> But the reason for that is not the supposed "benevolence" of
> "superiority" of the Anglo-Saxon regimes - the inventiors of modern day
> slavery, the genocide, and the concentration camp (the last two titles
> go to the British for their performance in Tasmania and South Africa, as
> well as to the US-ers for their treatment of Native Americans). The
> difference between Nazi Germany on one side, and the Anglo-Saxon
> genocide machine is mainly in the skin color of their victims, and the
> winning of the war. As a result, nazi historu has been written, for the
> most part, by its white skin victims. Had the history of the British
> and US empire been written by its dark skin victims, "democratic
> institutions" you mention in this context would have a similar meaning
> to "Demokratische" in the context of "Deutsche Republik."
Golly, I'm afraid that I will sound like a true-red/white/blue, American patriot -- the last persona one would want to exhibit in these precincts [ :-) ] -- but I have a slightly different take on this subject. I can't speak to the British in Tasmania and South Africa, not being very knowledgeable about those episodes, but I have a passing acquaintance with U.S. history. While no one could defend the treatment of Native Americans by the European settlers in North America, I think there are some significant differences from Nazi policies.
From the start, the Europeans' views of the Native Americans ranged from very hostile to quite friendly -- a certain number of them even "went native," preferring the native societies and cultures to their own. (Many of these cases were explained away by the native-hating settlers as "whites captured by Indians.") Of course, the majority view among settlers was that it was quite right and proper that the land under their control should expand westward without limit -- after all, they had come to the continent precisely to settle there, so they necessarily believed that they had a right to be on that land -- but there were sizable numbers who at least thought that some sort of peaceable sharing arrangement should be and could be arrived at (e.g., the Pennsylvania Quakers).
However, since the settlers were definitely part of the European mercantilist/capitalist economic system, the cards were unfortunately stacked in favor of forceful expansion, and the dynamic nature of that system made native resistance eventually futile. But at no time was the concept of completely exterminating the natives a majority view among white Americans, despite the prevalent racism, and there were always dissenters to that racism.
The essential difference from the Nazi regime, as I see it, is that even in the darkest hours there has always been the possibility of dissent in the U.S., and frequently this dissent has been able to mitigate and even reverse inhumane policies. By contrast, the relatively moderate Nazis (and there were some in the beginning) were eliminated before long, and an extremely efficient machine for entirely wiping out dissent was soon constructed. The possibility of a self-correcting process, which exists in a political system with built-in protections for political rights, just wasn't there.
> When sufficiently threatened, the Britsh and US regimes were as brutal
> as the Nazis, as they have ample opportunity to demonstrate.
In what sense were white North American settlers "threatened" by the Native Americans? Yes, there were brutal settlers, as there are brutal people everywhere at all times, but the Nazi system was not just a gang of brutal thugs getting their jollies. It was a system in which there was no way to stop or even mitigate the brutality because all space for dissent and self-correction had been eliminated.
> The bottom line is that there is nothing that would "predestine" Germans
> but not US-ers to develop a fascist regime at some point in history, and
> vice versa, nothing that would prevent either from so doing. As you
> correctly observed, comparing factual events to counterfactual ones are
> speculations that cannot be proved or disproved. Havingsaid that, I
> think that the US is now pretty close to nationalistic authoritarianism
> - and it is beside thepoint whether we call it fascism, or say that US
> managed to avoid it before. So did Germany before 1933. There is
> always the first time.
No, nothing predestined Germany to become Nazi, and I never said so (and never would say so). But there are plenty of specific factors in the post-World War I situation which explain why it did in fact take that course, and why countries with stronger democratic traditions didn't. To mention just the psychological conditions in Europe after the war, I will venture to quote again from a professional historian (which I am not), Michael Burleigh's "The Third Reich," pp. 32-3, paperback edition:
"Germany's defeat was closely followed by a peaceful republican revolution, there being no time between the two to mourn, or reflect upon more than two and a half million war dead and four million wounded. This was part of the terrible gap torn out of the lives of generations of Europeans (and their imperial allies), which even the most sensitive war memorials -- such as the Cenotaph in London's Whitehall -- could convey only through the architectural invocation of nothingness. Across Europe and the wider world, there were more than nine million war dead, killed at an average rate of more than six thousand per day for more than four and a quarter years. A way of life had vanished too, along with vast numbers of young men, in a catastrophe which, for many contemporary Europeans, is more present in their emotions and imaginations than the supervening Second World War and Holocaust. Ten years after the event, Dick Diver, the hero of Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, caught the mood: 'All by beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here [on the Somme] with a great gust of high-explosive love.' "
This catastrophe weighed as heavily on countries like Britain and France as it did on Germany, but they did not take the course Germany did. Why was this? Of course, they were among the victors, and Germany among the losers, but I think their greater experience with democratic traditions had something to do with it.
> PS. How you got to the Holocaust denial from here is beyond me.
As I said, perhaps "Holocaust-minimizing" might be a better term. In any case -- and this may just be a "theological" sort of controversy about which no rational agreement is possible -- to me the Nazis' Holocaust was in fact a unique event in human history, not just garden-variety human brutality, which as I said above can be found in any society at any time, but a descent into the very bottom of the possibilities of human nature such as had never happened before and (one hopes) will not happen again (although some events in post-1945 history have been at least reminiscent of it). To me, anyone who does not accept this uniqueness of the Holocaust is minimizing its significance, but that may just be a personal quirk of mine. (After all, although my ancestors on my father's side emigrated to the U.S. in the late 19th century, other branches of my family of course stayed in Germany, and I can't dismiss the very great possibility that some of them may have been among the most fanatic Nazis.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org _____________________________________________ The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt - Bertrand Russell