How effectivly could an armed population resist genocide?

[iapetus]

I recently responded to a thread about the AWB on a left-wing bulliten board. (I won't link it, unless anyone insists, it'll just make your heads explode. Worse than DU for mindless insults etc).

I posed the question "What would have happened if all the Jews, Slavs, etc in Europe had been well-armed, and prepared to fight? Could the Holocaust have happened?"

And got a hail of replies rubbishing the idea it could have made any difference.

Exactly what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. 6,000 Jews died, 22 Germans.

Ask the Native Americans if having a few rifles is much of a defence against a fully equipped professional army.

If an army can't defeat civilians with rifles I don't know why you bother to have one.

This is the most idiotic pro-gun argument I have heard. Apart from the one that says the constitution says you can stage an armed insurrection against the government.

But it did get me thinking - how effective would civilian guns really be in such a situation? After all, the Nazis were willing to send thousands of soldiers to their deaths fighting in at the front, and the soldiers were willing to go to their deaths, so would they not also be willing to go to theor deaths to round up armed Jews etc?


Would the RKBA (and will to use it) have any real use, other than giving you the option of a Heroic Last Stand (rather than dying on you knees from a shot to the back of the head)?

 

[Tharg]

I guess this one would have been better asked of the jews who were there.

You will always have sheeple who believe that they won't be hurt... well untill they are in the kiln and wondering why its getting hot.

Fact is that those jews DID lose thier lives - but they held that front for quite some time. Now imagine them having better weapons because the germans didn't "disarm" them... imagine 6000 of US, people who are willing to buy and learn to use our weapons. Then imagine somone of sufficient mind to lead those people - and you have an epic tale of the like of braveheart or the patriot...

For someone to defend themselves they must first have the inclination to do so. THEN they must have the forsight to know they can't do it alone. Then they must have the ability to be led. There are a LOT of if's... but those if's came together when we decided we didn't want the british to control us any longer. In the case of the indians - they were too busy fighting themselves as well as the white man to have ever provided for and maintained a defense. They also were much more attached to traditions that made them weak. (this all in my humble opine - not to be taken as fact by ANY means)

So ... if a sufficient number of americans believed that thier government must be overthrown - i don't know.... this day and age surveilance is king - and the government has it in spades - be it satellites or reconnisanse (spelling?) drones/vehicles. if you know where yer enemy is - then airstrikes/movemnt of armour will defeat about anyone. If the country desintegrated into rebellious "outposts" then a group of gunmen would prolly have a better chance. It would take a majority of the states, to include people on the inside to effectively "overthrow" the government that didn't want overthrown now a days.

On the other hand - the "vote from the rooftops" would be the only real means of fighting an advanced technology - as the iraq war continue to show us. Small groups - causing double or triple or better the damages to our superior forces as we do to them. This is because NO standing army is prepared for this kind of attack. Its why gurrilia warefare is so effective - no one can defend everywhere everytime 100% of the time. If the enemy is determined you get what the afgans did to russia... more dmg then you wanted to take for little to no gain. This is the outcome i'm afraid will happen in iraq - this is the time the people of iraq have to stand up and support the cause to free themselves - or it will just disintegrate and we will be blamed for "not finishing something" again.

So - does the argument stand? yes - it does. if there was enough of a movement and the people are not disarmed first - they CAN mount an attack on a unruly government... it won't be pretty - but revolution rarely is. It won't be the "typical war" because revolutionaries are invariably fighting against a larger and superior force.

To put it in perspective - imagine a civil war happening today. Where state militia's and national guard units would be faithful to thier homes, where the military in general would be torn in half since some come from here and some from there - some believe one way some the other. Splintering would be the norm for the regular units, some would go north some south. Bases would probably become aligned w/ thier land... and it would be an interesting model to put through a computer. As said it wouldn't be pretty - but we would have a defense... where in a different world... that we were disarmed, we would be against those who controlled the power bases of the military/guard. With no one from home to "join the fight" it would seem hopeless to defect, as defeat would be nearly assured. Then several years later it would be normal soldiers caught in the crossfire hoping that thier "I was just following orders" defense would stand.

i'm blathering tho - brandy does that to a man. Please don't take me TOOOO literally - but its how i'm invisioning it at the moment.

J/Tharg!

edit - also - if ONE jew took out ONE german for every jew that died - it would have been a shorter war.....

 

[seeker_two]

How effectivly could an armed population resist genocide?

Far more effectively than an unarmed population can...

The Army didn't defeat the Indians...the buffalo hunters wiping out the Indians' food source did. Had the Indians taken decisive action against them, the Indian Wars may have had a different ending.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was tied up thousands of Nazi troops in an action that only failed b/c the Nazi's surrounded the Jews. Had the Jews gotten out & started an effective resistance (i.e. France), things may have turned out different. On this one, I'll defer to Oleg. He has a better grasp of this point than I do.

