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Last night Michael @McFaul made a comparison between Putin and Hitler that was morally shocking, literally wrong, and also technically wrong. Since military scholars like him may care about the third part, I'll explain it in this thread… @AliVelshi @maddow: this is for you too @MaddowBlog/1502499687290617856Permalink On twitter.com
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This morning @McFaul acknowledged the moral failure and may have grasped the literal mistake too. @McFaul/1502640207622983681Permalink On twitter.com
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The obvious moral failing here is that Hitler is synonymous with genocide on an industrial scale, so one shouldn't make the comparison unless that's what you see.Permalink On twitter.com
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Significantly, much of that genocide took place in mass shootings *during invasions*, one of the first and largest being at Babyn Yar near Kyiv. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kiev-and-babi-yar So this is definitely the wrong place to fuck up this comparison.Permalink On twitter.com
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Still, @McFaul was making a narrower point about "ethnic Germans, German-speaking people." The obvious literal problem is that numerous Germans and German speakers were also killed in concentration camps, particularly German and German-speaking Jews and Roma.Permalink On twitter.com
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Auschwitz, while currently located in Poland (Oswiecim) was on Reich territory during the war. And it killed numerous German Jews, as well as some German-nationals who were non-Jews. The Auschwitz Museum would like a word: @AuschwitzMuseum/1502636091584745475Permalink On twitter.com
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But, but… @McFaul might protest, that's not what I meant. He is looking for a narrow comparison between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its treatment of German-speaking areas that done by the Nazis. I'm here to oblige. @McFaul/1502640208692617217Permalink On twitter.com
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In September 1939 (with some prior action a few days before), Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Part of the rationale was the incorporation of German-speaking areas, as had been accomplished in the Anschlüss of Austria and the cession of Sudetenland at Munich.Permalink On twitter.com
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In Poland, however, Germany resorted to bombing and invasion. Blitzkreig. From the Western perspective, this was the start of World War II, so it should be more prominently remembered.Permalink On twitter.com
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And the very first action of that September was the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) bombing of Wieluń, a town less than 20km from the German border, solidly in the zone that Germany disputed.Permalink On twitter.com
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The town was undefended. The bombing destroyed three quarters of its buildings and killed at least 127 people, likely many more.Permalink On twitter.com
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Despite the wanton destruction of the town, its ethnic German residents were incorporated into the Reich. Its German and Yiddish speaking Jewish residents were put into a tiny local ghetto.Permalink On twitter.com
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Four months later, ethnic Germans and the Jewish leadership were made to gather for the first mass hanging of Jews—10 were hung, and 10 more made to carry out the killings. Text below from Philip Jolly, Jewish Wielun - a Polish Shtetl, 2010.Permalink On twitter.com
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As best I can tell, the Nazi military carried out a terror bombing of the town of Wieluń for many of the same reasons that Russia is bombing majority-Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine: they're closer to the border and the damage may threaten those further in.Permalink On twitter.com
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However, it's also evident that many Russian-speaking Ukrainians now support the defense of Ukraine in a way that few German speakers in the Lodz region did.On twitter.com