- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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This is why you learn to do the Roman salute instead, so people don’t look at you wrong
The US praised the Nazis for killing the communists. They supported their “cause” riiiiight up until they started attacking western Europe AKA the countries that actually matter.
The US also hired tons of Nazi “scientists,” including granting them immunity for their roles in the Holocaust. They also granted the head of Unit 731 immunity (specifically from the USSR who rightly wanted him executed) in exchange for the human experimentation data. NATO coincidentally also has a ton of Nazis in its leadership.
The US went as far as installing prominent Nazi figures back into West Germany in the same way they let confederates go back to their lives after the civil war. Whereas the Soviets executed Nazi leaders in East Germany because that’s what they fucking deserve. The US then claimed that the executed Nazis were victims of communism and included them in their “communism death toll” numbers.
This isn’t an error. The US has always been sympathetic to Nazis, before, during, and after the war. They only begrudgingly pitched in against them because they viewed western Europe as slightly more important.
Finally, the US didn’t even fucking do that much. Certainly nowhere near enough to justify their claim that they “saved the world” in WWII. The USSR and UK each did far more yet the US seems to think the USSR was fighting for the Nazis and the UK was a scared poodle hiding in their island until the heroic Americans came to save them, when in reality, the tide had already turned against the Nazis by the time the US joined. They also nuked Japan just because they could, it had nothing to do with the war because they already had intelligence that Japan was about to surrender.
The Nazi eugenics program was also strongly inspired by what the US was doing at the time.
It’s just that the Nazi went a bit too far, too obvious (and mainly they lost the war). It was one of the arguments of the defense in the Nuremberg trial that the German eugenics differed little from what was practiced in the US.
They also granted the head of Unit 731 immunity (specifically from the USSR who rightly wanted him executed) in exchange for the human experimentation data.
“Experimentation” data that was entirely useless, if I remember correctly.
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The only Nazi rally held outside of Nazi Germany (in the 20th century) was held in the US.
While technically true, there were plenty of affiliated fascist organisations around the world who openly paraded their nazi sympathies in public. Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists spring to mind.
Minor correction: the US nuked Japan so the Soviets couldn’t be credited for Japan’s surrender as well as Nazi Germany. It was a calculated move by the US to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians just so that Socialism wouldn’t spread as much as it could have after the war due to the Soviets saving the world. The US paid the price of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilian lives in order to benefit its own standing after the war.
Oh, it wasn’t because of the fanatical dedication of the Japanese armed forces that were so dug in it would have taken years and cost thousands of American lives to defeat them, island by island? It was because they didn’t want the Russians to hog all the glory? Never heard that one before
the first bomb was dropped on 6 August, the Soviet Union declared war on the 8th. But contrary to American expectations and post-war claims, the author’s diligent research in the Japanese sources demonstrates conclusively that it was the Soviet declaration of war, not the atomic bombs, that forced the Japanese to surrender unconditionally.
Thanks for this!
That justification was made after the fact. The truth is that Japan was already going to surrender. This isn’t a conspiracy theory either, it’s modern historical consensus, even the US Navy’s museum admits so. The USSR had just taken Berlin and the Nazis surrendered on May 8, and declared war on Imperial Japan on August 8 after both Japan and the US had seen the Red Army pivoting to their East, towards Manchuria.
On August 9th, the Soviets invaded Japanese-controlled Manchuria, and Japan announced surrender on August 15th. The nukes were launched on the 6th and 9th of August, because the US didn’t want Japan to go Soviet, the US had plans of reforming Imperial Japan as a subsidiary Empire, maintaining Japan’s colonization of Korea and other Asian countries while profiting off of Japan, in a form of double Imperialism, and a Soviet Japan wouldn’t let that work. Their plan was thrown to dust with the Korean War that followed.
While publicly stating their intent to fight on to the bitter end, Japan’s leaders (the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, also known as the “Big Six”) were privately making entreaties to the publicly neutral Soviet Union to mediate peace on terms more favorable to the Japanese. While maintaining a sufficient level of diplomatic engagement with the Japanese to give them the impression they might be willing to mediate, the Soviets were covertly preparing to attack Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea (in addition to South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) in fulfillment of promises they had secretly made to the US and the UK at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences.
