Literally millions of Nazi Germans were killed, and the nature of the way war was fought meant that the most hard core Nazis were most likely to die. For example, the submarine service was populated with the most hard core Nazis because you have to trust submariners the most – you can't easily supervise what they're actually doing. And German submariners had something like a 75% fatality rate. Similarly, the teenage psychopaths who volunteered to sign up for youth battalions towards the end of the war got slaughtered. And in general, wars usually disproportionately kill the people most committed to the cause, which in this case was Nazi Germany; the people who aren't committed find ways to avoid dying, like surrendering, shirking responsibilities, etc. Finally, hundreds of thousands to possibly millions of Germans were killed in post-WW2 expulsions. Again, doing a good job of killing off hard core Nazis.
Versailles is a ridiculous argument. Germany was able to wage WW2 precisely because their economy was _not_ crushed by WWQ reparations. Their WW1 reparations were a mere 2% of German GDP, hardly anything. If WW1 reparations were actually effective, they would have never been able to afford to build a military capable of fighting WW2.
I should work out how much post-WW2 reparations cost in terms of their GDP... It's probably more... And that time around, it achieved a lasting peace.
Hyperinflation was a choice. As I said, reparations were a tiny % of GDP. Germany could have easily afforded to pay them without any hyperinflation. They chose not to. They wanted to rebuild their military – beyond treaty limits – and used inflation as one way to fund that. Indeed, hyperinflation in Germany started _during_ WW1, precisely because of military spending.
Had we had the will and military capability to impose stringent reparations on Germany after WW1, WW2 would have never happened. We didn't. We imposed token reparations and were unable to impose treaty limits on military forces.
German GDP in 1945 was about $775 billion, in 2024 dollars. WW2 reparations paid by seizures of German intellectual property _alone_ were about $174 billion. Yet that didn't lead to yet another war.
North Korea is a ridiculous example to use. They nearly collapsed in the 90's due to famine. We saved them with food aid, and look what it got us. We should have let North Korea starve, which would have likely taken down the government with it. We did the same thing with Russia in the 90's too. And again, it backfired. And yet again, we're propping up Gaza and Yemen with billions of dollars of aid, and they repay us with endless violence.
There's thousands of Israeli Jews who would be alive today if we hadn't spent years propping up Gaza with endless aid. About 2000 alone since Oct 7th (civilean + military).
It's not genocide to punish and kill people who are personally guilty of evil no matter how large their numbers are. The literally millions of Germans killed in WW2 simply wasn't genocide. Killing six million Jews was genocide; killing millions of Germans was not. Taking the wealth of millions of Jews was genocide; forcing Germany to pay trillions of dollars of reparations was not.
So? They're just criminalizing factual statements. EU countries also like to prohibit the collection of statistics on crimes committed by race, and prohibit honest discussion of the facts around that. Eg I probably could be prosecuted in the right circumstances for posting this graph and pointing out that's it's no surprise that criminality is so high amongst the US black population, as their average IQs are a fair bit less than whites and Asians:
https://image.nostr.build/b92c62185f022e6abaeea8374a2bebf475711abf1a4be63b44d0f445de1cd4cd.jpg
The EU has absurd laws that are basically fraud on the public, esp by prohibiting honest discussion around immigration.
As for the Russian population, with a double digit percentage of Russia's entire GDP going to genocidal war, going to work and paying your taxes in Russia is evil. Obviously, Russia hasn't collapsed due to nation wide strikes or tax non-payment. Quite the opposite: there's been hardly any protests and there's clearly wide public support for the invasion.
Another example of this is the fact that hundreds of thousands of Russians – quite possibly millions – have moved to occupied Ukraine. They are taking advantage of cheap/free housing made available by the fact that the Ukrainians who used to live there have been forced out and/or killed. The Russians moving in know this: it's particularly grim in places like Mariupol where the real estate agents openly advertise when they know former inhabitants are dead. Right there you have hundreds of thousands to millions of Russians who are clearly serious criminals. These scumbags need to be forced out, ideally jailed or killed. The efficient, practical, thing to do is probably to impose the death penalty for illegally entering Ukraine and hope that they leave on their own accord as territory is taken back.
Based on those facts you absolutely can say that Russians as a whole are evil. The average Russian is an evil person. That's just a factual statement.
Of course, something like a million Russians have left Russia. I know some of those people myself. But that just furthers my point. The good people have left and are no longer Russians in the sense I'm using. What remains is on average scrumbags and people too poor to leave.
Of course you can kill Russian criminals who have illegally entered Ukraine. You don't need to ask nicely for them to stop or give them a chance to leave. This is a war, with a large scale invasion. There is absolutely nothing wrong with just killing them. And doing so will in the long run save Ukrainian lives, as the people evil enough to take part in this invasion will probably come back in a future invasion. Better to kill them now if possible.
It is absurd how you keep trying to impose conditions on Ukraine taking their country back from a genocidal invasion, protecting deeply evil people in the process.
If we were talking about a few hundred people it'd be a different discussion. But this is a massive invasion that will be very difficult to reverse. It's totally ok in the extraordinary circumstances of war to ignore usual legal principals of due process to get the job done. Giving ~1 million Russians full trials would bankrupt any county.
And again, this gets back to my original point: right now tens of millions of Russians are meaningfully contributing to their genocidal war against Ukraine. These people are criminals. In the circumstances of war, with the numbers involved, it is impossible to adhere to normal standards of legal processes and bring each to justice. But it is feasible to stop the war by killing them.
Every working Russian is a valid military target, and as is always true in war, collateral damage is acceptable. It would, for example, be perfectly justified and ethical to use nuclear weapons to wipe out Russian cities to put an end to this war and future Russian aggression. It doesn't matter how many die in the process: the working Russian population are all valid military targets. If they want to live, the onus is on them to either leave Russia, or stop the war.
Right now Ukraine is being coerced into not taking effective measures to end the war that it could due to absurd humanitarian concerns. Ukrainians are being forced to give up their lives for the sake of Russian criminals. It is absurd that the lights are on in Moscow right now – Ukraine could have taken out the Russian electricity grid. But they haven't been allowed to. Sure, many Russians would die in the process. But that's absolutely fine.
Dude, the people I've talked with who tend to be most ok with killing Russian "civilians" to end this war are Ukrainians. For example, I've personally talked to quite a few Ukrainians, often in Ukraine, who thought that Ukrainian forces should use lethal force to get the ~1 million Russian "civilians" who have moved to occupied Ukraine to leave. Those same people tend to be quite happy for Ukraine to attack "civilian" targets in Russia, including killing off Russian workers. And Ukraine has done that to a limited extent, targeting industrial facilities in Russia.
Remember the first Ukrainian attack on the Kursk bridge? The truck bomb? The driver who illegally entered Ukraine died in that attack – he didn't know the bomb was on his truck. And for the most part, Ukrainians are absolutely fine with that. He participated in an invasion and died in the process. A 100% justified death.
Being murdered by Russians in large numbers hasn't given Ukrainians sympathy for Russians. It's made clear that if Russians aren't killed off, Ukrainians will be.
The other factor is that lots of Ukrainians did in fact have Russian friends and family... and almost every time I've talked to Ukrainians about those friends and family the outcome was either 1) said friends/family had left Russia, permanently, because obviously they can't live there, or 1) those friends/family turned out to be scumbags who didn't give a damn about Ukrainians and didn't care that their own friends and family were suffering and dying.
Ukrainians know from first hand experience that Russian culture is absolute garbage, and the sane people in Russia have mostly left.
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