8 ms·

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

54 points by yummyfajitas 11y ago

dalke 11y ago
What an odd opinion piece. It seems to suggest that the Jews of Nazi occupied countries were merely missing arms in order to significantly deter the Wehrmacht that was taking on the combined forces of the Soviet, British, and US military. Yet it doesn't explain why the French people in Nazi occupied countries, who had a larger gun culture, were so (relatively) easily subdued and kept pacified. If the thesis is correct, it would seem to suggest that the two-state solution might be achieved by simply delivering massive amounts of arms to the Palestinians. But I can't help in reading it that it's an advocacy piece supporting a certain US view towards the right to bear arms, and subject to 'hypothesis myopia', where 'investigators fixate on collecting evidence to support just one hypothesis; neglect to look for evidence against it; and fail to consider other explanations.' (Quoting http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-and-how-they-can-stop-1.18517 http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-an... .) As evidence of one thing I think is odd, I'll note that the quote from the 1967 "International Society for the Prevention of Crime", which concluded "defensive measures are the most effective means for the prevention of genocide" only appears in a handful of web search results, many by the same author as this, and the others from US sources which appear to want minimal gun controls. That's hardly suggestive of a wide-spread agreement that that view is correct. I attempted to verify the quote, to learn the context, but found very little even about the organization/meeting. DDG at https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22International+Society+for+the+Prevention+of+Crime%22&t=ffsb https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22International+Society+for+the+P... only finds 6 matches, including this WaPo opinion piece. Ditto for Google. Only one is not derived from this opinion piece, that being the author's earlier paper at https://www.saf.org/journal/19/kopel.pdf https://www.saf.org/journal/19/kopel.pdf . That paper in turn references 'V.V. Stanciu, “Reflections on the Congress for the Prevention of Genocide,” in Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, vol. 7, ed., Livia Rothkirchen (Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Vashem, 1968), p. 187'. The only other paper I found which cites that reference is David Caplan, in "Weapons Control Laws: Gateways to Victim Oppression and Genocide", at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-5974-4_18 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-5974-4_1... , which also appears to argue for weak gun controls. (I verified that the cited source does exist; see http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/studies/issues/index.asp#!prettyPhoto http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/studies/issue... . Stanciu appears to have been a French lawyer and criminologist.) Using a reference from 1967 from what appears to be an obscure source make me think it's a result of quote mining. Is this view an outlier specifically chose to back a predetermined hypothesis? Why reference something that's older than I am - is there really nothing newer? Given the number of genocides since 1967 (Rwanda, Red Terror in Ethiopia, Cambodian Genocide, 1971 Bangladesh atrocities, and the Nigerian Civil War all seem ways to test that thesis), surely those would provide additional insight the relationship between strong gun control laws and genocide. Could we have prevented the genocide in Rwanda by air-dropping a bunch of arms on those being killed? Indeed, I found just such a paper when trying to find out more about Stanciu. This paper is "Rethinking Approaches to Prevention under the Responsibility to Protect Agency and Empowerment within Vulnerable Populations" at at http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/1875984x-00604007 http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.... . > The paper considers a number of historical case studies in which targeted groups were able to leverage their own agency, often with assistance from others, to reduce this vulnerability. These include cases that culminated in genocide, namely the experiences of German and Austrian Jews under Nazi rule, and negative cases studies in which a demonstrable risk of mass atrocities was not realised, such as the experiences of Yemenite Jews in the first half of the twentieth century and those of the Bahá’í community in Iran since the 1979 Iranian revolution. These cases suggest that assisting persecuted populations to empower themselves can be an effective way to promote resilience to mass atrocities. and the author of that piece has done a lot of research on genocide http://ro.uow.edu.au/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Mayersen%22%20author_fname%3A%22Deborah%22&start=0&context=119687 http://ro.uow.edu.au/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Mayersen... .
- douche 11y ago
  Last week, one of the U.S. presidential candidates made a rather ignorant statement about gun control and the Holocaust. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt is the immediately obvious example to look at. This piece is really an advertisement for the author's upcoming book, and this piece seems pretty obviously cribbed from one of his chapters. It reads less oddly if you read the title of the book, and go look at the description on the Amazon link, and realize that it fits into a philosophical work on the justifiable use of force in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I was unaware of the potential political implications of this article. I'd probably not have submitted had I known that. I'm not following the election horserace, this was just an interesting historical article that came up in my feed.
