""You have to respect them for their fighting skill"?" Topic

Jack should definitely be doing a "No End in Sight' AAR ;)

Very glad to see things become more civil in this thread.

By the very nature of the subject, it was doomed to become very controversial and heated.

It may be best for all concerned to close the thread.

Many open wounds have been opened here and it may be best to close it and let those wounds heal…

Just a thought…

Frank

A questionable decision there Boss. Just sayin'.

It's better to have this discussion out in the open, rather than force it underground where it is harder to refute.

Perhaps it's about time that you had a rule about Holocaust denial/doubting then?

You know the rules – you can propose it on the TMP Poll Suggestions Board.

And why can't you mention the fact that someone has been banned? It's a fact. It happened. What rule does that break?

People who cannot be civil on the forums will be banned. There is no rule against mentioning it, but whining about it is unnecessary.

If people can speak freely here why did posts about Blast-Tastic! get deleted, why did posts about The Wargames Website get deleted?

Perhaps if Angel Barracks would stop using sock puppet accounts, people might show more respect for his business and projects.

Who was whining? Since we don't know why Flecktarn was banned, as opposed to when people get DH'd, we can only guess. I thought that it couldn't be as bad as the posts he was responding to, and was simply pointing out the injustice as I saw it.

As for your suggestion that there should be a poll about Holocaust denial, well, words fail me. You're in charge here, as you like to demonstrate, so perhaps you should just get on with it and make a rule. Don't hide behind a poll on a subject such as this. This is a serious matter and to equate it with changing the name of the NMB board, for example, is positively shameful. Sometimes a leader needs to step up and lead.

deep horse + 1

Bill, are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that a poll on Holocaust Denial is an appropriate way of handling this situation?

What is there to 'discuss' and 'in the open'? The Holocaust happened, whether there were 6 million victims or 5.99 million of them, whether the Russians lied about Poland etc etc – to give any credence and an open forum to a minority of members who say otherwise devalues this forum and insults those who died – not only those in the camps (detention, internment, labour or concentration, however you choose to describe them) but also the many tens of thousands from throughout the free world who fought to remove an abominable regime that blighted the 20th century.

And, while we're at it, why was Flecktarn locked out? Seems he only spoke up to condemn Chortle's (I don't hear anyone laughing) opinions – so where was his free speech and, from his earlier posts, I think he's better qualified to have an opinion on the subject than 99% of us non-Aryan WASPs.

I have stayed off this thread. But I will say now:

I will miss Flecktarn. I didn't see him do anything out of line. He brought something uncommon and interesting to the conversation.

Once again, please do *not* ban Chortle or any other neo-Nazis, merely for what they believe, so long as they remain civil and follow the TMP rules. Banning them only lends credence to their ideas and their pose of martyrdom.

No Chortle, I don't want Holocaust denial outlawed. Please, speak up, any time, and tell us *exactly* what you think.

Anyone who has read Flektarn's posts will know they are measured and uniquely informative. The same cannot be said for others, who still reside here. I'm giving this site a miss, which is a pity as I've enjoyed reading and posting here.

Ok Bill.
You say that to ban Holocaust Denial on TMP we need a Poll.

Does that mean that you are going to put it up to a vote of TMP for EVERYTHING that some people want to have banned? Including what YOU routinely ban people for?
Are all such ban-able and lockable topics subject to a Poll?

@ OSchmidt.

The 'tar baby' analogy isn't a bad one. The "arguments" offered by two of the above posters are so strained as to be self-evidently fallacious. However, there are topics where you do have to stand & be counted. And if you get a bit besmirched, so be it.

And BTW : we're discussing Holocaust Denial & Nazi apologism & some person(above) posts a whine about a two-bit convention & some website (I assume) they run? Get a sense of proportion.

Since we don't know why Flecktarn was banned, as opposed to when people get DH'd, we can only guess.

Flecktarn was banned for being disrespectful to the moderators.

You're in charge here, as you like to demonstrate, so perhaps you should just get on with it and make a rule. Don't hide behind a poll on a subject such as this.

You don't get it. If it was up to me, the topic can be discussed – that's what free speech is about, even speech that may be offensive. If the TMP community wants to overrule me, then have a vote. I don't like the censorship of ideas, and I have confidence that bad ideas lose to good ideas in a free and open discussion.

Does that mean that you are going to put it up to a vote of TMP for EVERYTHING that some people want to have banned?

I'm simply saying that if people want to change the rules of this site, we have a mechanism in place for doing so.

