Given a chance would you kill baby Hitler?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

He thought he was fighting an old style 19th Century war instead of a 20th Century war.

I don't agree, Wyrd.  The German Army prepared to fight the next war rather than the Allies who prepared to fight the last war all over again.  Germany was outnumbered by the British and French who had more and better tanks.  It was German tactics of blitzkrieg warfare which overwhelmed the Allies in 1940.

It's too bad for Hitler that the war didn't end in 1940.  He was toast as soon as his troops started shooting.

[Thumpalumpacus]

See Noam Chomsky:

https://youtu.be/9CKpCGjD8wg

https://youtu.be/oB1q2tdb-Gw

Sorry, I asked for numbers, not videos. Do you have statistics? Or ar you going to appeal to authority on the sly?

Give me data, or shut your piehole.

You're being a dick. Not all Americans support American policy, yet you're wishing evil to befall them no matter.

How the fuck am I "being a dick"?

By wishing misfortune on people who don't necessarily support the bad decisions of the American government ... that's how, you dick. Perhaps you'll learn how to consider individuals as individuals regardless of their nation of origin. Me, I don't think you're so bright you can reach that sort of thinking; I think you're a self-righteous flag-happy cunt who thinks that your country is a great place to be emulated, and you yourself do not even see the blinders you place over your own peripheral vision.

That's how you're being a dick ... Dick.

I just want what the US military does to other governments and civilians done to the US government and US civilians.

Yes, because two wrongs make a right, dipshit.

You don't seem to understand the concept of what I'm trying to get across to you. The Israeli occupation in the Levant is no different to if an invading force decided to occupy the United States and then force all the pre-existing North Americans out into tiny reserves, and enslave those who want to live alongside the white invaders. And while you're at it, pass legislation that makes them non-citizens, or citizens with fewer rights.

You don't think I understand this, because I don't agree with your view. I've got much deeper roots in this than you yourself know, but I'll let you spin your line out, in order that you shall make a bigger fool of yourself.

Or, alternatively, you could perhaps quit assuming rectitude and you know, uh, listen? Are you that wise?

My great-grandmother was Blackfoot; that branch of my family was exterminated. You, a lily-white Aussie who doesn't know his ass from his elbow about American racial dynamics, lecturing me about this stuff is rich, but trust me -- you're very PC, but you're not compelling. You read like you're chasing a viewpoint, rather than speaking from it. I'm sure you think that your words are useful, and perhaps to you they are -- but don't you use me to salve your own guilt. You'll have to get over that on your own.

Oh wait, that already happened, didn't it? A similar thing happened in Australia (although we never enslaved the Indigenous people); and that was because at the time we were following the conventional 18th/19th century wisdom of colonialism and assimilation. Under that world-view the rights of the indigenous populations didn't matter. We now know that such policies are very harmful for people.

Now, if you compare countries by how they treat their indigenous peoples, you find something very interesting. In the vast majority of the world they refuse to recognise the indigenous occupants of the land; so we actually don't know a lot about many indigenous cultures that continue to be oppressed. Almost every country (if not every) in the world has indigenous people - the Māori in New Zealand are probably among the best treated indigenous people anywhere in the world. You have other countries like Canada, Australia, China, India, the USA, and Japan that recognise their indigenous populations and give them some rights, but on a scale of who treats their indigenous populations better - you have places like Canada and Australia, you have the USA that kind of looks at them as a "problem", but gives them some support, and you have places like Japan that unapologetically treat their indigenous people like utter shit.

I'm sure you've read a lot of books. At least, this portion of your post seems to present that facade. Tell us, how many parts of the world have you, yourself, lived in? Have you traveled outside of Australia? You don't read like it. You read like a patriotic bumpkin who thinks his country is better than others.

And then you have Israel. They believe they are the rightful owners of the land because they are Jewish; but the Palestinians believe they are the rightful owners because they have been indigenous to the land for 12 centuries. This whole conflict was started by the UK invading Palestine in 1917. If not for that colonial invasion Palestine would today be a united State.

What this has to do with my reply is beyond me. Perhaps you could stick to the point rather than insert your own obvious agenda anywhere you see fit? Dipshit.

Anyway, my point is by continuing to support Israel, the United States is supporting them to oppress the indigenous Arab population of the land. And that is exactly what Israel has been doing from the start - they are displacing the indigenous population so they can possess the land for themselves. The way they did this was by purchasing the land from Arabs, putting it into a fund (Jewish National Fund) with the proviso that the land can never be sold back or even leased to the Palestinian people. It's a policy of deliberate oppression, expansion, and conquest. The problem the Palestinian people have is that they were not supported by other Arab States.

And yes, that justifies As for war hungry countries like the United States, I hope to God one day that Russia or Saudi or India or China starts war in their country and puts them in their goddamned place, because we all know that the answer to misery is more misery.

