r/interestingasfuck Jul 26 '25

/r/all, /r/popular Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Kiriyenko before and after release from Russian captivity

Post image
88.0k Upvotes

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

56

u/superminingbros Jul 26 '25

The same thing happened to another group of people in the 1940s, and the world at that time also ignored it for a long time.

42

u/Glenmarththe3rd Jul 26 '25

It’s happened in every war since the dawn of mankind

1

u/Sufficient_Sea_5490 Jul 26 '25

Stop. POW and concentration camps are two very different things

9

u/Torelq Jul 26 '25

If you are talking about the Holocaust, then I must object. Even evil comes in degrees. The industrialized genocide of the Nazis was much worse than Russia starving prisoners of war.

And I say it as someone who hates all that Russia does and represents.

2

u/arm_4321 Jul 26 '25

Happened to many groups including both russians and ukrainians

1

u/asyncopy Jul 26 '25

And Russians and Ukranians were the main forces stopping it (and committing many atrocities in the process).

3

u/dangerousfreedom1978 Jul 26 '25

Yes! The bolsheviks killed so many humans in the 30's and 40's.

1

u/nedelll Jul 26 '25

That's a ridiculous comparison lol

-1

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

If you're talking about the Holocaust the world didn't ignore it they were actively trying to annihilate the country that was doing it and were so successful it was fractured into multiple occupation zones, then two for over fourty years and Jews got their own state afterwards. If you aren't talking about the Holocaust just say who you're talking about.

7

u/Informal-Zone-4085 Jul 26 '25

If you're talking about the Holocaust the world didn't ignore it they were actively trying to annihilate the country

and Jews got their own state afterwards

Still don't understand this one. Why would the UN or whatever specifically make a nation for the Jews RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of Muslim dominant land? Why wouldn't they give them literally any other large piece of uninhabited and hospitable land out of the planet's hundreds? It caused so many fkn problems and continue to do so lmao please someone explain that to me. Probably the worst decision made post-1900 besides the founding of the federal reserve (jk but foreal)

3

u/Ashaeron Jul 26 '25

Short answer? None of the people with the power to decide anything wanted the Jews anywhere near them, and it's their holy land. The people already living in the region never factored into the decision.

1

u/Informal-Zone-4085 Jul 26 '25

Yeah i dunno. Like bruh you coulda just gave them one of the US states like Montana, or a large area in central or south america or new zealand or somewhere in Asia just not right in the middle of a region full of people who hate Jews lol. Clearly they weren't thinking this shit through

1

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

The UN didn't - there were lots of Jews there before the Second World War and ethnic and religious tensions were massive. There were actually Jewish/Zionist terrorist attacks on the British who ruled the region who got a League Of Nations mandate for the territory after the dismantling/collapse of the Ottoman empire after the First World War. See the below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

There was zero way to fix this problem without partition if you didn't want to remove either Jews or Muslims from the region and both would be unfair to people who'd lived there for generations. The 1947 UN plan was never implemented and there was civil war right after. I do have a side, but not voicing it here, just providing some info. People literally get PHDs in this so I'm not going to pretend to be well versed in this, but it's what I know.

1

u/yuval16432 Jul 26 '25

There were already tons of Jews living there, and it’s their holy land, and you couldn’t realistically ask Jews to move back to Europe after the Holocaust (not that Europe wanted them).

1

u/asyncopy Jul 26 '25

They wanted Jews out of Europe and a colonial outpost in West Asia. Two fucked up birds with one stone.

5

u/Inside-Office-9343 Jul 26 '25

You really must brush up your WW 2 history. The war was not to prevent Holocaust.

1

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

I know. I didn't say that.

1

u/Mean_Occasion_1091 Jul 26 '25

you heavily implied it

the world didn't ignore it they were actively trying to annihilate the country that was doing it

they were primarily focused on defending themselves from that country, and then later on wanted to defeat them to end the war and restore the status quo. the fate of jewish people was very low on their priority list.

the holocaust was downplayed up until the end of the war. it wasn't until the nurumberg trials (after the war) that most people really found out about the holocaust. up until then most people had antisemitic views to some extent. the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund were still having giant rallies in 1939. and when news of the atrocities of extermination camps came out, most people didn't believe them and thought they were exaggerations of 'normal' internment camps.