Just Jack wrote

Gwydion,

"Mad dogs fight well, I don't admire them for it."
No one said anything about admiring anyone…

Respect if you like – I don't respect them for it

"…why would I admire another human being for being able to kill people for a cause I find odious – whatever that cause may be?"
Sir, now you are just willfully ignoring the whole point of this thread.

The point was do I respect people's ability to fight in vaccuo – no I don't.

"…not a bunch of wannabe SS clones trying to rewrite history for their own nefarious and odious purposes."
Whooooooah! What!? Who is this? What did I miss? Is this directed at me?

No not directed at you – at those people Chortle was quoting with apparent approval, who Mark 1 outlined so clearly in his piece.

So, Bill, if you're happy for the topic to be discussed, what is your opinion of holocaust deniers? And are you comfortable for legitimate minority groups and religions to be attacked, directly or indirectly, on these pages?

Chortle and all:
As a person who has stepped across the line and written things which were wrong in this thread, I will not attack you, for to do so would be hypocritical on my part. However, this thread has become inflammatory as evidenced by my own inexcusable, angry outburst above and by the reactions of many of the TMP membership who have maintained much better decorum than I. I ask you to discontinue this tangent, which you have taken us down, so that some tranquility can be restored to this page and this community. I also ask all other posters who feel that they have more to say, to please return to the original topic of the post and leave the topic of the Holocaust to be discussed somewhere else.
I ask you to do this for the greater good and because sometimes it is more important to end an argument than it is to win one. This is such a time.
Please, I implore you all, to consider carefully and fully my requests.
Rod Robertson

Actually, Bill puts up with quite a bit of anti-Mormon bigotry on this site, not to mention personal attacks on his ethics, tastes and even his appearance. More than I'd put up with in his place. But I admit, I don't always understand the things get some people banned.

It is being discussed elsewhere now.

Rebelyell2006:
Thanks for the heads-up but I meant somewhere else then on TMP. I should have been clearer.
Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

To answer the questions of a few: Chortle is being allowed to express his opinions since he has not broken forum rules, and in recognition of the principle of free speech.

Those who disagree with him are welcome to express their views.

He has however broken the laws against Holocaust Denial in a number of European jurisidictions. link

OK this is a US website but it's not really something to be proud of, is it? Funny how selectively the 'free speech' arguement gets applied.

BTW my remark to Rick D that got deleted a page back? I simply confirmed that Herr Chortle isn't a member of Frothers. Apparently that was too much information for you lot to know!

Ah, you used the F-word? Stone the heretic!!

No, I didn't even do that!

Rod I Robertson, I admired your initial angry post. That was what needed saying.

Saying lets all stop and pretend everything's all right is not what is required. This sort of rubbish needs refuting by all decent people.

The SS deserves no respect. It was not clinically compartmented into Waffen SS and other branches. The Waffen SS were not just soldiers like other soldiers. They were part of a vile ideology and many rotated through other branches whose sole role was oppression and industrial murder. The Waffen SS itself was a bunch of thugs who murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians and as a matter of policy abrogated the rules of war and international law.
To respect their self serving rewriting of history to represent themselves as some sort of anti-communist crusaders fighting for western values would be to spit on the graves of the millions who died at their hands. The SS were and remain morally repellent.

Those raised under the Nazi regime have a small measure of an excuse but if they wanted to defend the country there was the Wehrmacht or the Luftwaffe or the Kriegsmarine. The SS came with ideology, and buying into it to the extent they did deserves moral condemnation as standard. If they can plead excuses of weakness of moral fibre or mental acuity by submitting to peer pressure to join it, they may absolve themselves of a little moral blame, but not much. Their actions speak for themselves.

Stranger, that's 'F' for fffff…Frothers…

There, I said it, now must go and scourge myself, which is probably permissible here when far more innocuous activities are not.

See what the TMP spellchecker did there? Seems that the xenophobia extends to all things French as well as Jewish – I meant 'etranger' of course!

So, Bill, if you're happy for the topic to be discussed, what is your opinion of holocaust deniers?

My opinion of Holocaust deniers? They're wrong.

And are you comfortable for legitimate minority groups and religions to be attacked, directly or indirectly, on these pages?

Direct attacks are, of course, prohibited by forum rules.

Indirect attacks have to be judged by how indirect they are.

BTW my remark to Rick D that got deleted a page back? I simply confirmed that Herr Chortle isn't a member of Frothers. Apparently that was too much information for you lot to know!

Remember that when a post is removed for breaking forum rules, the responding comments are also removed.

I want to remind members about my original post. Someone posted a list of atrocities committed by the SS in a month in the Soviet Union. I said that if the source of this information was the Russians then it may not be reliable because the Russians lied about events on the eastern front.