    - douche 11y ago
      It's not a bad piece of history writing. It's just going to bring out the gun-control debaters. The Warsaw Jews did pretty well, considering they had less arms and ammunition on hand than you'd find in a rural US WalMart. Victory was not an option - a year later, the considerably larger, better-equipped Warsaw Uprising failed as bloodily, when Soviet forces nearly on the outskirts of the city failed to raise a finger in support.
      - dalke 11y ago
        There are several different styles of history writing. One is to describe what happened. For example, there are histories of battles, and of Krakatoa, and of Newton, which follow more or less a timeline. Another is to identify underlying patterns and trends that help understand what happened, and hopefully can be applied elsewhere. For examples, how did the introduction of light mobile guns by Gustavus Adolphus change the battlefield? Why did the explosion of Krakatoa have a big cultural impact as well as physical one? How are Newton's view on alchemy and biblical research connected to his work on physics? The first is more descriptive, and the second is more predictive. Both are good history. Both are scientific, but call for different sorts of research. Both require extensive literature analysis. The latter requires more work to come up with alternative hypothesis and relevant comparisons, in order to test and disprove hypotheses. This article does both. I think it does best at the descriptive aspects of the event. But it uses a historical model that isn't well tested, but could be tested by looking towards other genocides to see if the model fits. If the model doesn't fit in a more general sense, then in the context of US gun control laws, it's a curiosity at best, and not something that can be used in decision making. It is trying to making that comparison, and not limit itself to the uprising, which is why I regard it as a bad piece of historical writing.
mozumder 11y ago
The implication here is that an armed American population would be able to defeat a tyrannical US government. This is the same US government that's armed with nuclear weapons, tanks with composite armor, a hacker network that would make Google blush, and populist democratic backing. Additionally, this is the same US government has killed over 600,000 of its own citizens before for rebelling. It is the height of sociopathic narcissism to think individuals or small bands of "freedom fighters" would be able to defeat such a system. Smart people would instead work WITH the system to achieve their objectives, instead of working against it like a buffoon. Personal firearms should be removed throughout a modern society.
- benjohnson 11y ago
  >>It is the height of sociopathic narcissism to think individuals or small bands of "freedom fighters" would be able to defeat such a system. Wholesale defeat of tyranny isn't necessary - a deterrent is sufficent. Very few soldiers would follow an order if they knew that it put their family at risk for reprisal.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    How'd that work out for the Branch Davidians or Ruby Ridge?
  - mozumder 11y ago
    So, the rebels won the Civil War?
- ianamartin 11y ago
  Is that the same well-armed and powerful U.S. Military that has repeatedly had its ass handed to it by small groups of fighters with little more than small arms and IEDs in the Middle East? Is that the all-powerful, unbeatable military force you're speaking of? Your argument sounds quite a lot like what was being said around the time the US wanted independence from England. What? We're going to fight them? With their army, and their artillery, and their guns, and their funding, and their navy, and all that? This argument has nothing at all to do with working with or against the system as it currently exists. The argument is about what happens when a system is so completely broken that it is shamelessly murdering a lot of people. Even the staunchest advocates for guns in the US go out and vote. They participate in the system. It's not a binary choice. You can choose to participate now and hedge your bets for later. Those things are not mutually exclusive. If you think guerilla warfare doesn't work against superior forces, you haven't paid much attention to, well, anything.
Throwawayxtu 11y ago
Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just repeating a long-stated claim. The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested -- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000 people, perhaps far more. I think what we're seeing in this article is an attempt to redefine the metric: > Nearly every Jew who participated was eventually killed — but they were going to be killed anyway. By choosing to stand and fight, the Warsaw Jews diverted a significant amount of Nazis resources from battlefields elsewhere, thus hastening the Nazi defeat. So according to the author, Jewish deaths don't really count as a metric because they were "going to be killed anyway". And the metric instead should be about whether "significantly resources were diverted", a highly dubious claim in and of itself. Essentially the uprising would be considered "successful" if it hastened the end of the war, not if the people in the Ghetto were saved. Whether true or not, the problem with this claim is that it doesn't help the gun lobby's agenda, which is used to justify arming people in the US: that having guns would have prevented the immediate deaths of those with the guns. The whole article reeks of misdirection.
