History What are some of your most contraversial takes on history?

[Scottty]

There's some horrible stuff back then, and even today.

There's still Australian Aborginals . There might be no pureblood Tasmainan Aborginals, but there are at least half bloods, and there are quite a few from the mainland. On a similar note, there's still quite a few North American Indians, amongst other native groups.

If there were any genocidal campains aimed at these groups, they didn't finish it, and it's pretty damn likely they could have. Only other colonists could have stopped them, if they had that kind of numbers and power.

Here in South Africa, there are now many times more black people than there were back in 1910 - their numbers doubled again and again over the 20th century. But this doesn't stop the anti-white Left from calling the Afrikaner nationalist government's racial segregation polices a "genocide".

Now that I'm thinking about such statements, I know of people, right now, who will openly say "Kill all white people!" and get cheers. Very few are seriously trying it. (Although, there's some terrible things happening.....)

There you have it. They accuse others of what they themselves with to do to them. And gradually we are seeing the mask dropping - they are ceasing to even pretend to be pretending to believe in civilized values.

 

[bintananth]

Here in South Africa, there are now many times more black people than there were back in 1910 - their numbers doubled again and again over the 20th century. But this doesn't stop the anti-white Left from calling the Afrikaner nationalist government's racial segregation polices a "genocide".

Apartheid pretty much meant that anyone with even a single drop of non-white ancestry wasn't actually "white" no matter how blonde and blue eyed they were.

Good riddence to such nonsense.

 

[Scottty]

Apartheid pretty much meant that anyone with even a single drop of non-white ancestry wasn't actually "white" no matter how blonde and blue eyed they were.

No, it did not. Please stop making statements based on ignorance.
For your information, the "one drop rule" is an American thing. In South Africa, it was perfectly possible to be classified as White, despite having non-zero Black or Coloured ancestry.
Especially if you were so "blonde and blue eyed" that no one looking at you would ever guess you weren't 100% European in your ancestry.
Also, people who were born of one race could apply to be "reclassified" as another, assuming your appearance was borderline. The line between Black and Coloured, and between Coloured and White, was in a sense rather subjective. But we didn't have just two "races" in South Africa, we had at least 5 or 6.

Good riddence to such nonsense.

Speak for yourself.

 

[WolfBear]

Here's an unpopular historical take: I think that Miklos Horthy should have avoided making any peace overtures to the Allies until October 1944. Had he done this, a grater percentage of Hungarian Jewry would have likely survived the Holocaust relative to real life. And his own fate as well as Hungary's fate likely would not have been any different.

Another unpopular take: Chaim Rumkowski's strategy in the Lodz Ghetto, however brutal and tragic as it was, was probably the right one. Had the July 20th Plot actually succeeded, then there would have been a very real possibility that an additional 67,000 Lodz Jews' lives would have been spared from the Holocaust as a result of Rumkowski's efforts. That's an extremely huge number of people being saved from mass murder! The Nazis were going to mass murder most of Lodz's Jews either way, but a huge fraction of them (albeit still a minority of them) could have still been saved had the July 20th Plot succeeded due to Rumkowski's strategy of buying additional time for a large fraction of Lodz Jews by strongly cooperating with the Nazis.

 

[Simonbob]

Here's an unpopular historical take:

I can't speak on this one, it's not something I know about.

 

[WolfBear]

I can't speak on this one, it's not something I know about.

Most of Greater Hungary's Jews got murdered in the Holocaust because Hungary tried to defect from the Axis and especially tried to do so prematurely.

 

[Simonbob]

Most of Greater Hungary's Jews got murdered in the Holocaust because Hungary tried to defect from the Axis and especially tried to do so prematurely.

So.....

Good idea, badly executed?

 

[WolfBear]

So.....

Good idea, badly executed?

Yes, pretty much. Badly executed due to it being prematurely executed. Compare what Hungary tried to do with the pitch-perfect timing of King Michael's Coup in Romania:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Romanian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Romania remained loyal to the Axis until that point in time, which is why the Jews in the Romanian Old Kingdom territories plus southern Transylvania were overwhelmingly spared from the Holocaust. And when Romania abruptly switched sides, this move came so suddenly that the Nazis didn't have time to properly react. Soviet troops were already at Romania's gates and they managed to quickly occupy almost all of Romania before the Nazis could do this.

 

[WolfBear]

Here's another unpopular take:

Poland deserved to have an Axis collaborationist government during World War II since that would have likely been the only realistic way to save a larger percentage of Polish Jewry after the Fall of France (and without having the Axis win the war, of course). 90% of Poland's Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust, but in Europe outside of Poland, around 50% of the Jewish population survived the Holocaust (with great variance by country, obviously). A Polish collaborationist Axis government could have perhaps somewhat reduced the Jewish Holocaust death toll in Poland.