Right on Wikipedia.
There were also 400,000 soldiers who died fighting fascists under the US flag, who were not responsible for their government’s decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons, nor Operation Paperclip, nor any other major government decisions.
Appreciate your comments. My grandfather fought Nazis, but then he stayed in the Navy through the Korean war. Guess which one haunted him the most.
I’m aware, and am not trying to downplay that. My comment was about the US gov’s decision to bomb Japan, not to downplay the lives given by US soldiers in the fight against the Nazis.
I hear you, I just feel like the meme was about the ordinary soldiers rather than the government. Fully respect wanting to correct the record regarding the government, just felt it was worth a reminder that there were people like the soldier in the meme who did sacrifice a lot fighting for a worthy cause and who do deserve respect, and our criticism of the government shouldn’t overshadow that. Just a small pushback on that, but one I felt was important.
That’s a fair point to push back on. It wasn’t my intention to downplay the many brave US soldiers involved who were genuinely antifascist, but if my comments gave off that impression, then it’s good that you spoke up. My main critique of this comic isn’t even with the US, but with how (in my view) it treats liberalism and fascism as distinct, and not as the twins I understand them to be. The ending of the comic gives the impression that the former US was a bastion of antifascism and the modern US failed to get the memo, but the reality is that the fascists were always there, and the anti-fascists too. I wanted to add more materialism to the picture, and if in doing so I accidentally downplayed the role of the brave antifascists in the US Army that gave their lives fighting the Nazis, then I made my point poorly.
I think I see your point a bit more, I didn’t really think about the implications of American fascism being a new thing. Also didn’t want to single you out or anything.
No worries! It’s all good.
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The Red Army was responsible for 90% of Nazi deaths, and took Berlin. The Soviet Union paid by far the biggest price in winning World War II, and was by far the most responsible for ending it. I’m not going to apologize for being a Marxist, it sounds like you wished the other side won World War II.
why can’t we see @SupraMario@lemmy.world’s comments? they all say they were deleted by a moderator.
Because they were removed for breaking the rules. Here’s SupraMario’s Modlog, which upon checking also shows a large history of bigotry, homophobia, islamophobia, slurs, and transphobia.
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The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations.[q] It is noted by historian Geoffrey Roberts that “More than 80 percent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front”.
As much as you may have hated it, the good guys won World War II, not Germany.
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Every army committed crimes against civilians, sadly, but the Soviets took that seriously enough to punish rapists with the death penalty. Other armies, like the Nazis, US, Japanese, etc did not punish their rapists to the same degree so as to serve as a deterrent.
Further, the Nazi propagandists used the facts of ethnic asians in the Red Army to propagandize about “mongol hordes coming to rape everyone,” which is of course racist, but nevertheless was enough to create the myth of the Red Army as exceptionally brutal as compared to the other armies.
Correct, what’s your point?
I’m anti-tankie as the next guy. But pick up a history book. Soviet Russia did a huge amount of the work during WW2.
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The Soviets were never “with the Nazis.” The Soviets spent years trying to get the West to form an allied pact against the Nazis, insteas the West gave the Nazis Czechoslovakia. The non-aggression pact was paid to buy time, as the USSR was a developing country and Germany a more developed one. Nazism and Communism are diametrically opposed and cannot coexist, in the years of the Nazis rise the Nazis murdered the Communists in Germany first, and the Soviets were constantly warning about the Nazi threat.
The surprise attack by the Nazis was swift, brutal, and with genocidal intent. They took land quickly, but were pushed back into a stalemate, and then rapidly the Nazi line collapsed. Lend-Lease equipment arrived after the Red Army had stabilized, it certainly helped but was not critical to the success of the Red Army, they weren’t crumbling. Repeating Goebbels “Russian hordes” anti-Slavic racist talking points doesn’t help you either, there are no records of “wave tactics” as was reported by the Nazis. Those records came largely from pre-Soviet Russian tactics, not the tactics of the Red Army.