- mdpopescu 11y ago
  the Nazis lost 300 soldiers So, you are saying that this statement "the Germans suffered over a thousand casualties in the first week of fighting alone" is false?
  - Throwawayxtu 11y ago
    It seems he's pulling that number out of thin air: perhaps he's conflating it with the general Warsaw uprising. The German figures are about 20 killed, and about 100 injured. Marek Edelman (a leader of the uprising) had an optimistic estimate of about 300 casualties. So the likely figure is likely somewhere between.
    - gregshap 11y ago
      "casualties" includes injuries
ufmace 11y ago
I tend to think that these kinds of summaries kinda miss the point. Yes, it's technically true that if the oppressed Jews had a lot more guns, they might have lasted longer, or took more Germans with them, or survived the war or something. But the real issue is more the mindset and culture they had than the weapons and the laws around them. First, it bears repeating that the vast majority of Jews killed were Polish, not German. This never really was a matter of not paying attention to the political progress of anti-semitism in your own country, but rather that your crazy neighbors get crazier and crazier and eventually invade your country and turn it upside-down. The real problem is that the Polish Jews always had to deal with a relatively low-level anti-semitism, and their strategy of being meek and going along always worked well enough for them. They had been doing it for so long that even when the Nazis invaded and changed everything virtually overnight, there was no real widespread movement for resistance until it was much too late. If it had been legal for them to buy and own guns, they wouldn't have bothered, and if they had them, they would have given them up without a peep long before. I suppose you could say that the even deeper root of the problem is the belief that It Can't Happen Here. The Nazis did indeed try hard to hide the facts of what they were doing, but they were greatly helped by the fact that pretty much nobody really believed that such industrialized mass-murder could happen in a first-world, civilized country. Even with the massive levels of documentation produced, there are plenty of people who still don't believe that it happened. But the facts on the ground there went on to fuel history in another direction. Jewish shame at how passively they were led to the slaughter in Europe fueled their will to flout British colonial immigration laws in moving to what was then British Palestine, found a nation and an army, desperately build or buy weapons from any possible source, and successfully defend it against all comers over and over again. They were also helped in no small part by Western diplomatic backing, fueled by shame at not having done enough to prevent the Holocaust from happening. In the end, having the materiel and skills to defend yourself is good, but having the knowledge that you might need to and the will to go through with it is more important. Without that, any armaments you do have will evaporate before they can make a difference, and with it, you can find a way to buy or make some kind of weapons, even if it wouldn't be as good as if you had gotten them beforehand.
- dalke 11y ago
  I think it's hard to argue about specific Jewish mindset when it comes to the Holocaust. While some six million Jews were massacred, there were another five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders. Any thesis that depends on the mindset and culture of Jews must necessarily fail to explain the millions of non-Jewish Ukrainians that were murdered.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Historical note: it needs to be remembered that the allies did a great disservice to Poland after the war. The war was ostensibly started over Poland, the allies promised to liberate it, and in the end it was given out as spoils of the conflict.
- powera 11y ago
  Technically the Soviet Union was one of the allies, and if you asked the Soviet Union they would say they "liberated" Poland. If you remember, there was a large conflict between the US and the Soviets for much of the 20th century over exactly these types of claims.
  - gambiting 11y ago
    I always have a problem with this argument, because the war started by both Germany and Russia invading Poland. Just because things went sour between them and in the end Russia helped defeat the nazis doesn't mean that the act of giving Poland away to the Soviet Union wasn't any less disappointing.
- douche 11y ago
  The Polish Question was a very ugly, messy bit of the war and the peace that followed. Somewhat similar to Yugoslavia, there were divisions within the Polish Resistance organizations between those supporting the government-in-exile in London, and the pro-Soviet faction. One reason that the Red Army sat on its hands during the Warsaw Uprising was that the Polish forces involved were primarily drawn from the London-leaning Home Army. In other cases, members of the Home Army were offered the "choice" of joining the Red Army or being sent to labor camps. One interesting what-if? to consider is what might have happened had Roosevelt lived to see the end of the war, and the various treaties and conference (notably the Potsdam Conference), instead of the inexperienced Truman. One of the better treatments of the final days of WW2, and the tensions between the western Allies and the Soviets over Poland is http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-100-Days-Controversial/dp/081296859X http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-100-Days-Controversial/dp/081...
bobthechef 11y ago
