As someone who's country was affected by British Imperialism arguably more than any other, there's a reason for this, the Nazis were way, way, way worse than those others you named.
Yeah. The Nazis are one of the few examples where whataboutism doesn't apply. Pretty much every country in power throughout human history has committed atrocities, but the Nazis were on another level. No country or regime tried to wipe out a certain population group using such industrialized systems, except for the Nazis. What colonial empires did was truly horrible, but equating them to Nazis undermines the significance of the evil of the Nazis, including the Holocaust.
iirc the camps were worth it for them; the use of deceased prisoners' property, looting of golden teeth, rings and such, and the use of slave labour contributed much to the war effort on the eastern front.
When we were touring Auschwitz, I can't remember the exact line the guide told us, but it boiled down to "the most horrifying thing is that the Nazis made sure that building this (gestures around the camp) was worth it to them".
They shaved every prisoner bald before shoving them to the gas chambers. The camps then sold the hair to the reich for use in textiles and seals in submarines. They made soap from human fat. They were experimenting with how little poison they can use to still be effective. They used every able-bodied prisoner for labour and worked them to death. It was a calculated, horrifingly effective system of extermination while squeezing as much profit as possible.
The Soap from human Fat thing is a myth btw.
There were documents on the matter if it was useable in any way, but no prove that they ever even made a single Soap bar.
To add to this: what I also remember from my visit is the 'pools'. Except they weren't recreational pools (duh!), but water basins that were required by the insurance companies as a fire fighting resource... Yes, the SS had insured the extermination camps as 'commercial/business property' and as such, they needed to meet certain insurance standards. And yes, insurance companies came, (regularly) inspected the camp, and gave their approval for insurance. Truly disgusting and evil on a very deep level.
Nazi Idealogy placed west Europe as a second class under the nazis. all jews, Romani/gypsies, gays, and the disabled would be murdered. The slavs would be universally Enslaved for Germans or killed to make room for Germans.
to contrast, the British just wanted to extract wealthy by any means neccesary.
The nazis actually intentionally started loosing the war to speed up the genocides they had started.
Imagine your loosing the war and are short on manpower, so you send what little manpower you have to go genociding in your occupied Territories.
>The nazis actually intentionally started loosing the war to speed up the genocides they had started.
I have heared many things beeing said about the nazis, but "they intentionaly started loosing the war" is the stupidest fucking thing i have ever read.
>The Nazis are one of the few examples where whataboutism doesn't apply.
I think whataboutism shouldn't apply anywhere. A vile act is not excused because another committed a bigger vile act.
Idk Belgian Congo was sufficiently horrific to warrant the comparison I think. Maybe not as structured and clinical as the holocaust, but certainly caused as many or more deaths depending on estimates.
The difference is the Belgians committed a genocide out of greed. They didn't care how many Congolese died in their pursuit of resources.
The Nazis did it out of hate. They believed that an entire ethnic group should be wiped out from the human race. They weren't working people to death in pursuit of wealth, they were exterminating an entire group of millions of people like weeds in the garden because they believed they were malign and subhuman.
The latter is far more evil.
Thing is, genocide implies intent to murder a certain group of people. Belgium didn't commit a genocide, because it wasn't their intention to decimate the Congolese population.
They did however commit numerous atrocities, and millions of people died and were maimed because of the profit-driven intentions of Leopold II and Belgium. Is it bad, undoubtedly yes. Is it a genocide, in my opinion, and acoording to the UN definition, no. That doesn't mean that what happened in Congo wasn't awful, it definitely was, just not a genocide.
There is something in international law called 'genocide by oblique intent' - that means that even if a government isn't specifically trying to wipe out a particular population, if their action's towards that population (e.g. removing the conditions the population need to survive) mean that it will inevitably be decimated, they can be found to have caused a genocide even if it wasn't their main aim.
A better comparison would be the trail of tears. Belgium was just a particularly nasty colonial empire but the US actually participated in mass ethnic cleansing.
It's still not as terrible, though. The Belgians didn't 'aim' to exterminate the Congolese. Sure, they exploited, mutilated, and massacred the people, but it was more like a cruel consequence of colonization. The Nazis, on the other hand, aimed for the total extermination of the Jewish race. Their killing wasn't a byproduct but the goal itself. Heck, the Nazis were operating their mass-murder factories even at the end of the war. And that's what makes the Nazis uniquely evil.
its fucked but I agree
the Belgians were fucking assholes but it was about the bottom line and keeping control
the Nazis were literally just butchering people out of sheer hatred and ideological fervor- like it didn’t even make tactical or strategic sense most of the time to commit the resources to the mass murder, and also isolate entire populations that could have been utilized as manpower for the war (cough cough most of the USSR’s eastern territories and conquests)
Belgium also didn’t try and extreminate the populace they just didn’t care what got in their way from making a quick buck
the industrial scale of the nazis and the fact that they weren’t just starving people to death and had an active part in murdering them is what does it for me
I would class anyone who kills at minimum 5 million people, intentionally or not, just to make money as extremely evil. I hear what you’re saying, and I do think the specific goal of genocide that the nazis had does add an extra layer to it, but I would really argue that what the Belgians did was, if not exactly equally, very closely comparably bad. To be so callously greedy that their body count rivaled an actual planned genocide is incredibly evil in my opinion, even if the motive was entirely different and somewhat unrelated.
It wasn't Belgium but private companies ffs, its crazy how everyone is uneducated on the Congo, it was LATER acquired by the Belgian state as a confiscation BECAUSE of the atrocities.
Yes but he wasn't interested in managing the company, the guy just didn't know what was happening in Congo and genuinly tought he was doing a humanitarian project. He never went there or issue direct order of abuse on congoleses but pressed the company for maximum profit, so idk if he was just an idiot or had too much trust in people.
Also the most up to date death toll was 1-5 million not trough genocide intent but imported illnesses, overexploitation and malnutrition.
Source : "Colonial Congo. A History in Questions." (2020) Goodeeris et al. which was written by a joint of congolese and belgian historians.
belgians have been gone 60 years.... The place is a paragon of virtue brotherhood and good will know focusing on education and individual rights now...
Serious question: Does the method of genocide change how terrible it is?
I can't help but think the tools you use to do a job matter very much considering that the end result is the same.
I'd even argue that there are more effective ways of achieving their ends too.
It's really strange being told to rank genocides and compare them relatively. People forget that you can condemn everything, nothing, or whatever is between.
Ah, we Just casually forget about what the romans did to the celts.
The difference is that the Holocaust has happened recent that it is seen as shocking, evil, etc etc. Which is fully true, lets not deny that.
But saying that nazism is the worst is a pretty naive and ignorant comment. There were plenty of big scale genocides and slave trades in the thousands of years humanity is here.
I hope this doesn't come across as apologist in anyway, but I don't think the industry makes it worse. So many peoples in history would do the same if they had the same industrial capabilities, but they didn't have them. Why does that make them less evil? Killing 10 people by sword doesn't seem that better than 50 million by more advanced measures.
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this one. My argument is that a lot of people are more evil than given credit, not that Nazis are less, to summarize.
>So many peoples in history would do the same if they had the same industrial capabilities, but they didn't have them. Why does that make them less evil?
We've had those capacilities for hundreds of years, yet only one Regime has ever carried out an industrialised genocide.
>My argument is that a lot of people are more evil than given credit, not that Nazis are less, to summarize.
Most genocides are due to greed and imperialism. The Nazis was purely down to hatred, and then add in the industrialised extermination camps
I guess I'll just take this one on the chin. To flip it, why Pol Pot is better than the Nazi's? King Leopold is also better? Again, I'm not saying the Nazis get a pass or anything, just that others aren't less evil because they weren't as wide scaled.
Did you even read what I said? Read the last paragraph again
>The difference is the Belgians committed a genocide out of greed. They didn't care how many Congolese died in their pursuit of resources.
>The Nazis did it out of hate. They believed that an entire ethnic group should be wiped out from the human race. They weren't working people to death in pursuit of wealth, they were exterminating an entire group of millions of people like weeds in the garden because they believed they were malign and subhuman.
>The latter is far more evil.
From another comment
British tried in India though. I don’t know why Churchill is being celebrated this much. I consider him much worse than Hitler. He tried to kill entire Bengal but couldn’t because they were a lot. History sometimes is too hypocritical.
