local churches and bodies tended to answer more to secular rulers in the area than the Pope and a lot of the horrible thing that happens were conducted under the banner of religion but had ulterior economic and political motives. It's kind of Middle Ages 101.

 LordofHats wrote:

The Catholic Church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. They just did a better job of taking over the world.

The Catholic Church never took over the world. The Pope certainly tried over and over again, but kings and queens, and especially the Holy Roman Emperor, always challenged the Pope butting into their business. Why do you think the Holy Roman Empire was always invading Italy? The Middle Ages can be greatly characterized as a constant power struggle between religious and secular authorities over who was really in charge, with the secular tending to come out on top.

Blaming the Catholic Church outright like it had absolute control over these things is very narrow minded. Local churches and bodies tended to answer more to secular rulers in the area than the Pope.

Largely because the King's swords were closer than the Pope's.

There is a reason the Reformation began in Germany. The church didn't have quite as much sway there as it did in other places.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
Does a higher Urban population really matter? Urban density may have been higher in Roman Europe, but as a measure of prosperity it's not really a meaningful measure. Especially if we account for the fact Western Europeans couldn't have access to the large population centers of Byzantium or the Near East. If we cut it back just to Western Europe, the Europeans were much father along during the Middle Period than they had been under Roman Rule, baring probably France where the population was shifting North.

Yes,. that's because Western europe was sparsely populated during Roman period. The fact that they may have been better off in Medieval/Dark Ages Europe is neither here nor there - You have to compare the most advanced part of the Roman world, i.e. the Italian Peninsula, with the most advanced part of the post-Roman World...I'm not sure what that could be, possibly the low countries?

Also, urbanisation is hugely important. 90 peasants and 10 citizens is a more advanced society than 999 peasants and 1 citizen, no? Cities concentrate wealth and ideas, and have been correlated with human development across all cultures and eras since time immorial.

 LordofHats wrote:

Perhaps I should clarify the context of what I mean. I'm not talking about the whole of the Empire. That's something of a pointless comparison as inevitably the Empire had a far greater landmass and access to far more resources. I'm referring specifically to Roman Europe and Post-Roman Europe.

Yeah, I figured you weren't comparing the grain output of Roman Egypt with that of dark ages Wales

 LordofHats wrote:

Note the huge spike in Roman times.

Noting that it's a chart of world lead production, and Rome wasn't the only prosperous civilization in the world at the time, I find the chart suspicious. The wikipage using it says its a chart of lead levels in Ice Cores, but is that really a real measure of a preindustrial age? What is the measure being used for it? A quick look on the net leads me to an talk of an article (and only one article) from some scientists working out of Greenland who claimed Roman and Carthaginian Silver mines and smelting processes flooded the atmosphere with lead, so is this just a chart of silver production/lead byproduct? And that article claims atmospheric lead had reached Roman levels by the 15th century not the 19th. But the article is from 2007. No one has corraberated their evidence and no other work seems to have been done to look into the matter from what I can tell (I'll look).

It's a chart of atmospheric lead levels. Assuming it isn't bs (to be fair, it could well be), it is actually rather telling - it correllated strongly with the rise and fall of the Roman civilisation, and includes the increase in production during the late middle ages (note that it more or less doubles at the end of the Ice Age). China is as China does, as they say. If there was rock solid evidence of huge silver production during the "dip" in that chart then, fair play.

Even if it's not fabricated however, I will concede that a single graph proves nothing.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
The Middle East and Byzantium certainly maintained a very high level of production which just doesn't sync with that chart. China would suffer little drop off until the 2nd century AD and certainly recovered.

Roman production of metals collapsed with the regional decline of Iberia, Gaul and Brittania - Italy itself was not resource-rich. Byzantium's production didn't even begin to compare, they didn't have the technology that was available to the Romans (okay, the "real" Romans), and they lacked the mass production that defined "true" Roman industry.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
at least by the 15th century Europe had vastly surpassed Roman Europe in everything by far.

Seems like I could either answer this and create about 5 further sub-topics, or let it slip. Ah well.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
Now that would sync with the chart but it's only a single metal and I've seen Roman Iron production numbers range from the ludicrously low to the ludicrously high so I don't think there's any consensus on Roman mining. Is there any other data you can find? I actually do want to know but the chart provide above is so ambiguous. Going off to see if I can find a more detailed data set XD

Well Roman iron production is "conservatively" estimated at 1.5kg per capita, for a total produciton of 82,500 tonnes. Han China (similar population) is estimated in The State and the Iron Industry in Han China to have annual production of 5,000.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:

GDP for the typical peasant in Europe circa 1100 was $1000 US. Don't know what year for the dollar value. My source for it was published 2011.

Well $620 in 1990 is $1,060 according to inflation calculator. But again, this includes large areas of the Empire that were simply left unRomanised. The figure for Italia would be about $1,500 in 2011 money.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
There's a reason for that. Food can be effectively measured through archeology (and tax records). It also by far formed the basis of all world economies until the early modern period and remained the key economic core of most of the world until the mid-19th century. It forms a basis by which economic prosperity can be measured across the world.

That's just...so grossly bs. By that method, modern society (with our historically low calorie consumption) are poorer than the middle ages. I don't even know how you could use that as any basis for anything.

Society A generates $100 worth of wheat and $10 worth of iron. Society B produces $90 of wheat and $100 worth of iron. Yet by the above definition, society A would be wealthier...

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
One of Europe's first Universities in Bologna was started to study law. Law codes in Europe were definitely behind Rome during the Crusades but come the reign of the absolute monarchs starting in the late 16th century, most law codes had long produced a mix of Roman and Germanic traditions.

The first constitutional basis for absolute monarchy that I can find is the seventeenth century, and it only gained widespread use in the eighteenth. Regardless we seem to be agreed on this.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
Roman government was incredibly corrupt by the Imperial Period. Probably far more corrupt than any later European system for a very long time (when you're working in Feudalism the regional nature makes corruption something of a voided issue). Tax farming is probably one of the most wasteful means of gathering taxes anyone can come up with but the Roman's weren't rolling in options. If anything in terms of tax collection Feudalism and the manor system was vastly more efficient.

Agreed.

 BryllCream wrote:
Also, urbanisation is hugely important. 90 peasants and 10 citizens is a more advanced society than 999 peasants and 1 citizen, no? Cities concentrate wealth and ideas, and have been correlated with human development across all cultures and eras since time immorial.