Apologies for the length, but I had to correct some misinformation. "In Western Europe, where anti-semitism among the conquered gentile population was less severe [...]" "But when Poland regained its independence in 1919, thanks to the Versailles Treaty, the nation degenerated into a military dictatorship which encouraged anti-semitism." These statements are either facile and come from a position of ignorance and show a lack of discernment. Consider that: * After Poland regained its independence in 1918/19, it had been a democratic republic until the May coup d'etat of 1926 under Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, arguably the most important figure in the creation of the Second Polish Republic and the rebirth of the nation's independence. This de facto dictatorship lasted for less than 10 years. I know that we like to superficially assign without question an absolute superiority to democracy and view dictatorship as an absolute evil, but this depends on the particular characteristics of a given society, its situation, and its present needs as well as the kind of dictatorship we have in mind. Poland had been wiped off the map 123 years prior and divided into three parts by a joint conspiracy between Prussia, Russia, and Austria. It is strongly argued that without a dictatorship that would hold the nation together and guard it from foreign malice and its notoriously bad geopolitical predicament, Poland would have failed to survive as a state. There was a need for stabilization and coordination. Democracy presumes a certain status quo and does not bear chaos in such circumstances very well. * Under Pilsudski's rule, the situation of ethnic minorities (1/3 of the citizenry) actually improved considerably, though some of these minorities later colluded with the Nazi and Soviet regimes in exterminations of the Polish population. Pilsudski preferred to emphasize loyalty to the state over ethnicity, which was the policy of the National Democrats under Roman Dmowski, Pilsudski's arch-rival (and who purportedly argued that ethnic minorities can add salt to the soup, though too much can ruin or destabilize a society, esp. when they fail to assimilate). In fact, Jews viewed him very favorably and their situation improved greatly especially under Pilsudski-appointed prime minister Kazimierz Bartel. Worth noting is that Pilsudski's own wife was Jewish. So I'm not sure how the author drew the link between dictatorship and anti-semitism. Maybe he was looking for a cheap trope to appeal to to sell his story. * The Polish variety of anti-Jewish feeling during this period was not racial in character. The "Jewish Question" concerned the problem of who and what Jews were in relation to the Polish nation. To say that Jews were being kept back is not really accurate. The situation was far more complicated. Many Jews who did assimilate were quite successful. However, it is false to assume that all Jews wanted to assimilate in the first place and simply weren't welcome. Many had no such desire and purposefully maintained a separation from gentiles. Many were Zionists. Many had German loyalties. Some had Communist sympathies. During an era of nationalism where the state was rebuilding and trying to survive against the threat of Nazi German and Soviet Russian aggression, unknown or divided loyalties were threatening. Furthermore, much of the resentment towards Jews, where it did exist, was economic in nature. While the aristocracy and the peasantry were about 2/3 Polish, the same proportions did not hold among the burghers where Jews were overrepresented. In other words, Polish-Jewish relations are complicates and require particular care if they are to be understood, not boorish generalizations that you often hear from bigots and the ignorant, no doubt the same people who use phrases such as "Polish concentration camps". * The greatest number of people honored at Yad Vashem are by far Poles. This is true despite that fact that only in Poland did Germany impose a death penalty that could be extended to the entire family for aiding and hiding Jews. Other than that, I'm not sure how convincing the main argument seems to be. Gun control, like many polarizing topics, exists in an anti-rational domain that elevates a tool to some transcendental, fantastic order of Manichean symbols: you either have those who equate guns with freedom and those who equate it with evil incarnate. It is my opinion that whether gun training and ownership is not a matter of principle but a matter of contingent factors and pragmatism. For example, since we're on the topic, I believe countries in historically geopolitically risky situation like Poland could benefit from widespread training if not ownership. Switzerland is arguably geopolitically safer place, but it has a trained populace in possession of firearms. The US has a very curious history with fire arms that differs from that of France, which does not mean stricter regulation of the gun market cannot be put in place. However, while gun ownership has been increasing, violence has been decreasing, esp. violence involving guns. There is no single number that can characterize the facts on the ground, but what it goes to show is that much of the "public debate" is merely the projection of preconceived notions, ideology, and emotion. There is barely any reason in it, merely arrogant presumption that the issue is obvious.
jakozaur 11y ago
Semi-related. If you ever visit Warsaw (Poland). I highly recommend museum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POLIN_Museum_of_the_History_of_Polish_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POLIN_Museum_of_the_History_of... http://www.polin.pl/en/ http://www.polin.pl/en/ There is amazing/modern/interactive exhibition of 1000 years Jewish history in Poland. Most of it is very positive and peaceful. You are invited!

