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Oh, but the german army was full of such honorable, patriotic men. They had made an oath, and they had a duty to their state and people. And by God they carried it out.
Complete misunderstanding of my point: It doesn’t matter if I’m a decent person as long as I serve an evil cause.
You might need to hurry up, because there's not a lot of them left, but talk to anyone who lived on territories that over the course of the years were occupied by Germans as well as Russians, and ask them their relative opinion of the Wehrmacht vs. the Red Army.
You're the one misunderstanding him. The point is that people like you are known to turn non-evil causes into evil ones.
Well who doesn’t love the germans. Those slavs could have taken solace in the fact that they would have starved to death in a very orderly manner.
Which causes, slavery, nazism? Anyway, we are not even disagreeing on the sides here.
Obedience, a sense of duty, loyalty, professionalism, those things are not good in a vaccuum. When they are present in people who serve evil, they become evil. They make things worse. It is morally blind to evaluate Lee’s qualities as if he had served the good. Had he been a cowardly, dumb, lazy drunkard, thousands of lives would have been saved. His honor has been a net negative for humanity. He failed morally as very few people fail. A mean-spirited, sadistic soldier in his army only has a small fraction of the blood on Lee's hands, he's an angel compared to Lee.
It’s like Scott’s ‘asymmetric weapons’ concept. Obedience, or, say, loyalty to your home community, helps both Hitler and Roosevelt, it’s a symmetric weapon. Otoh, disobedience, ie, asking the question ‘am I really doing the right thing here, should I give my loyalty to this guy?” is asymmetric, it is more likely to help the good guy and harm the bad guy.
Who's opinion do you think I'm asking you to ask for, if not Slavs'?
Nazism seems to fit nicely into the "would not have happened were it not for people deeply convinced they're on the Right Side Of History" template.
A quick glance at the modern progressive movement says otherwise.
I'm not so sure. I mean, obviously it's a clear sign that a movement doesn't need to praise individual loyalty to go bad, but it's not at all obvious to me that SJ actually does very much of "investigating whether the side you are on is the right side"; one does not censor unless one has already decided which side is right.
They don't really do a lot "obeying" either. The people who started looting during BLM didn't do so because they got marching orders, they just saw there will be no consequences to their actions, and decided to run wild. All of that was framed as "disobeying", #resisting, even.
Another way to phrase my objection is that I don't think "disobeying" actually leads to "investigating whether the side you are on is the right side".
No objections to that.
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Slavs. I think slavs who prefered germans to russians were a bit blindsided by the neatly polished hugo boss boots and would have died in much greater numbers under Generalplan ost than under any 5 year plan.
Show me people who fought for any side, anywhere, who thought they were wrong. I implied my side is morally good, that must mean I’m a nazi. Please. You said ‘people like me’ turn good causes into evil causes, then use nazism as an example, but of course, there was nothing good about nazism from the start. It was always on its predetermined path towards genocide and war. This was apparent. Alas, germans by and large chose loyalty to their country over morality and obedience over conscience. Like lee, like you and hlynka argue, is only right and proper.
FWIW, I think you make a good point. I'm still sympathetic to virtue ethics, but it seems obvious to me that neither those nor consequentialism end up doing much good if they are used in their undiluted extremes. Good men working for evil cause is bad because, well, in hindsight the cause was bad, and so is bad men working for good cause because, in hindsight, they never let the cause remain good for long. Catalina or Alcibiades may have been troublemakers for bad reasons, but we can still appreciate their bravery and other virtues without needing to "tea-bag" them. We can look at Sparta and see a society we would not wish to live in, but still give them the benefit of the doubt and admit that, at least for some time, what they were doing may have been the best feasible approach to their situation.
IMO we should be able to apply our hindsight and come up with better judgement than "Lee did good" or "Lee did bad". Be able to appreciate his chivalric and gentlemanly virtues, manage to imagine ourselves in his shoes and try to feel his attachment to the South, and yet say that his cause was unjust, that the world is better off for him having lost, that we prefer this outcome, that slave liberation and the preservation of the union were more important than securing the South's independence and way of life, that we still understand that for a Southerner at the time these priorities may have been inverted, that we wish he had been able to see things as we do now even though that may have been asking too much.
Now I for one am not American, and the whole affair is just idle talk on my part. So let's look closer to home.
The Nazis were a bunch of gangsters. It's hard to imagine a world in which they persisted longer than they did, but I have a hard time thinking that it would actually have been a better one for a German to live in than one in which they had never appeared, or the one in which they ended up beaten and Germany occupied by, mostly, the USA. I share Kaiser Wilhelm's criticism of some of them - the true believers - who correctly noted that their ideology did nothing to actually preserve the Germany that existed, either then or before, and merely aimed to create some abomination wearing the name of Germany in its place. This may not apply to all Nazis, and I suppose that many were more reasonable, but from what's visible through the fog of history I think Willy's judgement applies, at the very least, to Adolf Hitler himself and many of his most influential ideologues. And, as mentioned before, the Nazis were a bunch of gangsters - not only ideologues and patriots who stumbled upon a dark path, but also honest-to-god opportunists who loved the power and impunity their position in the party gave them. They lied and cheated, killed and destroyed, blackmailed and stole, often not even for the cause but merely to line their own pockets and lord it over their compatriots.
