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> Killing a bunch of random Danes We don't really know much but supposedly they were mainly enemy combatants (and their affiliates, possibly including their fa

> Killing a bunch of random Danes We don't really know much but supposedly they were mainly enemy combatants (and their affiliates, possibly including their families in a less generous interpretation. Although considering that the slave trade was a alive and well in Anglo-Saxon Britain killing women and children might not have been practical). "Random" Danes have been violently terrorizing Britain for centuries, of course indiscriminate murder is always horrible but I wouldn't say it's necessarily comparable to what Nazi Germany was doing (maybe closer to what the Soviets did to Germans when they got the upper hand).

inglor_cz 2y ago
The analysis of skeletons found at St John's College indicates that the slain were a mixture of native Danes and youngsters who grew up in England. Given how murder campaigns usually go, I would be a bit surprised if the killers were particularly careful about ensuring precise identities of the victims before killing them. Jewish people didn't kill Germans, no, but the Nazi propaganda painted them as mortal enemies of the people, betrayers, swindlers, modern wannabe slavers: certainly, after years of such propaganda, at least some of the Germans "bought it" and could justify their participation in the Holocaust as a mix of vengeance and national self-defence. Dehumanization of victims usually precedes genocides.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  Yes, I mean I'm not trying to justify those events however by the standards of the day it doesn't seem particularly exceptional (of course again, we only have a very vague understanding). Killing the entire male population (since in such societies all males above 12-14 were effectively treated as such) wasn't that particularly exceptional. After all most Danes/Scandinavians in England seem to have survived? The Holocaust was an extreme aberration though. Something generally unthinkable by the (European) standards of the 1800s or 1900s. We can go back another ~500 and even the medieval rulers of Spain, Portugal etc. (who expelled the entire Jewish and Muslim) populations from their countries) would consider outright extermination to be extremely appalling.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    The Holocaust was explicitly modeled on the Armenian Genocide. Of course, there is a question to which degree we can consider the Turks as European. They are sorta-kinda "in between" Europe and the more stereotypical Orient.
    - brabel 2y ago
      Hittler admired the American extermination of natives, actually, and hoped to do the same in Eastern Europe, killing the Slavic people and Jews rather than the Native American peoples.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]

inglor_cz 2y ago

The analysis of skeletons found at St John's College indicates that the slain were a mixture of native Danes and youngsters who grew up in England. Given how murder campaigns usually go, I would be a bit surprised if the killers were particularly careful about ensuring precise identities of the victims before killing them. Jewish people didn't kill Germans, no, but the Nazi propaganda painted them as mortal enemies of the people, betrayers, swindlers, modern wannabe slavers: certainly, after years of such propaganda, at least some of the Germans "bought it" and could justify their participation in the Holocaust as a mix of vengeance and national self-defence. Dehumanization of victims usually precedes genocides.

Wytwwww 2y ago
Yes, I mean I'm not trying to justify those events however by the standards of the day it doesn't seem particularly exceptional (of course again, we only have a very vague understanding). Killing the entire male population (since in such societies all males above 12-14 were effectively treated as such) wasn't that particularly exceptional. After all most Danes/Scandinavians in England seem to have survived? The Holocaust was an extreme aberration though. Something generally unthinkable by the (European) standards of the 1800s or 1900s. We can go back another ~500 and even the medieval rulers of Spain, Portugal etc. (who expelled the entire Jewish and Muslim) populations from their countries) would consider outright extermination to be extremely appalling.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  The Holocaust was explicitly modeled on the Armenian Genocide. Of course, there is a question to which degree we can consider the Turks as European. They are sorta-kinda "in between" Europe and the more stereotypical Orient.
  - brabel 2y ago
    Hittler admired the American extermination of natives, actually, and hoped to do the same in Eastern Europe, killing the Slavic people and Jews rather than the Native American peoples.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]