54 points by yummyfajitas 11y ago

dalke 11y ago

What an odd opinion piece. It seems to suggest that the Jews of Nazi occupied countries were merely missing arms in order to significantly deter the Wehrmacht that was taking on the combined forces of the Soviet, British, and US military. Yet it doesn't explain why the French people in Nazi occupied countries, who had a larger gun culture, were so (relatively) easily subdued and kept pacified. If the thesis is correct, it would seem to suggest that the two-state solution might be achieved by simply delivering massive amounts of arms to the Palestinians. But I can't help in reading it that it's an advocacy piece supporting a certain US view towards the right to bear arms, and subject to 'hypothesis myopia', where 'investigators fixate on collecting evidence to support just one hypothesis; neglect to look for evidence against it; and fail to consider other explanations.' (Quoting http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-and-how-they-can-stop-1.18517 http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-an... .) As evidence of one thing I think is odd, I'll note that the quote from the 1967 "International Society for the Prevention of Crime", which concluded "defensive measures are the most effective means for the prevention of genocide" only appears in a handful of web search results, many by the same author as this, and the others from US sources which appear to want minimal gun controls. That's hardly suggestive of a wide-spread agreement that that view is correct. I attempted to verify the quote, to learn the context, but found very little even about the organization/meeting. DDG at https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22International+Society+for+the+Prevention+of+Crime%22&t=ffsb https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22International+Society+for+the+P... only finds 6 matches, including this WaPo opinion piece. Ditto for Google. Only one is not derived from this opinion piece, that being the author's earlier paper at https://www.saf.org/journal/19/kopel.pdf https://www.saf.org/journal/19/kopel.pdf . That paper in turn references 'V.V. Stanciu, “Reflections on the Congress for the Prevention of Genocide,” in Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance, vol. 7, ed., Livia Rothkirchen (Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Vashem, 1968), p. 187'. The only other paper I found which cites that reference is David Caplan, in "Weapons Control Laws: Gateways to Victim Oppression and Genocide", at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-5974-4_18 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-5974-4_1... , which also appears to argue for weak gun controls. (I verified that the cited source does exist; see http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/studies/issues/index.asp#!prettyPhoto http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/studies/issue... . Stanciu appears to have been a French lawyer and criminologist.) Using a reference from 1967 from what appears to be an obscure source make me think it's a result of quote mining. Is this view an outlier specifically chose to back a predetermined hypothesis? Why reference something that's older than I am - is there really nothing newer? Given the number of genocides since 1967 (Rwanda, Red Terror in Ethiopia, Cambodian Genocide, 1971 Bangladesh atrocities, and the Nigerian Civil War all seem ways to test that thesis), surely those would provide additional insight the relationship between strong gun control laws and genocide. Could we have prevented the genocide in Rwanda by air-dropping a bunch of arms on those being killed? Indeed, I found just such a paper when trying to find out more about Stanciu. This paper is "Rethinking Approaches to Prevention under the Responsibility to Protect Agency and Empowerment within Vulnerable Populations" at at http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/1875984x-00604007 http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.... . > The paper considers a number of historical case studies in which targeted groups were able to leverage their own agency, often with assistance from others, to reduce this vulnerability. These include cases that culminated in genocide, namely the experiences of German and Austrian Jews under Nazi rule, and negative cases studies in which a demonstrable risk of mass atrocities was not realised, such as the experiences of Yemenite Jews in the first half of the twentieth century and those of the Bahá’í community in Iran since the 1979 Iranian revolution. These cases suggest that assisting persecuted populations to empower themselves can be an effective way to promote resilience to mass atrocities. and the author of that piece has done a lot of research on genocide http://ro.uow.edu.au/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Mayersen%22%20author_fname%3A%22Deborah%22&start=0&context=119687 http://ro.uow.edu.au/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Mayersen... .

