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> It's objectively true though Webster: pilfer intransitive verb : steal especially : to steal stealthily in small amounts and

> It's objectively true though Webster: pilfer intransitive verb : steal especially : to steal stealthily in small amounts and often again and again transitive verb : steal especially : to steal in small quantities OED: pilfer, v. transitive. To steal (property), esp. in small quantities; to filch. Also figurative. Or it's spoils of war or it's pilfering. It can't be both. Especially when a country with 27M of casualties is accused of robbing[0] the country which inflicted those casualties. Do I need to provide the definition of the word 'steal'? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388461

flohofwoe 2y ago
Semantics... you can call it what you want and I actually agree that it was in the SU's right as a winner of WW2 and occupant of East Germany, but the point is that the US cannot be accused of the same thing (like you did in a perfect display of whataboutism), because the US pumped massive amounts of money into the West German economy, which then made West Germany a much more thankful and valuable ally to the US than East Germany ever was to the Soviet Union.
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  Ah, yes, labeling taking war reparations as stealing is just 'semantics' and any other option is 'whataboutism'. Also casually ignoring what Drittes Reich did to the Soviet People, because that's also semantics, I guess. Yes, they are thankful to Uncle Sam what the Soviet Union didn't do to them what they did it the Soviet Union people (it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert). And the most amusing thing is what in the first comment I explicitly marked the difference on how it's described depending on the side.
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    > it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert Well it pretty much was compared to West Germany in 1990. And the little economic successes the GDR had were definitely not because, but despite our "beloved" Soviet Big Brother who didn't miss a chance to milk East Germany dry (lookup the uranium mining in East Germany from 1945 into the late 70s for instance - if the Soviet Union would actually have paid anything close to fair prices for the uranium, East Germany would have been much better off). East Germany looks how it does today because West Germany also pumped massive amounts of money into rebuilding the economy and infrastructure after the reunification, just as the US did in West Germany after WW2. I'm not ignoring the atrocities that Nazi Germany did in the Soviet Union during WW2 (and all of Eastern Europe btw, not just Russia, Belarus and Ukraine). The 'semantics' was about your nitpicking of whether taking "spoils of war" is the same as "pilfering". I called it "moving" btw, which as far as I'm aware doesn't have any negative connotations (maybe in Russia, dunno). The "whataboutism" remark is because you brought the "Great West" into the discussion out of nowhere. A true cornerstone of the Soviet and Russian propaganda playbook to deflect any criticism of the Soviet Union and today's Russia under Putin. The "Great West" had absolutely nothing to do with the complicated relationship between the Eastern half of Germany and our Soviet overlord.

flohofwoe 2y ago

Semantics... you can call it what you want and I actually agree that it was in the SU's right as a winner of WW2 and occupant of East Germany, but the point is that the US cannot be accused of the same thing (like you did in a perfect display of whataboutism), because the US pumped massive amounts of money into the West German economy, which then made West Germany a much more thankful and valuable ally to the US than East Germany ever was to the Soviet Union.

justsomehnguy 2y ago
Ah, yes, labeling taking war reparations as stealing is just 'semantics' and any other option is 'whataboutism'. Also casually ignoring what Drittes Reich did to the Soviet People, because that's also semantics, I guess. Yes, they are thankful to Uncle Sam what the Soviet Union didn't do to them what they did it the Soviet Union people (it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert). And the most amusing thing is what in the first comment I explicitly marked the difference on how it's described depending on the side.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  > it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert Well it pretty much was compared to West Germany in 1990. And the little economic successes the GDR had were definitely not because, but despite our "beloved" Soviet Big Brother who didn't miss a chance to milk East Germany dry (lookup the uranium mining in East Germany from 1945 into the late 70s for instance - if the Soviet Union would actually have paid anything close to fair prices for the uranium, East Germany would have been much better off). East Germany looks how it does today because West Germany also pumped massive amounts of money into rebuilding the economy and infrastructure after the reunification, just as the US did in West Germany after WW2. I'm not ignoring the atrocities that Nazi Germany did in the Soviet Union during WW2 (and all of Eastern Europe btw, not just Russia, Belarus and Ukraine). The 'semantics' was about your nitpicking of whether taking "spoils of war" is the same as "pilfering". I called it "moving" btw, which as far as I'm aware doesn't have any negative connotations (maybe in Russia, dunno). The "whataboutism" remark is because you brought the "Great West" into the discussion out of nowhere. A true cornerstone of the Soviet and Russian propaganda playbook to deflect any criticism of the Soviet Union and today's Russia under Putin. The "Great West" had absolutely nothing to do with the complicated relationship between the Eastern half of Germany and our Soviet overlord.