PSCI 1200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Axis Powers, Milgram Experiment, World Politics
16 Dec 2015
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Document Summary
War is the deliberate infliction of suffering and death on other people and nations. Violence encompasses: cruelty to animals, boxing, rape, punishment to children, individual acts of indiscriminative mass murder, drone attacks. Or in other words for politics to turn to violence. In the last 100 years, 60 million men and women have been slaughtered in wars legitimately by the state. Two forms of politically-authorised slaughter can be distinguished, the first type involved the large scale slaughter of service-personnel- an occurrence greatly facilitated by modernity"s uncompromising application of aircraft, artillery, and explosives. The second type was the slaughter of civilians. Hitler admitted in relation to poland: destruction was our primary task, the aim is not the arrival at a certain line but the annihilation of living forces. Allies targeted civilians just as much as the axis powers did, American bombs were dropped on the residential or commercial sectors of german cities. Today, 90% of victims of war are civilians.
