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sonicfan1373 on 07 February 2016
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snyps said:
sonicfan1373 said:

You are basically mentioning the prominent Nazi rationalizations of the time (read: Dolchstoßlegende).

Germany and indeed many other European countries targeted and oppressed the Jewish people far before the events of the WWI and WWII.

Germany lost WWI and they were put under significant constraints which prevented their economy from growing. Moreover, you had the far-left communists and far-right nationalists (the latter would unify under the Nazi banner) who were constantly battling for control and overall trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic. Some citizens were angry and resentful and the nazis channeled their anger towards the Jewish people (who, at that point, were the go-to scapegoats). Also, the vast majority of the Jewish people in Germany (as well as other groups who the Nazis would target) were ordinary people trying to live a regular life. They did not betray anyone and they certainly did not deserve to be sent to death camps to be killed or experimented on.

Rationalizations are just like ... You're opinion .. Man. (J/k) What you are stating is basically the de facto western rationalization of modern times. They did betray. That makes them deserving of internment camps more than the American Japanese. Imagine if America lost WWII and all those American Japanese detainees were stuck with the dry end of our demolished supply lines. It would look like a holocaust. Of coarse denying the Jewish holocaust is illegal so I'm merely giving an analogy. 

Rationalizations are attempts made by individuals to justify behavior. I am not sure how what I stated is a rationalization of the West because it does not justify any particular action and merely recounts history. In comparison, the narrative provided by the Nazis was used as justification to scape-goat the Jewish people. Moreover, there is written evidence (largely in the form of treaties) that demonstrate the unfair weight being put on Germany through forced reparation payments by Britain and France. Also, it was not the Jewish people that banned exports of German products (I assume you are refering to the huge trade deficit problem that emerged in the late-1920s early-1930s) but rather much of the export deficit was attributed to the Great Depression, which significantly reduced both foreign investment in Germany and trade with the United States (Germany was also not properly reintegrated in Europe at the time, which again stifled trade growth).

In addition, Germany was not the only one that collapsed under the pressure of losing WWI, the Ottomen Empire also collapsed during the same period (though I would argue that they actually started collapsing during the first Balkin Wars period) except the Turkish people decided to scape-goat the Armenians and Greeks. Even in more recent times we have seen similar scape-goating. For example, after the collapse of Yugoslavia, the Serbians started to target Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats. Scape-goating occurs because for many people it is simply much easier for people to blame all of their troubles (which are often quite complex and out of their control) on a certain group of people; the same is happening right now in parts of Greece, where the EU and IMF are pushng the country so hard that a small group of disenchanted people are turning to the extreme far-right (scape-goating ethnic minorities) and extreme far-left (scape-goating those who are better off) options.

Also, just to play devil's advocate, even if a minority of Jewish bankers did decide to make Germay suffer that would still not justify racializing an entire group of people and subjecting them genocide. I would strongly suggest you start speaking with and/or recounting the stories of Holocust survivors and victims, I believe that you will realize that the vast majority of them were not bankers or involved in the financial sector (some of them were too young to even know what the banking sector was). I also believe that we should look at and judge people individually as opposed to create groups that fit specific narratives.