Really, are you this stupid, or is this just a play you're putting on for kicks? The answer to oppression is not more oppression. The answer to suffering is not more suffering. The answer to death is not more death,

If you're so dull you cannot see that much, I can only be happy you're in a place so irrelevant that you have no weight to throw around. Also, I hope the other poms are a few points brighter than you. You're not exactly the sharpest blade on the chopping block.

As for war hungry countries like the United States, I hope to God one day that Russia or Saudi or India or China starts war in their country and puts them in their goddamned place.So you can't fucking tell me with a straight face that America doesn't deserve to feel the same oppression that they have bestowed upon others. I'll be very happy when someone invades America (again) and displaces the present inhabitants and confines them to tiny camps and settlements, and maybe that will stop them from instigating wars everywhere else.

That's because in your infantile desire for revenge, you're unable to see that misery for one person is misery for all. I'll recommend you go reread your Locke, and ponder what it means to be an island or a continent, if you are able to think that deeply; and I'll challenge you to drop your parochial views, if you're able to do so. Color me skeptical.

And I'll repeat my call, that you're being a dick, and you should stop it ... except that by now, it's clear you don't have the wisdom to avoid throwing good money after bad.

Dick.

[Thumpalumpacus]

He thought he was fighting an old style 19th Century war instead of a 20th Century war.

I don't agree, Wyrd.  The German Army prepared to fight the next war rather than the Allies who prepared to fight the last war all over again.  Germany was outnumbered by the British and French who had more and better tanks.  It was German tactics of blitzkrieg warfare which overwhelmed the Allies in 1940.

They concentrated what, seven armored divisions into the Ardennes to burst upon the crossing at Sedan? The Brits and French had at least three or four hundred more tanks, and in the S-35 a better tank than anything the Wehrmacht fielded -- but they split them up into brigade and regimental assignments. So the Germans hit with a solid armored spearhead, while the Allies defended with a soft, uncoordinated design.

Guderian and Rommel both wrote great books outlining the tactics they intended to (and did) use, in the upcoming war. Didn't Mellenthin, too? Can't remember.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Sure, Germany had a few good fighter planes but it didn't have any long range heavy bombers.

That's not to say it didn't have an air force of considerable influence. Long-range heavy bombers weren't the only, or even most useful, aircraft types.

It had some submarines but it didn't have a fleet of battleships and aircraft carriers.  It didn't even have any row boats to use to invade England.

I think you missed my point. If Germany hadn't spent so much time, money, labor and metal building the Tirpitz class, the Scharnhorst class, and the Hipper class, there could have been a hell of a lot more U-boats handy in 1942. Operation Paukenschlag sank a couple of million tons of commerce with seven subs -- and that was all Doenitz had available. What if he had had fifty?

Aircraft carriers in the ETO were pretty much irrelevant, too, except for ferry duties a la Wasp. Taranto was the exception because it was, indeed, a surprise. Not for nothing did the Americans assign only CVEs and one obsolete CV to Torch; Constricted waters mean carriers are not only not necessary, but are more vulnerable ... as the Limeys learnt.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Sure, Germany had a few good fighter planes but it didn't have any long range heavy bombers.

That's not to say it didn't have an air force of considerable influence. Long-range heavy bombers weren't the only, or even most useful, aircraft types.

It had some submarines but it didn't have a fleet of battleships and aircraft carriers.  It didn't even have any row boats to use to invade England.

I think you missed my point. If Germany hadn't spent so much time, money, labor and metal building the Tirpitz class, the Scharnhorst class, and the Hipper class, there could have been a hell of a lot more U-boats handy in 1942. Operation Paukenschlag sank a couple of million tons of commerce with seven subs -- and that was all Doenitz had available. What if he had had fifty?

Aircraft carriers in the ETO were pretty much irrelevant, too, except for ferry duties a la Wasp. Taranto was the exception because it was, indeed, a surprise. Not for nothing did the Americans assign only CVEs and one obsolete CV to Torch; Constricted waters mean carriers are not only not necessary, but are more vulnerable ... as the Limeys learnt.

The point is that Hitler started the war without the weapon systems necessary to win it.  And once Germany came under 24/7/365 Allied bombing raids he was done.  If Germany had held out to August 1945 we would have nuked them.   He had no ability to attack the US; he couldn't invade England; he couldn't knock out Russia; he couldn't defend Germany.

[Anomalocaris]

He thought he was fighting an old style 19th Century war instead of a 20th Century war.

I don't agree, Wyrd.  The German Army prepared to fight the next war rather than the Allies who prepared to fight the last war all over again.  Germany was outnumbered by the British and French who had more and better tanks.  It was German tactics of blitzkrieg warfare which overwhelmed the Allies in 1940.

not entirely true.  It was by pure chance that the Germany army did not oblige the French and British by fighting precisely the last war for which the French and the British were prepared.

