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From: amigo@iwlc6.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Humanism, Christianity and Nazism
Message-ID: <149@iwlc6.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-May-84 13:36:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: iwlc6.149
Posted: Fri May  4 13:36:42 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 5-May-84 02:15:46 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 76

I got two responses to my article replying to Y. S. Martillo's piece
on democracies and antisemitism.  The first is from T. C. Wheeler:
(and, yes, I know that it is proper net etiquette to ask permission
before quoting mail.  I did it anyway.):
>>	Psst, John, step over here.  The Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto
>>	took place under the Germans.  Just thought I would give you
>>	a chance to correct your article before all the nuts start
>>	screaming.  

I am fully aware that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place under
the Germans.  The Red Army, however, was sufficiently close to
Warsaw that it could have aided the Jews considerably had the
Russian commanders chosen to do so.  This failure to act should be
laid squarely at Stalin's door, since he routinely had a hand in
all major (and many minor) decisions.  If Uncle Joe had wanted to
help the Jews, the Red Army would have done so.

Y. S. Martillo says:
>>	I do not feel technically competent to debate how useful
>>	Jew-baiting was in getting votes in Germany.

But his original article said (or at least implied) that
anti-Semitism was the most popular part of Hitler's program.  My
point was that while Jew-baiting certainly was a significant part
of the NSDAP's platform, the4 Nazis did not get elected purely (or
even mainly) because they denounced Jews.

>>	I would prefer the debate would concentrate on the
>>	inappropriate response of the Western democracies to the
>>	plight of European Jews.
>>
>>	I do know numerically Stalin saved more Jews than England,
>>	the USA and Canada combined.
>>
>>	At the turn of the century, the general feeling of Jews was
>>	that if there were to be a major persecution of Jews, it
>>	would be in France (Dreyfus) which had a long democratic
>>	tradition and not in Wilhelmite Germany which had no
>>	democratic tradition.  An Island Within by Ludwig Lewisohn shows 
>>	this belief.  I am not an expert but Hitler probably could
>>	not have risen to such power had not democratic Germany
>>	supplanted monarchial Germany.

For those of you who may have been following Martillo's and my
relations on the net (incidently, his office is less than a
kilometre from mine, but we have never met), you are going to be in
for a mild surprise:  I am in agreement with what he says here.
I just have several comments:  Stalin never overtly persecuted Jews
per se; however, many of his victims were Jews, and he bore Jews no
love.  And yes, the Dreyfus affair did much to exacerbate
anti-Semitism in France, while the German Empire had no anti-Jewish
policies.  And Hitler almost certainly would not have risen to
power under the Kaisers, but do not forget that the German economy
and social fabric were in far better shape under the Kaisers than
under the Weimar Republic.

>>	I believe that the doctors' trials occurred shortly before
>>	Stalin died and that Mr. Hobson is referring to the Great
>>	Purge trials, but I am not a Russian history expert.

You are right.  The Doctors' Trials did occur shortly before
Stalin's death (in 1953).  Jews also were well represented in the
Purge trials of the 1930s.  I'm not a Russian history expert
either.

The failure of the Western Democracies to help the Jews was
shameful, and most inappropriate for countries claiming that the
freedom and wellbeing of the individual are paramount.  I do not
want to even try to defend them.  My point was that anti-Semitism
is not the exclusive property of democratically elected states (I
know, you never claimed it was) and that totalitarian countries
were just as bad in that regard.
				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs--Naperville, IL
				ihnp4!iwlc6!amigo