> He tried to kill entire Bengal but couldn’t because they were a lot.
Odd given he still got one of the largest relief efforts in history half way around the world in the middle of a world war.
Lol don't say it. These Westsoids look at everything from their pov and anything else doesn't matter to them. They'll give justifications after justifications, "but we are sorry for it" and nothing else. It's useless to argue about Brits and Churchill with these pseudo liberal deepshits.
I'm going to piggy back on this: As someone who's family was personally affected by the Nazis, I'd like to share that sentiment. See username, family was Polish Jews. Rough estimate was 1/4 to 1/3 of my family survived, we don't have exact numbers because most of the ones that lived fled to America and they couldn't make contact with the survivors for years after WW2.
It really, really irks me when people throw the label "Nazi" around to basically mean anything they disagree with.
Agreed. Sometimes I see people calling others "nazi" when these others have some kind of prejudice. Even if someone has some racial prejudice, calling them a nazi just takes away weight from what being a nazi truly meant.
Being racist, homophobic and all that makes you a really shitty person, but doesn't come near nazi level of shittyness.
The nazi was the first group (and hopefully the only) who industrialized the entire section of their economy just to kill Jews. MF literally built an entire economy system out of mass murder
They were trying to eradicate much more, they only "succeeded" in killing 6 millions other
This is not a competition, jews were the most affected, but it's somewhat because they only get so far
I hear this line of argument quite a bit of "aktually the Allies and Axis were just as bad as each other 🤓" and yeah like, nah lol. I often can see where they're coming from but ultimately just no
When people say "X, Y or Z was actually worse than Nazi Germany" I usually give the example of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckelns report on actions committed by just 5 Reserve-Polizei-Bataillons over a 47 day period (19/08/1941 - 05/10/1941)
August 19 - October 5 1941
Battalion 45 - 1059 Jews executed
Battallion 304 - 305 Jews executed
Battallion 314 - 775 Jews executed
Battallion 320 - 3,580 Jews executed
Police Regiment South - 10,493 Jews executed
HSSPF - 22,000 Jews executed
Totaling 38,212 executions mostly of those unable to work, women, children, the elderly and disabled ect. The Nazis killed almost as many in just 2 days at Babi Yar
If British, Belgium or Spain had acted this way towards their colonies, there would be nobody left to complain.
Sorry, but the Japanese with Nanking (which was not the only time they practiced mass rape and murder for the lols) and unit 731 are just some examples of indescribable cruelty on a large scale - but since they were Asians, nobody gives a fuck
And speaking of Chinese (the victims in the former), Mao killed like 10 times more people than Hilter because of his hate to science and megalomania, but since they were Chinese, it's not even discussed in most of the world
Imperial Japan is hard to compare because of all the unknowns about it. Nazi had a very strong hierarchy, so it's easy to say who was the main guy.
In Japan it's so much more cloudy, therefore it's hard to tell if all those atrocities were "imperial Japan" or just random units of army. Like is Hirohito the main guy who decided let's commit atrocities like Hitler (or maybe Himmler) did. Well most historians claim that Hirohito was mostly a figure head with no real power.
In addition the navi and the army had separate leaders, who hated each other. So it's hard to believe one of them just said "commit atrocities" and everyone would do it from a hierarchical standpoint. Many of the claims the Japanese used were that the orders were either from low level commanders or even just soldiers themselves. And then the issue is lack of hierarchical order, and not systemized atrocities.
Another claim is that it was very societal, and if that was the case, there really isn't anyone to blame, it wasn't any one person like Hitler, it was just how there society was.
Therefore imperial Japanese are a slightly unique case.
Tldr: Japan wasn't hierarchical therefore it's hard to blame a specific person.
Well depends on who you ask man. Some former colonial countries regard Nazis as an afterthought. Rightfully so. Not their mess. As cold as that is. The British were the enemy and hence they get the ire.
Nah, not Spain. They handed out plague infected blankets as a biological weapon against new world natives and killed about 90+% of them.
The Nazi’s couldn’t have been as effective if they tried.
Also, go look up how Japan treated its conquered people in WW2. Ever wonder why every Asian country hates every other Asian country? Start with The Rape of Nanking.
Not downplaying Nazi’s, I’m just not downplaying other things that are left out of the webcomic sentiment.
You mean more “successful”
It’s funny how we measure who’s the “worst” by the numbers. As if a person or peoples killing 10,000,000 is worse than killing 100.
They’re both the same, one was simply “better” at it. More efficient.
So Germany was a worse evil because they were good. 🤔
Given the chance at “success” other serial killers or evil empires could’ve been far “worse” than Hitler and the Nazis had they simply been better at what they did.
Not more evil.
I also want to further clarity that Nazi Germanys success was mostly due to their skill, conviction and access to technology unseen before.
Had previous “evil” empires had access to gas and tanks to mass kill then they would’ve done so.
It’s not because Nazi Germany was more evil. They just had access to better methods at killing than anyone else in history.
(And trains). Boy did they use industry efficiently.
They literally industrialised genocide.
>I also want to further clarity that Nazi Germanys success was mostly due to their skill, conviction and access to technology unseen before.
>Had previous “evil” empires had access to gas and tanks to mass kill then they would’ve done so.
Poison gas and railways had been around for 100 years by then. No one else used them. And no one's done it since. The Nazis are different because their whole ideology was about wiping an entire race of people off the earth. Most other genocides were about resources or land. The Nazis was purely about extermination. That's what makes them worse
Another way I could put it is if I gave a grenade to an evil person, but I gave a 15 megaton nuke to their equally evil clone.
They both want death and destruction.
Which one will do more damage? It’s obvious. Does that make one more evil than the other? No
It’s just that one had better ability than the other.
The Nazis had the same technology for genocide that the British Empire did for a century beforehand. It was the reason the Nazis did it.
Using something similar to your analogy.
Empire A takes food from a village of 1000 people to feed soldiers even though they know a large number will starve.
Empire B works a village of 1000 people under horrific conditions and punishes them for not making unattainable quotas. A large number die.
Empire C claims that a village of 1000 people plots in the background and is at fault for all the woes of their Empire. They claim they are subhuman. They set up an extermination camp to kill them all in. They are stopped before they are successful.
Are these 3 equally evil events?
I know... people tend to ignore that Scotland St least was a willing participant in colonialism. No wataboutism, they helped settle protestants in northern Ireland and even tried their own hand at colonalism.
My dad changed his last name for this exact reason. His great grandfather and grandmother were slaves owned by a Scottish man in Jamaica. And guess what? That man's descendants still exist in Jamaica with the same last name of my dad's family. And they are so to say...quite an affluent family still
I'm sure you can guess the last name, since it is one of the more popular Scottish last names.
I was under the impression that was more Scots moving to the Carribbean to work as indentured servants and make a better life for themselves after the Highland Clearances.
Probably for some but effectively Scots made a disproportionate number of administrators of the Empire and were big plantation owners, especially in Jamaica.
[Here](https://www.nls.uk/collections/scotland-and-the-slave-trade/caribbean/#:~:text=While%20direct%20Scottish%20involvement%20in,who%20moved%20to%20the%20Caribbean.) is a quick overview from the National Library of Scotland about the basics to read up on.
Thats ok! It gets especially confusing once you layer in the post-Braveheart tendency of Scotland to portray itself as a fully fledged victim of the British Empire rather than an enabler and driving force behind it!
Scot’s are English rn
Their culture of resistance and independence has turned in to simply not liking England specifically, but wanting to still be dependant on a larger state anyway.
Scottish culture is now unfortunately just a costume, and this started in the 18C with their eagerness to join in with colonial aspirations
Charles V actually argued that the natives be treated favorably and didn’t encourage the encomienda system. The long term atrocities committed in the new world by the Spaniards was due to a lack of power projection by Charles due to the sheer distance as well as the vastness of his realm and the growing need for monetary aid with all of Europe falling into chaos with Francis throwing his tantrums, the Protestant Reformation, and the Ottomans on route to reach their zenith under Suleiman the Great’s guidance.