Based on my own rough calculations, around 60% of global Ashkenazi Jewry survived the Holocaust. But this figure increases to 75% if one excludes Polish Jewry, 90% of whom were murdered in the Holocaust. This means that outside of Poland, 3 out of every 4 Ashkenazi Jews throughout the world were still alive after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, albeit in a sizable number of cases due to them living in places such as Britain and North America (though a lot of Soviet Jews were successfully evacuated to the Soviet interior in 1941-1942 as well, thus surviving the Holocaust that way).

 

[Doomsought]

Poland deserved to have an Axis collaborationist government during World War II since that would have likely been the only realistic way to save a larger percentage of Polish Jewry after the Fall of France (and without having the Axis win the war, of course). 90% of Poland's Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust, but in Europe outside of Poland, around 50% of the Jewish population survived the Holocaust (with great variance by country, obviously). A Polish collaborationist Axis government could have perhaps somewhat reduced the Jewish Holocaust death toll in Poland.

I'm not sure how well this would work out. Mussulini didn't really care about the Jewish thing, but he caved into Hitler on the matter when the Italians became rebellious against his rule and he became dependent on the SS to stay in power.

 

[WolfBear]

I'm not sure how well this would work out. Mussulini didn't really care about the Jewish thing, but he caved into Hitler on the matter when the Italians became rebellious against his rule and he became dependent on the SS to stay in power.

If one wants to be fair to Mussolini, though, around 80% of Italian Jews did survive the Holocaust. Could have been even better for them, of course, but @sillygoose told me that Italian defection in 1943 might have been necessary for the Allies to win the war, unfortunately.

Hungary's 1944 defection, on the other hand, was indeed unnecessary and resulted in over half a million of Hungarian Jews getting murdered. Hungary should have stuck it out to the bitter end on the condition that Hitler would not have either murdered or deported its Jewish population. Still, even for Greater Hungary, something like 30% of its Jewish population survived the Holocaust, primarily in Budapest, where the Nazis did not have the necessary time to complete their deportations.

 

[sillygoose]

Here's another unpopular take:

Poland deserved to have an Axis collaborationist government during World War II since that would have likely been the only realistic way to save a larger percentage of Polish Jewry after the Fall of France (and without having the Axis win the war, of course). 90% of Poland's Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust, but in Europe outside of Poland, around 50% of the Jewish population survived the Holocaust (with great variance by country, obviously). A Polish collaborationist Axis government could have perhaps somewhat reduced the Jewish Holocaust death toll in Poland.

Based on my own rough calculations, around 60% of global Ashkenazi Jewry survived the Holocaust. But this figure increases to 75% if one excludes Polish Jewry, 90% of whom were murdered in the Holocaust. This means that outside of Poland, 3 out of every 4 Ashkenazi Jews throughout the world were still alive after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, albeit in a sizable number of cases due to them living in places such as Britain and North America (though a lot of Soviet Jews were successfully evacuated to the Soviet interior in 1941-1942 as well, thus surviving the Holocaust that way).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland#Political_collaboration

Here were the potential leaders that the Germans contacted IOTL, but all rejected the offers.

If one wants to be fair to Mussolini, though, around 80% of Italian Jews did survive the Holocaust. Could have been even better for them, of course, but @sillygoose told me that Italian defection in 1943 might have been necessary for the Allies to win the war, unfortunately.

They could have still won without the Italians, but it would have been a lot harder.

 

[Cherico]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland#Political_collaboration

Here were the potential leaders that the Germans contacted IOTL, but all rejected the offers.

I'm not going to blame the poles for their heroism.

 

[sillygoose]

I'm not going to blame the poles for their heroism.

I wasn't. Just providing information for a potential what if.

 

[WolfBear]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland#Political_collaboration

Here were the potential leaders that the Germans contacted IOTL, but all rejected the offers.


They could have still won without the Italians, but it would have been a lot harder.

Here are some Poles who were willing to collaborate, from the very same article:

A group of eight low-ranking Polish politicians and officers broke with the Polish Government and in Lisbon, Portugal, addressed a memorandum to Germany, asking for discussions about restoring a Polish state under German occupation, which was rejected by the Germans. According to Czeslaw Madajczyk, in view of the low profile of the Poles involved and of Berlin's rejection of the memorandum, no political collaboration can be said to have taken place.[23]

Shortly after the German occupation began, pro-German right-wing politician Andrzej Świetlicki formed an organization - the National Revolutionary Camp - and approached the Germans with various offers of collaboration, which they ignored. Świetlicki was arrested and executed in 1940.[25] Władysław Studnicki, another nationalist maverick politician and anti-communist publicist,[26] and Leon Kozłowski, a former Prime Minister, each favored Polish-German cooperation against the Soviet Union, but they too were rejected by the Germans.[25]

But they were not good enough for the Nazis! One of them even got executed by the Nazis! Which was an extremely huge tragedy for Poland's Jewish population, since even raising the percentage of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors from 10% to 20% would have saved an additional 300,000-350,000 Polish Jewish lives.

