but do we all agree that the World history would be different if the ordinary german people would oppose the concentration camps and genocide? The ordinary russian people are IMO in the same position right now.

They. Have. To stop. Putin!

So you would have been in favor of punishing german jews like Einstein, for getting out and not staying to change the system from within?

If he was supportive to Adolf H. until the point that it wasn't comfortable for him anymore? Absolutely, but that was never the case. I have/had a lot of friends in the IT industry from Russia. You absolutely couldn't engage in any political discussion without them exercise their whataboutism.

We live in beautiful times. We can ask everyone, e.g. the OP, if he can give some links to his opinions here on HN or on twitter or elsewhere - where he criticized russian government for attacking Ukraine. Surely some russians did it, but most sadly didn't.

Exactly. They had a lot of chance to do it, while the Putin monster wasn't as powerful as today.

Examples:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissenters%27_March

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot

Warning: I do not support this war in any way. Or Putin, or his propoganda and cronies. And I also supported opposition in Russia financially as much as I could afford. And I publicly codemned this war.

Yet here is the problem: western countries allowed Putins regime to exist and grow in it's power for 15+ years and no one cared until this terrible war started. But before there been a lot of other events.

No one gave a damn when Putins olygarchs got rich and moved hundreds of billions of dollars out of Russia. They owned tons of real estate abroad, their children study abroad and most of their families moved to live abroad.

Around 2012 mass protests in Russia was supressed and a lot of people landed in prison. Some opposition leaders were killed.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine and annexied Crimea. Again there been little resistence from EU and US who supposedly have to guarantee sovereignty to Ukraine after this country gave up nuclear weapons.

When Navalny was poisoned and then imprisoned. Again no one really cared.

> Around 2012 mass protests in Russia was supressed and a lot of people landed in prison. Some opposition leaders were killed.

"Maximum penalties were fines of several thousand rubles or imposed labor of up to 200 hours" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_prot...

That's how it works, but can he incarcerate millions of people?

We have good examples of non-violent protests that won against such regimes:

We did in GDR. We went to te streets. The machine guns were mounted on the top of every single train station. We went to the streets anyway. Not with stones, but candle lights.

We have examples as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor#Strategy_and_tactics

We have literature about it https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

We have as well examples of violent protests through the History that worked (I don't support it, but we cannot deny their efficiency) https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-violent-protests-...

> That's how it works, but can he incarcerate millions of people?

Don't underestimate Russian capabilities when it comes to punishing regular people - 18millions went through gulag system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

Could they incarcerate millions of people? Nope, but even in Belarus it was possible to incarcerate tens of thousands of people. Half a million people on street couldn't win against 20,000 of people with guns.

Main problem that in Russia people who live in Moscow are too well-fed and their standards of living are too high to go and protest with a risk to lose everything. And protests outside of capital mean very little since distances are too big. No one gonna notice if 1000 people in small russian city will land in prison.

Again I wish that people in Russia were as brave as those in ukrainians protecting their home, but I personally is not the one of brave ones. I wish I could do more to prevent this. Sorry.

Is fleeing make me a bad person now? Nope, I dont think so.

> Is fleeing make me a bad person now? Nope, I don't think so.

For sure not. You do what you have to do. But it is important for us to reflect about it. Who is able to do more damage to Putin without any risk of a new nuclear war? The russian people.

I totally agree with you on this point, but unfortunately it's will take months or even years of economic crysis before reasonable amount of people in Russia understand this. Little too late for Ukraine or Russia itself.

> The Nazis were stopped from outside

Yes, after killing 30 million+ people. It would have been much easier if Germans didn't enable them or someone took out Hitler in 1938.

And we punished Germany for generations because of it. The US still has military bases there to this day.

Germany has been fully sovereign since 1991; they can ask the US troops to leave whenever they want to. The existence of US basis there now can hardly be considered “punishment”.

I looked it up and the ratio of German soldiers to US soldiers is about 2:1 in Germany. Pretty remarkable when you think about. They are kind of outsourcing their military to the US. And that's a choice the Germans made, and are starting to reverse.

Ah well, we do have quite some Reichsbürger (think QAnon people) who indeed say, germany is still occupied.

But after Trump made the actual decision to pull out all US troops, there was rather lots of whining, because the military bases are important for the local economies ..

> And we punished Germany for generations because of it.

Poland, who fought Germany with the biggest % casualties, ended up in a much worse state than Germany, because of russian occupation in the form of communism (Germany had a healthy part to take over after USSR collapsed) and no participation in the marshal plan.

So I have doubts if we can speak about Germany being punished for generations.

Hold on. US industrialists (so called fascists) enabled Hitler. Without them he would have never won any election and started all those wars and purges.