[scotty79]

Of course. Some of them.

Not everone who joins the army is a volunteer killer. Some people just want to help. Treat wounds. Recover wounded. Scare the enemy away. Some tentatively accept that some people might die in the process. People tend to accept that in war people die. They are more like armed robbers who'd love to have their goals met without killing anyone but some are accepting that someone might die in the process. But fraction of people are killers. They participate in the process in order to kill. Those are the most deficient ones. They are present in every place where people die, on both sides.

[bombcar]

Some fraction signing up so they can gun someone down, sure, those people have bad motives and should be found and excluded.

But being willing to say "I'd kill to protect X if there is no other option" is not that.

Someone who becomes a surgeon so that he can kill a patient now and then and get away with it obviously has something wrong. Someone who becomes a surgeon and now and then causes a patient to die unintentionally (even if they intended to do the surgery, knowing it could result in death) is not the same.

[fl7305]

Are you a pacifist who thinks that it is never OK to take a life, no matter the circumstances? In that case I understand what you think, even if that is not my way of thinking.

If you are not a pacifist, then I don't understand how you think a peaceful society should act when an aggressive neighbor tries to kill all of them?

[scotty79]

I think it's ok to take life if it's your own life or help someone to take their own if there are good reasons for it.

I don't know how a peaceful society should act if neigbour tries to kill them. I think if that's the case, they made a lot of mistakes already, if they reached that point.

Probably the only thing to do is gather your killers and send them to kill and tell everybody it's ok this time. And most likely just die regardless of what you decided to do. If this society somehow survives it's way ahead because they not only repelled foreign killers but culled their own. That's pretty much was the result of WW2. Europe was destined for prosperity after it no matter who won. Just because higher fraction of killers than normal people died.

[fl7305]

> I don't know how a peaceful society should act if neigbour tries to kill them. I think if that's the case, they made a lot of mistakes already, if they reached that point.

There are literally thousands of examples throughout history of smaller ethnic groups that were completely wiped out by their bigger and more aggressive neighbors.

Do you think these small groups were provoking their neighbors? Why? Did they all have a death wish?

How do you appease someone who is determined to take over your territory while getting rid of your people? What does the compromise look like?

> Europe was destined for prosperity after it no matter who won.

Wow. If the Germans would have won, they would have cleansed large parts of Europe. Do you call that "prosperity"?

Same thing with Stalin. If he had gotten a free rein across Europe, I don't imagine there would have been many Scandinavians left today, for instance. The few left would live somewhere in Siberia.

[scotty79]

> There are literally thousands of examples throughout history of smaller ethnic groups that were completely wiped out by their bigger and more aggressive neighbors.

Exactly. Figting and killing didn't help them in any way.

> Do you think these small groups were provoking their neighbors? Why? Did they all have a death wish?

The wrong decision in that case was deciding to be separate from their neighbors despite the fact that they presented overwhelming force. They were multitude of ethnic groups who survived by getting assimilated into their stronger neighbors. You might argue that it's not a survival if culture disappears. But that's just words. Genes are what matters in any broader context.

> If the Germans would have won, they would have cleansed large parts of Europe. Do you call that "prosperity"?

They would possibly kill all the Jews which is unfortunate and a terrible loss. The rest of the populace would just become the part of their empire. And running an empire is a troublesome thing as countries like Britain found out. India used to be a British colony. And today more property is owned in London by the Indians than by native British people. Some regions of London are minority white. Nobody designed it like that. It is just a result of previous attempts at exploitation of their acquired empire. Same happened to France. Germans would eventually succumb to the same fate.

Stalin is a different thing. Just because Russians are terrible at everything. I'm still sure they wouldn't manage to keep whole Europe under their shoe for long. And if they did that would mean they seriously stepped up their game, so prosperity of sorts.

[lannisterstark]

Appeasement didn't work in 1939, it wouldn't work now.

[scotty79]

I'm not talking about appeasement. I'm talking about peacefully losing all there is to lose.

[fl7305]

Edit: Reading your comments again, it does look like you are a pacifist?

> I think it's ok to take life if it's your own life or help someone to take their own if there are good reasons for it.

I read this as you think it is never OK to take a life in self defence, even if that means that tens of millions will be exterminated?

If so, you can disregard the rest:

> Figting and killing didn't help them in any way.

There are also many examples of much smaller ethnic groups who avoided complete extermination because they had a very competent army.

If you don't resist a neighbor who wants to exterminate your ethnic group, then the outcome is given. If you do resist, you still have a chance.

> The rest of the populace would just become the part of their (WW2 Germany) empire.

No. That is only true for northern and maybe western europe. Eastern europeans were considered vermin by them.

