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.
> Your whole premise here is that Ukrainians are inherently morally superior to Russians
Huh? I've repeatedly made very specific, clear, arguments as to why things Russians (and people working for Russia) have done are evil. I do that precisely because I'm making the argument that it is good for those people to be killed. Those arguments have nothing to do with the identity of who does the killing. It is just as ethical for me to assassinate a Russian general as it is for anyone else to do so. The argument isn't that Ukrainians are morally superior and get to do evil things. The argument is that the things they're doing aren't evil because of who they're intending to kill.
Just the other day multiple drones were flown into apartment buildings in Kazan, Russia, a city of 1 million people, ~600km east of Moscow. That city is well known for its large airplane and helicopter manufacturing plants. Obvious, high-value, militarily relevant targets.
The attacks are almost certainly intentional. This residential apartment got hit twice in almost exactly the same spot:
https://video.nostr.build/6976628c2deaa1b60069c94fbd51b854195806236560659ea3ed99dbe3fcc62b.mp4
It doesn't matter who flew those drones into those residential buildings; it's not ethical to do that because "Ukrainians are perfect" or some other nonsense like that. It's ethical to blow up apartments in Russia because the people being killed are evil and need to die. In this case, it's likely that Ukraine had specific intelligence that a high value target (eg a plant manager) lived in that specific apartment. But even there, part of what makes this attack ethical is the majority of the bystanders are Russian adults in an industrial city, who themselves are valid military targets.
You don't need to be Ukrainian to ethically do this attack. It's likely that some of these drone attacks are actually being done by non-ukrainians, launched from other countries bordering Russia, as well as Russia itself; the distances some of these attacks have been done at aren't easily accomplished by launching from Ukraine. Whomever is launching these drones is doing the right thing. Not because of their ethnicity. But because of who is being killed.
Dude, law is not ethics. I would expect a bitcoiner to know that. You're quoting law from 1889 because you can't make an ethical argument.
I'm making an ethical argument: I'm ethically ok with considering working Russians to be military targets because wars at these scales are economic battles. War is no longer just men fighting at close range in small battles like it was in 1889. Wars are primarily fought by machines, at extremely long ranges, attacking the infrastructure and economies that make those machines possible. The most effective weapon Russia has right now isn't the man in the trench. It's the drones that have turned the lights off in most of Ukraine.
If somehow Ukraine could magically kill every single Russian soldier on Ukrainian soil they _still_ wouldn't have won the war. Russia would still be sending long range drones and missiles into Ukraine, destroying infrastructure to crush their economy and force Ukraine to surrender. I've personally experienced those drone and missile attacks myself.
You would rather see Ukraine defeated and the Ukrainian population forced out of them homes and/or subjugated by Russia than have your "morality" offended by killing the Russians who are directly and meaningfully contributing to the destruction of Ukraine. There's a reason why Ukraine is happy to send missiles into Russian apartments, knowing full well that Russian "civilians" will die: Ukraine wants to win. It's the same reason why, as I noted elsewhere, Ukrainian drones kill hundreds of fleeing and wounded Russians every day, aguably in violation of the same international law you're quoting.
It's the same reason why we firebombed Dresden, knowing full well that tens of thousands of Germans would be burned alive in their homes: crushing the German economy was necessary to defeat the Nazis. Even back then, WW2 was an economic war.
You think you are being clever with your high and mighty arguments. But I don't think you don't actually strongly care about Ukraine – and the free world – winning. You care more about your moral superiority.
It's notable how I can't think of any recent time when you've actually said anything publicly about this war that directly supports Ukraine and clearly puts the blame on Russia. You've said some "clever" snarky things about Russian foolishness. But you don't actually take a concrete position of support.
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