Compare these to the genocides in Rwanda, the Soviet Union, and Nepal. Thousands dead in a matter of DAYS--not weeks (Warsaw) or years (Indians). And for every failed armed uprising, you can name a successful one (American Revolution, French Revolution, Viet Cong, French Resistance, Kurds in Iraq, etc.)

Plus, you can appeal to "common sense"...if firearms are so useless in a conflict, why do all the soldiers have one?

Personally, I wouldn't waste my time on that particular board. The Kool-Aid sounds too potent there...

 

[jpIII]

how effective would civilian guns really be in such a situation?

If I recall correctly, some citizens armed with nothing but "civilian guns" gave their government quite a headache back in 1776. If you ask me, I would classify them as "effective".

Of course, they weren't fighting against genocide. I'd imagine that it would be even more of an incentive.

 

[entropy]

The question begs the asking here, and it would be fun to post it on the forum that you were on, iapetus;
Would you rather die fighting for your life, and those of your loved ones, and ilk, or would your rather be led quietly to the 'showers'?
Those who say, "It can't happen here." are ignorant of history, as well as what is going on around them in the present. This country, and indeed, the world, is ripe for a tyrant to take the reins, and could indeed do so at any time.
BTW, the Second Amendment is the means that provides for the possibility of making true Jefferson's statement the "from tme to time the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants"
I don't think a civil war today would be regional, ie, North/South, so much as urban/rural or pro/ anti .gov, more like the Rev. War, where your neighbor could be the Tory.
The situation today is more like Germany in the early to mid '30's, what with the increase of invasion of privacy, the encouragement of 'informing', particularly towards children, the mass indoctrination of children towards dependency on the state instead of family, etc. Fortunately, "Kristallnacht" hasn't happened yet, and isn't yet inevitable, but we must be constantly alert and prevent it. The Second Amendment, and those who own firearms, are what scares the bejeesus out of those who would loose the JBT's. Ironically, those who hide behind the First Amendment, and attack us who stand by the Second, are in for a big surprise when the Second is invalidated, because the First will be right after it, and there will be some extremely pissed unarmed media types being led to the showers...

 

[WT]

Since the Muslims are waging a war of extermination against America, I think we will get a chance to find out.

Monday's THE NEW YORK POST reported how poorly prepared NYC is to handle 800,000 to 1,000,000 casualties from an atomic bomb. On CNN I see that Los Angeles is planning for 200,000 casualties.

What is London, Chicago, Houston, Billings ...... preparing for?

How will the typical American armed with a shotgun, rifle or pistol stand up to small pox, nuclear bombs or poison gas?

 

[gigmike]

There's more to be said on this topic, but at the very least the holocaust wouldn't have gained the momentum it did as it was unopposed. Also, armed resistance would have alerted the rest of the world as to the scope of what was happening.

 

[Chipperman]

You can also bring up Viet Nam and Afghanistan. Clearly superior military powers were beaten by geurilla tactics and inferior weponry.

Now they were not fighting against genocide, but the point still stands.

Now if the military just calls in air strikes until the entire country is rubble, then there's not a lot you can do. But no war can be completely fought without boots on the ground.

 

[geekWithA.45]

In any situation where a strong military force oppresses a weaker citizenry, there will be citizens who will advocate for collaboration, based on the notion that "they'll only take the sick/weak/troublemakers (first), and leave the rest of us alone (till later)".

I can't recall the gentleman's name, but I remember reading an article about one such leader in the ghettoes.

I'd suggest that your leftist would be a good candidate for that role.




But let me frame my response this way.

In many cases, especially early on in the pogrom, when the outcome of the activities of shuffling people around in freight cars was still ambiguous and subject to psychological denial, hundreds of people would be gathered at the station, guarded by relatively few riflemen, as few as a dozen or so.


Ask anyone who's ever shot the "el presidente" stage in respectable time what he thinks the outcome would be.


Ask anyone who's ever nailed 5 or 6 steel targets in 5 seconds what the outcome would be.

Given two or three competent handgunners with some spare ammo, a few minutes to coordinate, and the element of surprise, the odds of a positive military outcome of the "railroad platform people rescue themselves" scenario are pretty good.

The odds of the hundreds of people subsequently taking maximum advantage doing something effective, like running, hiding, and not being caught aren't as high, as people have the unfortunate tendency to do what they're told, even when it's blatantly against their best interests.

The bottom line: Your opponent in the forum debate has already decided that any scenario of serious oppression is unwinnable, which automatically hands a victory to the oppressor. If god forbid such a situation should occur, it'll be guys like you and me taking fire so that guys like him will have that opportunity to run and hide, and more likely than not flubbing it.