They didn’t “fuck over” a bunch of countries either.
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I never rewrote anything. There were many pacts between Western Powers and Nazi Germany before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, including non-aggression pacts from Nazi Germany with Estonia, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Britain, Italy, Denmark, and more. The Nazis broke the vast majority of these treaties, and it was only when war was on the horizon and the pleas from the Soviets to form an alliance against the Nazis that they conceded to the fact that the West was never going to willingly ally with the Soviets unless they had to.
Further, the large majority of those who lived in the USSR want it back. This is extremely well-documented, because 7 million people died due to the fall of the USSR and the economic crisis that came with that collapse, along with the elimination of the social welfare that people depended on.
The “meat shield” line is straight from Nazi propagandists using anti-Slavic racism (coincidentally, this line has carried over to today). The Red Army was very competent and didn’t rely on “wave tactics” as a part of their battle strategem.
This is nonsense anti-communism.
Any reason you’re opposed to Marxism?
I didn’t say I was anti-marxist. I’m anti-authoritarian. In all it’s forms.
All it’s forms? So you oppose national borders? Private property ownership? Do you think Donbas should be allowed to leave Ukraine?
It’s only authoritarianism when USA DoS say it is
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for Marxist, though, like “commie” or “pinko.” Marxism is “authoritarian” in that it expressly calls for flipping the Capitalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie into the Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat, ie turning from a society where the Capitalists are oppressing the working class via the state into a society where the working class wields the state against the Capitalists.
This isn’t a real “dictatorship” in the modern sense, but a descriptor for where the balance of power lies, in the working class or Capitalist class, via Public ownership or Private ownership being primary. Socialism is still democratic, but will use the power of the state against the bourgeoisie. All states are authoritarian, what matters is which class is in control of the authority, and how we can move beyond class and thus the state.
Oh really? My bad. I’ve always heard it used specifically to talk about corrupted implementations of Marxism. E.g. Animal Farm.
Err, maybe I’m confusing Marxism and socialism.
I’m still not exactly clear on how any of it avoids corruption. At the end of the day, somebody decides whose street gets paved first.
NATO coincidentally also has a ton of Nazis in its leadership
According to my lib colleague it’s fine because apparently they said they were forced to become Nazis.
Which might be understandable if they were lowly conscripted soldiers, but the ones that got into NATO were high ranking officers and other leaders in the Nazi party, many of whom architected the Holocaust.
It takes years and a ton of personal effort and commitmemt to climb the ranks of any military or party. Even if you did get conscripted, why did you keep going?
“Help I’m being forced to use my own cruelty and demonic propensity for making people suffer to organize a genocide after I spent years proving that I was the right person for the job! My only hope is if a peaceful, civilized, Western military alliance hires me once this ordeal that I’m in no way enjoying or benefiting from is over!”
Honestly the thing that still gets me is does he actually think they’d admit to being willing Nazis, especially when Nazis were being executed?
I know, see Operation Paperclip and I also know that the end of the nazi Germany is mainly thanks to Rusia and allies, US entered when the main task was already done. Without the French and British resistance, USA couldn’t even have managed to enter Germany.
Explain the US love affair with Israel then.
Zionist is a subset of Nazi
Zionism is the one thing where anti-semites and Jews (at least zionist Jews) agree.
Zionist Jews want it because it gives them their own country where they are not persecuted.
Anti-semites want it, because it means that the Jews are not in their country.
That’s why even the literal Nazis supported zionism. Every Jew in Israel was one less Jew in Germany.
You get the same thing still today with the most right-wing politicians supporting Zionism/Israel. On the one hand because it’s a way to keep Jews far away and on the other hand because it can be used as a “I’m supporting Israel, so surely I can’t be a Nazi. Anyway, let’s go shoot some Muslims.”-kind of excuse.
