/lit/ - Literature

>>3981244
Bumping for interest

>>3981244
>other totalitarian regimes
A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn

>>3981352

epic, simply epic XD

>>3981352
Isn't it past your bed time already?

>>3981352
Mildly adorable; now go get a job.

>>3981244

Shirer is a dickless German-hating bigot. What he has to say about German philosophy in particular is absolute dreck

>>3981451
>being a nazi apologist

>>3981352
*tips fedora*

>>3981455

>still slandering the Nazis

it's okay bubbe, big bad Hitler's not gonna throw you in the oven, i promise

>>3981352
>Am I cool yet?

>>3981464
>not understanding that if we forget how evil hitler and his nazi's were it will simply allow for it to happen again in the future
do u even history?

>>3981476

>if we forget how evil hitler and his nazi's
>how evil
>evil

this is what you sound like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6ucZsJQxbQ

>>3981485
>can't make a valid political argument so posts videos of a children's show

>>3981451
Well, I'm not familiar with William L. Shirer's genitalia so I will take your word on it.

Anyway what you're criticizing is merely a small part of the >1100 page book.

Has anyone read Mien Kampf? I'm wondering if it is any good

>>3981513
It's boring as fuck (not sure if that was a serious question).

>>3981495

What's so evil buddy?

Racial superiority myths? Churchill believed them too. He thought the Indians were sub-human scum that needed to be put in chains.

Rampant imperialism? Living space? How is any of different from Britain's colonial expeditions to North America, Africa, India and elsewhere?

Genocide? It's happened throughout history for many reasons; the Nazis just took advantage of modern technology

Dictatorship? Hitler was publicly elected and support remained strong for him throughout the war. Churchill won the war and the British people kicked him to the curb.

Homicidal maniac? How about Douglas MacArthur, who wanted to invade mainland China with 50 times the nuclear ordinance dropped on Japan, and who finally had to be deposed by his Commander in Chief?

Senseless mass destruction? The Germans were resource-strapped from the beginning. They never destroyed anything that wasn't a vital military objective until late in the war when it was clear there was no way to win. Meanwhile the Allies (specifically British air control) continually bombed and firebombed German cities with no military significance whatsoever. See Dresden and later, Hiroshima.

Injustice? The top Nazi leadership was put on trial in a kangaroo court staffed by the victorious powers. Most of them were executed despite having to represent themselves in court, with translation difficulties and preponderated evidence abounding.

Atrocities against mankind? We forgave all of the Soviet war crimes because they ended up being instrumental to victory in Europe. Go read up on the Rape of Berlin. If the Germans had won, it would have been the Russians and the French hanged at Nuremberg.

You don't know a damn thing about history. You've been spoon fed propaganda since you were little. It's pathetic

>>3981529
It was, just curious

>>3981513

Almost certainly a forgery and extremely tedious.

Few good passages though, someone should make a non-propaganda Wikiquote page for it

>>3981532
You, I like you.

>>3981352

>>3981532
Are you my husbandfu?

>>3981532
YES!

Not OP, but can anyone recommend good books about Generalplan Ost?

>>3981532

>Tu quocque

>>3981570

>still believes in an absolute moral world-order

it's 2013 dude, wake up

>>3981532
>hurrdurr churchill hated indians therfore hitler gud and a champion of the underdog germans

>>3981532
>Racial superiority myths? Churchill believed them too. He thought the Indians were sub-human scum that needed to be put in chains.

As if that's even close to the ethnic cleansing planned by Nazi Germany had they won the war.

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

>>3981581
Refer to the third rule:
if a marginalized persyn says STOP, the argument is over

>>3981244
Before this thread falls into the usual debates and shit-flinging can anyone help me and the OP out with some books about people like Stalin and Mao?

>>3981581
This is the best counterargument you're able to offer.

>>3981593
Anything by Simon Sebag-Montefiore about Stalin is unmissable.

>>3981532
>Genocide? It's happened throughout history for many reasons; the Nazis just took advantage of modern technology
>"genocide has happened more than once therefore it's not evil"

>>3981598
The sheer manpower and infrastructure to move that many people and keep them in the locations they were placed in is insane.

Just on a logistical scale its simply too enormous for me to comprehend.

>>3981604
It's what I choose to offer and it's suffice.

>>3981593
>Mao
Seconding, I've always been fascinated by modern Chinese society and a good book on Mao would be great.

>>3981620
About 300 chickens are killed per second, every second, with less infrastructure.