 

[ReadyontheRight]

Well -- It's worked for 200+ years in the U.S. Aside from some dark events around Native Americans and Blacks in the South, no one would even consider such a thing with an armed populace out there.

 

[Firethorn]

Warsaw ghetto uprising

I remember reading about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising a while back.

Some points to make:

1. The resistance didn't have many operational firearms. Captured:
   a: 9 rifles
   b: 59 pistols (many inoperable)
   c: several hundred grenades, explosives and mines
   d: Ammo was very limited (they were mostly out in less than three days)
2. The ghetto inhabitants were already weakened
3. The German's reported "22" casualties were drasticly underreported.
   a: This source said 18 dead, 84 wounded for the entire operation
   b: 200 dead or wounded in the first day?
4. It took a month, rather than the expected two days to take out the place
5. They had to essentially burn the ghetto down
6. They used equipment and resources that were needed on other fronts to put down the resistance. Artillery and Soldiers that were needed on the front lines had to be used in Warsaw.
   [/list=1]
   
   50-60 thousand people and less than a hundred guns? Can you really call that an armed uprising? Now just imagine it happening in a population with at least 50% of households owning at least one gun. Add in households owning more guns than they have family members, and you'll probably dredge up around 15-20 thousand firearms, and enough ammo to supply them for a year.
   
   Forget taking the place, you'd have to destroy it.

 

[SADshooter]

I applaud all the cogent responses, but for me this one is even simpler. The effectiveness of armed resistance to genocide is irrelevant, because the alternative should be unacceptable.

 

[Ktulu]

Ask the Native Americans if having a few rifles is much of a defence against a fully equipped professional army.

Ask Custer that same question.

The effectiveness of armed resistance to genocide is irrelevant, because the alternative should be unacceptable.

That's it exacty. Die or your feet or die on your knees.

 

[Oleg Volk]

Even a suspicion that the victim may be armed requires using several soldiers or police per prisoner, as anything else would cost dead soldiers. So the amount of resources to take on even a few thousand people would be pretty extreme and couldn't be done quickly or quietly. Assassination would be an option, but that would work both ways after a short while.

And (armed) US Indians fared much better than Australian aborigenes who lacked guns.

 

[Zach S]

I think more died as a result of diseases from Europe that their immune systems didnt know how to handle, rather than in battle.

 

[Pilgrim]

The Army didn't defeat the Indians...the buffalo hunters wiping out the Indians' food source did. Had the Indians taken decisive action against them, the Indian Wars may have had a different ending.

I believe the major factor in the defeat of the plains Indians was the willingness of the U.S. Army to campaign against them in the winter. Once the Army found the Indians' winter quarters, destroyed their lodges and their stored supply of food, the Indians were helpless.

Pilgrim

 

[Fudgie Ghost]

SadShooter: but that's just it: There are people, probably more than one realizes, that don't believe ANYTHING is worth dying over---any cause or principle, that is. (They might sacrifice themselves for their children, spouse, parents or friends). Others feel that resistance unto death is a noble thing--for it's own sake.

This fact is what really seperates those who see the utility of resistance, even if it IS doomed, and those who see colloaboration, as simply surviving.

This is an interesting idea. Picture yourself in France after the Germans had overun most of it, and the government had signed the cease-fire, armstice, whatever it was. For Joe-blow, the war was over. Why risk torture and death to oneself and kith and kin, getting involved with the maquis? Most people just want to go about their business. Does this make all of them quislings and cowards?

We all like to think were bad-ass hombres, but when they start pulling the fingernails out, living as a conquered nation might not seem so bad.

Not saying this is the best course, or the right one---just that it's easy to say how tough one is when you're young, healthy, well-fed, have indoor plumbing ,etc.

 

[Pilgrim]

The Army didn't defeat the Indians...the buffalo hunters wiping out the Indians' food source did. Had the Indians taken decisive action against them, the Indian Wars may have had a different ending.

I believe the major factor in the defeat of the plains Indians was the willingness of the U.S. Army to campaign against them in the winter. Once the Army found the Indians' winter quarters, destroyed their lodges and their stored supply of food, the Indians were helpless.

Pilgrim

 

[R.H. Lee]

Even a suspicion that the victim may be armed requires using several soldiers or police per prisoner, as anything else would cost dead soldiers. So the amount of resources to take on even a few thousand people would be pretty extreme and couldn't be done quickly or quietly.

And this brings up another serious problem for the aggressors, namely the economic component. It would be nigh impossible to round up/exterminate large numbers of people in the U.S. or U.K. (for example) without bringing the wheels of business and industry to a complete halt. Without basic goods and services delivered (especially to large urban areas), the oppressors would soon have more chaos than they could manage.

 

[Oleg Volk]

My guess is that a grandma with a concealed .32 would be as much a threat to the enemy as a guy with an AK...harder to ID as a threat...