Just how much harder would winning have been without the Italians?

 

[Yinko]

A Polish collaborationist Axis government could have perhaps somewhat reduced the Jewish Holocaust death toll in Poland.

There's this video I once saw, of a Jewish woman who was released from the work camps to return to Warsaw, being chased by children in the street who were throwing stones at her. Somehow I doubt that an axis sympathizer Poland would have resulted in fewer deaths, given the Polish sentiments before, during and after towards the foreign incursion.

 

[WolfBear]

There's this video I once saw, of a Jewish woman who was released from the work camps to return to Warsaw, being chased by children in the street who were throwing stones at her. Somehow I doubt that an axis sympathizer Poland would have resulted in fewer deaths, given the Polish sentiments before, during and after towards the foreign incursion.

Romania was also fiercely anti-Semitic (just look at the Iasi pogrom) and yet a huge part of its Jews survived because Ion Antonescu felt that this was more useful than having them dead, in part because he was angry at Hitler for not returning Northern Transylvania to Romania and in part because he wanted to get a better peace settlement for Romania in the event that the Axis would have lost the war.

Ultimately, this resulted in Romania having much more Jews than Poland had after the end of World War II, in spite of the situation being reversed before the war:

YIVO | Population and Migration: Population since World War I

yivoencyclopedia.org

 

[sillygoose]

Here are some Poles who were willing to collaborate, from the very same article:

But they were not good enough for the Nazis! One of them even got executed by the Nazis! Which was an extremely huge tragedy for Poland's Jewish population, since even raising the percentage of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors from 10% to 20% would have saved an additional 300,000-350,000 Polish Jewish lives.

They weren't the ones the Nazis wanted:

Unlike the situation in most German-occupied European countries where the Germans successfully installed collaborationist governments, in occupied Poland there was no puppet government.[7][11][12][13] The Germans had initially considered the creation of a collaborationist Polish cabinet to administer, as a protectorate, the occupied Polish territories that had not been annexed outright into the Third Reich.[13][14][15] At the beginning of the war German officials contacted several Polish leaders with proposals for collaboration, but they all refused.[16][17] Among those who rejected the German offers were Wincenty Witos, peasant party leader and former Prime Minister;[18][13][19] Prince Janusz Radziwiłł; and Stanisław Estreicher, prominent scholar from the Jagiellonian University.[20][21][22][12]

I have a feeling had those particular people accepted they'd have strived to save Jews...but also would have been targeted for execution by the Home Army:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Heads

Just how much harder would winning have been without the Italians?

That's a big topic, but for starters consider that something like 35 German divisions were needed to replace all the surrendering Italian ones all around the Mediterranean and opened up campaigns like in the Aegean as well as fighting all over Italy and occupied territories (for instance 2 Italian divisions joined Tito's Partisans). Had the Germans been able to spare those divisions and/or use them to defend Italy (and other territories) things would have been considerably tougher for the Allies.

Another big deal would have been saving the 5 division mechanized corps of elite Italian troops around Rome, some of which had the latest and best Italian gear like the P.26/40 tank. They'd have destroyed the Anzio landings if still committed to fight out the war. Then during the invasion of Italy in September 1943 having the Italians onside could have actually caused the invasion to fail in the most important sectors.

 

[WolfBear]

They weren't the ones the Nazis wanted:

I have a feeling had those particular people accepted they'd have strived to save Jews...but also would have been targeted for execution by the Home Army:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Heads

How many additional Polish Jews do you think that they would have saved? But Yeah, being a Shaheed (Martyr) is not exactly attractive even to save lives. Not everyone is Raoul Wallenberg.

 

[Yinko]

How many additional Polish Jews do you think that they would have saved? But Yeah, being a Shaheed (Martyr) is not exactly attractive even to save lives. Not everyone is Raoul Wallenberg.

There's also the part where no one gave a shit about the Jews until it was politically convenient. Anti-Semitism was only a popular rallying cry when it became a means of crucifying the defeated enemy. The US turned away of cruise ship filled with refugee Jews in New York harbor. A lot of that political expedience seems to have come from the USSR looking for a way to make things worse in the settlement after the war, hence why Nikitchenko was the main push behind the holocaust part of the trails despite the USSR not wanting the Jews to exist in their lands and actively persecuting them.