>>3981532
>Genocide? It's happened throughout history for many reasons; the Nazis just took advantage of modern technology
This does not really explain why genocide is no a despicable thing to do.
>Dictatorship? Hitler was publicly elected and support remained strong for him throughout the war. Churchill won the war and the British people kicked him to the curb.
In the beginning yes, but that power was reinforced through a lot of fear tactics and suppression of opposition
>Homicidal maniac? How about Douglas MacArthur, who wanted to invade mainland China with 50 times the nuclear ordinance dropped on Japan, and who finally had to be deposed by his Commander in Chief?
Naming another psychopath does not make him any less of a psychopath

Though the Nuremberg Trials were obviously more for show than actual justice and people not realizing the Soviets killed far more innocents during the war are almost as bad as the people who gloss over what the Japanese did to the Chinese

I thought about reading hitler by ian kershaw. Is rise and fall of the third reich better?

Which is preferable?

>>3981625

Nobody cares, hippie.

>>3981625
Insane but possible I suppose, you can convince people to do anything if you are the one who built their roads and houses.

>>3981616
Britain, Rome, America, Ottoman Empire, Rwanda, Russia, China and German. Small list of countries that have committed Genocide in the last 200 years.

>>3981642
>the Nuremberg Trials were obviously more for show than actual justice

A lot of Nazis actually got acquitted of all charges in the Nuremberg trials though.

>>3981532
Sorry buddy but you're gasping at straws. What the nazis did is incomparable to anything done by the western countries in the modern times (in scale and intention).

>>3981642
>This does not really explain why genocide is not* a despicable thing to do.
Trail of Tears killed about the same amount of people the German Genocide

>In the beginning yes, but that power was reinforced through a lot of fear tactics and suppression of opposition
>Alien and Sedition Acts

>Naming another psychopath does not make him any less of a psychopath
You're trying to argue that Germany was worse than other countries which is completely flawed from the start

>>3981652
And how does that make it not a despicable act?

>>3981654
Except by Russia. By a long way.

>>3981652
that doesn't actually refute his point

>>3981621
>It's not that I don't have any creativity or talent to reply with anything other than a stupid comment that mocks the poster, it's because I CHOSE to do so.
>This is what you actually believe.

>>3981532
You have a few semi-good points. But really you are the deluded one.

>>3981663
>Trail of Tears killed about the same amount of people the German Genocide
not even close, and the intention wasn't the same

>>3981352

Wow seriously? Why are people so butthurt over this reply?

I thought it was hilarious and clever. Extra points for linking it in book form

>>3981665
First of all, I think you are refering to the Soviet Union and second, it's not a western country.

>>3981663
The Trail of Tears killed about 16,000 people, not 9 million, and was mostly unintentional starvation, not deliberate gassing.

>>3981683
I can think of two reasons: bad joke and bad book.

>>3981686
> Soviet Union
In all but name, Russia.
> not Western
When talking of 'Western civilization', it is.

>>3981696
Holy shit, Russia and western? Seriously? ¨

The only excuse for this kind of ignorance that I can think of is being American.

>>3981696
Who's talking of western civilization? We're talking about WW2 in europe. Anyway we're getting beside the point. The USSR existed for much longer than nazi germany yet the death tolls weren't that disimilar. And the nazi's motivations were much more sinister in my opinion.

>>3981696
So you don't mind when non-americans take California as representative of the whole USA?

Jesus Christ, nobody in this fucking thread can into history at all.

>>3981654
Uh, the West kills more people every 3 years than the Nazis did in 15...If anything, the dumb part about that post was the implication that the Nazis weren't evil because the rest of the West was equally evil.

>>3981665
You're an idiot.

>>3981729
Define "the West".

>>3981729
>Uh, the West kills more people every 3 years than the Nazis did in 15

Hey guys, lets all make baseless conjectures and not post sources to back them up. That will be fun!

>>3981729
"Evil" is a stupid word being bandied about in this thread. There's blood on everybody's hands.

>>3981742
Fuck off you autist

>>3981756
Several human rights groups cite the number of annual deaths due to preventable (READ: intentionally perpetrated through Neo-colonialism) disease, hunger, and horrid work conditions at around 12-16 million victims a year. This, by the way, doesn't include any of the victims of Western military aggression, which adds several thousand more to the list depending on what was going on that year.

