Forum:Is there anyone who is interested in WWII, specifically addressing pseudohistory and revisionism?

If you are, please share any specific interests or experience so that we can review articles that I work on. –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 05:32, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Pseudohistory and revisisonism on exactly what in WWII? Please note that they need to apply to our mission. Osaka Sun (talk) 05:46, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There's stuff related to Holocaust denial and general closet Nazism. It's hard to quickly put into words: misconceptions that people have about the Germans that lead to Nazi sympathetic conclusions.  –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 06:41, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no mainstream school of thought that has sympathetic positions towards national socialism. MarcusCicero (talk) 07:19, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Not in mainstream history, but there are plenty of people who claim that it was "only the SS that was bad" or that the Germans didn't commit genocidal rape because they considered it gross to have sex with inferior races. There are also plenty more people who attempt to separate alleged war crimes such as the bombing of Dresden or the Soviet occupation from their historical context.  –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 23:26, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Suggestions
For those with some knowledge or interest in this area, I can think of a few WW2-related things to create or improve that would actually be useful for the wiki. It's an open-ended list so feel free to add to it or post comments below. 17:27, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * the Spanish Civil War
 * the Rape of Nanjing (or Nanking as it's still often transliterated)
 * a proper article on Harry Truman would be useful
 * tidy up Auschwitz now merged into Holocaust 17:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
 * cite or cull the unsourced/apocryphal quotes in the Winston Churchill article
 * expand/delete/merge these Nazism-related stubs as appropriate
 * create/tidy categories for WW2 subjects. There are at least enough articles for a WW2 category, probably enough for a holocaust cat too.

The above is a nice idea but we'd need to be careful not to reinvent the wheel here. There is an encyclopedia on the internet that gives far more in depth accounts of the above than we ever could. What Rationalwiki could do, is to focus solely on the fringe and crank perspectives on the above. For example, the Spanish civil war is fun, plenty of crazy voices we could argue with ad infinitum. MarcusCicero (talk) 19:09, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

We might want to consider breaking up Holocaust denial pages or at least adding more on related topics as they're getting a bit long. For example, possibly articles about specific red herrings in Holocaust denial or events as they relate to Nazi exploitation. I'm working on this one here about how Neo Nazis use the "atrocities" of the Red Army to portray the Germans as victims. I also go into how Germans used the "war crimes" committed against them to justify portraying themselves as victims, rather than as participants in a murderous regime. User:Inquisitor Ehrenstein/Warcrimes against Germans on the Eastern Front. One thing I'm a bit concerned about though is that the article seems a bit pro German because it mentions "war crimes" even though no court or legal entity has ever found guilt on the Red Army. It is quite possibly the most heavily cited article here. –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 02:26, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * " Germans used the "war crimes" committed against them to justify portraying themselves as victims, rather than as participants in a murderous regime." There is no reason that they (especially considering that the term "German" is insufficiently precise in this case) could not be both. The bus came by/and I got on.silverbrain.png 02:31, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * How exactly is "German" insufficiently precise? Secondly, the Germans were perpetrators of the greatest mass murder in history, not victims.  There are no non Neo Nazi historians who claim that the Germans were victims.  German self identified victim status was one of the ways that they got out of accepting responsibility for the mass murder of millions of people.  (Germany 1945) –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 04:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Because it lumps in perpetrators of mass atrocities with women and children who were victims of the targetted bombing of civilian populations, for example. They were all "Germans," but they did not bear any sort of rsponsibility for what the German forces were doing in their name. You write: "There are no non Neo Nazi historians who claim that the Germans were victims" and that's just wrong. Do your research. Look at the controversy that erupted at the Canadian War Museum. Watch "The Valour and the Horror." Do your homework before making broad and inaccurate claims. The bus came by/and I got on.silverbrain.png 04:46, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * "the Germans were perpetrators of the greatest mass murder in history, not victims." Pretty sure that Mao and Stalin had higher numbers. The bus came by/and I got on.silverbrain.png 04:47, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Nearly all of the Germans had knowledge of the Holocaust, approved of it, and benefited from it. Also, nearly all of the Germans who suffered brutality on the Eastern Front had benefited from genocide and war crimes against the people living in those areas, including deportations and murder that allowed the Germans to take the land in the first place.  You can read Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution and Germany 1945, which specifically cover German knowledge and benefit from genocide in the east.
 * On your second claim, Hitler started a war that killed 80 million people. Even the most anti Communist estimates of Stalin's atrocities don't come anywhere close to that.  You are insisting that the Germans were victims and claiming that the Communists were worse then the Nazis.  I'm not going to make an association fallacy, but I'm still going to take notice.  –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 05:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * "Nearly all of the Germans had knowledge of the Holocaust". This certainly contradicts what I've been told about this in the past, viz that the killings were carried out with as much secrecy as was practical.  Even if we do accept this premise (& where is the evidence for it?), this doesn't mean that civilians who were raped and murdered were "not victims".  "Hitler started a war that killed 80 million people."  Erm, are you talking about total casualties from the WW2 era?  Everything from the Second Sino-Japanese War to the bombing of Nagasaki is Hitler's fault?  That doesn't make any sense.  06:22, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Ehr, if the mark of supporting genocide is "they benefited from it even if they didnt run the camps themselves", then most humans at some point or another in human history are going to go under that list. --MikallakiM 10:20, 11 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Read one of the essays in Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. It specifically addresses the myth that the Germans "didn't know" about the Holocaust.  It explains that one of the reasons why many reviews have failed to discover German knowledge is because they never recorded reactions to it because they approved of it, and therefore had no need to protest.  There are also plenty examples of people being able to smell the concentration camps, watching people go in and not come out, and watching bone and hair fragments rain onto nearby towns.  The Holocaust also required the involvement of nearly all of German society, which means that most Germans participated in the extermination.  I realize that Hitler was not responsible for the war in the Pacific, but even then, he started a war that killed 50-60 million people.
 * Mikal, the Germans living in the east were directly benefiting from genocide. The Poles were relocated or exterminated, and Germans were brought in to take their place.  –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 22:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I directly benefit from the native american genocide: IE my home being square in the middle of lands that were forcibly taken. By your logic, i must support that genocide. --MikallakiM 23:22, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * How did I know that you would try to use this argument... You lived there many decades after the Native Americans were relocated.  The Germans by contrast, moved in immediately after the Poles were exterminated or relocated.  Also, there is really no comparison between atrocities committed by the United States and what the Nazis did.  –Александр(а) (Talk | Contribs | Ragebox) 02:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I really don't see the point of all of this -- are you trying to convince us that the Hoocaust happened, and that some fringe/nationalist groups try to deny this/minimize its importance? Are you also trying to argue something about the fact that soldiers commit rape? I don't think you'll find anything or anyone on this website that will contradict any of those arguments. If you want to grind an axe with Germans who want to minimize the role of Germany in the Holocaust, I don't think an English-language wiki is your best bet. The bus came by/and I got on. 22:47, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

While the saying goes, that the winners write the history books, sometimes the losers do. In Japan they omit that they started the war with Pearl Harbor, comfort women in Korea, the aforementioned Rape of Nanking, and experimentation on P.O.W.s. In progressive school districts, Japanese internment camps are mentioned, but in many parts of the country, it is whitewashed or ignored. I think it is a great topic, but the problem is how do you title it. White Flight, Blacklisting, or Stockholm Syndrome are terms that are ?(I can't think of the term), but their is no one term to describe the topic. Fairandunhinged (talk) 00:31, 12 July 2013 (UTC)