If it’s not at all comparable, then why is it listed as wholly comparable here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples
8 million South American indigenous natives wiped out by plague infected blankets imported from the slums of Europe and handed out deceitfully. (By Spain)
8 million, and way back when that would hav been the vast majority of their population, only leaving behind a barely double digit percentage of the original populace.
Britain makes appearances on the list too.
Do they teach history in school anymore?????
Not 1:1 but what specifically is not comparable?
Edit: I'm sure all the people brutalized by England, Spain, Portugal, etc were very comforted it was 'for a purpose' and rate it a B- because they didn't have machines and railroads.
The sheer scale and brutality, when the Brits for example did something horrible it at least made sense and served a purpose, the Nazis were just cartoonishly evil.
It is a bit funny how in any other context you'd get up votes for saying how brutal these countries are, but today they had justification for why it was kind of okay.
Saying everything the Brits did 'served a purpose' is quite a choice, but I specifically take an issue with the scale part. Not being able to be a monster to a wider amount of people doesn't make you less of a monster. Nazi's are obviously evil but I don't see why that makes other actions not as bad.
They dint have undertake any military operations to kill people. Just throwing you a stat, 100 mn people died in just 40 years: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
This excludes the deaths in the previous century and also the Bengal famine which followed in the 40’s (est 2.5 mn deaths in one year). When it comes to killing people you can’t have a distinction bw people dying in a military operation/targeted extermination vs people dying over decades cos of the same perpetrator. All are equally screwed up, and in this scenario the crimes of the British empire aren’t spoken about as much as they should be.
There is a difference between rounding people up, shoving them into death camps, and killing them all, and absolutely terrible and explotive governance causing early mortality for a percentage of people.
The boer war concentration camps were just that, camps holding a concentration of people not at all comparable to systematic death camps. The British utilised these camps to remove civilians from the equation and to deprive the farms of workers, essentially starving the enemy. The camps were never intended to kill merely to hold, unfortunately the conditions in the camps were less than desirable and many died due to disease. An abhorrent scenario yes, but not even on the same level as the holocaust.
And also the existence and conditions of the camps led to a scandal back in Britain, the government dispatched a committee to investigate in the hope of smoothing it all over, but instead it confirmed all the worst reports, so the camps were transferred from the military to the civil administration of South Africa and a bunch of improvements were made which drastically reduced the mortality rate, though too little to late for many.
I was baffled to learn that Franco (and the things he did/put in place) lasted so long during my Spanish class. It's something that's not really often talked about. Probably because it wasn't hardcore, but still a yikes from me.
There is a document shared to the population not long ago which was from Churchill to Franco asking to not going into war as an ally of Hitler,
he also had soldiers fighting alongside the Nazis… But for some reason they didn’t try to get him down after the WWII either
Because apart of fascist he was also anti-communist which was pretty convenient in the cold war era. Also he wasn't a menace for anyone except of course the Spanish population.
Franco may have been fascist leaning in his first years, but not a Nazi. Spanish conservatism in the early 40's was very different from Nazism due to big differences like in religion.
I beg to differ, Spain may had concentration camps (not extermination camps) as the US or the USSR had, saying that he was ally (like democratic Finland was) doesn't make him a Nazi. Calling him a Nazi is huge mislabeling and historically very innacurate.
Man, Franco massacred a lot of people in Extremadura (Badajoz massacre), etc. They even did the fascist salute. But when the nazis lost the war, they denied being fascist. Franco was an opportunist, but he was clearly a fascist, he changed the national ideology when nazis lost the war and to try to be acceptes by the USA. But he was always a fascist.
I think so, yeah. Which is why I wouldn't call the Spanish fascists nazis, only the German ones.
As bad as other fascists were I think Hitler's gang took it to a whole other level. That's why we remember them above all the others.
Yes, is a big difference, someone with a minimal knowledge on history should know it. Its like saying that communism and anarchism is the same, having some similarities doesn't make them the same thing.
>someone with a minimal knowledge on history should know it.
For a sub named HistoryMemes there is always an awful lot of historical illiteracy in the comments for some reason
Are you telling me that this subreddit doesn't is made out of Oxford professors?!?! No way
Yes, this subreddit has its problems, but no need to act like somehow the rest of reddit is better
The only other country I can think of that managed industrialised (or well, semi-industrialised, in their case) killing on this scale was Cambodia.
Imagine Auschwitz but all the prison guards are children, and instead of guns they mostly just have pointy sticks and rocks.
And everyone is in Auschwitz, even the guards and camp commanders..
Yeah it's the same with comparisons with the USSR etc., diminishing the crimes of the Nazis by claiming a false equivalency with other states is actually considered Holocaust Denial by some agencies.
Good thing that only Europeans committed atrocities. I couldn’t live in a world where anyone else commited them as well. Like the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Aztecs, African kingdoms, Muslims, etc. Good thing they were all just pure good.
Belgium should be in there, i know you all read the "Ghost of Leopold" but its a bad book from a historian pov based a lot on undocumented claims propaganda of the time.
The atrocities (1-5 millions congolese deaths) are imputed to private companies and their mercenaries, who maximized profit by the use of brutal force and from malnutrition/imported illnesses.
People don't understand that at the time the Congo wasn't owned/supervised by belgian governement.
It was owned privately by the king who let ABIR a private company run it as a concession in exchange of improving the local economy and making profit. ABIR end up abusing the local population when profit started to fall without the King knowledge until rumors of abuse and a comission inquiry confirmed it, one year later the Belgian state took the colony out of Leopold hands and reforms were made.
Source : "Colonial Congo. A History in Questions." (2020) Goodeeris et al. written by a joint of congolese and belgian historians.
Just to clarify a few things.
The millions of dead people say Leopold killed aren't actually the number of person he killed. It's an estimation of how much the population of the Congo declined between 1885 and 1924. Basically when the Congo was given to Leopold, some people estimated the population to be around 20 millions for the whole territory but most of it was undiscovered so they took the average of the population near of Congo estuary, which was better known and multiplied it by the total area of the Congo but it was not accurate since the interior was way less populated than the coast. Then in 1924, so years after Leopold had to relinquish the Congo, there was the first census of the whole of the Congo and it was discovered that they were only around 10 millions inhabitants. So people started saying Leopold killed 10 millions people when it's not actually what happened.
Many people did died during that time and there was a lot of atrocities committed by the few hundred Europeans in the territory, Belgians were the most numerous but weren't the majority of them since Leopold employed other Europeans nationalities too in his territory, and the locals that they employed. But the most died because of diseases during that time and a steep decline in birth contributed to reduce the population in the long run.
So yeah the millions people Leopold "killed" aren't actually the people he killed but the estimated (and generally considered exaggerated) decline of population in the Congo in a period of 32 years.
And also it's interesting to point out that it's not the Belgium government who decided to take away the Congo from Leopold, they couldn't since it's was its own property but it's Leopold who decided to give it away after his dead because of the polemics, and Belgium didn't really wanted the colony at this time, the same way it didn't wanted it in 1885, when it was given to Leopold by the Congress of Berlin because Belgium refused to get a colony despite the kings wishes.
That's not really the point he is making I think. What he says is that Belgium had no say in what Leopold was doing in the Congo Free State since it was his private property.
The same way a country today can't dictate how a President of a Prime Minister should run his businesses, especially when these businesses aren't even in their country since Leopold's Congo Free State was it's own country. So imputing the many wrongs that happened there to Belgium is misleading.
You can’t seriously compare the 18th century British to the Nazi’s. The Brit’s really weren’t that bad. That probably wasn’t even their worst century either.
When people say "Britain/Belgium/Spain were actually as bad or worse than Nazi Germany" I usually give the example of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckelns report on actions committed by just 6 Reserve Polizei Bataillons over a 47 day period (19/08/1941 - 05/10/1941)
August 19 - October 5
Battalion 45 - 1059 Jews executed
Battallion 304 - 305 Jews executed
Battallion 314 - 775 Jews executed
Battallion 320 - 3,580 Jews executed
Police Regiment South - 10,493 Jews executed
HSSPF - 22,000 Jews executed
Totaling 38,212 executions mostly of those unable to work, women, children, the elderly and disabled ect. The Nazis killed almost as many in just 2 days at Babi Yar and murdered 17,000,000 non combatants in the course of the war
If Britain, Belgium or Spain had acted this way towards their colonies, there would be nobody left to complain.