This book is quite old and outdated. Would recommend Evan's Third Reich trilogy as the current best in class for scholarship on the topic

>>3981778
lmao no, you can't automatically attribute any preventable death that occurred in the third world to "neo-colonialism." you'll need to do a lot better if you expect anyone to take your claims seriously

>>3981794
Well, people in the West don't really seem to die of hunger and lack of basic medical care in the same numbers they do in the "developing" world, and the reason the "developing" world is in that condition is exactly because of the neo-colonialism of the West (which is a real, observable thing, by the way, I don't understand why you put that in quotes).

The only justification for that I've ever heard is the same old and discredited liberal market logic espoused by people like Milton Friedman that people laugh at as "libertarian nonsense" whenever its applied to American labor markets, but suddenly becomes gospel truth when talking about Southeast Asian sweat shops and factories.

>>3981778
I went through all US wars since WW2 and collated deaths including civilian deaths from starvation etc, the number was 5-6 million or something like that. Using wikipedia, amnest, etc you can put together a list for yourself. Most of it happened in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and a good chunk in the middle east in the last few years.

You cant blame african kleptocracies murdering their own citizens on the US, but you can blame starving Iraqi children on them

>>3981816
That is completely untrue, just because poverty and subpar medical care isnt endemic does not mean its a huge problem in "the west". Eastern europe, Mexico, ghetto america, and sections of europe are truly going to shit.

>>3981244
>I'm curious whether there is a book comparable in scope and depth about the Soviet Union or other totalitarian regimes
Holy shit, OP, you are aware that there are entire departments of universities dedicated to the study of history, right?

>(and is a pleasure to read)
Oh. That might be harder.

But anyway, that book appears to be at least 50 years old. I'm pretty sure that much of what it says will have been disputed or even disproved in the decades since it was first published.

>>3981817
You can blame the West for those "kleptocracies" when the only reason they're kept there is to protect Western economic interests. The scope is much wider than specific sanctions.

>>3981823
Eastern Europe, Mexico, and ghetto pockets of the U.S. are obviously exceptions, and aside from the latter cannot be considered the core of the West. Though even in the most poverty stricken parts of the West the standards are still substantially higher than the third world. I wonder why....

I really liked how William Shirer criticized the Nazis for being a bunch of homosexuals.

You wouldn't exactly see that in modern liberal propaganda.

>>3981816
>Well, people in the West don't really seem to die of hunger and lack of basic medical care in the same numbers they do in the "developing" world, and the reason the "developing" world is in that condition is exactly because of the neo-colonialism of the West
so therefore the west with its neo-colonialism is actively depriving them of food and medicine? afaik most of the countries that are now considered third world did not have a huge surplus of food or modern medicine before the west intervened in them

>>3981244


a more philosophical analysis and critique of national socialist ideology.

>>3981835
I would recommend you read this:

http://whynationsfail.com/

It suggests that it isnt anyones "fault" that nations or regions fail (even diamond doesnt say that) but rather that cycles of failure can perpetuate for centuries without instances of popular revolt.

African kleptocracies are perpetuated through tribal, non-inclusive institutions that were in existence long before king leopold started killing the congolese for rubber.

Your pseudo marxist interpretation of the third world has been out of vogue for at least 20 years in human geographic studies

>>3981532
>wears so many fedora's he doesn't understand the concept of evil

>>3981977
The Allies were evil.

>>3981532
>fuck churchill
>nazi's jewish genocide created the term genocide dumb fuck
>brits praised churchill, hitler gained power by physically abusing and harassing all other opponents. how do you think the SS got started?
>China started to attack U.S. troops in North Korea. It was unwarranted and done because Mao was afraid the U.S. would come through and wipe them out which MacArthur had not plans of doing until the Chinese attacked. A little thing called the Great Leap Forward was happening in which 40 million+ nearly died. There would have been no need for nukes because there was no food to sustain a military for long term
>that bombing of warsaw, that bombing of london, that bombing of stalingrad, that seige of lenningrad and stalingrad
>they were all guilty anyways, they knew it, everyone knew it
>once again that seige of leningrad and that seige of stalingrad and that bombing of london and that jewish,crippled,homosexual, anyone who was in another party than the nazi's. Soviets were never forgiven, the cold war started and the U.S. and U.S.S.R. didn't want to have high tensions facing the war

Who doesn't know anything about history?
Who is the one who has been spoonfed conspiracy pro-nazi apologist bullshit?
get bent, bitch

>>3981930
not the guy you were replying to but:

I haven't read the new book but the insights of Acemonglu don't contradict neo-colonial theory, they mesh together pretty well I've found. There's no dichotomy, the two dovetail.