What's the difference between a citizen and a peasant? A roman citizen would be doing the same things (most likely) in the 1st Century as a French peasant in the 10th, and they'd both be scared somebody would come along and pillage them at any given moment.

It's a chart of atmospheric lead levels. Assuming it isn't bs (to be fair, it could well be), it is actually rather telling - it correllated strongly with the rise and fall of the Roman civilisation, and includes the increase in production during the late middle ages (note that it more or less doubles at the end of the Ice Age). China is as China does, as they say. If there was rock solid evidence of huge silver production during the "dip" in that chart then, fair play.

Even if it's not fabricated however, I will concede that a single graph proves nothing.

Yeah I couldn't find anything else, given that I only looked for like 10 minutes cause I'm not spend all day on this A possibility is that wind plays a roll. Lead byproduct could be blow up north from Western Europe but be blown a different direction elsewhere? Anyone here know anything about world wind patterns?

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:Roman production of metals collapsed with the regional decline of Iberia, Gaul and Brittania - Italy itself was not resource-rich. Byzantium's production didn't even begin to compare, they didn't have the technology that was available to the Romans (okay, the "real" Romans), and they lacked the mass production that defined "true" Roman industry.

See this is the thing. If anything, Byzantium continued to prosper well into the 10th century until the death of Basil II and his heirs failure to do anything useful. They never declined. Anatolia was rich in silver, copper, and iron. There's no reason to see them as falling behind Western Rome and having to play catch up.

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:Seems like I could either answer this and create about 5 further sub-topics, or let it slip. Ah well.

It does save us time and reading

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:
Well Roman iron production is "conservatively" estimated at 1.5kg per capita, for a total produciton of 82,500 tonnes. Han China (similar population) is estimated in The State and the Iron Industry in Han China to have annual production of 5,000.

This is part of the ongoing conflict though (and that's definitely not the conservative estimate that's one of the most generous). Historians of Global history and Far East history hold that the estimates for Roman iron production are so high as to be absurd and from what I understand the long held belief that the Roman's were chucking out iron like hotcakes has been called heavily in question in the past twenty years. The numbers range from as little as 2,000 tons to 90,000 depending on the method being used and who is asked, but there's increasing debate as to just how prosperous Rome really was.

Well $620 in 1990 is $1,060 according to inflation calculator. But again, this includes large areas of the Empire that were simply left unRomanised. The figure for Italia would be about $1,500 in 2011 money.

Well at least we got that to sync up then XD

LordofHats1 dced7f76f550c255c81daad8b7737b41.jpg wrote:That's just...so grossly bs. By that method, modern society (with our historically low calorie consumption) are poorer than the middle ages. I don't even know how you could use that as any basis for anything.

Society A generates $100 worth of wheat and $10 worth of iron. Society B produces $90 of wheat and $100 worth of iron. Yet by the above definition, society A would be wealthier...

Adjust the example for what the economy likely really was. As much as 90% of a regions population would be involved in agriculture. The other 10% would be specialists, nobles, etc. Even in the heyday of Rome itself with a very large urban population, most of the population would be growing food. This was largely true of most of the world leading into the Industrial Revolution. The basis for most economies was simply agriculture. It wasn't all they did, and not necessarily the most profitable, but by sheer volume it ended up being the most important aspect because most of the population would be involved. I don't think the measure is intended as an end all per se, it's just convenient for the ability to accurately estimate it.

This is another reason why Rome's production numbers have increasingly been called into question. The numbers are ridiculous not only by historical comparison to other civilizations in the Indus and China, but how could they maintain that production with known methods and feed themselves?

Unfortunately though question like that go beyond my depth for the subject :[ I can't really argue against your position at all (sadly for me XD) all I can really say is that the logical part of my brain is scratching itself in skepticism But this is what books are for so my reading will continue I suppose. Do you have any suggestions? I've only recently started to pick up my Medieval studies after years of other subjects in school (I'd have taken the class but they only offered it the semester AFTER I graduated ).

I feel silly that I posted something related to modern nazis and not something about the Crusades, Catholicism, or Lead particles in the air.

 Ahtman wrote:
Here is a recent report from the liberal bastion of West Point that looks at the increase of far-right extremism in the USA, including neo-nazis, if anyone is interested.

I'll take a look, if only to get away from the Romans and the Catholics.

 Ahtman wrote:
I feel silly that I posted something related to modern nazis and not something about the Crusades, Catholicism, or Lead particles in the air.

Feeling silly is my own personal past time Enjoy.

We can pin it down a many reasons and excuses.

1) Jewish people and Muslims are being using as scape goats for Europes finacial problems.

2) Nationalism is rampant in Europe particulary around Eastern Europe.

3) As the world's economy is in depression or recession, people tend to run towards either one of the politcal poles, the right or the left. Going for either one of the extremes.


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 Sturmtruppen wrote:

 Zakiriel wrote:

Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 Socialist regime

I hate it when people make this claim. National Socialism is about as Socialist as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic, for the people, or a republic.

The German's Worker Party started out with Socialist values but they were gradually stamped out as Hitler rose through the German Political System. Hitler was nearly killed for not being "Socialist" enough apparently because some of the leaders of the SS believe Hitler did not do enough for the working class.

 Ahtman wrote:
I feel silly that I posted something related to modern nazis and not something about the Crusades, Catholicism, or Lead particles in the air.

Interesting article actually, I leafed through it a little but didn't read the whole thing. I read enough documents like that for my college classes then to want to do it in my spare time.

I honestly can't say I see the Nazi groups as being anything new, the American Nazi Party and various street gangs, Aryan Nations, etc have been around for a long time now, some of them before the war even got kicked off. If anything they've been moving more into the separatist model, with Idaho in particular being the new white homeland for some odd reason. (despite all the potatoes I'm pretty sure Irishmen like myself still don't count as real white people.)

More to OP's point I think we've moved to a point where WW2 has less of an impact on us over all directly and emotionally speaking. The upcoming generation probably has less over all exposure to WW2 Veterans and Holocaust survivors, who are vanishing rapidly from the Earth as old age claims them. So there's less of a direct emotional impact or "proof" if you will that the Nazis are completely evil. Throw in a side order of internet culture where shock and offending/making people mad is an amusing game and it's easy to see where a swastika dread might come from.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
.... it's easy to see where a swastika dread might come from.

