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While there were more reasons for sure, I had never heard about the slavery aspect until today. Doing some google search showed me indeed historians think that

by tonmoy 2y ago

While there were more reasons for sure, I had never heard about the slavery aspect until today. Doing some google search showed me indeed historians think that it was one of the reasons and I find it surprising it isn’t talked about as much

consumer451 2y ago
If I was to learn a larger lesson from experiencing acquiring this major detail about the Texas Revolution myself, it might be that history is much more complicated than we are taught. Another huge example for me is that even though we escaped the communist-bloc when I was a kid, where my mom had to de-program me from preschool lessons about Lenin... I still bought into the whole "WWII was won with American industry, and Russian blood" story. Meanwhile, a major missing fact in that story is that Stalin and Hitler started WWII together, as allies. A few days after this pact was signed, Poland was invaded from both East and West. It is very arguable that without this agreement, even nutjob Hitler would not have tried to invade all of Europe. Now that I know that, it makes a lot more sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... BTW, this historical fact is now illegal to discuss in Russia: https://www.jpost.com/international/comparing-soviet-union-to-nazi-germany-now-illegal-in-russia-672821 https://www.jpost.com/international/comparing-soviet-union-t...
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  Don't really see how that fact changes that story, both can be true.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    Agreed, both could be true. This is another example of the simplified "kid history" which we were all taught. It is actually much more complicated. As an example from "the other side," in the USA, were we ever taught about the Business Plot?[0] Or the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden?[1] Why doesn't every American know about these events? However, in the case of “Russian Blood won WWII.” 1) This patriotic story which still rings true in Russia today, would be WTF’ed if the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was mentioned in the same breath. As in, so many died because papa Stalin allied with Satan Hilter? WTF? 2) It was actually mostly Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers who lost their lives on the front lines, not Russians. Because of course the Kremlin would decide to send them in first. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...
    - Hikikomori 2y ago
      Countries tend to not teach their bad parts of history, not unique for the us, and one side of the political spectrum is especially bad. Would less people have died if there wasn't a pact? Wouldn't Hitler have taken Poland anyway? Hitlers plan was always to invade and kill the population east of Germany. Stalin was already suspicious but thought they would have time to rebuild their armies before m the invasion. I read the soviet union when people say Russia during ww2, so includes other ethnicities for me. Wouldn't surprise me if they used non-russians like that, but I'm not sure about what you say. According to the link 5.7m out of 8.7m military deaths were ethnic russians. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/casualties-of-world-war-ii/#:~:text=disease%2C%20and%20starvation.-,The%20Soviet%20Union%20lost%20around%2027%20million%20people%20during%20the,by%201.3%20million%20ethnic%20Ukrainians https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/ch....
    - philwelch 2y ago
      > It was actually mostly Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers who lost their lives on the front lines, not Russians. Because of course the Kremlin would decide to send them in first. Yeah, this is probably bullshit. Russians will claim the numbers are heavily skewed the other way, but let’s look at some actual numbers. (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unnj1t/what_was_the_ethnic_makeup_of_the_red_army_in_wwii/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unnj1t/what_...) > I have some numbers on hand from Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna bez grifa sekretnosti (roughly Great Patriotic War declassified) by Krivosheev and Adronikov… > Out of 8,668,400 total combat losses where nationality could be established, only 5,756,000 were Russian (66%). Ukrainians made up 1,377,400 losses (16%), Belarusians 252,900 (3%), Tatars 187,700 (2%), Jews 142,500 (1.6%), Kazakhs 125,500 (1.4%), Uzbeks 117,900 (1.4%) and other nationalities made up less than one percent of the total losses apiece. > The number of prisoners of war tallied also show that Russians were the most numerous population involved, but that much. Out of 1,368,849 cases tallied up in the book, 657,339 POWs were Russian (48%), 386,568 were Ukrainian (28%), 103,053 were Belarusian (7.5%), 30,698 were Tatars (2%) 28,228 were Uzbeks (2%), 23,816 were Georgians (1.7%), 23,142 were Kazakh (1.7%), 20,850 were Azeri (1.5%), 20,067 were Armenians (1.5%) and then the remaining nationalities made up less than 1% each. > When determining the percentages of each nationality that fought in the Red Army it is also important to remember that pre-war populations won't do you much good. Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics were fully occupied by the Germans for the majority of the war, meaning that any civilians who would come of fighting age during this time were unable to join the Red Army. Men of fighting age or nearing it would likely be kidnapped for forced labour in Germany or killed, which further drove down those numbers. In contrast, it would be much easier to draft someone who turned 18 in Eastern RSFSR, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc. so the proportion of these nationalities were higher. It’s likely that Belarus and Ukraine probably did suffer more in some proportional sense. Is this because the Soviet Union followed a policy of ethnic Russian supremacism (under the rule of an ethnic Georgian dictator), or because Belarus and Ukraine are closer to Germany and got the worst of what the Nazis had to dish out? Likewise, I’ve also seen insinuations that the Holodomor was an ethnically motivated genocide of Ukrainians, and while it did affect Ukraine especially hard, there seems to be very good evidence that it was primarily motivated by communist class hatred towards the kulaks, combined with the sort of brutal forced reorganization of the economy that also led to millions of deaths at the hands of the Chinese and Cambodian communist regimes. Plenty of Russians also died in the terror-famine, and at any rate, the communist regime was preoccupied with questions of class and ideology. It’s much more fair to attribute their atrocities to these motivations more than the ethnic ones that people are perhaps more heavily fixated on today. I’d also point out that when you’re talking about modern Ukraine, you’re not quite talking about the same country as pre-WWII Ukraine. The eastern parts of Poland that were annexed by the USSR according to the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact became the western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. The Ukrainian city of Lviv, also known by its Russian name Lvov had been the Polish city of Lwow. Prior to that, before Poland was granted independence in the aftermath of WWI, it was the Austro-Hungarian city of Lemberg. Similarly, the Crimea was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR in the 1950’s for administrative reasons, but even since then was still mostly populated with ethnic Russians. Speaking of parts of history that don’t get talked about, let’s mention some other borders that got moved. Poland was ultimately “compensated” for the loss of its eastern territory to the USSR with the annexation of most of the easternmost parts of Germany, complete with the forced relocation of Germans into the now smaller territory of occupied Germany, a massive exercise in what most Americans would call “ethnic cleansing” if the US wasn’t utterly complicit in it. This happened to some degree across Eastern Europe during and after the war, and there are perhaps understandable and sympathetic motivations for that, what with the presence of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland providing excuses for German aggression at the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, that doesn’t quite justify annexing parts of Germany and driving out all of the Germans. Altogether, at least 12 million ethnic Germans were driven out of their homes during and after the war, with somewhere between half a million to 2.5 million of them dying in the process. And it’s not like it was always straightforward to accurately identify “ethnic Germans” either—some of the displaced and dead from the territories annexed to Poland were probably ethnic Poles with German citizenship.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
yieldcrv 2y ago
> and I find it surprising it isn’t talked about as much there have been many attempts to talk about it, the latest attempt was turned into a boogeyman called "Critical Race Theory" and censored by all levels of state government in that region of the country maybe this is an opportunity to look into what people are trying to actually teach and point out about American history there has been a century of pushback starting from parents for history that isn't resoundingly "go America, #1 in every aspect, moral leader of all time all the time". eh I'm beating around the bush because the reality might dilute the point in this crowd as it might sound fictional and unfamiliar: white parents want their white children to feel comfortable with the country's history. this neglects that other groups have always felt uncomfortable with that version of American history. other groups trying to merge in aspects of American history that affect them have had a century+ of pushback from the more numerous group of people who have representatives similar to them in office. yeah yeah #notallwhiteparents, ok. just enough to get governors and legislatures to continue creating boogeymen and blocking the teaching of history that isn't resoundingly comfortable for those same people.