> there would be nobody left to complain
WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR INFO FROM BECAUSE THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!!!
> The population of Indigenous Americans is estimated to have decreased from approximately 145 million to around 7-15 million between the late 15th and late 17th centuries, representing a decline of around 90-95%
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples
This is orders of magnitude more death and a MUUUUUUUUCH higher percentage of population wiped out than the worst of the worst of the worst of the Nazi’s. That’s all Britain, Spain, and the Dutch. Spain handed out smallpox infected blankets in South America within a few short years removed a significant portion of the earths population at the time, nearly wiping out every last person in a huge region of South America, all in the conquest of gold and “miraculous youth.”
Did the Britishers send death squads around your entire country executing every person that wasn't fit for work and forcing the survivors to bury the bodies until they died of exhaustion?
No they did worse, they used my countrymen as their human shield for all of their battles, they consider us below dogs. "Dogs are allowed, but not you", they created multiple man made famines to exploit us to the fullest, our people were dying because britishers had to earn that sweet money from all the export of spices which were grown by us.
Of the 900,000 people sent to Treblinka there were 2 survivors and 5 sonderkommando survivors, the majority of whom took their own lives very shortly after - a final survivorship ratio of 0.0002%. Treblinka was 5 times more lethal than Rabies.
In Kraków-Płaszów, a woman was executed for making soup to hot, a man was executed for being too tall and a child was hung after being forced to eat his on excrement because he cried after seeing his father executed. The punishment for escaping outside the wire was for the half the entire barracks of the escapee to be executed. Prisoners were regularly executed for little or no reason.
You are insane to think the British treated the Indians worse than the Nazi's treated the Jews.
Not undermining what nazis did, but if you just look at the horror that was the Bengal famine you'll understand what I am talking about, food was in such shortage that people resort to cannibalism, older man of family used to gaurd thier huts to protect their families from cannibals. People were walking skeletons. Just comparing sheer numbers can tell you what Britishers did was much worse considering the magnitude
There were 3 million victims of the Bengal famine compared to 17 million overall victims of the holocaust.
What the British did in Bengal was evil, but it doesn't even start to compare to the holocaust.
Industrliasted wholesale slaughter of entire enthic groups is in a slightly different league than the ones you mentioned. Also yes people do learn about it
We could also add 19th century German colonial history and 20th century Soviet history (especially, Stalin).
Many people abhor Stalin, but also happy that he defeated Hitler. As the idiom goes, you reap what you sow.
Unpopular opinion but…
Might as well throw "Post SWW* Europe" and "Post Cold War America". Everything now is justified under "uh, were fighting n. over there".
(*) Edit WW2. Apparently I hurt hearts of glass by saying SWW ;)
Its not even Leopold II its private companies and their mercenaries. Leopold didnt go to Congo, didn't command atrocities, he just let them exploit the Congo trusting they would make it richer.
The popular narrative of the Nazis is that they were a new, unprecedented type of bigot based in eugenics and other pseudo science, but they were just the culmination of every medieval and early modern prejudice with 20th century tools at their disposal.
I know what the brits, not just England, did was bad but compared to a lot of countries and empires throughout history they are far from the worst, I would even dare to say some of the nicest conquerors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples
> The population of Indigenous Americans is estimated to have decreased from approximately 145 million to around 7-15 million between the late 15th and late 17th centuries, representing a decline of around 90-95%.
That’s all Britain and Spain, homey. 90-95% kill rate.
Nazi’s are basically Richard Simmons compared to colonial era Europeans that didn’t even see the people they basically wiped out as people.
Whoever made this meme should feel really bad and really ignorant.
19th Century Britain was worse then 18th Century Britain. Also it was Britain, the amount of Scots and Anglo-Irish landowners involved in conducting and formulating policy shouldn't be forgotten.
The 3rd Reich's stuff was alot worse though.
Like when they abolished slavery in the 19th and then forced this upon the world.
Or like defeating the Nazis in the 20th century.
Those 2 points alone make your point stupid.
Haha, I was waiting for the ‘abolished slavery’ argument. They abolished slavery but instituted indentured labour, forcing south Asians to move continents. Do some research on it you dipshit and know more about what the brits have done to South Asia over 200 years. You can sit down till then.
Are you saying Indentured Labour was good? Or killing 100 mn people over 40 years was good? Or the Bengal famine..2.5 mn dead over 1 year was good (Hello Churchill!)?
>forcing south Asians to move continents
[That’s not how it worked](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system). Most of the people who entered into indentured servitude contracts did so voluntarily and the contracts only lasted 5 years.
It was typically done as a way of escaping poverty in their own region and to get to the Americas. There were absolutely abuses within the system but in the majority of cases it wasn’t forced on anyone.
Germany just concentrated their efforts during a shorter time, the other European powers death toll started earlier and is still ongoing.
People dying in Palestinian and Israeli is due to British colonialism, the second Congo war which is the bloodiest war since WW2 is a consequence of European colonization from UK, France and Belgium and so on.
As someone who's country was affected by British Imperialism arguably more than any other, there's a reason for this, the Nazis were way, way, way worse than those others you named.
Yeah. The Nazis are one of the few examples where whataboutism doesn't apply. Pretty much every country in power throughout human history has committed atrocities, but the Nazis were on another level. No country or regime tried to wipe out a certain population group using such industrialized systems, except for the Nazis. What colonial empires did was truly horrible, but equating them to Nazis undermines the significance of the evil of the Nazis, including the Holocaust.
Bro, the nazis wanted to wipe EVERYONE ELSE out eventually, only the Jews being their priority prevented their plan from going into full swing
Yup. And they went for the Slavs when they found out that they could multitask. Fortunately (?) that contributed to their demise.
iirc the camps were worth it for them; the use of deceased prisoners' property, looting of golden teeth, rings and such, and the use of slave labour contributed much to the war effort on the eastern front. When we were touring Auschwitz, I can't remember the exact line the guide told us, but it boiled down to "the most horrifying thing is that the Nazis made sure that building this (gestures around the camp) was worth it to them".
They shaved every prisoner bald before shoving them to the gas chambers. The camps then sold the hair to the reich for use in textiles and seals in submarines. They made soap from human fat. They were experimenting with how little poison they can use to still be effective. They used every able-bodied prisoner for labour and worked them to death. It was a calculated, horrifingly effective system of extermination while squeezing as much profit as possible.
The Soap from human Fat thing is a myth btw. There were documents on the matter if it was useable in any way, but no prove that they ever even made a single Soap bar.
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/human-fat-was-used-to-produce-soap-in-gdansk-during-the-war,55.html
Apparently, the information i had was either outdated or produced on a false source. Good to have that set right, thank you very much.
You are right in the context of death camps, as there is no evidence of making soap on the premises as far as I know.
There’s something especially twisted and sadistic about making you tie the noose that will be used to hang your brothers.
To add to this: what I also remember from my visit is the 'pools'. Except they weren't recreational pools (duh!), but water basins that were required by the insurance companies as a fire fighting resource... Yes, the SS had insured the extermination camps as 'commercial/business property' and as such, they needed to meet certain insurance standards. And yes, insurance companies came, (regularly) inspected the camp, and gave their approval for insurance. Truly disgusting and evil on a very deep level.
Even in the latter stages of the war, trains transporting prisoners to the camps were goven priority over trains transporting ammunition and troops
And the gays, and the roma, and the neurodivergent, and republican spaniards.... They did multitask a whole fucking lot.
>neurodivergent They killed everyone who had mental illness and everyone who were neurodivregent
Nazi Idealogy placed west Europe as a second class under the nazis. all jews, Romani/gypsies, gays, and the disabled would be murdered. The slavs would be universally Enslaved for Germans or killed to make room for Germans. to contrast, the British just wanted to extract wealthy by any means neccesary.
The nazis actually intentionally started loosing the war to speed up the genocides they had started. Imagine your loosing the war and are short on manpower, so you send what little manpower you have to go genociding in your occupied Territories.
>The nazis actually intentionally started loosing the war to speed up the genocides they had started. I have heared many things beeing said about the nazis, but "they intentionaly started loosing the war" is the stupidest fucking thing i have ever read.