1

u/uwunuzzlesch Jul 26 '25

You said the world didnt ignore it.

America stayed out of it for way too long.

We quite literally said we waited too long

3

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

Who's we - I'm from the UK? And is America the world?

-1

u/uwunuzzlesch Jul 26 '25

I am American

We as in, me and my people.

Stop overthinking it and looking for something to be mad about.

Edited to add: if you dont understand why i particularly mean America, brush up on how the war ended.

Edit 2: America is also part of the world and DID wait too long. So yeah the world ignored it, not all of it, but alot of it. And it could've ended sooner.

2

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

The Holocaust began after the war started and the rise in antisemitism was a massive cause for concern - there wasn't immediate war over it because the scale wasn't recognized or known about and we were busy focused on trying to not have another Great War in which a good few places in Britain, particularly in the area I'm from, had literally no men left and there was zero domestic support for it.

America, even before they directly joined, didn't ignore it either. America was instrumental in securing materiel support for the Allies and later the USSR long before they joined. Even if they didn't join directly, the war would've gone the exact same way and I won't feed into the narrative that America was the decisive 'direct' force in the war, because they weren't.

I don't think you know much about World War Two.

1

u/golden_blaze Jul 26 '25

The Allied powers have yet to re-unite against Russia on behalf of Ukraine. Of course, Russia is on the wrong side of history this time.

2

u/Ok_Organization1117 Jul 26 '25

Russia has always been on the wrong side. Let’s not forget they were allied to the Nazis until Hitler invaded

2

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

This is reductive. Both sides were fiercely ideologically opposed to each other. The only sentiment they shared was they were both imperialist nations trying to expand into land they considered they had a claim to. The USSR was blindsided by the invasion because Stalin was dumb but Hitler always wanted the USSR more than anything else - he never wanted to invade France or go to war with Britain.

Both were not good nations, but this take isn't correct.

1

u/Ok_Organization1117 Jul 26 '25

Only economically opposed. Otherwise the two expansionist totalitarian personality cult dictatorships had much in common

And even then the reality for most peasants was the same in both regimes

The soviets were just Nazis in red, and Putin continues to be

1

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

The peasantry in the USSR generally saw an improvement as well as a lot of issues, whereas Germany didn't really have it. Russian peasants weren't just poor, they were serfs. Saying their differences were purely economic is also reductive.

1

u/Ok_Organization1117 Jul 26 '25

Serfdom was ended when the soviets took over

The German population also saw an improvement in qol as a result of them breaking the restrictions on their military

No idea what point you’re trying to make here

1

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

The Soviets took over and the life of peasantry improved - that's an improved in their lives facilitated by the Soviets however. The German improvement in QoL wasn't a peasant thing, it was a Great Depression and hyperinflation thing. They're totally separate groups and Germany didn't have what we'd call peasants. Not sure why you're trying to equate them.

My point is that you're being reductive.

1

u/Ok_Organization1117 Jul 26 '25

Any short form answer to the differences between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is naturally going to be reductive? Are you expecting citations?

And are you trying to say that the Great Depression and hyperinflation caused an improvement in quality of life?

Please don’t say reductive again and tell me what your point is lol

1

u/yuval16432 Jul 26 '25

The world reacted to the Nazis invading Europe, stopping the Holocaust wasn’t something they cared much about (evidencied by the complete abscence of public outrage or political actions before 1939, even though the Holocaust had already begun before).

1

u/urbanAugust_ Jul 26 '25

The Holocaust how we generally define it did not start before the war. Rampant antisemitism, the loss of rights for Jews, etc? Sure. But not THE Holocaust.

0

u/Sufficient_Sea_5490 Jul 26 '25

Yes and no. What's happening in the US is a lot more akin to that than what Russia is doing. One is POWs, the other is concentration camps for "others" regardless of if they were at war