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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.