states that were "evil" in a similar way evolved from what we tend to think of as opposite sides of the political spectrum.' 1) I don't think they were 'evil'. 2) What are you saying, that it's interesting that human societies based on radically different political and economic foundations could end up killing people? I don't think that's all that much of a revelation, or even that interesting: governments/regimes, of various stripes, in completely different times and places, have been killing their citizens/subjects since time immemorial. "As I've already explained, the reason why Soviet policy is largely irrelevant to the thinking of the German elites, is that the German elites (and the Nazis) were primarily concerned with the SPD -- a party which had nothing to do with Soviet policy, did not wish to imitate it, and, in fact, opposed it." By the accounts in the history books I read -- such as Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich etc, all post 1950s -- the Nazis in government rounded up Communist and SPD activists after the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933 for "security reasons" and put them in the newly opened "concentration camps". The SPD were eventually mostly released whereas the Communists were mostly retained as the perceived greater threat. "I can understand how this must be hard to accept for someone, like yourself, who's thinking is stuck in the 1950s. But time stops for no man, whether you wish to accept this or not." That's