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The 'final Solution'

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scooping | 18:55 Tue 29th Aug 2017 | News
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Just watching some TV and I don't understand why, when the Nazis attained power early in 1933, they waited until 1942 to carry out the mass extermination of the Jews. Absolutely no axe to grind, just puzzled.
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Perhaps people should read this wiki entry first, before embarking upon Irvings turgid books :::::

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving
You're missing the point, Mikey.
"Mickey, you should never ignore things said by people you disagree with that is how evil is able to flourish. Read it, understand it (as best as possible) then argue factually against it."

That only works if the other guy is actually interested in having such a discussion. Oftentimes they aren't.

There's some benefit to reading stuff from the opposing side, for sure, especially as there is sometimes room for interpretation over motives for actions, at least, and what counts as important. One of the more involved and important books concerning WWII I've read is "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", by the American Journalist William Shirer, which is probably not the definitive authority on Nazi Germany as it advocates a now-discredited theory of "Sonderweg", ie that it was inevitable that Germany would be the country of the Holocaust or that at any rate the seeds for that were sown throughout German history. He also ends with a rather chilling "afterword", added in 1990, when after the fall of the Berlin wall he wrote that "once again, Europe will face the question of dealing with the German problem" (or words to that effect, I can't remember the exact quote).

Still, it's an excellent read and as long as you appreciate the limits of the work then it's still a fine overview of the Germany side of the years from 1933-1945.
"In his works, Irving argued that Hitler did not know of the extermination of Jews or, if he did, opposed it"

It gets worse ::

"Irving marginalized himself in 1988 when, based on his reading of the pseudoscientific[3] Leuchter report, he began to espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at the Auschwitz extermination camp"
Thanks Jim....I will have a look at that book in the Library later this week.
Jim, //That only works if the other guy is actually interested in having such a discussion.//

I disagree. The absence of the other guy doesn’t preclude anyone from countering a claim.
It's a judgement call is all. You can spend too much effort trying to discredit ideas that are obviously wrong when their advocates won't listen -- especially if you do so at the expense of understanding what's right.

Perhaps in history it's harder to find an objective truth, but still it follows that as you can't read everything or try to understand perfectly every historical argument and interpretation then you have to be selective at some point in what you do research, and therein lies the judgement call.
Jim, of course you have to be selective, but taking your lead from Wiki and from other people’s ideas is, in my opinion, not selective enough.
I get the feeling that some people are too keen on using wikipedia as a first, last and only point of reference, and it's certainly not that. I don't mind people reading wiki articles as a starting point for research, but sure -- it bothers me too whenever anyone says "read the wiki article" as if, somehow, that's the definitive view on a subject.

As it happens Wikipedia can be an excellent entry point for specialist topics, but it's no more than that. But you knew that already, I'm sure; I guess this last is therefore directed mainly at mikey.

Jim, it wasn’t ‘directed’ at anyone and I often use Wiki, but since Mikey advised readers here to ignore certain works and offered Wiki as a source of reference to illustrate his aversion, I thought it judicious to point out that Wiki entries are not necessarily – in fact rarely – definitive.
I was talking about my post, not yours, when I said that it was directed at Mikey.
Jim, ok.
Erm, why is this in News? There is a History section.
Krom, this is happening a lot now, I think because other sections aren't readily accessible and posts there don't generate much response. I suggested that 'Politics' be added to the buttons on view at the top of the page - that would take much of the stuff that shouldn't be in News - but as you can see the suggestion came to nothing.
There are buttons at the top of the page!?
QUIZZES&PUZZLES CROSSWORDS NEWS TV BODY&SOUL CB

Other topics are hidden in the View All Categories box - and sub-categories are hidden deeper.
Maybe Hitler's position was secure enough to avenge his granma?

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/was-hitler-jewish
There have been a few comments recently, here on AB, about the veracity of the content on Wiki.

While a small percentage of Wikis output may not be entirely correct, as far as Irving is concerned, it is bang on the nail.

A few years ago, he brought a case of libel against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, because Lipstadt has accused him of being a Holocaust denier, falsifier, and bigot, and said that he manipulated and distorted real documents.

He lost that court case, and the court found that he was an indeed, an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".

In addition, the court found that Irving's books had distorted the history of Adolf Hitler's role in the Holocaust to depict Hitler in a favourable light.

So, when I and more importantly Wiki, described him in the way we do, it isn't just our opinion.

It seems to me that some people are willing to accept the Wiki standpoint when it supports their case, but vigorously condemn Wiki, when it is at odds with their own opinions.
Mikey, no one is disputing that he’s a holocaust denier. The question that has arisen is whether or not his critics, rather than rely upon the opinions of others, should actually read what he says before attempting to counter his argument - and really the same goes for any argument.
"It seems to me that some people are willing to accept the Wiki standpoint when it supports their case, but vigorously condemn Wiki, when it is at odds with their own opinions."

Nah. The point is that wikipedia is not a primary reference, so you shouldn't be citing it as one. Wiki's article on David Irving may be essentially accurate -- I don't know and I don't particularly care -- but if you are going to cite it then you cite the article's given references, not wikipedia itself.

This is, by the way, not a problem of Wikipedia particularly. For sure, the open edit feature makes it vulnerable to sabotage but such errors or deliberate falsifications as do occur tend to be corrected by the same mechanism. But it's an encyclopedic work by definition, and no-one, ever, takes encyclopedic works as a primary reference, because they are not. That's the point.

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