Random Stuff II

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

As long as I can give you an equally weird answer . Go for it.

What is your opinion on Magneto? Not necessarily the fact that he became a terrorist, but more how his Holocaust backstory is used alongside the sci-fi elements of the series?

[Blaze1616 he/him]

I'm definitely erring on the side of offended.

Ride alone = ride with a monster who was personally responsible for murdering my family?

Yeah, no.

Unless that gives me the chance to stab him through the heart while he's whistling to the radio.

 

Aside from what everyone else has mentioned about War Propaganda, also remember that the horror that is the Holocaust was not fully realized by the Allies until late into/after the war. That propaganda, as well as many others, were easily created prior to Hitler's most famous crimes becoming widely known.

[Orlion Blight he/him]

Aside from what everyone else has mentioned about War Propaganda, also remember that the horror that is the Holocaust was not fully realized by the Allies until late into/after the war. That propaganda, as well as many others, were easily created prior to Hitler's most famous crimes becoming widely known.

That's not entirely true. I remember reading a Graham Greene short story that mentioned Nazi concentration camps that was published before the inner workings were "discovered". They knew about the various actions being taken against the Jews, there's a particularly disturbing Dr. Seuss political cartoon that I'll have to see the date about...

Edited October 1, 2015 by Orlion

[Blaze1616 he/him]

That's not entirely true. I remember reading a Graham Greene short story that mentioned Nazi concentration camps that was published before the inner workings were "discovered". They knew about the various actions being taken against the Jews, there's a particularly disturbing Dr. Seuss political cartoon that I'll have to see the date about...

 

Let me rephrase: instead of Allies, insert Americans.

 

According to my American education anyways (remember that winners write history, so this might be flawed), we did not know of many of the horrors that happened to the Jews until after the war, when we had time to notice the mass graves and the overall slaughter of the Jewish people. Prior to that, we knew that conditions were rather bad, but we were doing something similar to the Japanese in our country, and we likely had knowledge of the Russian gulags, so it didn't cause us pause to say the least.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Blaze1616

[Delightful]

What is your opinion on Magneto? Not necessarily the fact that he became a terrorist, but more how his Holocaust backstory is used alongside the sci-fi elements of the series?

I don't know much about Magneto so I can't really comment. I passed the question on to a friend who came back with:

My experience with the character is limited to Magneto: Origins. Within that run, I strongly stand with the execution of the early manifestations of his powers. The entire run was done incredibly tastefully, and I find it very nearly remarkable, how subtley and respectfully they brought in his mutation, all the way from him playing with scraps in the beginning to him finally realizing his survival might perhaps possibly be a little more than just luck.

Edit re holocaust: as far as I'm aware, towards the beginning of the war no one really knew what was going on. By 1944/45, people knew, people had escaped, stories had leaked out. I can't speak for what exactly Americans (gov vs civilians obviously) knew. But I'd guess this propaganda was created earlier.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Delightful

[Orlion Blight he/him]

Let me rephrase: instead of Allies, insert Americans.

 

According to my American education anyways (remember that winners write history, so this might be flawed), we did not know of many of the horrors that happened to the Jews until after the war, when we had time to notice the mass graves and the overall slaughter of the Jewish people. Prior to that, we knew that conditions were rather bad, but we were doing something similar to the Japanese in our country, and we likely had knowledge of the Russian gulags, so it didn't cause us pause to say the least.

That's the image as it is taught... though I have my doubts. As you said, we were doing something similar in our country and concentration camps were used previously by the British in Africa. Incidentally, it looks like Dr. Seuss was an editorial cartoonist for a New York newspaper in 1941-1943 (in other words, the last issue would have appeared a year before Eisenhower liberated his first concentration camp). 

 

Link to very brief article and cartoon (trigger warning) that I'm referring to: http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2012/07/17/check-out-dr-seuss-wwii-editorial-cartoons/

 

Like you said, history is written by the victors (and even pruned) and it can be very difficult to distinguish between nationalistic tales of victory with what actually occurred. The cynic in me kinda believes that Eisenhower filmed the horrors of the concentration camps to convince the populace back on the home-front to buy more war bonds. The human in me acknowledges that he was very much infuriated by the crimes committed against humanity and was determined to defeat Nazi Germany as swiftly and completely as possible.