I found three cases of the Russians lying in under half an hour on the Yale University archive of the Nuremberg trials transcripts. Then I remembered one from a Donahue show (Abraham Lincoln said you can only trust 50% of what you read on the internet, so I had that Donahue show in reserve). It wouldn't matter if the lies were about someone standing here instead of there. But they made up non-existent methods of mass execution and these were used to prosecute people on a capital charge. Very serious for the guy on trial, and for his relatives who have to live with shame.

No one challenged me on the facts. If these matters have taken on the character of a religion for you, instead of something which can be thought through, then your objections belong in the Fez.

If the evidence of those SS atrocities came from, say, American observers then I would expect them to be true. I don't know, and am not saying, the Soviets systematically distorted every event. I say that they falsely claimed Germans had done certain terrible things.

I used a respected source and material pertinent to the the question raised.

I said that we see daily Nazi stories in the media. I believe that this accounts for the anti-SS hysteria which seems to escalate as time passes.

In response to my factual post I got replies that I characterise as religious, and therefore belonging in the Fez. I mean that these respondents expect to police the zeitgeist rather than consider the facts. They didn't want to challenge claims, they objected to any questioning of these events. Goodbye to refutability and the scientific method!

It was Weasel himself, who started this thread, who brought up Nuremberg. I found the Yale archive, posted a link here, and then started checking out what people said about it on the web.

If you want to make a poll to ban what I brought up holocaust then denial will not cover it. You will have to ban mentioning anything that was false in the Nuremberg evidence. You are going to have to think about which other historic events, perhaps limited to WW2 or perhaps broader, should have an acceptable TMP view which can not be contradicted.

Actually, you might want to start burning a few books and shutting down free speech.

Further on in the thread, after a lot of kerfuffle, I was asked if I believed in the holocaust at all by Weasel. I said that if I could find such serious lies in the actual trial transcripts after a brief search I had to wonder what else was false. But, I said, I hoped it was substantially correct. I didn't want to discuss this at all and only did so in response to a direct question.

Any thread on the SS is going to end up with hundreds of posts, mostly talking at cross purposes. This is going to get worse as the Nazis are still in the news every day. Perhaps ban talk about the SS except in regard to their weapons, organisation, operations? Ditto for the Germans in WW2? The political/religious aspect of WW2 can be shifted to the Fez. It would be fine to be able to discuss everything, but some things in the Fez, but frustrating if it isn't allowed to challenge falsehoods on the main board.

Neo-Nazi and Anti-Semite are just trick terms to close down a debate. It is only possible to be a Neo-Nazi if you get a knock on the head, are alcoholic, or drug riddled. It would require an irrational thought process to be a Neo-Nazi. How many Nazis of yesteryear do you think would join these people? Zero! Anti-semitism is another "magical" term which says "no real causes here". Both of these terms are intended to stop people seeing genuine underlying conflicts of interest.

"The just man, firm to his purpose, is not to be shaken from his fixed resolve by the fury of a mob laying upon him their impious behests, nor by the frown of a threatening tyrant, nor by the dangers of the restless Adriatic, when the stormy winds do blow, nor by the loud peals of thunder as they rend the sky; even if the universe were to fall in pieces around, the ruins would strike him undismayed." – Horace

I didn't want to discuss this at all and only did so in response to a direct question.

It's what you've been discussing for the entire thread. Too late to jump now but an apology might help.

Since I believe we can all pretty much agree that the hands of many members of the SS were soiled with the blood of many innocent people and thereby considered evil by common standards, I believe actions of the Soviet state such as the Gulag system HAS to be considered in the same breath. Attrocities committed by BOTH of them can only be described as pure evil.

Please note I am not tarring ALL elements of Germany or Russia with the brush of pure evil, only those members that committed evil acts. Therefore this is not a political post, but merely a spreading of awareness of evil atrocities committed by evil men.

After reading Gulag (on the Soviet Concentration camps where one could be thrown for the lamest off hand comment or merely by being in the same family as someone who made an offhanded remark) I cannot help myself seeing the Eastern Front struggle as a fight between two rabid dogs, both dangerous to all…

I implore everyone on this site to read Gulag A History by Anne Applebaum.