Without straying too off topic, I think that if any race in 40k could be Nazi-fied, it's the Orks. Cruel, brutal, and utterly convinced of their right to rule supreme. Plus just enough comic relief to make it okay.

IRL Nazis are deluded scum, but Nazi Orks just make me laugh.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I honestly can't say I see the Nazi groups as being anything new

Then it is probably for the best that no one made such a claim.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I'm pretty sure Irishmen like myself still don't count as real white people.

In the past sure, but you do now, just like the Italians. You'll learn to get over it, whitey.

I blame lead particles for most of the posts in the OT forum.

Anyway, I think fascination with Nazis (aside from the occasional person who is genuinely interested in the WWII era) is born out of ignorance or an attempt to shock and offend.

The problem is many people associate Nazi's with the well oiled German Warmachine of WW2.

The two can be seperated on an intellectual level so we can admire the German Army's impressive tactics, technology, and discipline. Much of our modern equipment and tactics are based off of German WW2 innovations.

 Ahtman wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I honestly can't say I see the Nazi groups as being anything new

Then it is probably for the best that no one made such a claim.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I'm pretty sure Irishmen like myself still don't count as real white people.

In the past sure, but you do now, just like the Italians. You'll learn to get over it, whitey.

I'd say I still don't qualify because I'm not a protestant but the various white power groups have been getting into paganism.

and that was more a response to the title "Alarming return" from what exactly? They've been here quite awhile.

On a side note, this is still a thing:




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 Grey Templar wrote:
The problem is many people associate Nazi's with the well oiled German Warmachine of WW2.

The two can be seperated on an intellectual level so we can admire the German Army's impressive tactics, technology, and discipline. Much of our modern equipment and tactics are based off of German WW2 innovations.

I admit a personal study of individual cogs in said Warmachine. I have a couple books in my collection (Forgotten Soldier, Black Edelweiss, etc) that are individual accounts from German soldiers during the war. Black Edelweiss in particular was interesting because it's the story of a Waffen SS machinegunner on the Eastern Front, as far as he knew he and his comrades fought with pride and honor, even as they retreated to Germany, and eventually surrendered to American soldiers. Followed by their reactions upon finding out about the holocaust.

I do WW2 reenactments now and then, mostly as a GI or when I can find a unit as Marine (even then our uniforms were sexier), also played a filthy communist partisan once or twice borrowing a mate's Mosin. I have received one invitation to a formal unit in the local area. They were German Fallschirmjaeger, and while intellectually I can appreciate what they do, and why... having bad guys is kinda important to the whole concept of making history breath again briefly... my grandparents were in Germany for WW2. My Great Grandfather was in a protected trade and safe from the draft, he only had daughters... but they saw, and that was enough. Growing up with those stories... I'd just as soon /not/ see Nazi insignia much of any where.

Some idiots just want attention. They know the imagery will shock and offend anf thats all they want. Even when they hide behind excuses to justify their display.

The irony of the above post is not lost on me.

That said, Nazi's aren't coming back, unless you mean Jobbik and Golden Dawn in europe. I don't really think it will happen in North America.

I was watching one of hitlers' speeches the other day and one word kept popping out at me as he spoke in German. Intolerant is said almost the same in English as German. I found it hugely amusing that one of the few words i could understand in Hitlers' speech was intolerance .

Judging from the graph printed about populations over the centuries, i postulate that Jesus' death caused many people to die. Bloody Jesus , terrorist he'd be called nowadays, killing all those people like that.


lol, i can't read , apparently it's a world lead production chart

Jesus still killed all the lead producers , before being put to death as a terrorist!

 Grey Templar wrote:
To claim that the Nazis were any sort of Christian is disingenious. It was a severe perversion of Christian values that could not in any way be called what it used to be.

While I agree with you that baxter123's claim that Nazism believed Christianity was the one true religion was mistated, I think your effort to remove Nazism from Christianity entirely is also incorrect. Most Nazis were Christian, including most of the party's leadership. There was no real conflict between Nazism and Christianity, especially not with German Protestantism.

Hitler, for instance, had quite a strong commitment to German Protestantism. Not because he was much of a believer in Christian values, but because German Protestantism was a key part of his understanding of the proper Germanic society he idealised.

IIRC Hitler was fond of a bled of old Norse religion with some Christian things thrown in.

It was a hodge podge of all sorts of random stuff gathered from wherever the hell they found. A not inconsiderable number of Protestants actually expressed concern with a lot of the pagan imagery... not with the calls to extract and remove the Jews from German society... just with the use of symbols.


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 GalacticDefender wrote:
The Catholic Church opressed Europe for centuries. They burned people at the stake for believing different ideas than theirs, they rejected all new ideas, and they held back our technology for over 2 centuries.

Actually, for much of history the Church was the only real source of learning and academia in Europe. What we know about ancient Rome and other societies we know because the churches of Europe kept those documents safe.

They church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. The numbers have probably been lost to time, but the number of people executed by the Catholic church easily numbers in the millions, and in many cases they were executed in the absolute most brutal way imaginibale(Arguably. But fire would be a terrible way to go).

You will not find a historian alive who'd claim the Catholic church killed anywhere near that. The highest estimates, which include massacres taken in the name of the church but through no instruction of its own, stretch out to 100,000, but no more.

Please don't assume historical knowledge and then throw those kinds of numbers about. It makes you look silly.

The Japanese were just as evil as the Nazis. It was so messed up that the soldiers were instructed to "Use local provisions" when in China. Yes, they ate people, after raping them to death with bayonets.

Yes, Japanese soldiers ate people. This was never an official order, and was almost entirely done when field rations and local food was entirely consumed - an act of desperation in a time of starvation. The order to use local provisions was not a metaphor, but an order to feed the army by taking food from the local population. Which is definitely an awful thing to do, as it sentenced the local subsistance farming population to starvation, but it was simply not an order to eat people.

And the actions of the IJA were terrible, but trying to understand them by equating them to the Nazis just leads to confused, ignorant conclusions. The story of the Nazis is the story of what happens when people who say they're going to slaughter indigenous populations and replace them with their own people (they slaughter the invaded Russians and begin to move their own people into the region). The story of the IJA is the story of what happens when a nation raises soldiers from a young age through brutal training, then dumps then in a foreign country with vague mission objectives, poor support and minimal government oversight (they commit sporadic massacres and rape a lot of the local population).