 

History is complicated stuff with uncomfortable questions.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

I don't know much about Magneto so I can't really comment. I passed the question on to a friend who came back with:

 

My experience with the character is limited to Magneto: Origins. Within that run, I strongly stand with the execution of the early manifestations of his powers. The entire run was done incredibly tastefully, and I find it very nearly remarkable, how subtley and respectfully they brought in his mutation, all the way from him playing with scraps in the beginning to him finally realizing his survival might perhaps possibly be a little more than just luck.

Edit re holocaust: as far as I'm aware, towards the beginning of the war no one really knew what was going on. By 1944/45, people knew, people had escaped, stories had leaked out. I can't speak for what exactly Americans (gov vs civilians obviously) knew. But I'd guess this propaganda was created earlier.

 

Thank you so much! Most of my experience with Magneto is from later comics and the movies, so I'll have to look into Origins a bit more.

[Delightful]

What exactly do you mean by concentration camp? Is that equivalent to Nazi death camps, operating like a machine to mass-murder as many people as possible daily?

Because short of probably North Korea, I thought Nazi camps were .....lets say "uniquely evil".

Twi - no worries. . Is your WIP a fanfic?

Edited October 1, 2015 by Delightful

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

What exactly do you mean by concentration camp? Is that equivalent to Nazi death camps, operating like a machine to mass-murder as many people as possible daily?

Because short of probably North Korea, I thought Nazi camps were .....lets say "uniquely evil".

Twi - no worries. . Is your WIP a fanfic?

 

In America following Pearl Harbor, Japanese citizens were deported to internment camps. They weren't systematically killed, but they were held in prison-like conditions for no other reason than the fact that they or their ancestors were from Japan and the government was paranoid. The Nazi concentration camps were uniquely evil, but the American government wasn't above some awfulness of its own. 

 

No, it's an original world elaborated on some in this thread. I'm still working through the details so I'm not entirely comfortable sharing what I have so far in public yet, but if you have any questions/comments/concerns about how the premise would affect conditions in Germany and Poland at the time, I'd be more than happy to discuss it in a PM. Even though the whole premise is changing history, I want to be respectful toward the history I'm changing.  

[Seonid he/him]

In general, concentration camps are where you round up a lot of your own people who are perceived as threatening for some reason (racial/religious/national identity - the exact reason doesn't matter, they just have to be some "other"). You put them in a place where they can't cause any trouble, and place guards over them. Sometimes you use them for forced labor, though not always. Conditions vary from being bearable (like the American camps in WWII) to intolerable (like Soviet gulags).

 

America did that to Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Soviets did it to political dissidents all over the place. Orlion notes that the British used it in South Africa.

 

Nazi Germany was uniquely evil in that their concentration camps were turned into machines for genocide - most aren't. But the basic idea started out the same. Round up all of your undesirables and put them in a place where nobody can see them and they can't do any theoretical harm to you.

 

EDIT: Ninja'ed by Twi

 

Concentration camps are not a pleasant subject, even the more benign ones. But they happened, and could potentially happen again if public sentiment swings in certain ways.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Seonid

[Blaze1616 he/him]

That's the image as it is taught... though I have my doubts. As you said, we were doing something similar in our country and concentration camps were used previously by the British in Africa. Incidentally, it looks like Dr. Seuss was an editorial cartoonist for a New York newspaper in 1941-1943 (in other words, the last issue would have appeared a year before Eisenhower liberated his first concentration camp). 

 

Link to very brief article and cartoon (trigger warning) that I'm referring to: http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2012/07/17/check-out-dr-seuss-wwii-editorial-cartoons/

 

Like you said, history is written by the victors (and even pruned) and it can be very difficult to distinguish between nationalistic tales of victory with what actually occurred. The cynic in me kinda believes that Eisenhower filmed the horrors of the concentration camps to convince the populace back on the home-front to buy more war bonds. The human in me acknowledges that he was very much infuriated by the crimes committed against humanity and was determined to defeat Nazi Germany as swiftly and completely as possible.

