What If Hitler Had Used Nerve Gas?


  • @KurtGodel7:

    @calvinhobbesliker:

    Oh, god. Another “think tank” that thinks all democrats are communists

    I drew from several sources, including The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, the CIA website, the Mackinac Institute, and elsewhere. As for The Wages of Destruction, The Times (London) labeled it as “A magnificent demonstration of the explanatory power of economic history.”

    To the best of my knowledge, no one from any of the sources I have quoted has asserted that all or most Democrats are communists. This is a discussion about FDR and his administration, specifically, and not of differences between American political parties in general. If I have labeled FDR pro-communist, it is because of the following actions (among others):

    • Warmly referred to Stalin as “Uncle Joe,” and cultivated a consistently pro-Soviet foreign policy throughout his administration.
    • Engaged in a pro-Soviet propaganda effort, as I described in my earlier post.
    • Built his foreign policy largely on the long-term goal of cementing an alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union
    • Allowed his administration to become influenced by Soviet agents, including Harry Hopkins, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and others. There were also significant numbers of people in FDR’s administration who, while not Soviet agents, were nonetheless Soviet sympathizers or fellow travelers.
    • Directly participated in Soviet mass murder through the Yalta Conference. One of the provisions to which FDR agreed involved handing over most German POWs, all Soviet POWs, and all Soviet and Baltic States refugees, to the Soviet government.
    • Adopted the Morgenthau Plan, which had initially been proposed by Harry Dexter White. That plan resulted in the starvation of millions of Germans after the war. According to the Hoover Report, that number would have increased to tens of millions had FDR’s postwar plan been allowed to remain in place. As a result of this postwar genocide, West Germany was starting to turn to communism out of desperation. It very well could have become communist had the Republicans not passed the Marshall Plan in 1948.
    • Back in the U.S., FDR raised the top income tax rate first to 79% and later to 90%. He once proposed a top marginal rate of 99.5%; and later issued an executive order increasing the top marginal rate to 100% for all income over $25,000 a year. (That executive order was later rescinded by Congress.)
    • Empowered the National Recovery Agency (NRA) and other federal agencies to use thug-style tactics to enforce restrictions on free enterprise.
    • When the NRA was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, FDR attempted to neuter the court by packing it with additional justices. Had he been successful in that plan, it would have eliminated what up until then had been one of the largest obstacles to making the U.S. more like the Soviet Union.

    Please do not construe my reference to Republicans’ support for the Marshall Plan as an indication that I think that all Republicans of the era were humane in their treatment of Germans after the war. As I have noted elsewhere on this board, Eisenhower strongly supported JCS 1067 and its implication of postwar starvation in Germany. He even went so far as to remove Patton from command due to the latter’s opposition to JCS 1067.

    Where did you get that FDR wanted a 100% income tax?


  • @calvinhobbesliker:

    Where did you get that FDR wanted a 100% income tax?

    The Mackinac Institute’s essay about FDR–entitled “Great Myths of the Great Depression”–contains the following text:


    As pointed out earlier in this essay, Herbert Hoover’s own version of a “New Deal” had hiked the top marginal income tax rate from 24 percent to 63 percent in 1932. But he was a piker compared to his tax-happy successor. Under Roosevelt, the top rate was raised at first to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent. Economic historian Burton Folsom notes that in 1941 Roosevelt even proposed a whopping 99.5 percent marginal rate on all incomes over $100,000. “Why not?” he said, when an advisor questioned the idea.[40]

    After that confiscatory proposal failed, Roosevelt issued an executive order to tax all income over $25,000 at the astonishing rate of 100 percent. He also promoted the lowering of the personal exemption to only $600, a tactic that pushed most American families into paying at least some income tax for the first time. Shortly thereafter, Congress rescinded the executive order, but went along with the reduction of the personal exemption.[41]


    Sources 40 and 41 from the above text are from the following:


    Burton Folsom, “What’s Wrong With The Progressive Income Tax?”, Viewpoint on Public Issues, No. 99-18, May 3, 1999, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Midland, Michigan.


  • '12

    Burton Folsom must be a democrat, I see him refered to alot by fox news and freeman societies, they are democraticly slanted right?

    This is starting to look like a right versus left typical american political battle.  This FDR as evil dictator argument is boring……


  • Actualy the Nazis were more sane in this reguard than the allies were.  They had much more, and much better chemical weapons than we had but did not use them.  Kind of an early version of MAD.  Hitler served in WW1 and was exposed to mustard gas and I think that influenced his decision.  Could also argue that might be one of the reasons he used it in the holocaust, he hated those “subhumans” that much.

    Churchill actualy almost used chemical weapons in 44.  He was enraged at the v1 and v2 attacks that he wanted to start dropping chemical weapons in the bombing raids in retaliation.  Roosevelt talked him down from it.  Good thing too - a V2 loaded with the more lethal and more plentiful german chemical weapons would have been a holocaust in and of itself.


  • @MrMalachiCrunch:

    Burton Folsom must be a democrat, I see him refered to alot by fox news and freeman societies, they are democraticly slanted right?

    This is starting to look like a right versus left typical american political battle.  This FDR as evil dictator argument is boring……

    Fox is right slanted

  • '12

    I was being facetious.  Fox is merely the toy/mouth piece of Rupert Murdoch who can hardly be confused with a lefty.  Ironic how fox seems to influence things in the US but rarely mentions it is owned by a foreigner.  Well, technically not in order to satisfy FCC rules.

    Anyways, it’s also ironic that Churchill was basically for poison gas usage and hitler was against it.


  • I completely agree, Fox is right slanted.  But the crappy thing is that it is the only place to go not to hear the further extreme of the left.  I would love if fox was more “fair and balanced”, but it isn’t.  BUT, where else can you go to hear another point of view that is not tainted?

    CNN?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOrPzVECSjo

    Fox may be bad, but they are not this bad.  Don’t you think the ACORN news was newsworthy?  Why was Fox the only one who really covered it?  I think the fact that Fox has such good ratings is because people are not nec. right wing in America, they just are sick of only hearing one point of view.

    MSNBC is not unbiased either, and they are crazier than rat shit.

  • '12

    OK, as a non-american who could really give a ratts-a$$ about who runs the US, right or left wing some personal observations.  It really is sad to see the right and left fighting and rearranged deck chairs as the titanic is taking on water. I for one would welcome a strong, prosperous and introspective america.  MSNBC is about as left as FOX is right.  FOX tends to make more factual mistakes however, like Anne coulter arguing with a Canadian journalist about Canada sending troops to vietnam during that war.  Canada didn’t, but Anne is not one to let facts get in the way of a good insult.
    http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/sticksandstones_multimedia2.html

    CNN is becoming irrelevant.  Nobody mentioned PBS, they are accused of being lefties by FOX types, but PBS puts out a high quality product, perhaps a bit left as right wingers don’t tend to pursue journalism as a career.

    Perhaps to get a better perspective on America, Americans should watch non-american news shows.  It might just surpise you what non-americans think are important issues and what important issues are to the rest of the world that most US media outlets ignore.

    BBC world report is highly respected around the world and should be one of many sources.  While Al-Jazzera has its critics and often rightly so, it is an interesting window on the grievences of those who wish american harm.

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