me[edit]

Hi. I got little to say about myself. I love math, filosofy, and political science. I enjoy physics.

I believe that mankind ( i really think that the use of "humankind" is an exageration, looking for minor issues instead of important ones, not to mention it sounds like a try at newspeak ) has got other options, as far as it's political ans social organization is concearned. And i would hope to see choices that are more human.

I believe that there is only one truth, one way to differ right from wrong. So far, i'm convinced that this truth can only be made real in a socialist, democratic, and tolerant society ( i believe that one should aknoledge the impossibility of seeing things from all angles, and therefore accept that other people may have other views. What i don't get is : why not seat togheter, and try to undertand the different views, and seek, amongst them all, a common truth to guide the steps of both people ? We can't just accept that someone "figures" that 2+2=5 ! If we all used the same premisses, we have to get to the same conclusions !)

I like logic

I'm less organized than i should ( as this mess might suggest )

I love classical music, and instrumental in general. I love Vanessa Mae . For my neibors' despair, I'm leaning to play the violin

I try to never miss the sight of a bird, when they are near

I hope this is the goal of this page ... ( guess not ... in the edit page, it says that it has to be verifiable )

stuff I am doing on wikipedia[edit]

Right now, I am trying to research on the soviet union's significance to the errdication of smallpox

for that purpose, I keep in here the material I already have about it

Question on reference desk[edit]

Smallpox erradication and the soviet union[edit]

I'd like to know more about the soviet union's involvement in the struggle to erradicate smallpox. The article on smallpox seems to indicate they had a significant participation, but fails to state so, so I'd like to get the information to put it there. Cold Light (talk) 03:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The book you need is Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox by Jonathan Tucker, which details not only the Soviet contributions to smallpox eradication, but also their quest to mix smallpox with other bugs. A scary book indeed, and painstakingly researched. Among the key figures in the eradication program was Dr Viktor Zhdanov, then deputy minister of health for the USSR, who addressed the World Health Assembly in Minneapolis in 1958. He proposed a 'Soviet-style' five year plan to eradicate the disease. The USSR had eliminated smallpox by 1936 despite being little better than a third world country in terms of transportation and infrastructure, having poor quality vaccines, and having to service a huge, ethnically diverse, territory. Just the kind of expertise you'd need if you were trying to remove smallpox from Brazil or India. The USSR also pledged to donate 25 million doses of vaccine.

Unfortunately, the WHO was not interested in getting rid of smallpox at the time, but was rather caught up in the expensive American plan to wipe out malaria, which was eating up $13 million of the $30 million total budget for the WHO. Essentially throwing the USSR a bone, the WHA agreed in 1959 to finance the Soviet smallpox program with a budget of only $300,000 per annum.

The story is long, complicated, but quite worth reading. The Soviets always made the smallpox program a top priority, forcing the issue when nobody else was too interested. I can't type out all the details (read the book!), but the program was largely their baby; they provided the proposal, the blueprint for vaccination schemes, and continually pushed it onto the front of the agenda. It's a bitter irony that the same country that pushed for smallpox eradication the most also mucked about with such evil uses for it. I'm sure cynics would suggest the two programs were actually wed together, but I don't think that was necessarily the case. Matt Deres (talk) 16:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ooh, and here's something else. The USSR was the chief provider of the vaccine, but it was determined that their vaccines were actually substandard. When Donald Henderson (an American and another key player) went to Moscow to discuss the problem, the USSR completely overhauled their program to surpass expectations. The WHO considered a vaccine of 100 million vaccinia particles per mL to be effective - the Soviet labs began churning out vaccines that were ten times that concentration. That meant they would still be potent even after losing some of the effectiveness due to heat. Just what was needed as the WHO prepared to tackle Ethiopia and India. Matt Deres (talk) 17:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Popular reaction to antisemitism in nazi germany[edit]

I am looking for anything on the popular reaction to nazi agressions of the jews. I've read somewhere around wikipedia that the attacks of the SA against jews were not popular. What did the general public think about the nurember laws ? About concentration camps ? About the final solution ? Cold Light (talk) 08:00, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