 

History is complicated stuff with uncomfortable questions.

 

From what I learned, much of the filming of the camps was to serve as proof, as Ike didn't believe people would believe the government.

 

Discussion of cartoon that was linked to. Trigger warning.

To defend my education (as troubled as that makes me), Seuss's work is a political cartoon. Exaggeration is a must in said line of work. The hanging Jews can merely be a comment on the fact that Jews were dying in the camps, and doesn't necessarily mean Seuss had knowledge of the extent of the killings. After all, people die in labor camps. That's how things were. As disturbing as the cartoon is, hanging was not often used in the camps, as you could only kill people one at a time. Were Seuss to have truly known, I'd argue he'd be using references to gas chambers or firing squads.

 

 

What exactly do you mean by concentration camp? Is that equivalent to Nazi death camps, operating like a machine to mass-murder as many people as possible daily?

Because short of probably North Korea, I thought Nazi camps were .....lets say "uniquely evil".

 

Concentration camp = internment camp = labor camp.

 

None of those synonyms above denote the horrors that were commited in the German territories. The first term is often conoted as such, but that is not the definition. As such, the gulags were concentration camps, and the US's Japanese internment camps were concentration camps. Japan had similar camps at the time as well.

 

Aaaand Ninja'd by 2 people.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Blaze1616

[Orlion Blight he/him]

What exactly do you mean by concentration camp? Is that equivalent to Nazi death camps, operating like a machine to mass-murder as many people as possible daily?

Because short of probably North Korea, I thought Nazi camps were .....lets say "uniquely evil".

 

I use concentration camp in its most general term: usually a location where you concentrate "undesireables"  as a form of control/cheap labor for war production. I would say most of Europe would have been more familiar with strictly this definition as opposed to the connotation that "concentration camps" now have with "extermination camps".  These camps were evil, but unfortunately do not seem to be unique (think Stalin, Pol Pot, Maoist China just off the top of my head). 

 

Hopefully I am not causing offense with my attempt at a neutral tone, I do not mean to condone the evil acts under Hitler's regime.

[Kaymyth she/her]

In America following Pearl Harbor, Japanese citizens were deported to internment camps. They weren't systematically killed, but they were held in prison-like conditions for no other reason than the fact that they or their ancestors were from Japan and the government was paranoid. The Nazi concentration camps were uniquely evil, but the American government wasn't above some awfulness of its own. 

 

No, it's an original world elaborated on some in this thread. I'm still working through the details so I'm not entirely comfortable sharing what I have so far in public yet, but if you have any questions/comments/concerns about how the premise would affect conditions in Germany and Poland at the time, I'd be more than happy to discuss it in a PM. Even though the whole premise is changing history, I want to be respectful toward the history I'm changing.

 

George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek) talks a lot about the Japanese-American internment camps, as he spent several years of his childhood inside one.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

From what I learned, much of the filming of the camps was to serve as proof, as Ike didn't believe people would believe the government.

 

Discussion of cartoon that was linked to. Trigger warning.

To defend my education (as troubled as that makes me), Seuss's work is a political cartoon. Exaggeration is a must in said line of work. The hanging Jews can merely be a comment on the fact that Jews were dying in the camps, and doesn't necessarily mean Seuss had knowledge of the extent of the killings. After all, people die in labor camps. That's how things were. As disturbing as the cartoon is, hanging was not often used in the camps, as you could only kill people one at a time. Were Seuss to have truly known, I'd argue he'd be using references to gas chambers or firing squads.

 

 

My impression of the article and associated cartoon was that Seuss was a few steps ahead of the public in terms of understanding what was going on. Since he used the image of hangings instead of firing squads or gas chambers, it seems that he didn't know what was going on, but he clearly suspected it was worse than anyone knew. So the cartoon comes across as a dire warning to the rest of the Western world—his way of saying "They're not going 'to work in the East,' you idiots; Hitler is going to kill them and you'd best acknowledge that fact before it's too late." 

