As to your first point, indeed racism existed here in the states (and still does as it does pretty much everywhere else...nature of man), but compairing those lynchings to a nationally sanctioned plan of genocide are two differn't things. ;POpa wrote:
The regime was no democracy, but then, which country was perfect then? Until 1941, Jews, while oppressed, were less so than Negroes in Alabama, miscegenation laws in Germany had definitions of Jews much less strict than those applied to Black people in Virginia, with its "one drop rule" since 1924
Also Hitler, while brutal, had killed at most 100,000 people yet (bad, but on the lines of Somoza or Castro) while Stalin had murdered 20 million and had not stopped yet. So as of Summer 1941, who was the, relatively speaking, more moral side was clear.
Holocaust of the Indians
But I looked at his textbook--no Gulag, no Stalin, no Mao.
As to your comment on the Soviet Union, I don't think either of the two (Germany or the Soviet Union) where on any moral high ground in that particular example. Though I do somewhat agree from where you are coming from.
As to the "holocaust of the Indians", bunk. Yes, there were horrible atrocities done to the American Indian, but they were NOTHING compaired to the holocaust. If the US government had done what the German gov tried to do in WW2, most of the American Indian population would have probably been annihilated (eventually, after years of attrition). There were also horrible atrocities committed against both civilian and military non-AI folks...something conveniently forgotten in those types of arguements, and not all of them were as a result of colonial expansionism to the west. SOme of em just plain didn't like us, and for many the feeling is mutual. It didnt help that we got involved in inter-tribal wars by supporting one side over the other either.
As to textbooks, I totally agree with you. History education is not well here, but thank god it hasn't fallen to the atrocious levels of Japan (yet).
Doc