And anyone who tries to say otherwise is trying to censor history to make themselves feel better for being human.

No, saying otherwise is a basic matter of knowing the historical record.


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 chromedog wrote:
Why the recent rise in Nazism?

Because history DOESN'T repeat.


It just rhymes with itself a lot.

ALL of this has happened before, and will happen again. It's a design flaw and I'd get onto the manufacturer about it.

Agreed. It seems simplistic narratives that give people someone to hate and blame for all their problems, like fascism/Nazism, will never go entirely out of style.


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 Mr Nobody wrote:
Well, he started out as a pretty good leader, being one of the first countries to put restrictions on smoking, helping bring the country out of poverty. Many other leaders thought he was a good guy and they even had the Olympics in Germany during his reign.

Then he went crazy and started a war with everybody at once.

Sort of but not really. The 1936 Olympic Games were awarded to Germany two years before the the Nazis came to power, and when the Nazis came to power the IOC met to discuss moving the games to somewhere else, only relenting when the Nazis promised to let Jewish athletes compete (one of the many promises the Nazis would break over their reign).

And while Germany in 1938 looked to have regained its economic stride, like most Nazi planning it was just a house of cards. The economy was revitalised by the employment of many millions in the armed forces, and on massive government works programs, and most of these programs had little lasting economic value (for instance, Hitler gets a lot of credit for the autobahn, but this was actually begun during the previous government, and Hitler did the program considerable harm, cancelling roads that would benefit industry and commerce, and directing them instead to better support roads for military use - roads to the border of Poland). Without any lasting economic benefit from this spending, the debts assumed by the German government were unsustainable and destined to collapse. They only prolonged this collapse through the loot taken from the conquest of Poland and then France. Even in the brief period of reduced war before Barbarossa Germany was teetering on the edge.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Which really shows how blind people were. His book was quite revealing, a best seller even, and yet somehow nobody saw WW2 coming

Absolutely. If only someone had bothered to read the thing before 1939...


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 Mr. Burning wrote:
He was never a good leader. ever see the party speech where he states he doesn't have a plan for Germany. What he had was people in place who would listen to his ramblings and then act on them. He didn't write anything down, his subordinates did what they thought 'the will of the fuhrer' was, but since Hitler believed in a kind of Darwinism he set departments against each other.

The Nazis also had a near pathological hatred of bureaucracy. They loved men of action, not pencil pushing little bureaucrats. So many key pieces of policy were never written down in any coherent, complete sense, and there were few controls placed on individual leaders. Which, ironically, led to a massive explosion in the bureaucracy under Nazism, as leaders took it on their own initiative to expand their departments, in size and scope (leading to the waste of government departments competition as you said).

In reality other leaders thought they could appease him, with the great war fresh in their minds.

Sort of. Chamberlain gets a lot of criticism for 'peace in our time', and while that was a chronic mistatement, there's plenty strong evidence in place he didn't believe it himself. Following the Munich agreement and its appeasement, Chamberlain returned to London and immediately began a process of rearmament of Britain. In France work on the Maginot Line was greatly hastened, to ensure it was complete by the time Germany was done with occupying Czechoslovakia.

Basically, the woeful state of the French and British forces in the late 30s meant they couldn't meaningfully respond to an aggressive Germany (they also wildly over-estimated the state of German preparedness for war). So they did what they could - play for time and get ready as soon as possible. And the plan would have worked, and should have worked, as the two nations built up an armed force that was more than capable of resisting the German attack. Except the Maginot Line was poor policy, and French military doctrine left them incapable of reacting to that with the speed needed under this new mechanised war.


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 BryllCream wrote:
And those "myths" are dubious. Other than "everyone in the middle ages smelled" they weren't really known to me. Everyone as a kid is told that knights were awesome and cool, then when you get a little older you learn the truth. Those guys were an entire class of land-owning people, of course they weren't all living saints. But the idea of "chivalry" is a lot more child-friendly than the Sack of Byzantium.

"I knew that wasn't true therefore it isn't a myth" is some awfully strange thinking. Lots of people believed the myths in that article. To the point where one of them (the church suppressed knowledge) was repeated in this thread.


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 GalacticDefender wrote:
To whoever made their earlier post saying that Catholics gave people a chance to convert, well, I fail to see the moral distinction between "Die" (the Nazi's policy), and "Join us or die" (The Catholic policy)

Which is a fair point. But the Catholic position was not uniform for the whole of their history. There were far greater periods of live and let live in Catholic history than 'join or die'.

I mean, just think about this one, please. In 1939 there was more than 9 million Jews in Europe. While the sporadic pogroms that occurred against the Jews were disgraceful, the population continued to survive and flourish in Europe, despite more than a 1,000 years of Christian, and specifically Catholic dominance. In just a few short years the Nazis killed two thirds of them, and were only prevented from killing the rest by T34s driving through Berlin.

One of those things just fething isn't like the other.

There was one man who was burned at the stake for suggesting that God may have created life elsewhere in the universe. If you do not call that evil and counter to human progress, then I'd love to hear your argument. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet )

There were indeed a great many Catholic scientists. Gregor Mendel, the discoverer of genetics, was a catholic monk. This does not justify or make the actions of the Catholic Church as a whole any less evil. And of course you probably know that the Catholic Church put Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life after he discovered the moons of Jupiter. Another example of anti-scientific ignorance and censorship on the Church's part.

Yeah, there are specific instances of Catholic oppression. But you just do not get to say 'oh yes Mendel was there but lets just look past that'. It wasn't just Mendel, for a very long period of time the only meaningful forms of science and the preservation of learning we had came from the church.

You provided examples of scientists who were members of the catholic church, though still did good things for human progress. Well, here is an example of a scientist who who worked for the Nazis, then went on to help us get to the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

And if von Braun was anything more than a quirky exception, then it would be fair to say that for all the evil the Nazis did, they also produced great science. But von Braun is a quirk, and overall the Nazis didn't advance technology any faster than was already occuring under the already advanced industrial state of Germany.

Whereas you tried to claim that the Catholic Church actually held back technological advance. Which is just fething wrong.

Honestly I fail to see how the leadership of the Catholic Church was any less evil than the Nazis or Japanese.