 

That's what I got from it, anyway.

[Delightful]

What I find particularly eerie about the cartoon

( aside from, you know, hanging feet *shudder*), is the word "sport". Because as far as I'm aware, Nazis did sometimes hunt down Jews and kill them for fun, within the context of the larger Aryan race goal they were striving for. By all account I've heard, the Nazis and often the Poles *enjoyed* what they were doing. Now i don't know if Suess knew about that specifically, but still. It's eerie.

[Blaze1616 he/him]

What I find particularly eerie about the cartoon

( aside from, you know, hanging feet *shudder*), is the word "sport". Because as far as I'm aware, Nazis did sometimes hunt down Jews and kill them for fun, within the context of the larger Aryan race goal they were striving for. By all account I've heard, the Nazis and often the Poles *enjoyed* what they were doing. Now i don't know if Suess knew about that specifically, but still. It's eerie.

 

I warn against wide labelization again here. Many of the people in the Nazi party only joined for their own safety, and the safety of their family. It became a thing of join or die. Keep in mind that racism was still widely practiced in the world. The ill treatment of a people extended beyond the Jews. That being said, in terms of hunting for sport, I would be incredibly surprised to learn it was anyone other than the most die-hard racists at the time; individuals who truly believed that the Jews were lesser.

[Seonid he/him]

Note: I do not mean to offend anyone by saying this. I certainly don't want anyone to think that I am speaking ill of their country. I don't mean to - since 1945, the vast majority of people have taken a long, hard look at their beliefs and prejudices about Jews and come out the other side with much less prejudiced viewpoints. The horror of the Holocaust shocked a lot of people (including Americans) out of their sentiments, because it showed them just how dark a path those went down.

 

But these dark moments are still part of our history, just like the American treatment of slaves and the massacre of native peoples in North and South America are part of our history. We dare not ignore them. We don't have to be enslaved to the evils in our past, but we must be aware of them so that they do not happen again, and so that we can help alleviate their effects in the present.

 

Anti-Semitism has a long, dark history in Eastern Europe, especially Poland and Russia/Russian satellite states, but also in Germany. Centuries of propaganda and racism convinced the average population that Jews were somehow subhuman, to the point that they were consistently portrayed in political cartoons as animal-like, or in later, more science-conscious versions, closer to human's primate ancestors. As if the Jewish people were a step along the evolution of mankind, with the Aryan race at the top.

 

That picture informed Hitler, but did not originate with him. As horrific and awful and evil as it was, the Holocaust was only the latest in a long string of "purges." The Holocaust was not shocking because of the content - it was commonplace to whip up a mob and kill what Jews you could and drive the rest out of town. The Holocaust was shocking because of the scale. Never before had a pogrom used modern technology so effectively. Never before had the state so efficiently organized anti-Jewish sentiment and turned it into a weapon of genocide. That was what was shocking.

 

But I suspect and fear that many of the earlier pogroms were prevented from being like the Holocaust only by limitations on resources and reach, not by limitations on hate.

[Mestiv he/him]

What I find particularly eerie about the cartoon

( aside from, you know, hanging feet *shudder*), is the word "sport". Because as far as I'm aware, Nazis did sometimes hunt down Jews and kill them for fun, within the context of the larger Aryan race goal they were striving for. By all account I've heard, the Nazis and often the Poles *enjoyed* what they were doing. Now i don't know if Suess knew about that specifically, but still. It's eerie.

 

No, it's an original world elaborated on some in this thread. I'm still working through the details so I'm not entirely comfortable sharing what I have so far in public yet, but if you have any questions/comments/concerns about how the premise would affect conditions in Germany and Poland at the time, I'd be more than happy to discuss it in a PM. Even though the whole premise is changing history, I want to be respectful toward the history I'm changing.