by tonmoy 2y ago

consumer451 2y ago

If I was to learn a larger lesson from experiencing acquiring this major detail about the Texas Revolution myself, it might be that history is much more complicated than we are taught. Another huge example for me is that even though we escaped the communist-bloc when I was a kid, where my mom had to de-program me from preschool lessons about Lenin... I still bought into the whole "WWII was won with American industry, and Russian blood" story. Meanwhile, a major missing fact in that story is that Stalin and Hitler started WWII together, as allies. A few days after this pact was signed, Poland was invaded from both East and West. It is very arguable that without this agreement, even nutjob Hitler would not have tried to invade all of Europe. Now that I know that, it makes a lot more sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... BTW, this historical fact is now illegal to discuss in Russia: https://www.jpost.com/international/comparing-soviet-union-to-nazi-germany-now-illegal-in-russia-672821 https://www.jpost.com/international/comparing-soviet-union-t...

Hikikomori 2y ago
Don't really see how that fact changes that story, both can be true.
- consumer451 2y ago
  Agreed, both could be true. This is another example of the simplified "kid history" which we were all taught. It is actually much more complicated. As an example from "the other side," in the USA, were we ever taught about the Business Plot?[0] Or the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden?[1] Why doesn't every American know about these events? However, in the case of “Russian Blood won WWII.” 1) This patriotic story which still rings true in Russia today, would be WTF’ed if the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was mentioned in the same breath. As in, so many died because papa Stalin allied with Satan Hilter? WTF? 2) It was actually mostly Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers who lost their lives on the front lines, not Russians. Because of course the Kremlin would decide to send them in first. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    Countries tend to not teach their bad parts of history, not unique for the us, and one side of the political spectrum is especially bad. Would less people have died if there wasn't a pact? Wouldn't Hitler have taken Poland anyway? Hitlers plan was always to invade and kill the population east of Germany. Stalin was already suspicious but thought they would have time to rebuild their armies before m the invasion. I read the soviet union when people say Russia during ww2, so includes other ethnicities for me. Wouldn't surprise me if they used non-russians like that, but I'm not sure about what you say. According to the link 5.7m out of 8.7m military deaths were ethnic russians. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/casualties-of-world-war-ii/#:~:text=disease%2C%20and%20starvation.-,The%20Soviet%20Union%20lost%20around%2027%20million%20people%20during%20the,by%201.3%20million%20ethnic%20Ukrainians https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/ch....
  - philwelch 2y ago
    > It was actually mostly Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers who lost their lives on the front lines, not Russians. Because of course the Kremlin would decide to send them in first. Yeah, this is probably bullshit. Russians will claim the numbers are heavily skewed the other way, but let’s look at some actual numbers. (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unnj1t/what_was_the_ethnic_makeup_of_the_red_army_in_wwii/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unnj1t/what_...) > I have some numbers on hand from Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna bez grifa sekretnosti (roughly Great Patriotic War declassified) by Krivosheev and Adronikov… > Out of 8,668,400 total combat losses where nationality could be established, only 5,756,000 were Russian (66%). Ukrainians made up 1,377,400 losses (16%), Belarusians 252,900 (3%), Tatars 187,700 (2%), Jews 142,500 (1.6%), Kazakhs 125,500 (1.4%), Uzbeks 117,900 (1.4%) and other nationalities made up less than one percent of the total losses apiece. > The number of prisoners of war tallied also show that Russians were the most numerous population involved, but that much. Out of 1,368,849 cases tallied up in the book, 657,339 POWs were Russian (48%), 386,568 were Ukrainian (28%), 103,053 were Belarusian (7.5%), 30,698 were Tatars (2%) 28,228 were Uzbeks (2%), 23,816 were Georgians (1.7%), 23,142 were Kazakh (1.7%), 20,850 were Azeri (1.5%), 20,067 were Armenians (1.5%) and then the remaining nationalities made up less than 1% each. > When determining the percentages of each nationality that fought in the Red Army it is also important to remember that pre-war populations won't do you much good. Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics were fully occupied by the Germans for the majority of the war, meaning that any civilians who would come of fighting age during this time were unable to join the Red Army. Men of fighting age or nearing it would likely be kidnapped for forced labour in Germany or killed, which further drove down those numbers. In contrast, it would be much easier to draft someone who turned 18 in Eastern RSFSR, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc. so the proportion of these nationalities were higher. It’s likely that Belarus and Ukraine probably did suffer more in some proportional sense. Is this because the Soviet Union followed a policy of ethnic Russian supremacism (under the rule of an ethnic Georgian dictator), or because Belarus and Ukraine are closer to Germany and got the worst of what the Nazis had to dish out? Likewise, I’ve also seen insinuations that the Holodomor was an ethnically motivated genocide of Ukrainians, and while it did affect Ukraine especially hard, there seems to be very good evidence that it was primarily motivated by communist class hatred towards the kulaks, combined with the sort of brutal forced reorganization of the economy that also led to millions of deaths at the hands of the Chinese and Cambodian communist regimes. Plenty of Russians also died in the terror-famine, and at any rate, the communist regime was preoccupied with questions of class and ideology. It’s much more fair to attribute their atrocities to these motivations more than the ethnic ones that people are perhaps more heavily fixated on today. I’d also point out that when you’re talking about modern Ukraine, you’re not quite talking about the same country as pre-WWII Ukraine. The eastern parts of Poland that were annexed by the USSR according to the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact became the western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. The Ukrainian city of Lviv, also known by its Russian name Lvov had been the Polish city of Lwow. Prior to that, before Poland was granted independence in the aftermath of WWI, it was the Austro-Hungarian city of Lemberg. Similarly, the Crimea was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR in the 1950’s for administrative reasons, but even since then was still mostly populated with ethnic Russians. Speaking of parts of history that don’t get talked about, let’s mention some other borders that got moved. Poland was ultimately “compensated” for the loss of its eastern territory to the USSR with the annexation of most of the easternmost parts of Germany, complete with the forced relocation of Germans into the now smaller territory of occupied Germany, a massive exercise in what most Americans would call “ethnic cleansing” if the US wasn’t utterly complicit in it. This happened to some degree across Eastern Europe during and after the war, and there are perhaps understandable and sympathetic motivations for that, what with the presence of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland providing excuses for German aggression at the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, that doesn’t quite justify annexing parts of Germany and driving out all of the Germans. Altogether, at least 12 million ethnic Germans were driven out of their homes during and after the war, with somewhere between half a million to 2.5 million of them dying in the process. And it’s not like it was always straightforward to accurately identify “ethnic Germans” either—some of the displaced and dead from the territories annexed to Poland were probably ethnic Poles with German citizenship.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

yieldcrv 2y ago

> and I find it surprising it isn’t talked about as much there have been many attempts to talk about it, the latest attempt was turned into a boogeyman called "Critical Race Theory" and censored by all levels of state government in that region of the country maybe this is an opportunity to look into what people are trying to actually teach and point out about American history there has been a century of pushback starting from parents for history that isn't resoundingly "go America, #1 in every aspect, moral leader of all time all the time". eh I'm beating around the bush because the reality might dilute the point in this crowd as it might sound fictional and unfamiliar: white parents want their white children to feel comfortable with the country's history. this neglects that other groups have always felt uncomfortable with that version of American history. other groups trying to merge in aspects of American history that affect them have had a century+ of pushback from the more numerous group of people who have representatives similar to them in office. yeah yeah #notallwhiteparents, ok. just enough to get governors and legislatures to continue creating boogeymen and blocking the teaching of history that isn't resoundingly comfortable for those same people.