Well, I'm telling you straight up that it's stupid. Managing to replace the complex history of the Catholic Church with a silly pastiche, and at the same time underplay the actual horror of the Nazi regime.


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 Zakiriel wrote:
Why are we giving China no mention in the Bloodbath rankings? I saw something on this awhile back.

Bodycount maths is a really poor means of assessing atrocity. It basically means that the greatest evils ever perpetrated in the world are bad agricultural policy (China, and the British Empire in India), even when those policies were well intentioned. At the same time utterly despotic, insane murder machines like Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia don't crack the top twenty, just because he wasn't in charge of a very populous country.

And you seem to be thinking that Nazi Germany only killed 6 million people. That is just wrong. The number of Jews killed in the holocaust was 6 million. Add in the Gypsies, communists and all the rest and you're up to 9 million already.

Add in the deaths in Europe, soldiers and civilians, and you're up to around 45 million.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
If we're going to be that nitpicky it should be clarified that Communist China and Russia were never truly Communist systems.

It isn't nitpicky. Nazi Germany wasn't not quite a socialist system... it was formed as a specific response to the rise of socialist and communist movements within Germany. They achieved complete power when they blamed the Reichstag fire on socialists, and put all those folk into camps.

This idea that it was a socialist movement is one of the craziest bits of political nonsense I've ever heard.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
It also needs to be noted that the Muslims were no better behaved towards their opponents than the Crusaders were. Muslim culture in general was a very agressive expansionist power that had been encroaching towards Europe for some time.

Not really. I mean, I agree with you that Muslims were in general no better behaved, but the idea of either faction as an expansionist power is just falling into that old clash of civilisations nonsense. Both sides were highly fractious, and spent much of the period fighting more among themselves than against the other. Really, the Crusades themselves are the product of internal pressures in Europe, just as outing the Crusader Kingdoms came to be a means to consolidate power for the various factions within Islam. And while between those conflicts, for much of the time the Crusader Kingdoms held good relations with their neighbours, engaging in extensive trade.


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 rockerbikie wrote:
The German's Worker Party started out with Socialist values but they were gradually stamped out as Hitler rose through the German Political System. Hitler was nearly killed for not being "Socialist" enough apparently because some of the leaders of the SS believe Hitler did not do enough for the working class.

The Nazi party formed from multiple groups, some of which had genuinely socialist values. They centred their power in the SA, which ended up with some generally . Strausserism is basically the effort to align socialism and nazism (basically by saying that capitalism is a Jewish plot).

The Night of the Long Knives is basically the end of all that. The murder of the leadership of the SA was basically the extermination of socialism within the Nazi party.

Actually, I'm going to jump in on the side of the Crusades era Muslims, when they were expanding into Europe many towns were pleased to be "conquered" especially Jews who lived much better under Muslim rule, especially the Ottoman Empire. While Muslims were very brutal in warfare, this was pretty much forced by the crusader knights. The average muslim knight was an educated and pious man, closer to the European chivalric ideal then most European knight were at the time.

Side note, Sebs, the total death count I always see for the Holocaust is around eleven million with all "undesirables" accounted for.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The problem is many people associate Nazi's with the well oiled German Warmachine of WW2.

The two can be seperated on an intellectual level so we can admire the German Army's impressive tactics, technology, and discipline. Much of our modern equipment and tactics are based off of German WW2 innovations.

Yeah. There's two central myths that lets that happen. The first is the idea that the German war machine was this wonderful, super advanced machine - that is true of some elements of it in 1939 (their squad level tactics were excellent, as was their use of air power), but in many other places it was just never true - logistically the German army sucked from beginning to end, relying on horse and cart for most of their transport off the rail lines. And as the war ground on it became even less true, as the officers were steadily killed off by on-going war and the army as a whole came to depend more on conscription, the Wehrmacht came to resemble the early war Soviet army (while at the same time the Soviet army went in the opposite direction, with less political interference and more authority devolved down to the officers on the ground).

The other myth is that the Wehrmacht was somehow kept apart from the atrocities of the Nazis. The soldies in the Wehrmacht were raised on the propaganda of the Nazi party, and when they went to war they showed it. Their actions on the Eastern Front were simply shocking, even if you exclude things done at the request of the Nazi leadership.

It also plays in with Cold War politics. The Germans did some nasty stuff in WWII but after WWII they weren't the enemy, the Russians were. So the extent of German war crimes were glossed over, forgotten, or conveniently unnoticed cause we needed Western Germany on the board to oppose the Reds

 sebster wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The problem is many people associate Nazi's with the well oiled German Warmachine of WW2.

The two can be seperated on an intellectual level so we can admire the German Army's impressive tactics, technology, and discipline. Much of our modern equipment and tactics are based off of German WW2 innovations.

Yeah. There's two central myths that lets that happen. The first is the idea that the German war machine was this wonderful, super advanced machine - that is true of some elements of it in 1939 (their squad level tactics were excellent, as was their use of air power), but in many other places it was just never true - logistically the German army sucked from beginning to end, relying on horse and cart for most of their transport off the rail lines. And as the war ground on it became even less true, as the officers were steadily killed off by on-going war and the army as a whole came to depend more on conscription, the Wehrmacht came to resemble the early war Soviet army (while at the same time the Soviet army went in the opposite direction, with less political interference and more authority devolved down to the officers on the ground).

The other myth is that the Wehrmacht was somehow kept apart from the atrocities of the Nazis. The soldies in the Wehrmacht were raised on the propaganda of the Nazi party, and when they went to war they showed it. Their actions on the Eastern Front were simply shocking, even if you exclude things done at the request of the Nazi leadership.

Let us not forget that the nazis were helped by the ustasi and the lithuanians on the eastern front. People always bang on about the nazis , there were others involved as well, all of them totally fethed up.

When i was at school some of the croatians would yell ustasi at the (few) serbs, what a buch of fethwits.

 GalacticDefender wrote:


The Catholic Church opressed Europe for centuries. They burned people at the stake for believing different ideas than theirs, they rejected all new ideas, and they held back our technology for over 2 centuries. They church was every bit as evil as the Nazis. The numbers have probably been lost to time, but the number of people executed by the Catholic church easily numbers in the millions, and in many cases they were executed in the absolute most brutal way imaginibale(Arguably. But fire would be a terrible way to go). Think of how many people that could have otherwise been progressive "renaissance men" that were killed by the Catholic Church.