I don't have any questions or concerns about your world and idea, but I'l like to offer help with research I'm living in Poland so I guess I might be able to help a bit if you're stuck with something regarding what was going on in Poland etc.

 

What I find particularly eerie about the cartoon

( aside from, you know, hanging feet *shudder*), is the word "sport". Because as far as I'm aware, Nazis did sometimes hunt down Jews and kill them for fun, within the context of the larger Aryan race goal they were striving for. By all account I've heard, the Nazis and often the Poles *enjoyed* what they were doing. Now i don't know if Suess knew about that specifically, but still. It's eerie.

I'm a Pole and I'd like to inform that during WW II it wasn't only Jews that were treated in inhuman ways. Thousands of Poles were killed in concentration camps. Thousands were killed just randomly on the streets of our occupied cities. When you walk around in central Warsaw and look around, you will easily find dozens of statues and simple stone tables placed in memory of civilians simply executed on the streets without any reason. So please believe me, that so generalized statement that "Nazis and *often* the Poles enjoyed" in Nazi monstrosities is, well... let's say untrue. There obviously were some Poles that sided with Nazis, that were responsible for deaths of Jews, but they were very few. Plenty of Poles however were killed for trying to help Jews or for no reason at all. So please, remember that Poles were *not* having fun hunting Jews.

[+Slowswift]

Pardon, but are we referring to people of the Jewish faith or people who are ethnically Jews, ie. from Jerusalem, regardless of faith?

[Seonid he/him]

Both. In Nazi Germany, it was about descent, not religion. If your mother was a Jew, you went to the concentration camp without regard to your faith.

 

Earlier pogroms were more oriented towards religion - if a Jew converted to Christianity in Russia, they would be spared the pogroms.

[+Slowswift]

Both. In Nazi Germany, it was about descent, not religion. If your mother was a Jew, you went to the concentration camp without regard to your faith.

 

Earlier pogroms were more oriented towards religion - if a Jew converted to Christianity in Russia, they would be spared the pogroms.

 

Ah. Thanks.

[Blaze1616 he/him]

Pardon, but are we referring to people of the Jewish faith or people who are ethnically Jews, ie. from Jerusalem, regardless of faith?

 

I would say 90% of Jews satisfy both. They are a very closed community, and joining the Jewish faith without having Jewish blood is rather difficult. One of my friends from high school had a grandfather who converted to Judaism, and he spent 30 years of his life doing as they asked before they finally, officially, let him in. Remember that their faith puts much emphasis on their blood line, for they are the chosen people.

 

Once again ninja'd. People are active today!

Edited October 1, 2015 by Blaze1616

[Orlion Blight he/him]

It should be noted that the cartoon by Dr. Seuss depicts Hitler with Pierre Laval, a French PM that was executed after WWII for high treason. 

 

I believe Seuss definitively had insight into what was going on, but it's hard to separate us viewing him as having a prophetic voice after the fact. 

[Blaze1616 he/him]

It should be noted that the cartoon by Dr. Seuss depicts Hitler with Pierre Laval, a French PM that was executed after WWII for high treason. 

 

I believe Seuss definitively had insight into what was going on, but it's hard to separate us viewing him as having a prophetic voice after the fact. 

 

I think Twi has it right, in that he was face palming over how easily deceived we all were.

 

Something Hitler was very good at, unfortunately.

[Delightful]

Pardon, but are we referring to people of the Jewish faith or people who are ethnically Jews, ie. from Jerusalem, regardless of faith?

Ie from Jerusalem? There is no such thing as ethnically Jewish.

A person is Jewish if their mother('s mothers mothers mother etc) is Jewish, or if they've converted.

Hitler defined someone as Jewish if any one of their four grandparents were Jewish. He was wrong, but that's the definition he used.

Mestiv: so from what I've heard from Jewiah sources and survivors, on the one hand there were plenty Poles who helped Jews, hid us at risk of their own lives, and were incredibly brave and heroic, on the other hand I've also heard many times "the Poles were worse than the Germans".

No offence intended, we're obviously coming at the topic from vastly different perspectives.