And the abhorrent prevalence of neoliberalism in Adacemia isn't a great argument against neocolonial theory, it's not like academics have ever really been at the forefront of anticolonialism ever, they're much more often complicit with capital...

>>3982003

top lel

your level of delusion surpasses reason

a good little citizen, just like the rest

>>3982547
yeah hes just a sheep amirite hehehe we know whats REALLY going on

>>3981476

I never understood people who say that line

>if we forget it will happen again

That's nonsense - those events are never 'forgotten' as such, but in the heat of the moment are willfully put aside in the mind, temporarily ignored if you will.

It's quite possible for atrocities to be remembered and imitated at the same time.

That saying sticks up an optimistic false dichotomy. A premise that these events 'only' happen because they are forgotten and otherwise humans 'will' and do learn from history where on the contrary we are well aware of historical events and even if we expand upon the list of atrocities we do so out of our own impetus and not because we've forgotten anything.

Same thing but different people, and different circumstances to justify.

>>3982584
in america the biggest supports of right-thuggery and mass surveillance are all world war II buffs who ramble on about freedom with no sense of irony so "remembering" means nothing

>>3981652
>200
2000?

>>3982547
Maybe you just need to le repill him XDDDD

>>3982587

In a sense 'remembering' events might make them even more likely to happen.

>'Hey remember that guy who waged war, conquered huge amounts of territory, wealth, and fame, and lived a great life?

>Yeah - I wanna be that guy too!

>>3981654
Bullshit. Stalin killed 20 millions russians in labour camps and let another 20 million die as a meat shield to halt hitler's attack. The fact that he did it to his own people is shocking.
Mao committed mass genocide too, on a much larger scale.
Nazis < Stalin < Mao < USA (we'll get to that)
6 million < 40 million < God who the fuck knows < a continent

Let's also not forget the fact that the good ol' democratic US of A raped the fuck out of South America's economy for 150+ years and now the whole continent is a shithole. A whole continent fucked and forced into poverty and corruption, and the Nazi's are the worst thing that's happened to modern history?

I'm not into all that crap about jooz controlling everything or the holocaust never happened, but even a sane man must realise that it's blown way out of proportion. Nobody knew anything about Stalin's gulags until the 90's, yet they killed many times more people than the holocaust.

>>3982630
>USA (we'll get to that)

Don't even bother. I know you'll just be making stuff up.

>>3982630

>>3982642
Source?

>>3982645
http://web.archive.org/web/20081228031043/http://www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/Staljin/articles/AHR/AHR.html
http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema06.php

>>3981244
:Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of WW2" by Keith Lowe isn't precisely what you're after for your final line there, but it is an interesting look at, well, Europe in the aftermath of WW2. I recommend it.

>>3982642
>>3982646
Glad someone finally posted this. Stalin was a mass-murdering cunt, but the myth of gulags-as-death-camps has really gotten out of hand.

My favorite part was Fegelein.

>>3982630
>Bullshit. Stalin killed 20 millions russians in labour camps and let another 20 million die as a meat shield to halt hitler's attack. The fact that he did it to his own people is shocking.
Those figures are made up. The modern USA has a higher rate of incarceration than Stalin's Soviet Union.

Also, it's not the headcount that matters. If the headcount mattered, then British monarchs would be the most evil by an order of magnitude.

What matters is the intent, not the number.

(In the same way that Jeffrey Dahmer is much more evil than a random negligent ship captain, even though Dahmer killed only 17 people. A shitty captain can easily kill 100 times that much.)

>>3981378
>>3981429
>>3981435

Why is it a bad book? genuinly curious here, the guy looks respectable, or are people butthurt about it's succes?

I'm surpised Shirer hasn't been called out for being homophobic by some gay activist group.

>But the brown-shirted S.A. never became much more than a motley mob of brawlers. Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer.

Considering Enders Game is being boycotted because the author is against gay marriage or whatever.

>>3982682
It is a joke of a book because of the outrageous leftist bias of the author added to the fact that many foolish people read this and believe it is the supreme truth. If it weren't so widely read, it wouldn't catch so much flack, but when Matt Damon is talking about it and dumbfuck teachers are having students read it, there begins to be a problem.

>>3981244
>totalitarian regimes
Read Arendt and get back to us on your theory of society.

>>3982682

Wouldn't mind a thread on this.