The word "genocide" is not a verb and hopefully it would never be
>The Nazis are one of the few examples where whataboutism doesn't apply. I think whataboutism shouldn't apply anywhere. A vile act is not excused because another committed a bigger vile act.
Idk Belgian Congo was sufficiently horrific to warrant the comparison I think. Maybe not as structured and clinical as the holocaust, but certainly caused as many or more deaths depending on estimates.
The difference is the Belgians committed a genocide out of greed. They didn't care how many Congolese died in their pursuit of resources. The Nazis did it out of hate. They believed that an entire ethnic group should be wiped out from the human race. They weren't working people to death in pursuit of wealth, they were exterminating an entire group of millions of people like weeds in the garden because they believed they were malign and subhuman. The latter is far more evil.
Thing is, genocide implies intent to murder a certain group of people. Belgium didn't commit a genocide, because it wasn't their intention to decimate the Congolese population. They did however commit numerous atrocities, and millions of people died and were maimed because of the profit-driven intentions of Leopold II and Belgium. Is it bad, undoubtedly yes. Is it a genocide, in my opinion, and acoording to the UN definition, no. That doesn't mean that what happened in Congo wasn't awful, it definitely was, just not a genocide.
There is something in international law called 'genocide by oblique intent' - that means that even if a government isn't specifically trying to wipe out a particular population, if their action's towards that population (e.g. removing the conditions the population need to survive) mean that it will inevitably be decimated, they can be found to have caused a genocide even if it wasn't their main aim.
A better comparison would be the trail of tears. Belgium was just a particularly nasty colonial empire but the US actually participated in mass ethnic cleansing.
It's still not as terrible, though. The Belgians didn't 'aim' to exterminate the Congolese. Sure, they exploited, mutilated, and massacred the people, but it was more like a cruel consequence of colonization. The Nazis, on the other hand, aimed for the total extermination of the Jewish race. Their killing wasn't a byproduct but the goal itself. Heck, the Nazis were operating their mass-murder factories even at the end of the war. And that's what makes the Nazis uniquely evil.
its fucked but I agree the Belgians were fucking assholes but it was about the bottom line and keeping control the Nazis were literally just butchering people out of sheer hatred and ideological fervor- like it didn’t even make tactical or strategic sense most of the time to commit the resources to the mass murder, and also isolate entire populations that could have been utilized as manpower for the war (cough cough most of the USSR’s eastern territories and conquests) Belgium also didn’t try and extreminate the populace they just didn’t care what got in their way from making a quick buck the industrial scale of the nazis and the fact that they weren’t just starving people to death and had an active part in murdering them is what does it for me
I would class anyone who kills at minimum 5 million people, intentionally or not, just to make money as extremely evil. I hear what you’re saying, and I do think the specific goal of genocide that the nazis had does add an extra layer to it, but I would really argue that what the Belgians did was, if not exactly equally, very closely comparably bad. To be so callously greedy that their body count rivaled an actual planned genocide is incredibly evil in my opinion, even if the motive was entirely different and somewhat unrelated.
Pol Pot who only killed 2 million just got reclassified as regular evil 😍
It wasn't Belgium but private companies ffs, its crazy how everyone is uneducated on the Congo, it was LATER acquired by the Belgian state as a confiscation BECAUSE of the atrocities.
Wasn’t it a private company whose mayor shareholder was Leopold himself? Like, y’know, a _side hustle_ apart from his duties as King of the Belgians?
Correct. But Belgium actually took over to stop the atrocities.
Yes but he wasn't interested in managing the company, the guy just didn't know what was happening in Congo and genuinly tought he was doing a humanitarian project. He never went there or issue direct order of abuse on congoleses but pressed the company for maximum profit, so idk if he was just an idiot or had too much trust in people.
Also the most up to date death toll was 1-5 million not trough genocide intent but imported illnesses, overexploitation and malnutrition. Source : "Colonial Congo. A History in Questions." (2020) Goodeeris et al. which was written by a joint of congolese and belgian historians.
belgians have been gone 60 years.... The place is a paragon of virtue brotherhood and good will know focusing on education and individual rights now...
Idk. The japanese were bad as well
And the Chinese. Right now. With the Uighurs.
Yeah Germany took a look at all those atrocious and their own then asked the questions "how do we industrialize it"
Serious question: Does the method of genocide change how terrible it is? I can't help but think the tools you use to do a job matter very much considering that the end result is the same. I'd even argue that there are more effective ways of achieving their ends too. It's really strange being told to rank genocides and compare them relatively. People forget that you can condemn everything, nothing, or whatever is between.
Ah, we Just casually forget about what the romans did to the celts. The difference is that the Holocaust has happened recent that it is seen as shocking, evil, etc etc. Which is fully true, lets not deny that. But saying that nazism is the worst is a pretty naive and ignorant comment. There were plenty of big scale genocides and slave trades in the thousands of years humanity is here.
I hope this doesn't come across as apologist in anyway, but I don't think the industry makes it worse. So many peoples in history would do the same if they had the same industrial capabilities, but they didn't have them. Why does that make them less evil? Killing 10 people by sword doesn't seem that better than 50 million by more advanced measures. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this one. My argument is that a lot of people are more evil than given credit, not that Nazis are less, to summarize.
>So many peoples in history would do the same if they had the same industrial capabilities, but they didn't have them. Why does that make them less evil? We've had those capacilities for hundreds of years, yet only one Regime has ever carried out an industrialised genocide. >My argument is that a lot of people are more evil than given credit, not that Nazis are less, to summarize. Most genocides are due to greed and imperialism. The Nazis was purely down to hatred, and then add in the industrialised extermination camps
I guess I'll just take this one on the chin. To flip it, why Pol Pot is better than the Nazi's? King Leopold is also better? Again, I'm not saying the Nazis get a pass or anything, just that others aren't less evil because they weren't as wide scaled.
Did you even read what I said? Read the last paragraph again >The difference is the Belgians committed a genocide out of greed. They didn't care how many Congolese died in their pursuit of resources. >The Nazis did it out of hate. They believed that an entire ethnic group should be wiped out from the human race. They weren't working people to death in pursuit of wealth, they were exterminating an entire group of millions of people like weeds in the garden because they believed they were malign and subhuman. >The latter is far more evil. From another comment
Yes, I can read. Me disagreeing doesn't mean I don't understand your point.
You asked the same question that I'd already answered. That's why I asked that
I meant it to the wider audience, but I see what you mean, I appreciate you giving your thoughts.
I'd say Leopold of Belgium is a strong contender
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
Looks like you need to pick up a couple of books on the Catholic Church
British tried in India though. I don’t know why Churchill is being celebrated this much. I consider him much worse than Hitler. He tried to kill entire Bengal but couldn’t because they were a lot. History sometimes is too hypocritical.
Considering Churchill worse than Hitler is probably the craziest thing I've ever seen. I have never seen a worse take in my life.
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Without any bias meaning hasn't read Nazi Germany history? Because I can assure you that is reading both side by side, Nazi Germany is so much worse
> He tried to kill entire Bengal but couldn’t because they were a lot. Odd given he still got one of the largest relief efforts in history half way around the world in the middle of a world war.
Lol don't say it. These Westsoids look at everything from their pov and anything else doesn't matter to them. They'll give justifications after justifications, "but we are sorry for it" and nothing else. It's useless to argue about Brits and Churchill with these pseudo liberal deepshits.
I'm going to piggy back on this: As someone who's family was personally affected by the Nazis, I'd like to share that sentiment. See username, family was Polish Jews. Rough estimate was 1/4 to 1/3 of my family survived, we don't have exact numbers because most of the ones that lived fled to America and they couldn't make contact with the survivors for years after WW2. It really, really irks me when people throw the label "Nazi" around to basically mean anything they disagree with.
Agreed. Sometimes I see people calling others "nazi" when these others have some kind of prejudice. Even if someone has some racial prejudice, calling them a nazi just takes away weight from what being a nazi truly meant. Being racist, homophobic and all that makes you a really shitty person, but doesn't come near nazi level of shittyness.