The Japanese were just as evil as the Nazis. It was so messed up that the soldiers were instructed to "Use local provisions" when in China. Yes, they ate people, after raping them to death with bayonets.

And anyone who tries to say otherwise is trying to censor history to make themselves feel better for being human.

This is hilariously wrong and misinformed. The Inquisition(s) were mandated by the Church, yes, but entirely formed by the Nations they operated in. It's why we speak of the Spanish Inquisition. The countries which already had an independant and well structured legal system by the time the Roman Empire fell, like France and to some extent the various germanic populations, did not allow Inquisitors inside their borders, or local priests to form one. There were burnings and everything, still, but that's just because everyone's legal system was hilariously cruel (except the germans, who were really really lenient in regards to murder).

Which explains why Montesquieu was able to reproduce, in L'esprit des lois, a beautiful text on religious tolerance, written by a young jewish girl who was burned at the stake in Spain only a decade before. He had nothing to fear as long as he didn't travel to Spain.

And most estimates I've seen about numbers of victims are around 40 000. Which again, is nothing when you think that there's no way to determine which were entirely based on religious reasons, and which were just criminals. In many place, the roman law was the only in place, and the Inquisition would have been involved as much in criminal cases as in cases of heresy.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Actually, I'm going to jump in on the side of the Crusades era Muslims, when they were expanding into Europe many towns were pleased to be "conquered" especially Jews who lived much better under Muslim rule, especially the Ottoman Empire. While Muslims were very brutal in warfare, this was pretty much forced by the crusader knights. The average muslim knight was an educated and pious man, closer to the European chivalric ideal then most European knight were at the time.

The average Muslim was pretty much exactly the same as the average Christian - just an illiterate subsistance farmer.

But I have read that among the upper echelons of society Muslims were far greater educated than their Christian rivals.

Side note, Sebs, the total death count I always see for the Holocaust is around eleven million with all "undesirables" accounted for.

Interesting. I haven't seen that number but it's not something I've ever tried to keep up on when it came to the research. I always heard 9 million (6 million Jews and 3 million of all the rest) Is that a new development?

I've seen numbers all over the place. Depends on if you stay conservative with your estimates or high ball it.

 LordofHats wrote:
It also plays in with Cold War politics. The Germans did some nasty stuff in WWII but after WWII they weren't the enemy, the Russians were. So the extent of German war crimes were glossed over, forgotten, or conveniently unnoticed cause we needed Western Germany on the board to oppose the Reds

Yeah, there was a fair few Nazis who were useful enough, or at least able to convince the allies they were useful enough to escape sanction. More than few of them went on to do more evil in their lives. Former board members of IG Farben went on to help form Grünenthal, who went on to release Thalidomide, and continue to sell Thalidomide after they knew it caused birth defects. Klaus Barbie managed to convince the Western Allies that he could be a valuable strong man to check the growth of communism... he ended up in Bolivia doing exactly what he'd done in Germany - slaughter civilians for the government.

Mind you, far more leniancy was shown to the Japanese. There the Americans were incredibly leniant.


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Bullockist wrote:
Let us not forget that the nazis were helped by the ustasi and the lithuanians on the eastern front. People always bang on about the nazis , there were others involved as well, all of them totally fethed up.

When i was at school some of the croatians would yell ustasi at the (few) serbs, what a buch of fethwits.

Definitely. There was no shortage of people in conquered and allying countries that colluded with the Nazis, or in many cases took it on their own initiative to settle their own to purge local Jewish populations, and continue whatever other local ethnic feuds they had. The ustase were among the worst, but they weren't the only ones.

Hilariously, there's records of Hitler rambling about how the Serbs were a fine race, very close to the German race in morals, while the Croats were a low race, not to be trusted and only fit to be made subserviant. Then during the occupation, when the Croat fascists aided Hitler and the Serbs began their resistance Hitler changed tune entirely, claiming the Serbs were lowly and the Croats upstanding, without any recognition he ever thought otherwise.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
I've seen numbers all over the place. Depends on if you stay conservative with your estimates or high ball it.

Sure, but within that there's generally a figure that's more or less agreed to. I always thought it was 9 million, and it sounded like KalishnikovMarine might have been saying that number had now shifted.

 LordofHats wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:


How's that history course going?

And those "myths" are dubious. Other than "everyone in the middle ages smelled" they weren't really known to me. Everyone as a kid is told that knights were awesome and cool, then when you get a little older you learn the truth. Those guys were an entire class of land-owning people, of course they weren't all living saints. But the idea of "chivalry" is a lot more child-friendly than the Sack of Byzantium.

They also deliberately wrongly define the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages were dark because they came after the Roman Empire. Culturally and economically, Dark Ages Europe was a shadow of its former self - Europe would only return to Roman era levels of sophistication by the 19th century.

Um, that is the wrong definition of the Dark Ages. It's the one the Enlightment folks loved because it made them feel more awesome, but then they also weren't as good at historical study just yet. The Dark Ages were over by the 10th century. Most historians of the period won't even use the term anymore because its too loaded with ideas contrary to known facts. By the time the Crusades were launched in 1095, Western Europe had surpassed Rome in most ways (in the words of Kenneth Harl, Europe went into the Crusades in the Romanesque and emerged from them in the High Gothic).

Western Europe (depending) had achieved an economic parity with the late Empire by the 10th century (Northern Italians had gotten there way sooner) and the population had recovered from the big plague that swept Gaul, Iberia, and Britannia in previous centuries. Education was more limited, but hardly unheard of. The idea that it took hundreds of years to catch up to Rome is a horribly outdated idea. By the end of 12th century Western Europe had surpassed Rome by any meaningful measure. Economics, technology, art. The Dark Ages ended when the Carolingians came to power and restored a modicum of order to Western Europe that evolved into Western Christendom.

Indeed one can argue it was the great plagues that hit Western Europe (well much of the globe), that really hampered economic and cultural development. Even in late Roman times the plagues were desolating entire regions. Get rid of the plagues and Europe is much stronger, much earlier. I guess the positive is that the Black Death overturned the economic order of things.

 sebster wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Actually, I'm going to jump in on the side of the Crusades era Muslims, when they were expanding into Europe many towns were pleased to be "conquered" especially Jews who lived much better under Muslim rule, especially the Ottoman Empire. While Muslims were very brutal in warfare, this was pretty much forced by the crusader knights. The average muslim knight was an educated and pious man, closer to the European chivalric ideal then most European knight were at the time.