douche 11y ago
Last week, one of the U.S. presidential candidates made a rather ignorant statement about gun control and the Holocaust. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt is the immediately obvious example to look at. This piece is really an advertisement for the author's upcoming book, and this piece seems pretty obviously cribbed from one of his chapters. It reads less oddly if you read the title of the book, and go look at the description on the Amazon link, and realize that it fits into a philosophical work on the justifiable use of force in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I was unaware of the potential political implications of this article. I'd probably not have submitted had I known that. I'm not following the election horserace, this was just an interesting historical article that came up in my feed.
  - douche 11y ago
    It's not a bad piece of history writing. It's just going to bring out the gun-control debaters. The Warsaw Jews did pretty well, considering they had less arms and ammunition on hand than you'd find in a rural US WalMart. Victory was not an option - a year later, the considerably larger, better-equipped Warsaw Uprising failed as bloodily, when Soviet forces nearly on the outskirts of the city failed to raise a finger in support.
    - dalke 11y ago
      There are several different styles of history writing. One is to describe what happened. For example, there are histories of battles, and of Krakatoa, and of Newton, which follow more or less a timeline. Another is to identify underlying patterns and trends that help understand what happened, and hopefully can be applied elsewhere. For examples, how did the introduction of light mobile guns by Gustavus Adolphus change the battlefield? Why did the explosion of Krakatoa have a big cultural impact as well as physical one? How are Newton's view on alchemy and biblical research connected to his work on physics? The first is more descriptive, and the second is more predictive. Both are good history. Both are scientific, but call for different sorts of research. Both require extensive literature analysis. The latter requires more work to come up with alternative hypothesis and relevant comparisons, in order to test and disprove hypotheses. This article does both. I think it does best at the descriptive aspects of the event. But it uses a historical model that isn't well tested, but could be tested by looking towards other genocides to see if the model fits. If the model doesn't fit in a more general sense, then in the context of US gun control laws, it's a curiosity at best, and not something that can be used in decision making. It is trying to making that comparison, and not limit itself to the uprising, which is why I regard it as a bad piece of historical writing.

mozumder 11y ago

The implication here is that an armed American population would be able to defeat a tyrannical US government. This is the same US government that's armed with nuclear weapons, tanks with composite armor, a hacker network that would make Google blush, and populist democratic backing. Additionally, this is the same US government has killed over 600,000 of its own citizens before for rebelling. It is the height of sociopathic narcissism to think individuals or small bands of "freedom fighters" would be able to defeat such a system. Smart people would instead work WITH the system to achieve their objectives, instead of working against it like a buffoon. Personal firearms should be removed throughout a modern society.

benjohnson 11y ago
>>It is the height of sociopathic narcissism to think individuals or small bands of "freedom fighters" would be able to defeat such a system. Wholesale defeat of tyranny isn't necessary - a deterrent is sufficent. Very few soldiers would follow an order if they knew that it put their family at risk for reprisal.
- DanBC 11y ago
  How'd that work out for the Branch Davidians or Ruby Ridge?
- mozumder 11y ago
  So, the rebels won the Civil War?
ianamartin 11y ago
Is that the same well-armed and powerful U.S. Military that has repeatedly had its ass handed to it by small groups of fighters with little more than small arms and IEDs in the Middle East? Is that the all-powerful, unbeatable military force you're speaking of? Your argument sounds quite a lot like what was being said around the time the US wanted independence from England. What? We're going to fight them? With their army, and their artillery, and their guns, and their funding, and their navy, and all that? This argument has nothing at all to do with working with or against the system as it currently exists. The argument is about what happens when a system is so completely broken that it is shamelessly murdering a lot of people. Even the staunchest advocates for guns in the US go out and vote. They participate in the system. It's not a binary choice. You can choose to participate now and hedge your bets for later. Those things are not mutually exclusive. If you think guerilla warfare doesn't work against superior forces, you haven't paid much attention to, well, anything.

Throwawayxtu 11y ago

Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just repeating a long-stated claim. The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested -- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000 people, perhaps far more. I think what we're seeing in this article is an attempt to redefine the metric: > Nearly every Jew who participated was eventually killed — but they were going to be killed anyway. By choosing to stand and fight, the Warsaw Jews diverted a significant amount of Nazis resources from battlefields elsewhere, thus hastening the Nazi defeat. So according to the author, Jewish deaths don't really count as a metric because they were "going to be killed anyway". And the metric instead should be about whether "significantly resources were diverted", a highly dubious claim in and of itself. Essentially the uprising would be considered "successful" if it hastened the end of the war, not if the people in the Ghetto were saved. Whether true or not, the problem with this claim is that it doesn't help the gun lobby's agenda, which is used to justify arming people in the US: that having guns would have prevented the immediate deaths of those with the guns. The whole article reeks of misdirection.