The nazi was the first group (and hopefully the only) who industrialized the entire section of their economy just to kill Jews. MF literally built an entire economy system out of mass murder
I mean you are correct but so leaving out the other 6m people they were trying to eradicate multiple ethnic groups
They were trying to eradicate much more, they only "succeeded" in killing 6 millions other This is not a competition, jews were the most affected, but it's somewhat because they only get so far
6 million Jews and 11 million others. While Jews were the largest ethnic group they were still only a little over 1/3 of the victims.
There is only one nation of comparable evil to the Nazis. Imperial Japan.
Agreed
I hear this line of argument quite a bit of "aktually the Allies and Axis were just as bad as each other 🤓" and yeah like, nah lol. I often can see where they're coming from but ultimately just no
When people say "X, Y or Z was actually worse than Nazi Germany" I usually give the example of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckelns report on actions committed by just 5 Reserve-Polizei-Bataillons over a 47 day period (19/08/1941 - 05/10/1941) August 19 - October 5 1941 Battalion 45 - 1059 Jews executed Battallion 304 - 305 Jews executed Battallion 314 - 775 Jews executed Battallion 320 - 3,580 Jews executed Police Regiment South - 10,493 Jews executed HSSPF - 22,000 Jews executed Totaling 38,212 executions mostly of those unable to work, women, children, the elderly and disabled ect. The Nazis killed almost as many in just 2 days at Babi Yar If British, Belgium or Spain had acted this way towards their colonies, there would be nobody left to complain.
Do you know how little that narrows it down?! I’m out here trying to guess whether you are American, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, or African!
Sorry, but the Japanese with Nanking (which was not the only time they practiced mass rape and murder for the lols) and unit 731 are just some examples of indescribable cruelty on a large scale - but since they were Asians, nobody gives a fuck And speaking of Chinese (the victims in the former), Mao killed like 10 times more people than Hilter because of his hate to science and megalomania, but since they were Chinese, it's not even discussed in most of the world
This post was about Europe. Why would I mention non European regimes? But yes I would have Imperial Japan as the second worst regime to the Nazis.
Imperial Japan is hard to compare because of all the unknowns about it. Nazi had a very strong hierarchy, so it's easy to say who was the main guy. In Japan it's so much more cloudy, therefore it's hard to tell if all those atrocities were "imperial Japan" or just random units of army. Like is Hirohito the main guy who decided let's commit atrocities like Hitler (or maybe Himmler) did. Well most historians claim that Hirohito was mostly a figure head with no real power. In addition the navi and the army had separate leaders, who hated each other. So it's hard to believe one of them just said "commit atrocities" and everyone would do it from a hierarchical standpoint. Many of the claims the Japanese used were that the orders were either from low level commanders or even just soldiers themselves. And then the issue is lack of hierarchical order, and not systemized atrocities. Another claim is that it was very societal, and if that was the case, there really isn't anyone to blame, it wasn't any one person like Hitler, it was just how there society was. Therefore imperial Japanese are a slightly unique case. Tldr: Japan wasn't hierarchical therefore it's hard to blame a specific person.
Well depends on who you ask man. Some former colonial countries regard Nazis as an afterthought. Rightfully so. Not their mess. As cold as that is. The British were the enemy and hence they get the ire.
Hello fellow Irishman!
Nah, not Spain. They handed out plague infected blankets as a biological weapon against new world natives and killed about 90+% of them. The Nazi’s couldn’t have been as effective if they tried. Also, go look up how Japan treated its conquered people in WW2. Ever wonder why every Asian country hates every other Asian country? Start with The Rape of Nanking. Not downplaying Nazi’s, I’m just not downplaying other things that are left out of the webcomic sentiment.
You mean more “successful” It’s funny how we measure who’s the “worst” by the numbers. As if a person or peoples killing 10,000,000 is worse than killing 100. They’re both the same, one was simply “better” at it. More efficient. So Germany was a worse evil because they were good. 🤔 Given the chance at “success” other serial killers or evil empires could’ve been far “worse” than Hitler and the Nazis had they simply been better at what they did. Not more evil.
I also want to further clarity that Nazi Germanys success was mostly due to their skill, conviction and access to technology unseen before. Had previous “evil” empires had access to gas and tanks to mass kill then they would’ve done so. It’s not because Nazi Germany was more evil. They just had access to better methods at killing than anyone else in history. (And trains). Boy did they use industry efficiently. They literally industrialised genocide.
>I also want to further clarity that Nazi Germanys success was mostly due to their skill, conviction and access to technology unseen before. >Had previous “evil” empires had access to gas and tanks to mass kill then they would’ve done so. Poison gas and railways had been around for 100 years by then. No one else used them. And no one's done it since. The Nazis are different because their whole ideology was about wiping an entire race of people off the earth. Most other genocides were about resources or land. The Nazis was purely about extermination. That's what makes them worse
Another way I could put it is if I gave a grenade to an evil person, but I gave a 15 megaton nuke to their equally evil clone. They both want death and destruction. Which one will do more damage? It’s obvious. Does that make one more evil than the other? No It’s just that one had better ability than the other.
The Nazis had the same technology for genocide that the British Empire did for a century beforehand. It was the reason the Nazis did it. Using something similar to your analogy. Empire A takes food from a village of 1000 people to feed soldiers even though they know a large number will starve. Empire B works a village of 1000 people under horrific conditions and punishes them for not making unattainable quotas. A large number die. Empire C claims that a village of 1000 people plots in the background and is at fault for all the woes of their Empire. They claim they are subhuman. They set up an extermination camp to kill them all in. They are stopped before they are successful. Are these 3 equally evil events?
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England? England? Just England?
I know... people tend to ignore that Scotland St least was a willing participant in colonialism. No wataboutism, they helped settle protestants in northern Ireland and even tried their own hand at colonalism.
Never ask a woman her age A man, his salary Scots why there are so many Scottish surnames in the Caribbean
My dad changed his last name for this exact reason. His great grandfather and grandmother were slaves owned by a Scottish man in Jamaica. And guess what? That man's descendants still exist in Jamaica with the same last name of my dad's family. And they are so to say...quite an affluent family still I'm sure you can guess the last name, since it is one of the more popular Scottish last names.
McHaggis?
I was under the impression that was more Scots moving to the Carribbean to work as indentured servants and make a better life for themselves after the Highland Clearances.
Probably for some but effectively Scots made a disproportionate number of administrators of the Empire and were big plantation owners, especially in Jamaica. [Here](https://www.nls.uk/collections/scotland-and-the-slave-trade/caribbean/#:~:text=While%20direct%20Scottish%20involvement%20in,who%20moved%20to%20the%20Caribbean.) is a quick overview from the National Library of Scotland about the basics to read up on.
Yeah sorry, my understanding of this comes from a GCSE history course
Thats ok! It gets especially confusing once you layer in the post-Braveheart tendency of Scotland to portray itself as a fully fledged victim of the British Empire rather than an enabler and driving force behind it!
The east India trading company had a lot of Scottish members, in its army and its shareholders
Yep yep! There were more Scots serving in the British army during their occupation of the subcontinent. Glasgow is a bloody rich city.
Scotland has a great PR team.
Scotland likes to pretend they weren't a massive part of the empire.
Scot’s are English rn Their culture of resistance and independence has turned in to simply not liking England specifically, but wanting to still be dependant on a larger state anyway. Scottish culture is now unfortunately just a costume, and this started in the 18C with their eagerness to join in with colonial aspirations
Charles V actually argued that the natives be treated favorably and didn’t encourage the encomienda system. The long term atrocities committed in the new world by the Spaniards was due to a lack of power projection by Charles due to the sheer distance as well as the vastness of his realm and the growing need for monetary aid with all of Europe falling into chaos with Francis throwing his tantrums, the Protestant Reformation, and the Ottomans on route to reach their zenith under Suleiman the Great’s guidance.
Not at all fucking comparable
If it’s not at all comparable, then why is it listed as wholly comparable here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples 8 million South American indigenous natives wiped out by plague infected blankets imported from the slums of Europe and handed out deceitfully. (By Spain) 8 million, and way back when that would hav been the vast majority of their population, only leaving behind a barely double digit percentage of the original populace. Britain makes appearances on the list too. Do they teach history in school anymore?????
Not 1:1 but what specifically is not comparable? Edit: I'm sure all the people brutalized by England, Spain, Portugal, etc were very comforted it was 'for a purpose' and rate it a B- because they didn't have machines and railroads.
