Is one holocaust worse than another?

[UdoKier]

This is tangentially related to another topic, but I wonder, do you think that the Nazi holocaust was WORSE than the other holocausts of this century, or was it just BIGGER?

To me, they are all the same, horrible slaughter, but to say one is "worse" than another because of numbers seems to diminish the "smaller" ones to just being "incidents".

Nazis = 14 mil murdered

Stalin = upwards of 20 million murdered

Japan = killed hundreds of thousands in their Asian occupations

US in SE Asia = at least 2 million senselessly slaughtered for no reason at all

Pol Pot = murdered at least 1 million

Indonesia = systematically killed about 200K E. Timorese for 20 years as the US looked the other way

Bush = murdered 100K+ Iraqis for his corporate cronies, and our soldiers continue to die because of him every day

[Zynx]

1. With the Nazis, I count all European deaths during WWII, brining it to

50+ million killed by them.

[UdoKier]

2. Fair enough.

Since I count all US and Iraqi dead as Bush's murder victims.

[maveric]

3. Ask the Armenians.

A couple of million Armenians slaughtered by Turks and Cossacks from 1913-20.

[russian33]

9. ditto

although US doesn't think it was holocust, just you know bad luck...(psst, we need Turkey's help in things)

[Burma Jones]

4. Mao - 35 million plus

According to R.J. Rummel's Death by Government. I've also heard other sources put the number of civilians killed by Mao's regieme at between 30 and 40 million as well.......

[jdonaldball]

6. Read "Hungry Ghosts" by Jasper Becker, about Mao's famine

[derby378]

5. With the Nazis, killing was very systematic

The Khmer Rouge were the same way to a certain extent, but they never built large-scale compounds specifically designed to kill people. The closest they got was the Tuol Sleng interrogation center, and that was more than bad enough.

[gollygee]

7. There is no reason to compare tragedies in that way

They are all terrible.

That's like asking a woman who lost her children and her husband which loss was greater.

[carlvs]

8. If you really want to be depressed...

check out this link to see just how bad the last century was. Interestingly, when the site's author compared deaths by communists to ones by non-communists, there's not a lot of difference (92+ million vs. 96+ million.) And even though about 1/2 of the deaths by non-communists are due to the 1933 - 1945 activities of Nazi Germany, that still leaves well over 40 million non-communists deaths caused by other countries... :cry:

[theresistance]

10. My count for people killed by US policies

Either direct (Vietnam) or indirect (Afghanistan, Indonesia etc) since WW2 has to be at least 10 million, plus many more maimed and left as refugees.

[Jack_DeLeon]

11. Its all killing...

but I would consider the difference between what the US does and what the Nazis did the same as the difference between 1st degree premeditated murder and manslaughter.

What the Nazis did they did specifically for the purpose of killing the jews.

What we do isnt specifically to murder people, but we call it "collateral damage," we arent trying to murder people but it inevitably happens as our government tries to achieve its goals.

[UdoKier]

12. The government is well aware that it will happen.

Pair that with the fact the the war was obviously unnecessary from the beginning and you have mass murder.

If Saddam had actually been attacking or threatening the US in some way, I wouldn't characterize it that way.

[sir_captain]

13. Perhaps not worse, but the Nazi holocaust is very much unique

Never before (or after) has the country which was the leading cultural, scientific (and one could argue economic, depending on when exactly you decide to look) systematically and scientifically decided on and executed a plan to commit genocide.

As I said, I'm not sure this makes the holocaust worse than what Stalin or Pol Pot did, but it does make it different.

[Dora]

14. I voted for the 3rd choice

but I'm not sure any of them quite do it for me.

I'm depressed now.

I'm glad it's Friday and I'm glad I'm lucky enough to have a three-day weekend.

[St. Jarvitude]

15. Hitler was completely fucked in the head

Hitler and his cronies genuinely believed that he was doing the whole world a favor by killing off an "inferior race". That's where the difference is - the other holocausts (little "h") were either totally senseless or were done to bump off "inconvienences" in the dictator's life.

That difference is what puts the Holocaust (big "H") below the others - Hitler was not only insane enough to want to systematically kill off a population, but because he believed that the whole world owed him something for it. I don't mean to diminish the other holocausts, though, because totally senseless slaughter is its own breed of insanity... but Hitler was perhaps the most evil human being to ever exist.

[theboss]

16. Murder is murder; slaugher is slaughter

However, I think what makes the Nazi holocaust of the Jews so horrifying is who did it, how specific it was, the twisted logic behind it, and the system put in place. This was a Western nation - not so different from our own - that targeted people not for politics, land, or riches but for a difference based on one man's twisted worldview.

And then they threw so much of their infrastructure into the act. I mean, the Germans sacrificed the efficiency of their military at desperate times to keep the machinery of the camps going.

[ChairOne]

17. Not to beat a dead horse, but why isn't the US on there twice? /eom