mdpopescu 11y ago
the Nazis lost 300 soldiers So, you are saying that this statement "the Germans suffered over a thousand casualties in the first week of fighting alone" is false?
- Throwawayxtu 11y ago
  It seems he's pulling that number out of thin air: perhaps he's conflating it with the general Warsaw uprising. The German figures are about 20 killed, and about 100 injured. Marek Edelman (a leader of the uprising) had an optimistic estimate of about 300 casualties. So the likely figure is likely somewhere between.
  - gregshap 11y ago
    "casualties" includes injuries

ufmace 11y ago

I tend to think that these kinds of summaries kinda miss the point. Yes, it's technically true that if the oppressed Jews had a lot more guns, they might have lasted longer, or took more Germans with them, or survived the war or something. But the real issue is more the mindset and culture they had than the weapons and the laws around them. First, it bears repeating that the vast majority of Jews killed were Polish, not German. This never really was a matter of not paying attention to the political progress of anti-semitism in your own country, but rather that your crazy neighbors get crazier and crazier and eventually invade your country and turn it upside-down. The real problem is that the Polish Jews always had to deal with a relatively low-level anti-semitism, and their strategy of being meek and going along always worked well enough for them. They had been doing it for so long that even when the Nazis invaded and changed everything virtually overnight, there was no real widespread movement for resistance until it was much too late. If it had been legal for them to buy and own guns, they wouldn't have bothered, and if they had them, they would have given them up without a peep long before. I suppose you could say that the even deeper root of the problem is the belief that It Can't Happen Here. The Nazis did indeed try hard to hide the facts of what they were doing, but they were greatly helped by the fact that pretty much nobody really believed that such industrialized mass-murder could happen in a first-world, civilized country. Even with the massive levels of documentation produced, there are plenty of people who still don't believe that it happened. But the facts on the ground there went on to fuel history in another direction. Jewish shame at how passively they were led to the slaughter in Europe fueled their will to flout British colonial immigration laws in moving to what was then British Palestine, found a nation and an army, desperately build or buy weapons from any possible source, and successfully defend it against all comers over and over again. They were also helped in no small part by Western diplomatic backing, fueled by shame at not having done enough to prevent the Holocaust from happening. In the end, having the materiel and skills to defend yourself is good, but having the knowledge that you might need to and the will to go through with it is more important. Without that, any armaments you do have will evaporate before they can make a difference, and with it, you can find a way to buy or make some kind of weapons, even if it wouldn't be as good as if you had gotten them beforehand.

dalke 11y ago
I think it's hard to argue about specific Jewish mindset when it comes to the Holocaust. While some six million Jews were massacred, there were another five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders. Any thesis that depends on the mindset and culture of Jews must necessarily fail to explain the millions of non-Jewish Ukrainians that were murdered.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Historical note: it needs to be remembered that the allies did a great disservice to Poland after the war. The war was ostensibly started over Poland, the allies promised to liberate it, and in the end it was given out as spoils of the conflict.

powera 11y ago
Technically the Soviet Union was one of the allies, and if you asked the Soviet Union they would say they "liberated" Poland. If you remember, there was a large conflict between the US and the Soviets for much of the 20th century over exactly these types of claims.
- gambiting 11y ago
  I always have a problem with this argument, because the war started by both Germany and Russia invading Poland. Just because things went sour between them and in the end Russia helped defeat the nazis doesn't mean that the act of giving Poland away to the Soviet Union wasn't any less disappointing.
douche 11y ago
The Polish Question was a very ugly, messy bit of the war and the peace that followed. Somewhat similar to Yugoslavia, there were divisions within the Polish Resistance organizations between those supporting the government-in-exile in London, and the pro-Soviet faction. One reason that the Red Army sat on its hands during the Warsaw Uprising was that the Polish forces involved were primarily drawn from the London-leaning Home Army. In other cases, members of the Home Army were offered the "choice" of joining the Red Army or being sent to labor camps. One interesting what-if? to consider is what might have happened had Roosevelt lived to see the end of the war, and the various treaties and conference (notably the Potsdam Conference), instead of the inexperienced Truman. One of the better treatments of the final days of WW2, and the tensions between the western Allies and the Soviets over Poland is http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-100-Days-Controversial/dp/081296859X http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-100-Days-Controversial/dp/081...

