[Cicero]

Let's see. We aren't allowed to criticize the Times or Duranty unless we blame the Ukrainians of being Nazi Jew killers. Well, probably some of them were, but on the whole the smaller countries of Central Europe were more victims than perpetrators, caught between Hitler and his Nazi murderers to the West and Stalin and his Communist murderers to the East.

In any case, that's hardly a sufficient reason to overlook the guilt of The New York Times and Walter Duranty in continuing to cover up the murder of 8 million innocent Ukrainians, who died well before the Holocaust occurred.

[aristeides]

Relativization cuts both ways. The Nazis probably would not have come to power in Germany if a lot of people in Germany, most significantly the formerly ruling class (which still dominated such institutions as the Army and the civil service) had not been petrified at the prospect of a Communist takeover. You just have to read Hitler's speeches from 1932-3 to see what advantage he took of this fear.

When the German philosopher-historian Ernst Nolte pointed this out, he got in a lot of trouble. But that doesn't stop him from being right on this matter.