A German major with plans for fighting precisely the Von schliffen plan again crash landed and was captured in Belgium.  That was the plan German army would have gone with.   In pure panick that the plan is compromised, the German army at the 11th hour adapted Von Manstein's plan to cut through Ardennes.  Had the major not taken a wrong turn, German army would have slammed through northern Belgium just as it did in auagust 1941, and would have been stopped dead in its tracks by the French and British armies in Belgium, and there would have followed a confined and very concentrated war of attrition on the ground similar to 1915-1918, for which Nazi Germany in 1940 was much less materially well prepared than kaiser's Germany had been in 1914.

If there was one thing the German army really was much better than everyone else during WWII, it wasn't farsightedness regarding future tactics and needs, it wasn't logistics, it wasn't training of the fighting men, and it wasn't equipment overall, it was the skill of its officer Corp to Improvise, roll with the punches, and rapidly adapt to emergencies.

[Anomalocaris]

I don't agree, Wyrd.  The German Army prepared to fight the next war rather than the Allies who prepared to fight the last war all over again.  Germany was outnumbered by the British and French who had more and better tanks.  It was German tactics of blitzkrieg warfare which overwhelmed the Allies in 1940.

It's too bad for Hitler that the war didn't end in 1940.  He was toast as soon as his troops started shooting.

His last chance for not losing the war was in July 1941. But He vacillated over how the war should be conducted in Russia between focusing on the annihilation of (known) soviet armies in the west, and quickly seizing the strategic objectives of Moscow and Leningrad. He tries to do both, wasted 2 month of prime campaigning weather and ran the panders into the ground by making them deploy first for one objective and then the other.

Had he struck directly for Moscow he may well have taken Moscow by October and forced a negotiated peace with what is left of the USSR. if that happened, he and germany may well survive a long time.

[Edwardo Piet]

Despite the fact more innocent babies dying is worse, I don't really see someone killing one innocent baby as any less immoral than if someone killed billions. It's worse in body count but every individual innocent baby from its own perspective still experiences dying. Which is fucking horrific.

Like I said I don't think utility can be aggregated as simplistic as many utilitarians do.

For example it doesn't matter how many pinpricks oneself or millions of other people experience, every experience of a pinpick both multiple times by the same person and by different people is still only a pinprick and could never be as bad as torture of the worst kind to even one other person.

However, 2 pinpricks of the same pain level is clearly twice as bad as one, and a million a million times worse than 1. But higher pains and sufferings are unreachable from the pinprick level.

Likewise a more horrific death will always be a more horrific death from a pain/suffering perspective... and more painful grief from more loved ones will always be more painful grief from more loved ones. Every individual is different and every individual matters:

However in practical terms there is often no clear way to judge so many different individual sufferings and deaths and the griefs of others and it would be completely biased and unethical if one seriously attempted to do so. The best approach at least for practical terms= Greater suffering and death in quantitive terms leads to greater suffering and death in qualititve terms.

Besides the chances that anyone suffers the exact same identical level of pain and experience of death even from seemingly identical experiences is extremely tiny so basically greater suffering and deaths in numbers almost guarantees greater suffering from the qualittive perspective too.

So obviously more dead babies is far worse but I think that even 1 dead innocent baby is so bad as to make more being obviously worse but clearly hardly an improvement. Every death and extreme suffering is relevant.

If one had to choose between the death of one or the death of many, obviously the former is almost certainly a better result but I wouldn't ever want to "play God" with such matters because I think that the former isn't much better in result than the latter.

And lets say it was a choice between a million painlessly dead and 1 painfully dead? What then? I don't like to play with people's lives.

In my personal opinion in that case one would have to think of whether the emotional grief and pain from any of the millions of dead could at all outweigh the suffering of the 1 that died painfully, including any long term impact of sufferings on the planet and earth population in general after the millions died.

But this is hypothetical, in practical terms I would prefer to never "play God".

[IATIA]

Basically, you are talking the "trolley problem". You have a trolley headed toward five people that will die or you can flip the switch and reroute the trolley to kill one or just walk away and let five die.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yes but I'm taking it further than that because I'm also talking about the inapplicability of the mere aggregation of utility.

I mean like... I would say that if it's 5 people suffering a painless death from a trolley and 1 person suffering an extremely painful death from a trolly, and asked if that was moral then we're talking about a more complicated scenario than the basic question.

Furthermore I am taking it a step further than that because I'm saying: Let's say the 5 people do suffer but a pain far less significant than the first person, and let's also say that all 5 people who die will be barely missed but the first person was much loved and his/her death will cause much grief. I am saying can the smaller sufferings and smaller grief caused by the other 5 people be meaningfully "added up" /aggregated in such a way in utilitarian terms as to outweigh the one other person who was killed who suffered far more and who was much more greatly missed and grieved over.... or rather should each individual -including those who grieved as well as the sufferings of those who were directly killed AND including all the long term impact of suffering afterwards - be treated as separate and the peak suffering is what should really be considered (the one person) and merely it is just the case that it would be biased, unjust, and unrealistic to generally assume anything other than the reasonable assumption that greater quantity of deaths and suffering = generally more intense qualititve death and suffering, as a general moral principle.