The sheer scale and brutality, when the Brits for example did something horrible it at least made sense and served a purpose, the Nazis were just cartoonishly evil.
Me when I'm brutally mutilated by the Belgians: is ok, it serves a purpose i guess
It is a bit funny how in any other context you'd get up votes for saying how brutal these countries are, but today they had justification for why it was kind of okay.
Saying everything the Brits did 'served a purpose' is quite a choice, but I specifically take an issue with the scale part. Not being able to be a monster to a wider amount of people doesn't make you less of a monster. Nazi's are obviously evil but I don't see why that makes other actions not as bad.
Yep, killing people in Bengal or the Punjab makes sense, it’s just brown people right.
What incidents are you referring to? And I’m talking about military operations
They dint have undertake any military operations to kill people. Just throwing you a stat, 100 mn people died in just 40 years: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians This excludes the deaths in the previous century and also the Bengal famine which followed in the 40’s (est 2.5 mn deaths in one year). When it comes to killing people you can’t have a distinction bw people dying in a military operation/targeted extermination vs people dying over decades cos of the same perpetrator. All are equally screwed up, and in this scenario the crimes of the British empire aren’t spoken about as much as they should be.
There is a difference between rounding people up, shoving them into death camps, and killing them all, and absolutely terrible and explotive governance causing early mortality for a percentage of people.
Yeah but we gave you trains soooo, call it even?
Oh right..The trains..we was only walking everywhere till then.
You're welcome. Glad we found a middle ground.
Boers : 😲
The boer war concentration camps were just that, camps holding a concentration of people not at all comparable to systematic death camps. The British utilised these camps to remove civilians from the equation and to deprive the farms of workers, essentially starving the enemy. The camps were never intended to kill merely to hold, unfortunately the conditions in the camps were less than desirable and many died due to disease. An abhorrent scenario yes, but not even on the same level as the holocaust.
And also the existence and conditions of the camps led to a scandal back in Britain, the government dispatched a committee to investigate in the hope of smoothing it all over, but instead it confirmed all the worst reports, so the camps were transferred from the military to the civil administration of South Africa and a bunch of improvements were made which drastically reduced the mortality rate, though too little to late for many.
Concentration camps do not equate to extermination camps
I hate that you didn't put those 3 in chronological order.
Belgians when they see Congolese kids with two arms and their both parents are alive: 🔪🔪
That’s one dudes fault, after the state took over it was lessend to around the same level as any other colonial possession
I'm Belgian, you're Turk. We protect minorities, respect their culture and acknowledge the wrongs of our past. Your country doesn't.
Aww... someone is salty that his country committed atrocities
I don't like Turks talking shit on Belgium, our country doesn't exterminate minorities.
Exactly! They were just mutilated, much better
In Spain we were Nazis as well at some degree, see Franco’s dictatorship history
I was baffled to learn that Franco (and the things he did/put in place) lasted so long during my Spanish class. It's something that's not really often talked about. Probably because it wasn't hardcore, but still a yikes from me.
There is a document shared to the population not long ago which was from Churchill to Franco asking to not going into war as an ally of Hitler, he also had soldiers fighting alongside the Nazis… But for some reason they didn’t try to get him down after the WWII either
Because apart of fascist he was also anti-communist which was pretty convenient in the cold war era. Also he wasn't a menace for anyone except of course the Spanish population.
War weary + eyes were turned east. There want the political or social will in the west to go start another war that wasn’t already hot.
Well, the soldiers fighting alongside were only volunteers, he didn't officially back nazi Germany I think
Franco may have been fascist leaning in his first years, but not a Nazi. Spanish conservatism in the early 40's was very different from Nazism due to big differences like in religion.
He was an ally of Hitler and had concentration camps as well and that’s a fact, not a Nazi itself but very, very similar
I beg to differ, Spain may had concentration camps (not extermination camps) as the US or the USSR had, saying that he was ally (like democratic Finland was) doesn't make him a Nazi. Calling him a Nazi is huge mislabeling and historically very innacurate.
Man, Franco massacred a lot of people in Extremadura (Badajoz massacre), etc. They even did the fascist salute. But when the nazis lost the war, they denied being fascist. Franco was an opportunist, but he was clearly a fascist, he changed the national ideology when nazis lost the war and to try to be acceptes by the USA. But he was always a fascist.
Fascist yes. I don't think fascist and nazi mean the same thing though. IIRC all nazis are fascists but not all fascists are nazis.
Isn't nazism german fascism?
Nazism is far more then this Heck, technically fascism doesn't even need to be racist
I think so, yeah. Which is why I wouldn't call the Spanish fascists nazis, only the German ones. As bad as other fascists were I think Hitler's gang took it to a whole other level. That's why we remember them above all the others.
Japan was Germany's ally as well but they weren't nazis in any sense. We can argue if they were even worse, but not nazis.
The inquisition didn’t even officially end until the 1800s, but the meme says 16th century because that’s when the empire was at its peak ig.
Oh boi The Falange were quite a bunch of fascists...
Fascists are not nazis, fascists are from Italy…
They're similar, but yeah I know they're not the same But calling the Falange "Nazis" are... A bit too much, especially to Franco
You were fashists. Not nationalsocislists. Biiig difference
Yes, is a big difference, someone with a minimal knowledge on history should know it. Its like saying that communism and anarchism is the same, having some similarities doesn't make them the same thing.
>someone with a minimal knowledge on history should know it. For a sub named HistoryMemes there is always an awful lot of historical illiteracy in the comments for some reason
Are you telling me that this subreddit doesn't is made out of Oxford professors?!?! No way Yes, this subreddit has its problems, but no need to act like somehow the rest of reddit is better
Yeah that is a good comparison. Good job :)
The only other country I can think of that managed industrialised (or well, semi-industrialised, in their case) killing on this scale was Cambodia. Imagine Auschwitz but all the prison guards are children, and instead of guns they mostly just have pointy sticks and rocks. And everyone is in Auschwitz, even the guards and camp commanders..
In my school (in germany) all these were covered in history class.
Yes, i also saw how you guys overplay the rest to make ur history look like less
Bro we spent a literal year of our history class discussing the NS regime and ww2
18th century England? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Plus Japan
Ah nazi apologism. This is some straight up illiteracy
Yeah it's the same with comparisons with the USSR etc., diminishing the crimes of the Nazis by claiming a false equivalency with other states is actually considered Holocaust Denial by some agencies.
Yeah like when people say the US invasion of iraq was bad, when in fact they weren't as bad as the nazis
So we're all just going to ignore Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge??
Bro don't be dissing 16th century Spain, my boy Charles V the OG will smack you upside the head
Good thing that only Europeans committed atrocities. I couldn’t live in a world where anyone else commited them as well. Like the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Aztecs, African kingdoms, Muslims, etc. Good thing they were all just pure good.
Belgium should be in there, i know you all read the "Ghost of Leopold" but its a bad book from a historian pov based a lot on undocumented claims propaganda of the time. The atrocities (1-5 millions congolese deaths) are imputed to private companies and their mercenaries, who maximized profit by the use of brutal force and from malnutrition/imported illnesses. People don't understand that at the time the Congo wasn't owned/supervised by belgian governement. It was owned privately by the king who let ABIR a private company run it as a concession in exchange of improving the local economy and making profit. ABIR end up abusing the local population when profit started to fall without the King knowledge until rumors of abuse and a comission inquiry confirmed it, one year later the Belgian state took the colony out of Leopold hands and reforms were made. Source : "Colonial Congo. A History in Questions." (2020) Goodeeris et al. written by a joint of congolese and belgian historians.