The average Muslim was pretty much exactly the same as the average Christian - just an illiterate subsistance farmer.

But I have read that among the upper echelons of society Muslims were far greater educated than their Christian rivals.

Not that that was particularly hard to do. Muslim knight equivalents were more akin to samurai then European knights, you were expected to be pious, educated, an able ruler and administrator and be skilled in the arts as well as a good fighter.

I recommend the following book "An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades" by Usamah Ibn-Munqidh http://www.amazon.com/Arab-Syrian-Gentleman-Warrior-Period-Crusades/dp/0231121253 it's available on the various ebook devices as well and I found it extremely fascinating as a primary source document on the period in general and Arabic/Muslim culture/society at the time. I'd offer to send you the copy I needed for school last semester but I found it so enjoyable it's earned a permanent spot on my shelves.

Side note, Sebs, the total death count I always see for the Holocaust is around eleven million with all "undesirables" accounted for.

Interesting. I haven't seen that number but it's not something I've ever tried to keep up on when it came to the research. I always heard 9 million (6 million Jews and 3 million of all the rest) Is that a new development?

That's just the number I've always heard, I think it varies if you count mass killings out side of Germany proper, like the slaughter of Russian civilians. I'll look in to it when I have a second.

The Romanians got rid of their Jewish population without any real prodding from Germany.

11 million seems a high number, but believable, Russian civvies would account for a lot. Lets not forget liquidated individuals and groups such as the polish leadership and intelligentsia.

Put another way, excluding what I would call direct holocaust/final solution victims, 4 miilion people terminated is shocking enough.

Still the way to counter the hangers on of this resurgence in Nazism is to educate them, not about the holocaust but the fallacies of romanticism about the Nazis themselves, particularly the SS/Waffen SS.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
The Romanians got rid of their Jewish population without any real prodding from Germany.

11 million seems a high number, but believable, Russian civvies would account for a lot. Lets not forget liquidated individuals and groups such as the polish leadership and intelligentsia.

Put another way, excluding what I would call direct holocaust/final solution victims, 4 miilion people terminated is shocking enough.

Still the way to counter the hangers on of this resurgence in Nazism is to educate them, not about the holocaust but the fallacies of romanticism about the Nazis themselves, particularly the SS/Waffen SS.

I prefer the Patton method of dealing with Nazis myself.

But I have read that among the upper echelons of society Muslims were far greater educated than their Christian rivals.

Tis true. Charlemagne pushed really hard to create a literate nobility, but after his death no one really seemed to care. Middle Age nobles were largely illiterate in Europe. Contact with Islamic Culture however was a early factor in increasing European literacy.

However I have read that scholars have noted that Saladin's fame in his time among Europeans owes much to his reputation for being a very chivalrous man, even more so than many of his European opponents (which was interesting cause he stabbed people in the back ALOT. The Crusades were one big power game for him ).

Not that that was particularly hard to do. Muslim knight equivalents were more akin to samurai then European knights, you were expected to be pious, educated, an able ruler and administrator and be skilled in the arts as well as a good fighter.

The distinction should be noted that many of the combatants on the Islamic side of the first 3 crusades, were Seljuk Turks. They were at the time, largely uneducated, and quite barbaric by the standards of Islamic civilization. Now what I don't know is how many of these Turks made up these armies. My guess would be a smaller number than natives to the region long there since the Conquests.

That said, Samurai weren't really the nicest guys on the block, in spite of their reputation. The thing about elite warrior classes with a monopoly on force is that... Well they have a monopoly on force

 Frazzled wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
The Romanians got rid of their Jewish population without any real prodding from Germany.

11 million seems a high number, but believable, Russian civvies would account for a lot. Lets not forget liquidated individuals and groups such as the polish leadership and intelligentsia.

Put another way, excluding what I would call direct holocaust/final solution victims, 4 miilion people terminated is shocking enough.

Still the way to counter the hangers on of this resurgence in Nazism is to educate them, not about the holocaust but the fallacies of romanticism about the Nazis themselves, particularly the SS/Waffen SS.

I prefer the Patton method of dealing with Nazis myself.

Run'em over with a tank?

Why yes actually.

Not that that was particularly hard to do. Muslim knight equivalents were more akin to samurai then European knights, you were expected to be pious, educated, an able ruler and administrator and be skilled in the arts as well as a good fighter.

To be fair, european knights were also expected to be all these things too. Not that they were successful

The difference between the ideal and what actually would happen is stark.

Not that this was anybody's fault really. It just happened.


The Japanese and Muslim cultures hadn't just experienced a major sociatal collapse so they had the infrastructure to support art and science. Although they did experience stagnation towards the end which did lead to a collapse of sorts eventually.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not that that was particularly hard to do. Muslim knight equivalents were more akin to samurai then European knights, you were expected to be pious, educated, an able ruler and administrator and be skilled in the arts as well as a good fighter.

To be fair, european knights were also expected to be all these things too. Not that they were successful

The difference between the ideal and what actually would happen is stark.

Not that this was anybody's fault really. It just happened.


The Japanese and Muslim cultures hadn't just experienced a major sociatal collapse so they had the infrastructure to support art and science. Although they did experience stagnation towards the end which did lead to a collapse of sorts eventually.

Samurai PR is just that, PR. In truth they were just killers who kept the peasant down and could you just for not bowing properly. Chivalry is a lie.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I recommend the following book "An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades" by Usamah Ibn-Munqidh http://www.amazon.com/Arab-Syrian-Gentleman-Warrior-Period-Crusades/dp/0231121253 it's available on the various ebook devices as well and I found it extremely fascinating as a primary source document on the period in general and Arabic/Muslim culture/society at the time. I'd offer to send you the copy I needed for school last semester but I found it so enjoyable it's earned a permanent spot on my shelves.

Sounds marvellous. Added to my list.

That's just the number I've always heard, I think it varies if you count mass killings out side of Germany proper, like the slaughter of Russian civilians. I'll look in to it when I have a second.

Once you add in Russian civilians who died in the general course of the war you quickly get up to 20 million.

The 9 million figure (which I see has now been revised to 11 million thanks to excellent sources provided to me by a helpful person by pm) is purely talking about people killed through organised mass murder. Those who were shot by SS death squads following behind the main German advance. Those who were killed when the ghettos were cleared out. And those who died in the work camps and extermination camps. For a long time that number was believed to be 9 million, and has since been revised to 11 million.