It came out in 2004 and was the Pulitzer prize winner for non-fiction. It was researched from files that only became available after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Here is one of the reviews…

In 1973, when Alexander Solzhenitsyn launched the first volume of his monumental GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, an oral history of Soviet concentration camps, he expressed concern that a proper history of the camps might never be written, that those who do not wish to recall would destroy all the documents "down to the very last one."
As it happened, however, the documents were not destroyed; they remained locked away in files and archives. Nor did Solzhenitsyn foresee the coming of Mikhail Gorbachev and the advent of glasnost, his policy of openness, much less the unfettered availability of Gulag information and the flood of memoirs by camp survivors.
It was an American Sovietologist-turned-journalist, Anne Applebaum, now a Washington Post columnist, who embraced the unexpected opportunity to undertake this vast and daunting project from which whole universities of ordinary researchers might have slunk away in dismay.
--- Reviewed by Hal Cordry

The Gulag Archipelago is excellent. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's subsequent book was blocked by publishers in the west. You can only find bits and pieces in PDFs.

If Eisenhower had marched his men through the gulags and then told them that people in Russia had been steamed to death and executed by electrified floor, I guess they would have believed him.

The key difference, of course, is that the Gulag was meant for reeducation, segregation, manual labor, and eventual release; the Nazi camps had one purpose, that of extermination.

Actually that would be a much more merciful way to go….many of the people in the Gulag spent 10, 15, 25 years being robbed, raped, beaten, frostbite, worked to death in hellacious conditions and all the while being slowly starved to death…

For instance, if you meet your work quota you can receive 500 grams of bread (daily by regulations but in reality sometimes only every 3 or 4 days), if not meeting the work quota then 300 grams of bread. Maybe someone here can tell us how much that is.

Not to mention that the quota was not set in stone…it was always increased brutally upwards…

Death by a thousand cuts spread out over many years. Pure hell on earth stretched out for years and years…

Compared to what they had to endure I believe almost anyone would prefer a quick death that is over quick…

the Nazi camps had one purpose, that of extermination.

Hold on. Someone earlier in the thread said his history teacher was one of those who liberated a camp and that it wasn't a death camp.

Gulag was meant for reeducation, segregation, manual labor, and eventual release

How much do you know about this? Your view surprises me.

Actually that would be a much more merciful way to go

It is a puzzle why Soviet camps, existing from the "revolution" and the holodomor get so little publicity.

Hold on. Someone earlier in the thread said his history teacher was one of those who liberated a camp and that it wasn't a death camp.

Oh please, do you really think that the Nazis were going to let them out on parole?

Agreed, Chortle.

Hopefully some of the members on here will read Gulag or other Gulag related books or research the Gulag to get a glimpse into what evil looks like.

Actually what is more frightening is that I saw it with my own two eyes when I spent 3 years in Germany patrolling the border as a 19D Cavalry scout in E Trp, 2/2 ACR from Sept 85-Mar 88.

We cycled our troops through border rotations, so you spent roughly a third of the year on border patrols.

All along the border you have the barbed wire fence, the plowed minefields, second and third barbed wire fences, some with mines, dog runs with German Shephards, and of course the ever present guard border towers with the machine guns…

When I read the description of the camps it chilled me to the bone because all I had to do was look at my pics of my border patrols and I had it right in front of me, because this exactly how they set up their camps to keep people from escaping…

We had patrols where our guys came back literally crying because they had to watch helplessly as people were machine gunned down trying to get to our side.

Anyone that doesn't believe only has to look at the hundreds of pictures I took on many patrols as a patrol leader.

Pure EVIL…

Oh please, do you really think that the Nazis were going to let them out on parole?

Well, let me know what you have on that.

zaevor2000 – Is there a way to see your pictures?

Cheers

I believe some are on photobucket.

I believe if you google zaevor2000 it can take you to some of my photobucket albums, some of them have pics from Germany.

If others know how to post pics here I will be happy to post pictures of my patrols, the border fence, and the border towers. Not to mention all the pics of our equipment and vehicles so that you know for a fact how they were painted over in Germany in the mid80s.

It was humorous years ago at a convention when a wargamer was laughing at me for having my M1s and Bradleys in Forest Green instead of camo'd and kept ridiculing me and asking me how did I know…until I pulled out my photo albums from Germany and showed him pics from arteps, Graf, different railheads, Hohenfels, etc….

Sometimes you have to have the photographic proof…

I have copied the pictures to CD and given them to two close friends so that if anything ever happens to me they are not lost forever…

I have NO doubt that 20-30 yrs from now people will be denying that conditions under communism were so bad that they had multiple rows of barbed wire fence, plowed minefields, and border towers with machine guns to keep people from escaping to our side…

In fact, this is probably one of the main reasons that they took so many pictures of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany…so that future generations could not deny the evil that occurred within them…

Frank

Thanks, I will take a look.

AmongLions let me know if there are any particular pics you would like posted to photobucket and I can probably upload them there.

Or if someone can tell me (Bill or anyone else) how I can upload or link to them here I will be glad to do so.