Basically, the Germans didn't even have to search their victims most of the time, and a few riflemen would convoy and kill hundred of civilian. At that point, one of two people with pistols could have been a serious monkey-wrench.

 

[BobCat]

deterrent?

No one has mentioned that, as long as the Government is seen to govern by the consent of the (armed) people, armed revolt is unlikely to become necessary.

If the Japanese who were interned during WWII in this country had been armed, and *thought* they were being taken away to be slaughered, and offered armed resistance - they *would have been* slaughtered. But they would have died on their feet, not in gas chambers.

A lot depends on what group the genocide is directed against. If it is a small, generally despised and distrusted group within a society, I htink the best they can hope for is to take some of their persecuters with them when they go, honorably.

If it is a larger group, or a group that commands the respect / support of the society at large, it seems to me that the prospect of armed resistance might be enough to stay the persecuters' hand and prevent the genocide in the first place.

As I recall, it was Albright who said (wrt Kosevo) something like, 'What's the point of having such a marevlous Military if you can't use it?' - and the answer, of course, is deterrence. Predators - individual thugs or governments - tend to go after those perceived as weak and unlikely to resist.

Ok, I'll shut up now.

Purrrs,
BobCat
http://www.bayourifles.org

 

[Fred Fuller]

iapetus,

Take a look at http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/terry/terry2.html . Then check the information on the film _Inncents Betrayed_ at http://www.jpfo.org/ . If you have the equipment to view the film (DVD or VHS) you should get a copy.

The antis often point out the futility of 'one person with a gun standing against an army.' The point is that an armed people are far more numerous than any army that can be deployed against them. Look into the 'Winter War' between Finland and the Russians just before WW2 for an example.

And always, always remember this one:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! "If. . . if . . . We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! . . . We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward." (Note 5, page 13, Vol. 1, The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn)

And the ultimate question is, what do you have to lose? If your life is to be taken from you no matter what, is it not better to force those who would steal it to pay a price for it in kind?

Citizens bear arms, slaves do not.

lpl/nc

 

[Pilgrim]

Would the RKBA (and will to use it) have any real use, other than giving you the option of a Heroic Last Stand (rather than dying on you knees from a shot to the back of the head)?

If you wait for the government forces to come for you, you will be picked off one by one until there is no one left.

The instrument of government suppression is more likely to be the local police than the 82nd Airborne as our Democratic Underground defeatists are prone to suggest.

The local police are very vulnerable to guerilla warfare. If you study the history of insurrections and guerilla warfare, the police are targeted more often than the might of regular army troops.

Pilgrim

 

[stevelyn]

Two problems with the American Indian resistence. The first is inter-tribal warfare. Tribes fought as much among themselves as the did with the settler/army. Sencond was lack of maneuver warfare. When the indian went into battle they fought as a group of individuals going after targets of oportunity rather than a planned objective.
The Battle at Little Bighorn showed how using maneuver warfare and tactics can defeat a professional army. Of course Custer made the mistake of underestimating his opponent and traveling without Gatling gun and artillery support (Benteeeeen..........bring guns, lotsa guuuuunns.......).

The jews in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising were already behind the curve for real effective resistence. They were already corraled into a place they couldn't get out of and had been completely disarmed prior to being placed there. However inspite of those odds they did show real fighting spirit before being decisively crushed by the nazis. Had the Ghetto resistors been able to be supplied from the outside, they may have been able to break out and escape.

I think most folks are forgetting recent history. In our lifetime we watched as the most oppressive communist governments in the world collapsed. These governments collapsed due in part to the people being fed up. They managed this with little armed resistance. Imagine how easy it would have been had these people been armed.

We have also seen the effects of disarming one side in an effort to stop the fighting or to facilitate a genocide. Look at Rwanda and Bosnia.
I don't know about anyone else, but noble or not I would rather die fighting than by execution. Slavery and just surviving are not acceptable either.

 

[444]

There are countless stories of a realatively small, poorly armed and poorly trained group keeping an invading army at bay. Let's see: present day Iraq, USSR vs. Afganistan, USA vs. Vietnam just to name a few. You don't have to win a traditional military victory to come out on top of this, you just have to make it so miserable and costly that they lose their will to fight. You don't meet the enemy toe to toe, you hit and run, you harrass. And example might be sniping: remember that the value of sniping usually isn't the fact that one man was killed, it is the psychological part of them knowing that it is never safe to go outside. At anytime you could be shot by an unseen enemy. Look at the winging of hands by the American people and the American press right now over Iraq. We have lost something over 1000 men KIA in what ? A year or two ? Now imagine if it was not our soldiers in a far away land, but it was right here and the occasional political hack, the occasional LEO, the occasional new media quisling met an untimely death. How long would it go on before they said, the hell with it. You arn't going to win in a head to head batlle. You just make it so miserable that the enemy loses his will to fight.