Holocaust: can it happen again?

It IS happening.

So yeah, it can happen.

I'd like to think it can't happen again in the developed world.

Well, that's malleable. Developed nations come with an expiration date.

I misread your post. Since the Great Purge wasn't capitalized in your previous post, I'd assumed you were calling the entirety of the democide a purge a la the comments regarding Pol Pot. Anyway, I too think it's beside to point to argue whether anything can mirror the Holocaust in its efficacy, when the thread is clearly about organized genocide.

So what they did in Rwanda wasn't organized genocide?

Just because they didn't have clean uniforms or professional gas didn't stop both sides of the Sri Lankan Civil war from total annihilation of whole villages into mass graves.

Let's not even begin with the systematic sweeps in Syria.

Somalia alone is it's own horror story.

I didn't say that. In fact, I've been arguing for exactly the opposite since the beginning of this thread.

Considering the fact that most Americans I know are decent folks, yet don't really blink when they read about all the brown people we've killed in our senseless wars, yes, yes the same human weaknesses that caused the holocaust are still alive and well.

Re: the original point, the Auschwitz-II extermination facility was only in operation from 1943 onward to handle Undesirables categorically unfit-for-work (e.g. small children, elderly) and formerly fit-to-work slaves which had been expended/used up by private companies (Ford, Blohm & Voss, Vauxhall, etcetc) and thereby rendered unfit-for-work. The facility only handled a small minority of the Holocaust's victims. You might want to check out our useful notes article on The Holocaust for a brief summary of the rest.

To address your question directly, it is certainly possible to replicate the pressures upon the 'Hiwis' ('Hilfswiliger', 'willing-to-help'). 'Hiwis' were Soviet POW offered the choice of death or service, they could be and were tortured and executed by their German handlers if they refused to kill people.

On the other hand, replicating the pressures upon the German volunteer units would be more difficult. One would need to:

• Get them to bond with their co-workers.
• Get them to feel that they would be letting their co-workers down if they didn't kill those people.
• Get them to feel that it was legal/okay to kill those people.
• (Optional) Get them to feel that killing those people was a good thing.

While this is relatively more difficult than dealing with 'Hiwi'-equivalents, it is not actually difficult.

TLDNR: in extreme circumstances (famine, war) it is not difficult to implement a genocide. However, certain demographics are easier to target than others.

Well, I'd say that while it could happen, it's less likely than this thread getting necro'd after four years of inactivity.

I'm going out on an limb nere to say that history has an way of repeating itself in terms of genocide. Ghenghis Khan, I remember an few case of genocide from the last time that I've skimmed through an Bible, Stalin, the Third Reich, the motivation that led to Custer's last stand, the shit that went on in Africa a few years ago, the KKK, the current wave of religious extremists, the list goes on...

Now the real question is what could cause the next Holocaust.?

edited 17th Feb '16 2:06:46 PM by RabidTanker

If you ask me, Donald Trump's populist movement has the potential to create a disturbing Fourth Reich based on foisting America's problems upon the entirety of South America.

I've heard rumours he's gonna make a Schutzstaffel equivalent.

Well, he's certainly trained under the master.

That's basically just a rumor made from Trump-hysteria. Even in a world where Trump got elected president, what Congress is going to make him take any of the actions he actually wants to take, nevermind all the shit he's promised to take, and never mind the pseudo-Hitler actions that have been unnecessarily attached to him? The Republican party doesn't like him, the Democratic party demonizes him, it'll be one of the few times in history that Congress is actually united to fuck over one guy's plans.

In any case, it would take a lot more than just one bad presidency to lead us into a full on Nazi Germany situation. Looking at the political turmoils that leads to shit like this (insane mass disaster, war, economic collapse on a scale that makes 2007 look like a minor bump in the road) happening in history, the variables just aren't in place. Certainly there are things being done today that could one day lead to such a scenario happening, but the amount of things that would have to go wrong in succession to lead to Hitler 2 is simply, well, unrealistic.

I'm not saying that only poor people can do the genocide, but radicalization is much easier when you have nothing left to lose.

Can the Holocaust happen again? Of course it can happen again. It can always happen again. But I suspect the question is more along the lines of "can it happen now, in the 1st world of the 21st century", of which the answer is "no, not for a while."

You know. I hate summoning Godwin but...

Sounds exactly like what they said about Hitler...

This topic is Goodwin bait anyways.

Hitler also came up in the wake of the then worst war in human history that left his home country devastated and desperate. You cannot compare the political situation of the USA since 2000 to anything of the sort. It diminishes the magnitude of the Holocaust and the genocides since it to try and compare the situations leading up to them to the relatively more temperate state of other nations currently.

EDIT: Also I need to stop clicking on The Atlantic links. I always spend the next ten minutes getting irrationally frustrated at nothing.

edited 17th Feb '16 2:49:45 PM by InAnOdderWay

Economically, it was not only, or that much, the World War I that spurred Germany into World War II.

It was The Great Depression.

Now, I am no historian, but I do not think the U.S was immune to the Great Depression, or immune to any potential recession in the future.

It's not Godwining, some of Trump's ideas are Facism, the comparison is valid for him.

However it's not valid for the US in general, the system simply isn't there for a Trump Facist takeover like happened in Germany, the US president doesn't have the ability to suspend the constitution and basic civil liberties, additionally Trump would be unlikely to be able to win over the needed groups for the required constitutional amendments for the creation of a dictatorship.

Not even if terrorrist attacks multiplied dozenfold in the United States?

Not even if a sympathetic, desperate Supreme Court and Congress in the hands of one desperate, fearfilled group decides to give a few concessions?

Look at the Patriot Act after 9/11.

The comparison could become valid, but it's not right now. The US is not currently at risk of having two third of both the senate and house be willing to support Facism, if things change then yeah it could become a very real possibility.

Yes look at the patriot act, then look at the enabling act, the patriot act is bad, but it's no enabling act.

edited 17th Feb '16 4:58:35 PM by Silasw

I'm not saying that it's impossible, but- actually, scratch that, I am. I'm saying that it would take a massive crash, war, economic collapse, and literal panic before governments and people became desperate enough to accept fascism on the scale of the Nazi Party. And no, I don't think the current global climate is that close to that point... yet. While certainly there are too many variables to be certain of this even in the near future (terrorism and the Middle East in general, North Korea, whatever the fuck Russia's trying to do, etc.), what's important to understand is that all these factors would have to go south at the same time in one big house of cards collapse.

And while obviously if such an event were looming on the distant horizon then the foundations for it are most definitely being laid today, but if it were just an economic collapse, or just an increase in terrorism, or "just" the breakout of war, things might not go totally to shit.

In the US that's true but I'd be carful about applying that everywhere, there's a serious rise of Facism occurring in both Hungary and Poland at the moment.

Can't really debate that, I'm no expert in world politics.

And its starting to rear its ugly head in France, Sweden and other European nations; though those parties are not in power and probably won't win outright. A far-right party is the junior member of the governing coalition in Denmark as well.

Poke your head in the Eastern European thread, belive me the folks in there would love the chance to explain how shitty the regimes in Poland and Hungary are.

In the US? While ethnic cleansing is probably not impossible in the event of a Republican loon (in other words Trump) winning, I doubt it will be a Holocaust level campaign of extermination. Mass deportation, more likely.

What does concern me is the base (in particular the Internet base) for the... crazier parts of the Republican party becoming the modern day Blackshirts.