Frank

Here's a link to Frank's photobucket (there are several different albums off this page):
link

He's a doggie, his nose is cold! Sorry, as a former Marine I couldn't help myself ;)

V/R,
Jack

What was the story here?

We are on Reaction Force which means we have to be out the camp gate in 8 minutes so we LIVE in our MOPP suits for the 2 wks we are on it.

Graham REALLY had to scratch his balls and couldn't get to them.

You've got on
1) MOPP suit
2) BDU's
3) Sweat suit
4) Long Johns
5) tshirt & underwear

You have to remember that it is winter and below zero outside which is why we have all that stuff on.

Everyone was doing their thing and with Graham reaching into his pants it looked like he was whacking away while everybody else ignored him.

It looked like a scene out of National Lampoon and I HAD to take a pic!

In fact I've got it framed and in my home office.

EVERYONE stares at it and asks "is he doing what I'm thinking he's doing?"

Frank

Well, after all the angst on this thread, I have to say on seeing that last picture, that I must have an aberrant worldview. I thought it looked like he was just literally 'scratching an itch…'

P.S. As on another recent thread, Just Jack, I find myself in your camp…

RebelYell2006 wrote

Hold on. Someone earlier in the thread said his history teacher was one of those who liberated a camp and that it wasn't a death camp.

Oh please, do you really think that the Nazis were going to let them out on parole?

That was me. He did. It was Belsen. It wasn't.
That doesn't mean it wasn't despicable or that I am a Holocaust denier. Read the rest of what I have said.

Being technically precise is what is needed to deflect the barrack room lawyer approach of Holocaust denial. It wasn't a death camp like Treblinka or Auschwitz, it was a concentration camp where people died in horror and abuse but its purpose was not mass extermination itself. People in Belsen who had either outlived their usefulness or just whose time had come in the Nazi timetable of death were moved east for extermination in true 'Death Camps'.

Please do not equate me with an apologist for what the Nazis did.

But if we want to effectively counter their poisonous idiocy we need to be precise and not give hostages to fortune like the nitpicking pieces Chortle has quoted.

You didn't understand what I wrote.

Chortle,
I was replying to RebelYell2006 to clear up some misunderstanding between us – I think he and I are on the same side. I have made it clear by an edit.

I understood precisely what you wrote.

You keep twisting the discussion to the Soviet Union in an attempt to deflect attention from the mass of genuine evidence that the Nazis systematically murdered Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Slavs and physically and mentally handicapped people in pursuit of an ridiculous racist eugenics ideology.

You ignore my point.

You may find a hundred mistakes in reports, – they are outweighed by the millions of pieces of evidence supporting the mass extermination.

Concentrating on the minor and irrelevant is an attempt to muddy the water of the clear facts that the German nation, led by the Nazi Party indulged in an orgy of pointless slaughter for the most idiotic of reasons. The SS was the primary weapon of this idiocy. I cannot respect them for anything that furthered that ideological slaughter. If any turned from their 'Blood Oath' and helped a Jew, Gypsy or other persecuted minority escape I can respect them for that.

Rebel Yell2006

I see you were replying to some weird misuse of what I said by Chortle – my apologies. I just wanted to clear it up.

But Chortle's use of my quote is a perfect example of selective and disingenuous misquoting of people that those who 'doubt' the Holocaust accounts use.

Belsen was not a death camp but it was part of the mechanism of the final solution. My original comment was sparked by Chortle's selective use of one small part of the huge volume of evidence about Belsen to cast doubt on the whole idea of the Holocaust.

Belsen itself would be grounds for the condemnation of the Nazi system and the SS. That it was but one small part of a much worse horror is more than adequate grounds for contempt for the SS rather than respect.

Chortle wrote

The Spanish Blue Division was composed of volunteers in thanks for Germany's help against the Bolshevik backed uprising in Spain

Uprising?

Fascist revisionism.

The uprising was by the Fascists who overthrew the elected Government.

The Republican side – the legitimate Government took help from everyone who would help. The fact that Stalinists (not Bolsheviks) were able to subvert the legitimate government as well is a sorry commentary on the inactivity of democracies across the world to help a legitimate government defend itself against a right wing military coup.

….. It is indeed possible that the Spanish Nationalists were inspired to act after witnessing the dire consequences resulting from the ascension to power of the socialist regime of Plutarco Calle in Mexico.

B

They could have been inspired by an invasion of boll weevils from Alpha Centauri- it was still a Fascist uprising against an elected government – not a Bolshevik backed uprising – unless Chortle thinks the Bolsheviks were backing Franco.

Don't worry Gwydion, we're on the same page.