bobthechef 11y ago

Apologies for the length, but I had to correct some misinformation. "In Western Europe, where anti-semitism among the conquered gentile population was less severe [...]" "But when Poland regained its independence in 1919, thanks to the Versailles Treaty, the nation degenerated into a military dictatorship which encouraged anti-semitism." These statements are either facile and come from a position of ignorance and show a lack of discernment. Consider that: * After Poland regained its independence in 1918/19, it had been a democratic republic until the May coup d'etat of 1926 under Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, arguably the most important figure in the creation of the Second Polish Republic and the rebirth of the nation's independence. This de facto dictatorship lasted for less than 10 years. I know that we like to superficially assign without question an absolute superiority to democracy and view dictatorship as an absolute evil, but this depends on the particular characteristics of a given society, its situation, and its present needs as well as the kind of dictatorship we have in mind. Poland had been wiped off the map 123 years prior and divided into three parts by a joint conspiracy between Prussia, Russia, and Austria. It is strongly argued that without a dictatorship that would hold the nation together and guard it from foreign malice and its notoriously bad geopolitical predicament, Poland would have failed to survive as a state. There was a need for stabilization and coordination. Democracy presumes a certain status quo and does not bear chaos in such circumstances very well. * Under Pilsudski's rule, the situation of ethnic minorities (1/3 of the citizenry) actually improved considerably, though some of these minorities later colluded with the Nazi and Soviet regimes in exterminations of the Polish population. Pilsudski preferred to emphasize loyalty to the state over ethnicity, which was the policy of the National Democrats under Roman Dmowski, Pilsudski's arch-rival (and who purportedly argued that ethnic minorities can add salt to the soup, though too much can ruin or destabilize a society, esp. when they fail to assimilate). In fact, Jews viewed him very favorably and their situation improved greatly especially under Pilsudski-appointed prime minister Kazimierz Bartel. Worth noting is that Pilsudski's own wife was Jewish. So I'm not sure how the author drew the link between dictatorship and anti-semitism. Maybe he was looking for a cheap trope to appeal to to sell his story. * The Polish variety of anti-Jewish feeling during this period was not racial in character. The "Jewish Question" concerned the problem of who and what Jews were in relation to the Polish nation. To say that Jews were being kept back is not really accurate. The situation was far more complicated. Many Jews who did assimilate were quite successful. However, it is false to assume that all Jews wanted to assimilate in the first place and simply weren't welcome. Many had no such desire and purposefully maintained a separation from gentiles. Many were Zionists. Many had German loyalties. Some had Communist sympathies. During an era of nationalism where the state was rebuilding and trying to survive against the threat of Nazi German and Soviet Russian aggression, unknown or divided loyalties were threatening. Furthermore, much of the resentment towards Jews, where it did exist, was economic in nature. While the aristocracy and the peasantry were about 2/3 Polish, the same proportions did not hold among the burghers where Jews were overrepresented. In other words, Polish-Jewish relations are complicates and require particular care if they are to be understood, not boorish generalizations that you often hear from bigots and the ignorant, no doubt the same people who use phrases such as "Polish concentration camps". * The greatest number of people honored at Yad Vashem are by far Poles. This is true despite that fact that only in Poland did Germany impose a death penalty that could be extended to the entire family for aiding and hiding Jews. Other than that, I'm not sure how convincing the main argument seems to be. Gun control, like many polarizing topics, exists in an anti-rational domain that elevates a tool to some transcendental, fantastic order of Manichean symbols: you either have those who equate guns with freedom and those who equate it with evil incarnate. It is my opinion that whether gun training and ownership is not a matter of principle but a matter of contingent factors and pragmatism. For example, since we're on the topic, I believe countries in historically geopolitically risky situation like Poland could benefit from widespread training if not ownership. Switzerland is arguably geopolitically safer place, but it has a trained populace in possession of firearms. The US has a very curious history with fire arms that differs from that of France, which does not mean stricter regulation of the gun market cannot be put in place. However, while gun ownership has been increasing, violence has been decreasing, esp. violence involving guns. There is no single number that can characterize the facts on the ground, but what it goes to show is that much of the "public debate" is merely the projection of preconceived notions, ideology, and emotion. There is barely any reason in it, merely arrogant presumption that the issue is obvious.

jakozaur 11y ago

Semi-related. If you ever visit Warsaw (Poland). I highly recommend museum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POLIN_Museum_of_the_History_of_Polish_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POLIN_Museum_of_the_History_of... http://www.polin.pl/en/ http://www.polin.pl/en/ There is amazing/modern/interactive exhibition of 1000 years Jewish history in Poland. Most of it is very positive and peaceful. You are invited!