I think it's fair to say that the Nazi party, the National Socialist German Worker's Party or NSDAP, along with its non-member supporters and collaborators, was a thoroughly bad influence on Germany and the wider world, even if we just look and its very immediate doings and effects. What good they did was massively outweighed by the bad. In consequentialist terms - obviously. In terms of virtue ethics, also - the party enabled all kinds of undesirable excesses, and what militarist virtues it put on display were mostly just inherited from the Kaiserreich and the Prussians.
And still I don't want them "Tea-Bagged". I don't want their graves defaced no matter what they did. I don't need an army of media people ceaselessly ridiculing them. I think it's distasteful and pointless - if we actually are better than them, then we should be able to cast judgement that actually discerns between what they did well or poorly, between facets of their cause that were just and those that were unjust, be honest about what metrics we apply, and acknowledge that not everyone associated with them is automatically a complete monster from cradle to grave.
Now, so far we only spoke of the Nazi Party, but what about German soldiers? Was Lee a politician and ideologue, or a military man? From what little I know, the latter - please correct me if I'm mistaken - so whom can we compare him to? As I understand from this thread, the primary offense he is charged with by The Right Side Of History is that he fought for his home country when it should have been obvious that its cause was unjust. Obviously we have countless similar Germans in the history of WW2. German officers in the Prussian tradition had varied views of the Nazis, but many detested them either from the onset or once they realized what they were up to. And yet they fought for Germany, because not doing so seemed even worse to them. In retrospect, did that cause more harm or more good? Had they not lent their expertise to the Wehrmacht, would the Nazis have avoided War? Or would they have started it anyways only for the Soviet Union to end up occupying all of Germany? Would their refusal to serve have broken the Nazi's war-making potential entirely and set a precedent for others to follow in resisting their ideological projects? Or would they only have bent themselves out of shape, broken their oaths, rejected their traditions and risked their and their families' and friends' lives for no change to the outcome? I for one don't know. And I wasn't in their shoes. I feel glad that there were men of virtue who fought for Germany, even as Germany was going down the wrong path. I think it would have been even sadder had no-one stood by our country, regardless of the consequences.
I'm not a Prussia fanboy either. Nomen est Omen, my Germany is that of the South, far from the centers of power. But when it comes to questions of "just following orders", our primary contribution is Erwin Rommel. A famous officer who helped conquer France, he was a living hero for his exploits in North Africa (though his status was helped by official propaganda), and though supposedly vaguely sympathetic to the party and, at least for most of his time, on good terms with Hitler, he ended up either tacitly endorsing or subtly supporting plans to assassinate Hitler and launch a coup against the German government. The assassination failed and everyone involved was swiftly put to death. Rommel, thanks to his status, was given the option to commit suicide in exchange for lenience for his family and associates (and to not damage the morale of the people and army), and he did so.
Using the same standards that end up condemning Lee to Tea-Bagging and Statue Removal, I guess we need to have Rommel suffer the same fate, yes? He was on the wrong side, after all. Or does his tenuous association with the assassination plot absolve him?
Well, Germany kept his name around. He had a monument, and a Museum, and even three barracks named after him. It seemed that we managed to differentiate between rabid ideologues, opportunist gangsters, obedient soldiers and the martyrs of the resistance. It seemed we condemned the first two, judged the third on their individual merits, and lionized the fourth. Obviously there are countless monuments to Sophie Scholl, Dietrich Bonhöffer and all the others who died in opposition to the Nazis, and you can find memorials to common soldiers who fell in the war in practically every German village.
Still, people do come after the memory of Rommel. His Museum was closed, and the Barracks in Dornstadt almost had to change its name. And you can be sure that many on the left are fuming every time they see his name and calling for a damnatio memoriae. But I don't want them to get anywhere with that, because in the little church in my home village there is a little stone plate on which are the names of all the locals who fell in the World Wars. One of those names belongs to my great-grandfather, who went as a private to fight both in the West and East until he finally fell in Stalingrad. What did he think of Nazism? What was his opinion on the Jewish question? What could he have done to stop the NSDAP? He was a dirt farmer in the middle of nowhere making barely more than subsistence and his last letters to home were reminders to take good care of the pigs.
I'd write more but my daughter just woke up and I'm not sure I really had a point to make anyways.