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 LordofHats wrote:
Tis true. Charlemagne pushed really hard to create a literate nobility, but after his death no one really seemed to care. Middle Age nobles were largely illiterate in Europe. Contact with Islamic Culture however was a early factor in increasing European literacy.

However I have read that scholars have noted that Saladin's fame in his time among Europeans owes much to his reputation for being a very chivalrous man, even more so than many of his European opponents (which was interesting cause he stabbed people in the back ALOT. The Crusades were one big power game for him ).

Yeah, I always see historians talk about Saladin's reputation for nobility, and then they describe what he did.... I guess everything's relative to the time and place it occurred in.

That said, Samurai weren't really the nicest guys on the block, in spite of their reputation. The thing about elite warrior classes with a monopoly on force is that... Well they have a monopoly on force

Yeah, that's a good way of summing it up. The guy with the weapon is always going to be prone to throwing his weight around.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Samurai PR is just that, PR. In truth they were just killers who kept the peasant down and could you just for not bowing properly. Chivalry is a lie.

Well, chivalry isn't a lie. Plenty of people acted in chivalrous and noble ways. It's just a mistake to attempt to think an entire class of people acted in that way.

And Chivalry IIRC never said you had to be nice to the peasents or those beneath you. It really only encouraged that of your same social class.

It's worth pointing out that Saladin was incredibly noble over all, and was respected by pretty much everyone who came into contact with him for it. From the perspective of a soldier and warrior he's the kind of general I would have been happy to serve under. He only got brutal (relative to the age) in response to crusader brutality during the third crusade, an escalation of force if you will. Commit enough atrocities and even the most noble man is going to dedicate himself utterly to ripping you a new one and burning your playhouse down.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
It's worth pointing out that Saladin was incredibly noble over all, and was respected by pretty much everyone who came into contact with him for it. From the perspective of a soldier and warrior he's the kind of general I would have been happy to serve under. He only got brutal (relative to the age) in response to crusader brutality during the third crusade, an escalation of force if you will. Commit enough atrocities and even the most noble man is going to dedicate himself utterly to ripping you a new one and burning your playhouse down.

Um I'm referring directly to his in house politics. Saladin used the Crusades to seize power in numerous regions. The Crusades were more his excuse than his cause. He'd make promises and then stab his political allies in the back by taking their lands or their armies. It's always rather convenient for Saladin that he would only increase tensions with the Crusader Kingdoms when some Sultan had something he wanted ("Quick I need your armies to protect you from the Crusaders!" Five months later. "Your army? The only army I see is my army. Thanks for watching my land for me while I was away though!"). Heck he was originally sent to Egypt by the Abbasids to defeat the Fatamids with his uncle, and the moment that was done, his uncle died (and there are plenty of good conspiracy theories about that!) and Saladin looks the Abbasids in the eye and says "Yeah I'm doing my thang now."

Saladin's reputation for nobility is similar to the reputations of most noble men in history. Not all its chalked up to be

I'm not saying he wasn't a shrewd politician, able commander and skilled in fighter as well as warrior, the man had his position for a reason and that rule of the day was political intrigue and being able to stomp the most people to claim what you wanted.

This doesn't stop him from being noble. Unless you take our modern perspective to him, in which case no, he wasn't Ghandhi, he was a warrior king in one of the most brutal periods of human history.

Okay I see what you mean Judge by the standards of the time. Sounds like something I normally try to say XD.

 LordofHats wrote:
Okay I see what you mean Judge by the standards of the time. Sounds like something I normally try to say XD.

true dat

It's an important point to make when talking about history though I think. While some behaviors and actions are down right evil. (Mass murder for example I feel no need to "gain perspective" on) other things we see as brutal or individuals we see as harsh now, are still a product of their times and might be judged a little harshly by modern standards. King John of England is an interesting western example and proof how bias then can extend forward now (mostly thanks to Robin Hood but still) from what we know of the time Prince John was a good king and a better administrator, certainly better then Richard the Lion Hearted who spent most of his time on the throne as far from his throne as he could get. A couple hundred years later and John would be remembered as a good king, but this was still the time period when the Germanic theory of kingship was still in effect in Europe, which... actually I'd compare directly to how Orkz do things.

Can definitely see that. Go find me a piece of popular culture where John isn't a; douche, jerk, womanizer, adulterer, selfish, ahole, all around selfish human being who is a waste of space

He's probably rolling in his grave crying "come on guys I wasn't that bad!"

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
It's an important point to make when talking about history though I think. While some behaviors and actions are down right evil. (Mass murder for example I feel no need to "gain perspective" on) other things we see as brutal or individuals we see as harsh now, are still a product of their times and might be judged a little harshly by modern standards. King John of England is an interesting western example and proof how bias then can extend forward now (mostly thanks to Robin Hood but still) from what we know of the time Prince John was a good king and a better administrator, certainly better then Richard the Lion Hearted who spent most of his time on the throne as far from his throne as he could get. A couple hundred years later and John would be remembered as a good king, but this was still the time period when the Germanic theory of kingship was still in effect in Europe, which... actually I'd compare directly to how Orkz do things.

I think Shakespeare's play probably contributed to the poor reputation of King John as well. The play is one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays now, but it was a big deal in Victorian times.

What was the Germanic theory of kingship?

The Orcs version of kingship. Whoever can kill the old king gets to be the new one.

I'm the biggest an the strongest an I gotz the most boyz so I wear the shiny hat see?

The Germanic tradition was that the king was a warrior and battle leader, it didn't matter if you were a decent administrator if you weren't a rock solid warrior as well.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I'm the biggest an the strongest an I gotz the most boyz so I wear the shiny hat see?

The Germanic tradition was that the king was a warrior and battle leader, it didn't matter if you were a decent administrator if you weren't a rock solid warrior as well.

Okay, thanks for that.

The conflict about it was that European monarchs were trying to establish hereditary rule, but especially in Germany (then Holy Roman Empire) especially, the Germanic theory was preferred and while the Emperor managed to solidify is political position he never established hereditary succession like French and English kings did in the same time period.

 Ratbarf wrote:
The Orcs version of kingship. Whoever can kill the old king gets to be the new one.

You keep what you kill!