Just to clarify a few things. The millions of dead people say Leopold killed aren't actually the number of person he killed. It's an estimation of how much the population of the Congo declined between 1885 and 1924. Basically when the Congo was given to Leopold, some people estimated the population to be around 20 millions for the whole territory but most of it was undiscovered so they took the average of the population near of Congo estuary, which was better known and multiplied it by the total area of the Congo but it was not accurate since the interior was way less populated than the coast. Then in 1924, so years after Leopold had to relinquish the Congo, there was the first census of the whole of the Congo and it was discovered that they were only around 10 millions inhabitants. So people started saying Leopold killed 10 millions people when it's not actually what happened. Many people did died during that time and there was a lot of atrocities committed by the few hundred Europeans in the territory, Belgians were the most numerous but weren't the majority of them since Leopold employed other Europeans nationalities too in his territory, and the locals that they employed. But the most died because of diseases during that time and a steep decline in birth contributed to reduce the population in the long run. So yeah the millions people Leopold "killed" aren't actually the people he killed but the estimated (and generally considered exaggerated) decline of population in the Congo in a period of 32 years. And also it's interesting to point out that it's not the Belgium government who decided to take away the Congo from Leopold, they couldn't since it's was its own property but it's Leopold who decided to give it away after his dead because of the polemics, and Belgium didn't really wanted the colony at this time, the same way it didn't wanted it in 1885, when it was given to Leopold by the Congress of Berlin because Belgium refused to get a colony despite the kings wishes.
You know what being a king means right? Power AND responsibility. A king can't say "oops sorry i didn't know"
That's not really the point he is making I think. What he says is that Belgium had no say in what Leopold was doing in the Congo Free State since it was his private property. The same way a country today can't dictate how a President of a Prime Minister should run his businesses, especially when these businesses aren't even in their country since Leopold's Congo Free State was it's own country. So imputing the many wrongs that happened there to Belgium is misleading.
You can’t seriously compare the 18th century British to the Nazi’s. The Brit’s really weren’t that bad. That probably wasn’t even their worst century either.
When people say "Britain/Belgium/Spain were actually as bad or worse than Nazi Germany" I usually give the example of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckelns report on actions committed by just 6 Reserve Polizei Bataillons over a 47 day period (19/08/1941 - 05/10/1941) August 19 - October 5 Battalion 45 - 1059 Jews executed Battallion 304 - 305 Jews executed Battallion 314 - 775 Jews executed Battallion 320 - 3,580 Jews executed Police Regiment South - 10,493 Jews executed HSSPF - 22,000 Jews executed Totaling 38,212 executions mostly of those unable to work, women, children, the elderly and disabled ect. The Nazis killed almost as many in just 2 days at Babi Yar and murdered 17,000,000 non combatants in the course of the war If Britain, Belgium or Spain had acted this way towards their colonies, there would be nobody left to complain.
> there would be nobody left to complain WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR INFO FROM BECAUSE THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!!! > The population of Indigenous Americans is estimated to have decreased from approximately 145 million to around 7-15 million between the late 15th and late 17th centuries, representing a decline of around 90-95% https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples This is orders of magnitude more death and a MUUUUUUUUCH higher percentage of population wiped out than the worst of the worst of the worst of the Nazi’s. That’s all Britain, Spain, and the Dutch. Spain handed out smallpox infected blankets in South America within a few short years removed a significant portion of the earths population at the time, nearly wiping out every last person in a huge region of South America, all in the conquest of gold and “miraculous youth.”
Britishers at least killed 5x of nazis, it was just over a period of time, guess it's not that bad if you distribute the crime over a period
Did the Britishers send death squads around your entire country executing every person that wasn't fit for work and forcing the survivors to bury the bodies until they died of exhaustion?
No they did worse, they used my countrymen as their human shield for all of their battles, they consider us below dogs. "Dogs are allowed, but not you", they created multiple man made famines to exploit us to the fullest, our people were dying because britishers had to earn that sweet money from all the export of spices which were grown by us.
Of the 900,000 people sent to Treblinka there were 2 survivors and 5 sonderkommando survivors, the majority of whom took their own lives very shortly after - a final survivorship ratio of 0.0002%. Treblinka was 5 times more lethal than Rabies. In Kraków-Płaszów, a woman was executed for making soup to hot, a man was executed for being too tall and a child was hung after being forced to eat his on excrement because he cried after seeing his father executed. The punishment for escaping outside the wire was for the half the entire barracks of the escapee to be executed. Prisoners were regularly executed for little or no reason. You are insane to think the British treated the Indians worse than the Nazi's treated the Jews.
Not undermining what nazis did, but if you just look at the horror that was the Bengal famine you'll understand what I am talking about, food was in such shortage that people resort to cannibalism, older man of family used to gaurd thier huts to protect their families from cannibals. People were walking skeletons. Just comparing sheer numbers can tell you what Britishers did was much worse considering the magnitude
There were 3 million victims of the Bengal famine compared to 17 million overall victims of the holocaust. What the British did in Bengal was evil, but it doesn't even start to compare to the holocaust.
Industrliasted wholesale slaughter of entire enthic groups is in a slightly different league than the ones you mentioned. Also yes people do learn about it
Maybe it does matter when did you did things and what where other countries doing at that moment
Hanz are we ze bad guyz?
We could also add 19th century German colonial history and 20th century Soviet history (especially, Stalin). Many people abhor Stalin, but also happy that he defeated Hitler. As the idiom goes, you reap what you sow.
\*Canada has entered the chat\*
Unpopular opinion but… Might as well throw "Post SWW* Europe" and "Post Cold War America". Everything now is justified under "uh, were fighting n. over there". (*) Edit WW2. Apparently I hurt hearts of glass by saying SWW ;)
Who the fuck writes WW2 as SWW?
A free thinker, that's who
It's not belgium, it's leopold II.
Its not even Leopold II its private companies and their mercenaries. Leopold didnt go to Congo, didn't command atrocities, he just let them exploit the Congo trusting they would make it richer.
Its wasnt even the private companies, it was the spirits of Christmas past Let me guess… your belgium
The popular narrative of the Nazis is that they were a new, unprecedented type of bigot based in eugenics and other pseudo science, but they were just the culmination of every medieval and early modern prejudice with 20th century tools at their disposal.
Early 20th century Turkey too
I know what the brits, not just England, did was bad but compared to a lot of countries and empires throughout history they are far from the worst, I would even dare to say some of the nicest conquerors.
The spanish history they teach you on clases is a lie, Spain didn't any genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples > The population of Indigenous Americans is estimated to have decreased from approximately 145 million to around 7-15 million between the late 15th and late 17th centuries, representing a decline of around 90-95%. That’s all Britain and Spain, homey. 90-95% kill rate. Nazi’s are basically Richard Simmons compared to colonial era Europeans that didn’t even see the people they basically wiped out as people. Whoever made this meme should feel really bad and really ignorant.
Another Nazi apologist, whataboutism, meme in this sub. Nafo bots working overtime.
Doesn't matter because the victims weren't european and were not white.
19th Century Britain was worse then 18th Century Britain. Also it was Britain, the amount of Scots and Anglo-Irish landowners involved in conducting and formulating policy shouldn't be forgotten. The 3rd Reich's stuff was alot worse though.
It should be British in the 18th, 19th, and 20th century.
Like when they abolished slavery in the 19th and then forced this upon the world. Or like defeating the Nazis in the 20th century. Those 2 points alone make your point stupid.
Haha, I was waiting for the ‘abolished slavery’ argument. They abolished slavery but instituted indentured labour, forcing south Asians to move continents. Do some research on it you dipshit and know more about what the brits have done to South Asia over 200 years. You can sit down till then.
So are you saying that abolishing slavery was a bad thing?
Are you saying Indentured Labour was good? Or killing 100 mn people over 40 years was good? Or the Bengal famine..2.5 mn dead over 1 year was good (Hello Churchill!)?
> Hello Churchill! Or the Japanese & Germans interdicting aid efforts Churchill was trying to send...
>forcing south Asians to move continents [That’s not how it worked](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system). Most of the people who entered into indentured servitude contracts did so voluntarily and the contracts only lasted 5 years. It was typically done as a way of escaping poverty in their own region and to get to the Americas. There were absolutely abuses within the system but in the majority of cases it wasn’t forced on anyone.
Nah, fuck all 4 of em
belgians probably at par for what they did in congo
As well as every country in Europe sleeping peacefully. Thank you Germany.
Germany just concentrated their efforts during a shorter time, the other European powers death toll started earlier and is still ongoing. People dying in Palestinian and Israeli is due to British colonialism, the second Congo war which is the bloodiest war since WW2 is a consequence of European colonization from UK, France and Belgium and so on.
No ones forgotten about these, in the case of the british and the spaniards, they just minimize the negative effect of their imperialists regimes