I don’t want to tea-bag anyone , as far as I’m concerned, the statues can stay, they’re a part of history, no need to re-write it. I do think history should be judged however, and not only on its own moral terms. I do condemn sparta, even though I recognize its martial excellence.
My grandma’s brother fell at 17 in the last months of the war. He didn’t want to go apparently. We could never mention him or the city where he died in front of her or she would start crying. I really can’t forgive the leaders, and even just regular adults who went along with it, for what they did to the country (to say nothing of all the non-german victims) . They all had their reasons of course, but they just were not good enough. Sure, most of the blame falls on the leaders, and the enthusiastic nazis, but in my view there is still more than enough blood left to mark every quiet follower as a murderer.
And it is true that rommel was tacitly supporting the stauffenberg attempt, but it was too tacit. As you say, even in his death he assisted the regime, keeping morale up. I’ll grant that he’s not morally in the same league as guys like schörner who were executing soldiers for refusing orders up to the very end (before abandoning his men to surrender to the americans).
It's this, I suppose, that really disagree with. I think the resistance to the nazis was admirable. But I also think that the "murderers" as you call them are by and far perfectly understandable. In between positive motivations like patriotism and martial ethos and just being law-abiding citizens and negative ones like peer pressure and the very real risk of getting executed as well as arrested and one's family badly harassed by the local nazi party barons, I'm fairly sure most of them had many good reasons for quietly following orders.
Then again, I guess it's ethically consistent to say that the man who surrenders his wallet when threatened with death by mugging is complicit in all further muggings, is an enabler and supporter of violent criminals, and a shameful failure of a human being next to the man who nobly attempts to overwhelm his would-be mugger.
A) It wasn’t always a gun to the head situation. The government dropped T4 in the face of popular opposition. Granted, if you told them head-on that you did not want to fight their stupid war, it would not take long before you were handed a death sentence.
B) That particular robber wasn’t asking for a few reichsmarks, but for your soul, and the lives of your children and brothers. I think it does change the calculus of what amount of courage can be expected of someone.
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Well the way I heard it, it was less being struck by the the polished hugo boots, and more being more or less able to go about your life as much as the war permitted under the Germans vs. hearing your neighbor getting raped by Red Army soldiers, and hoping you're not next.
Some of our fellow posters who read soldiers' journals for a hobby will have to confirm or deny, but I'm sure lots of conscripts found themselves in that position.
It's less that, and more that if you ended up in the position of any power, it would be unlikely you would restrain yourself against your enemies, and would end up committing nazi-esque atrocities.
That's also not quite what I was going for. It's more that Nazism would never had happened without your mentality. There's no reason to think that the more generic cause of Make Germany Great Again had to go to such an extreme.
The difference between you and me is that I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge the failure modes of my approach. That said, I don't buy that Germany would have descended into genocidal lunacy if the honorable and loyal Erwin Rommel was fuhrer instead of the morally certain Adolf Hitler.
Well problem here is that Red Army would loot and rape but USSR had no plans to murder everyone in general and intended to let people be for example educated engineers.
While Wehrmacht was far less likely to commit unorderly destruction, but plans were calling for systematic genocide and mass murder. See Hunger Plan for example.
If I would need to select between my town being overrun by Wehrmacht or Red Army I would take Germans.
If I would need to select living under Third Reich or USSR - USSR was preferable. (Though they were also evil murderous thugs, just less genocidal ones).
Yeah, I agree. But the whole convo started with "It doesn’t matter if I’m a decent person as long as I serve an evil cause". My point is that it does matter, it doesn't literally amount to nothing, even if the evilness of the cause outweighs your personal goodness.
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Lee and rommel helped the atrocities/slaughter along just as much as if they had personnally, sadistically perpetrated them. What they did was perhaps even worse, as they gave moral horror a sheen of panache and respectability.
You accuse me of imaginary lack of restraint, but what good was their restraint? A few british prisoners thought rommel was a swell chivalrous guy, big deal. Meanwhile the military machine he was the mascotte of was starving soviet POWs in the millions. And lee’s pleasant conversations with his old west point buddies can hardly compensate for thousands of little guys dying in a ditch for nothing.
In effect, they would stab you just like a rabid nazi or Bedford Forrest would have, but they would do so politely and efficiently. Sorry, but you don’t get moral points for being affably evil.
Let’s back up a bit. Forget the woke, the current culture war. I’m not interested in Lee’s statue, but in his moral stature. Let’s say you’re lee, or rommel, or a random officer in the german or newly formed confederate army. You get your marching orders. Your home state, your friends and family, are going along with the program, but you have major reservations about ‘the cause’. What is the morally correct course of action?
No they didn't. No one thinks slavery or the holocaust is more respectable because of Lee / Rommel.
It's imaginary because it is unlikely you will ever be in a position where men will follow your orders to commit atrocities. But you speak with the moral certainty of a crusader, it stands to reason you'd act accordingly given the opportunity.