Its biased. And I'm far from being a conservative. One thing in particular I can't believe Zinn can't even bring himself to give the US credit for how the Korean War turned out.

A lot of people died but you can't avoid the fact that currently North Korea is a communist shithole while South Korea is unbelievably wealthy relative to their history.

He's so much of a ideologue that he ignores evidence to the contrary.

>>3982705
>Arendt as an authority on totalitarian regimes

hahahahaha

>>3982712
>A lot of people died but you can't avoid the fact that currently North Korea is a communist shithole while South Korea is unbelievably wealthy relative to their history.
I ain't no filthy Juche apologist but relative material wealth doesn't seem like healthy litmus for a country's entire sense of prosperity in general, bruv.

>>3982712
South Korea was pretty awful for a few decades too though. The U.S. just sort of brought them "in" because they needed an economic HQ of sorts in that part of the world....income inequality is still pretty huge there, but even more damning than that in my opinion is that South Korean capital (with the backing of U.S. capital but given substantial leeway) now exploits the hell out of places like Africa.

Zinn's book is okay, I have my fair share of criticisms of it but anyone who tells who that it's primary weakness is being "too leftist" is just a fucking liberal, or worse, because Zinn is just another dime-a-dozen anti-communist leftist, i.e. not very leftist.

>>3982701

Why does it have leftist bias acording to your opinion?

>>3982712

The korean war was like a proto- vietnam.It was the USA mingling in a foreign civil war, the US had no business there.

>>3982753
I didn't just say leftist, I said outrageous leftist. Should have said radical leftist, since that is what Zinn was and what colored all of his academic writing.

>>3982753
I'm not that guy and I'm not against Zinn but he wrote in the introduction that it was purposefully biased, if only to provide some history that wasn't plagued by nationalistic propaganda.

The real problem is, if you don't really know how to put things in a broader context, the whole one-sided narrative just ends up becoming propaganda of its own and you either get sucked into it or you despise it.

>>3982768
Zinn's hardly that radical. Maybe in the American context where Trotskyism is as far left as anyone goes, but globally speaking there's plenty of great thinkers and historians much further to his left.

>>3981778
Obvious troll or 12yo.

>>3981793
Not interested in "scholarship".
.
>>3981817
I'm curious how you can attribute every single death to US presence. Wasn't disease and malnutrition common in those places before?

>>3982682
Because its only that history which suits the writer's political opinions. I'm not interested in his political opinions and neither am I interested in cherry-picked history.

>>3982686
Because it was a different time, almost everyone was back then either "homophobic" or homosexual.

>>3981664
What makes it despicable?

>>3982779
Biased in the context of most histories written, he purposefully wrote about the perspective of those whose voice was/is usually ignored.

>>3983066
>neither am I interested in cherry-picked history.
so you do hate history books?
But please continue with the indignation.

WWII what a fucking clusterfuck
I know some older fucks who survived that. They are either incredibly bitter or slightly checked out

>>3983066
Yeah, but it's 2013 now and we have a thing called modernity, industrialization, etc, which the West has done everything in its power to keep from falling into third world hands in any independent way. Someone dying of hunger in 1300 is dying from a different economic cause than someone who does in 2000, or even 1900, because we live under vastly different economic systems.

>>3981378
>>3981429
>>3981435
>>3981457
>>3981470
>>3981550

These butthurt Americans.

>>3983193
No indignation here. Just saying it's an all around shitty book. That's all.

>>3981532
This is basically a watered down argumentum ad populum.

>Hitler did X? So did Y.

Try again, this time finding another country that was guilty of all these at the same time. Although I will admit you're at least more knowledgeable than other people on history, you're either trolling, deluded, or don't know how to make an argument.

>>3981244
>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a non-fiction book by William L. Shirer chronicling the general history of Nazi Germany from 1932 to 1945. It was first published in 1960, by Simon & Schuster in the United States, where it won a National Book Award.[1] It was a bestseller in both the U.S. and Europe, and a critical success outside Germany, where harsh criticism stimulated sales. Academic historians were generally critical.

>not one '>>>/pol/' in this thread
Wow.

Read this about two years ago and liked it.

>>3983261
/pol/ pls go

Guys please recommend more history books, not OP but wanted to make a similar thread

I'd like something about Spain and Castile/Aragon

>>3983253
>this is basically a watered down argumentum ad populum

philosophy 101 has failed you hard

>>3981532

Oh, God. I came.