Zionism is anti-semetic, ironically. The Zionists were anti-Yiddish and collaborated with the Nazis (yes, you’re reading this right). Further, the Zionist mythos depends on fostering anti-semetism abroad, so that there seems to be legitimacy in having a “safe country for Jewish peoples,” even if that country is a genocidal settler-colony.
I recommend reading To Stop Marx, They Made Zion.
love affair with the zionazis in israel, to be specific. not that hard to understand.
I gotta push back against the criticism that several of my comrades in here are expressing. Y’all are talking about the US collaborating with Nazis after the war, and you’re not wrong about that, but that was the US government, while this meme is about a soldier. The soldiers on the ground fought for all sorts of reasons, they might have opposed the Nazis for all sorts of ideological reasons, or they might have just been doing it out of loyalty, or any of the other reasons soldiers fight. But there were people on the ground fighting the Nazis under a US flag who were committed antifascists and even communists. As for the others, whatever their reasons, when the call came to save the world from fascism, they answered, and were willing to sacrifice life and limb to do it. That’s pretty heroic if you ask me. And they weren’t the ones who made the decision to let Nazis into NATO and stuff afterwards.
I understand the defensiveness against attempts to glorify the US while villifying the USSR and downplay their (more substantial) sacrifice and contribution to the war. But there’s nothing in this meme that’s doing that, and there were Americans who contributed to the war effort. Is it necessary to kneejerk react to a meme celebrating someone who fought the Nazis by talking about the government that ruled over them? People aren’t defined by their nation or their government.
Let’s not forget the proud tradition of people like Woody Guthrie, who explicitly tied the war effort to a broader idea of antifascism, nor of the people on the front lines who he inspired.
This is not a meme, it’s reality.
Not all are that innocent, Musk family were Nazis
This is a very romanticized version of American intervention in WW2.
The bitter truth is that we had guys with Nazis war trophies back home who were waving Confederate flags the year after their deployment ended. Hell, we had guys like Mark Fuhrman, who were decorated detectives in the LAPD back in the early 90s with a naked well-established fetish for European fascism. And that’s before you get into the Ratlines that imported thousands of Nazis into Latin America under cover of the CIA and Opus Dei.
This isn’t something that got lost in translation or distorted through history. It’s a direct consequence of American fascism reproducing itself in America as an outcropping of American tendencies.
The Stars and Stripes is as much a symbol of fascist oppression in Vietnam and Indonesia and the DRC and the Oklahoma Reservation system as any German flag.
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This really overstates the US opposition to the Nazis and understates the role the US played in cementing former Nazis in key roles around the world, including the US. The US was never anti-fascist just like the US has never been anti-Capitalist, the US’s involvement in World War II was late, and for the purpose of profit. Lend-lease was one mechanism, and solidifying its position as the only major allied power not devastated by World War II, it could transfer into the position of unquestioned global Hegemon. It couldn’t let the Soviet Union take all of the credit for winning World War II (or the Great Patriotic War, in the former USSR), as that would have challenged US legitimacy in the post-war world.
In reality, fascism and liberalism are both superstructural elements of Capitalism, in different conditions and contexts. When class struggle is heightened, and Capitalism in utter decay with the bourgeoisie in need of violence to retain their hold on society, the mask of liberalism falls to reveal the ugly face of fascism. When Capitalism puts the mask back on, it pretends as its liberal self it is distinct and opposed to its unmasked self.
“WW2 was a nice vacation, now back to my home for some lynching, Jim crow, indigenous genocide, and keeping women at home not working!”
as if the US didn’t operation paperclip the shit out of nazis into their own country.
as if some of their descendants aren’t in power right now.
and now that i think of it, flags are the weirdest souvenir to bring from such a war.
Oh shit, is it just the eventual end product of teenage rebelliousness?
Combined with ignorance and neural disfunction
Are you trying to say that dozens of millions of people in one specific country went nazi because of teenage rebelliousness, ignorance and neural disfunction?
Don’t forget a deficient education system and nice media like FOX news, among wit rreligion the perfect brainwash system
Makes as much a sense as anything else