I once again refer you to the Wehrmacht vs. Red Army example. If the Wehrmacht had less restraint, you'd likely be using that as proof of how evil their cause was.
You're the one claiming that sort of question is answerable, not me. The entire point of my framework is that the big questions are hard to answer, which is why doing the small, answerable, things right is so important, and why people like Lee deserve credit for it.
Lol, no. This is too good of an example to let go.
As an illustration of the above point, I believe the conduct of our medical establishment regarding the transgender issue is the biggest medical scandals since lobotomies. But it is not the fact that they're on the other side of this giant controversy that bothers me about them, it is precisely the little things: the refusal to engage with opposing views, the censorship, the getting people fired from their jobs. I don't think I'm wrong on the issue, but it's not impossible, but if I conduct myself with some semblance of decency I can sleep easy knowing I did what I did with good intentions. This would ring rather hollow if I lowered myself to their level.
With your approach all of that is irrelevant. If I'm wrong, I'm just an evil transphobic chud, and everything done to me is justified. If I'm right, I guess I should be firebombing some gender clinics and WPATH conferences right now, and no one should be able to say shit.
Strong disagree. Isn’t that what the lost cause is all about? That they were in effect just lee-esque, decent, gentlemenlike men doing their duty. By extension, an institution defended by such men couldn’t be all that bad, could it?
I endorse none of these things, even against nazis, so again complete irrelevancy.
cop-out. This is a far more fundamental disagreement than the rest of the comment. Imo after that admission, you’ve forfeited the right to condemn anything the woke, or anyone else, do. Who knows, maybe hitler was right, it’s unanswerable. All you know is that you approve of Rommel’s good manners.
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Personal opinion, no particular historical knowledge: the German army could have been so much worse. Consider the ordinary execution of genocides in history. The Holocaust was unique in organization and sheer scale of suffering, but at least the suffering it caused was, mostly, incidental and not the goal. If I'm de facto going to be the victim of a genocidal campaign, to be quite honest, there are worse options than the Nazis. There are even worse options in German history than the Nazis! Make my captor and executioner an honorable patriotic career soldier any day.
I don’t get what you’re saying here. They weren’t so bad, compared to some hypothetical regime that would commit a genocide of equal proportion, but would purposefully, systematically torture people before killing them… is that your point?
I don’t think a bullet to the neck under stalin or getting stabbed under pol pot was worse. They didn't go out of their way to make undesirable units suffer either.
Have you ever read Eichmann in Jerusalem or Scott’s review of it? Both speak to this point.
The Nazis look like they were just saying "You need to conduct your mass murder in an organized way - none of this messy, disorganized, ad hoc murder. We Germans herd our victims into train cars and ultimately into death camps that churn dead bodies out like Volkswagens off the factory floor."
I would say Baron von Killinger was not horrified by the brutality - German concentration camps were just as bad - but by the disorganization and lack of efficiency that he may have seen. After all, the Romanians were using a lot of train fuel and freight car capacity to murder those five thousand people...
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Yep. I mean, say the Catholic church thought I was a heretic or something. Or some bush war where half the point of the army is that it's where you stuff your psychopaths so they do something useful. And I think that's mostly attributable to the professionalism of the German army. Sure, they served an evil regime - granted! But I think you're just underestimating how much farther an army can fall, and how much more personal suffering it can cause if it has lower standards.
My point is - there is still a point to praising honor and professionalism in the army of Sauron. I would absolutely honor the righteous Orc who ran a tight ship and whose men only ate alive a small fraction of his POWs. - In war, you may die either way, but you can still have a preference whether to die with your limbs attached and your rectum intact. Everybody wants to act like their enemies are the absolute worst, the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth - and they are almost universally wrong, and simply have never seen real scum in their lives. The lowest of humanity is very, very low.
This seems like a debate between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil. Your "righteous" (and possibly genocidal) Orc who's running a tight ship and whose men are only eating one PoW in twenty alive is probably better at running his ship than the Orc on the next ship over who are eating every single PoW alive and leaving PoW bones laying around on the ship deck. That "righteous" orc is making a greater contribution to the army of Sauron.
Yeah - police officers in really bad neighborhoods, ER doctors in the same areas, maybe people in psych units, people in maximum security prisons, and combat soldiers might see stuff like this. I'll grant that the Nazis were orderly in their mass murdering. I've heard it said essentially that outside of the huge piles of bodies coming out of the murder factories they built, the Nazis behaved more or less decently...although that is one hell of a qualifying statement. It's like saying "Sure. Hans is a decent guy if you're not looking at the 50 bodies he's got buried out back. Ivan, however...Ivan's a bit more disorganized with his shit. And let's not even talk about Akira, he's hopped up on meth and eating the bodies."
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