The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
A Fistful of Warlocks (SPOILERS: FISTFUL OF WARLOCKS)
Arjan:
--- Quote from: LordDresden2 on July 16, 2017, 04:31:43 AM ---Um...no. Those names don't go together. None of them were necessarily nice, but putting Napolean and Caesar in the same category as Hitler and Stalin just doesn't work.
--- End quote ---
They all shared the same appreciation for human life.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/150000-fled-their-lives-were-slaughtered-julius-caesar-army-bones-reveal-020659
This was not an accident. Roman warfare was brutal but Julius Caesar was new in the scale of his killings and invasions, he invaded Gaul for money and did not even need an excuse.
Of course he would not have started a holocaust, he would have thought it a waste of resources, romans were very practical. But mass slaughter of defenseless people? Happened a lot in his campaigns. Unprovoked attack on other peoples? He was all for it.
Caesar and Napoleon still have the myth around them and people who seriously ascribe to that myth.
forumghost:
Atrocities were committed everywhere throughout history. When the First Crusade got to Jerusalem, they say the City ran ankle-deep in blood. Alexander the Great brutally marched his Army conquering everything in sight. The British slaughtered, divided and enslaved countless to build their Empire. The treatment of Native Americans by Settlers. Etc, Etc.
That's War. That's Empire. It's a terrible, evil thing. But Napoleon and Caesar (bastards though they are) aren't really comparable with the acts of Hitler and the Holocaust, or Stalin's purges.
Dina:
What about atomic bombs? What is happening in Aleppo? And so many other examples.
Arjan:
--- Quote from: forumghost on July 16, 2017, 08:21:24 AM ---Atrocities were committed everywhere throughout history. When the First Crusade got to Jerusalem, they say the City ran ankle-deep in blood. Alexander the Great brutally marched his Army conquering everything in sight. The British slaughtered, divided and enslaved countless to build their Empire. The treatment of Native Americans by Settlers. Etc, Etc.
W
That's War. That's Empire. It's a terrible, evil thing. But Napoleon and Caesar (bastards though they are) aren't really comparable with the acts of Hitler and the Holocaust, or Stalin's purges.
--- End quote ---
Hitler and Stalin had modern technology, communication and organisation at their side. Unlike Rome however they lost and we do not have to listen to their mythology.
They were innovators and though their crimes were not new they were on a scale unheard of before their time.
Rome was similar. Everything they did was known before the romans came but they killed and enslaved on a scale and efficiency never heard of before. They were innovators too.
But I think I wandered away from my original argument here. They were all horrible people who did far more even than most people in their situation and even in their time would have done. The difference that was important for my argument is that some of them had build a mythology around them.
And that mythology still has power today over peoples mind.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/stalinist-nostalgia-in-vladimir-putins-russia.html
Aminar:
--- Quote from: Arjan on July 16, 2017, 10:03:20 AM ---Hitler and Stalin had modern technology, communication and organisation at their side. Unlike Rome however they lost and we do not have to listen to their mythology.
They were innovators and though their crimes were not new they were on a scale unheard of before their time.
Rome was similar. Everything they did was known before the romans came but they killed and enslaved on a scale and efficiency never heard of before. They were innovators too.
But I think I wandered away from my original argument here. They were all horrible people who did far more even than most people in their situation and even in their time would have done. The difference that was important for my argument is that some of them had build a mythology around them.
And that mythology still has power today over peoples mind.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/stalinist-nostalgia-in-vladimir-putins-russia.html
--- End quote ---
Remember, we see a difference between what a ruler does to others and what they do their own people still. Ceaser and Napoleon didn't commit genocide within their borders on nearly tbe scale Hitler and Stalin did.(Although I think at points Rome did.) That's the difference people see. And it's a tough difference to argue against. In the end I'm not sure the difference matters. But to our culture it does. But you're arguing the wrong thing.
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