See German resistance and related articles. Bear in mind that german peoples opinions may have been swayed by domestic Nazi propaganda. In a totalitarian state with no freedom of speech or freedom of the press, people tend to think what their told to think. Willy turner (talk) 08:36, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd advise looking for multiple respected opinions on this before forming your own. I've looked into this a few times over the years, and some historians insist the German people were totally devoted to Hitler until the bitter end, while other's claim they were more like collaborators, going along with him out of fear, not respect or adoration. Whether the antisemitic actions were a reflection of a minority or the majority (even given the propaganda element, which further skews interpretation) is very much still debated. Add in the fact that Germans tend to claim post-war that Hitler was the root of all evil, and that they were unwillingly dominated by him possibly as a national coping mechanism, and finding meaningful answers is very hard. Prokhorovka (talk) 09:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not that people "tend to think what their [sic] told to think" in a totalitarian state, it's that there is not a lot of opportunity for different actions. If you spoke up or protested in even the most minor way, poor fortunes would await you. One nice example of this is when the Nazis took over the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, full of scientists, many of whom were not fans of the anti-semitism at all. Hitler had them do things like sign petitions saying how great Hitler was, taking loud and public oaths to how great Nazism was, publicly salute the flag and etc. If you had reservations, if you disagreed—it would go on your record, and that could be used against you in the future. In this way, partial collaboration in the Nazi activities by anyone who didn't or couldn't flee the country was assured.

Keep in mind that of the things you've mentioned, about half are public and half are secret. The general public had some inclining (and a lot of fear) of camps (they could be sent there themselves), but that they were specifically being used as death camps (rather than just labor camps or prison camps) was not so obvious. (Consider that the US also had "concentration camps"—e.g. Manzanar—but they weren't being used as death camps. Just because you have camps doesn't mean you have a final solution.)

But as User:Prokhorovka points out, this is a highly contentious matter and one of the great, great debates amongst professional historians. How much did the German public know, how much were they complicit? There are a lot of very well-argued answers to this that disagree with each other entirely. Because of the nature of the Nazi state, actual polling, or even things like party membership, etc., are useless indicators. Even someone who was an active member of the Nazi party might have been doing it to save their own skin alone or to save their job. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 12:08, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Although it's a complicated issue, anti-Semitism was at least a part of the views the Nazis campaigned democratically on. Some, but (importantly) not all, of Hitler's and the Nazi Party's views towards Jews was known, when people voted for them. SA attacks had started before Hitler's chancellorship in a capacity - although I'm not sure whether some of these were anti-Semitic. While not all plans were known, some of them were. I forget exactly what is said in Mein Kampf on this issue, but our article certainly says it had anti-Semitic elements to it: "In Mein Kampf, Hitler uses the main thesis of "the Jewish peril," which speaks of an alleged Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. The narrative describes the process by which he became increasingly anti-Semitic...". Hitler did win votes, so those people either didn't understand his views or at least were prepared to put up with anti-Semitism. We're talking around 45% of the voting public voting for Hitler in normal democratic elections. That may help you to draw answers. Of course, people's views change. There must have been people who were happy to have Jews discriminated against, but not killed. Reaction to different events or ideas would have been different. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 16:16, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a different thing to be anti-Semitic and to be genocidal. (As a parallel, there are plenty of people in the United States who would describe themselves as "anti-immigrant." But very few of those people would want them rounded up and actually shot.) The most common German sentiment I have seen written about is the idea that they thought Hitler would mellow over time, or that his policies would not be nearly as radical as his rhetoric. These are not ridiculous notions—they are true in almost all political situations. The Third Reich was not exactly business as usual, politically speaking; they are one of the few (only?) examples of an advanced industrial democracy transforming into a completely centralized totalitarian state. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

If that's a reply to me, that's not what I was saying. The question was everything anti-Semitic, from the minor to genocidal, and this must include measures which people knew about and voted for. Good points on rhetoric, though. I'm not suggesting people were voting for genocide, far from it, but by the laws of probability, some would have known and approved of some policies when they voted for them. As a bonus, parties weren't going to mention unpopular policies, so if you look at what they were offering, as it were, you can gauge what they thought would be popular, to a fair extent. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 20:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Good point, though I'd always heard (ie, I found a good level of agreement on this) that a good portion of the German population believed the more racist policies of the Nazis to be the more racist wing speaking, and that Hitler would move towards the centre once elected (a not uncommon thing for elected leaders to do). Also, one must remember the lack of serious possibilities to lead Germany circa 1932, the country was in a bad way and almost all political parties were too. Prokhorovka (talk) 22:30, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's controversial book, Hitler's Willing Executioners contains much source material of relevance to this question. The book's title says it well, but if I may generalise a complex book into a trite half sentence, Goldhagen does not believe there to have been popular opposition to the persecution of the German Jews. --Dweller (talk) 10:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

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