> They were multitude of ethnic groups who survived by getting assimilated into their stronger neighbors.

That can happen. Doesn't mean it's a given. I feel your overall logic reasoning leaves a lot to be desired? Do you strive to make logically sound arguments, or is that not important? If not, I don't think we can take this any further.

There is a sliding scale here. You have everything from pressure to align your country with the bigger neighbor all the way down to 100% extermination.

Germany's plans for the Slavic peoples were complete extermination. There was nothing the slavs could do or say to convince the German leadership to change their mind.

> I'm Polish. How much good do you think killing Germans did for Polish people in 1940?

Maybe you think that Germany didn't plan to exterminate all poles. Ok, let's just pretend that's the case. By advocating that Poland shouldn't have resisted, you're at the same time advocating handing over the 3 million Polish jews to Germany without a fight, knowing what would happen to them. Are you really OK with that?

> Stalin is a different thing. Just because Russians are terrible at everything. I'm still sure they wouldn't manage to keep whole Europe under their shoe for long. And if they did that would mean they seriously stepped up their game, so prosperity of sorts.

Sure, the Russians would have had a hell of a time keeping western europe under control. Stalin's answer to such problems were simply killing enough people until the problem disappeared. Not letting them do their own thing.

During the 1930's, Stalin sent out his underlings with orders to kill a certain quota in given area. The quotas were in the hundreds of thousands.

[scotty79]

I guess you could say that my views align with views of absolute pacifists at least when it comes to moral evaluation of war related activities.

However I arrived at it independently from two beliefs I hold. First, that killing is innately evil. The other one is that I believe that the idea that good and evil are somehow additive and can cancel each other out is worth of people from two thousand years ago. This simplistic view of things that are core of any morality was (and is) propagated by major religions for the purpose of getting away with evil. Religiously fossilized perception of good/evil as a single axis is far behind current cultural development of humanity.

More accurate perception, I believe, is to see good and evil as orthogonal. To be considered independently. To be rewarded and punished separately and accordingly.

> I read this as you think it is never OK to take a life in self defence, even if that means that tens of millions will be exterminated?

It's good to save millions. It's evil to take life. If you managed to save millions without taking a life you are purely good. Way better than a person who saved millions but killed someone.

A billion people owe their entire existence to Norman Borlaug. Would you be willing to absolve him of guilt if he intentionality killed 100 people during his research?

I assume not. Why should fighting be considered different?

> There are also many examples of much smaller ethnic groups who avoided complete extermination because they had a very competent army.

Does some specific case come to your mind?

> Do you strive to make logically sound arguments, or is that not important?

I agree that logic is important and I would like to have reasoned beliefs (apart from things I take as axioms, like killing is evil, less suffering is good).

> Maybe you think that Germany didn't plan to exterminate all poles. Ok, let's just pretend that's the case.

We don't need to pretend. We know that they didn't. Slavs were destined to be subservient workers in their plans. Many ethnic Poles died in death camps, second only to Jews. The main purposes was to terrorize populace (to achieve control), reduce number of Poles (to make lebensraum for Germans) and eliminate Polish elite (that was deemed counterproductive to the idea of turning Poles into workers). All in all terrible, far end of the evil axis. But completely unpreventable by attempting to kill Germans. I could argue that some lives might have been saved if Germans believed they already have full control so that terrorizing is unnecessary.

Poland has a history of armed resistance and uprisings that almost all failed. Again, compare to how much suffering was inflicted on countries that didn't resist this much. Poland was leveled.

> you're at the same time advocating handing over the 3 million Polish jews to Germany without a fight

And you are advocating handing them out with a fight. Result is the same. Just more people dead.

The correct action is to evade, hide, run, bargain. Fighting is in almost all cases the worst possible idea even from purely utilitarian standpoint. And for the cases it somehow succeeds it still doesn't mean it's only good in a moral sense. When it's effects ar deaths and destruction it is also evil.

> During the 1930's, Stalin sent out his underlings with orders to kill a certain quota in given area. The quotas were in the hundreds of thousands.

I think Russian would be way worse than Germans. Then again Eastern Europe was effectively given away to Stalin unconditionally and most survived, no thanks to attempts at armed resistance. Just by waiting out till those idiots run out of steam.

[lannisterstark]

This is such a naive point of view. Imagine seeing somebody getting assaulted, genocided, murdered in front of your eyes and then closing your eyes for the sake of 'peace,' or the idea of it that you have in mind anyway.

You should tell the Polish people in 1940s that they should only treat wounds and not fight back.

[scotty79]

I'm Polish. How much good do you think killing Germans did for Polish people in 1940?

Compare to France and other western European countries that immediately retreated, lost one battle and peacefully folded and stayed down till the end.