'Final Solution'


ok i watched this again for the first time in ages and i noticed that the night before the britsih moves out one of the british old guys say something along the lines of

"let us hope this is the final solution to the the zulu question"

Does anyone else not think that this is a bit much. I mean it was an unfair invasion and all but i doubt any british person said that and the attempt to create parllels with the Nazis is not necessary.

any thoughts?

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I've noticed that too. I love the movie for the costumes, the action and the cinematography but I have always loathed the attempted political statements. It seems people are afraid to depict the British as anything less than ruthless imperialists. I find this ironic given the fact that in their own part of the world the Zulus were equally ruthless and dominating.

"Four things greater than all things are, Women and Horses, and Power and War." --Rudyard Kipling

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>>>>>>I find this ironic given the fact that in their own part of the world the Zulus were equally ruthless and dominating.

I hate it when morons say this. The Zulus weren't ruthless and dominating to the British. They didn't go to the UK and invade them, the UK invaded THEM.

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Ummm no. He was reffering to how the invaded the land of other tribes such as Swazi who sided with the British and even had warriors working with one of the British columns as scouts.

Have you ever heard how Shaka built up the Zulu nation by invading other tribes?

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As has been stated, the Final Solution did not have that sort of similar meaning, Bartle Frere had visions of glory and South Africa dominated by Britain, much like another later commissioner, Milner, he wanted to secure the region under the British crown. He had two hurdles to this, the Boers and the Zulus, Frere forced war on the Zulus, by making extremely unreasonable demands for relatively minor infractions, and siding with the Boers in almost all cases against the Zulus, in one notable case, he even reversed a previous decision made by some British officers (including Durnford) in favor of the Boers regarding some disputed land. The Zulus were really the only powerful independent black nation left in South Africa, and the national bugaboo for the Boer nations, to bring the whole region under British authority, the Zulus would have to be eliminated, which would win the British support amongst the Boers. I don't think there was a deliberate attempt to link the British with the Nazis, the British tended to be a rather fair and humane colonial power, at least in comparison to the rest.

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What a moron, leaarn your history newonic... or should I say "moronic"?

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Can someone bring this Newonic to the attention of a moderator? All he does is go around all the old movie forums and bash the British.

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[deleted]

AWW CRY BABY. Go run home to your mom and cry about it ya stupid idiot.

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You're both idiots, frankly.

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Shaka took a village of 1500 people, and within two decades had a couple of million. His process was to attack, slaughter and dominate, violate the women, kill the men, reward the brave with loot, and repeat.

So "ruthless" and "dominating" describe the Zulus accurately.

The British were encroaching on some of the same territory the Zulus were encroaching on (Which belonged to neither of them), and the two came to blows.

IOW: Both of them were invading the territory of other people. The Brits were just better at it.

http://www.MichaelZWilliamson.com

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The British were encroaching on some of the same territory the Zulus were encroaching on (Which belonged to neither of them), and the two came to blows.

IOW: Both of them were invading the territory of other people. The Brits were just better at it.



And don't forget that after the British defeated the Zulus the British did not eradicate the Zulus or chase them out of the area.......unlike what the Zulus did to the people who were there before they were.

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>>>>>>I find this ironic given the fact that in their own part of the world the Zulus were equally ruthless and dominating.

HE LEFT OUT THAT THE BOERS ALSO COULD BE QUITE RUTHLESS AND DOMINEERING.

I hate it when morons say this. The Zulus weren't ruthless and dominating to the British. They didn't go to the UK and invade them, the UK invaded THEM.

YES, THE ZULUS NEVER INVADED BRITAIN BUT LANDS WHICH THEY DID INVADE INCLUDED NATAL AND EVEN ZULULAND WHERE THEY RUTHLESSLY CONQUERED AND ASSIMILATED DOZENS OF TRIBES WITH BRUTAL MASSACRES WITHIN THE LIFETIMES OF THE OLDEST ZULUS IN 1879.

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''I find this ironic given the fact that in their own part of the world the Zulus were equally ruthless and dominating.''

The Zulus were a tribal chiefdom with lower technology. Big different.

The British establishment was ruthlessly imperialist, regardless of what nationalistic twaddle you now see on the BBC or read about in crappy tabloids.

Formerly KingAngantyr

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I think 'Final Solution' is with reference to the fact that the British were responsible for atrocities then and at a later stage during the Boer War, namely that they were responsible for the first concentration camps whilst campaigning in South Africa.

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The phrase "Final solution" only gained it's sinister meaning after WW2, there was no plan to exterminate the Zulu, only to bring them under the "Protection" of the British crown

Nil Illegetti Desperadum

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davidwestwell - ***they were responsible for the first concentration camps whilst campaigning in South Africa***

........

Quite right that due to ill-management many of the weaker Boers died from malnutrition and disease in the camps with this failure being vilified by the British press at the time.

However i do feel it necessary to distinguish that these "concentration camps" aka detainment camps were not the death camps of the Nazi era that saw systematic extermination of the captives

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Many Boers were happy to put their families in the camps. they thought it safer than being unprotected on their farms. At the same time a number of the concentration camps also had a lower mortality rate in proportion to that of Glasgow at the same time. Also, the first concentration camps were not actually British but used by the Spanish in Cuba. An understandable mistake as everyone and everything claims that it was the British.

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The policy behind these camps was not so much to punish the population in its self, but to deprive the guerrilla Boers of logistic means found all through the countryside. No safe haven, food, supplies, etc. was on the long run the ruin of the Boer resistance.

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Very irresponsible for the earlier poster to talk of the UK 'inventing' the concentration camp. The British in South Africa wished to isolate the Boer guerillas from a sympathetic civilian population while the Nazis in occupied Europe wished to exterminate millions of men, women and children.

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Thats very true But having said that after the millitary defeats and screw ups in the boer war,the idea of having to fight a drawn out and ever lasting guerilla war that would have made there europeon foes jump with glee was obviously something that needed to be crushed fast.
Sadly the camps were not carried out to well,and far to many innocent people died,but thats war for you i dont know of one war that has never really been like that,and untill the day we finish with wars it will always happen.
But i also thought the use of the words "final solution" was over the top,i mean the british goverment was horrified when they found out of the invasion,thgough that was probaly more to the fact that they believed we would have to fight russia over india (the great game),and another costly war at the same time would be to expensive and hard for britains smallish army of the time.
Of course after they found out of the isandlwana defeat there was nothing else to do,but to back it up to the hilt,with reinforcements as obviously a defeat like that had to be avenged big time.
The boer war to me was easily the worst war britain ever got involved in,the two wars brought nothing but disaster and humilitaion to a ever long list of british generals.
The only good thing that came out of it,was that we changed the way the army did things,infantry tactics were moddified and the like,though of course ww1 soon destroyed the tiny profesional british army we had at the time in 1914.

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I believe it was the Cherokee, not the Seminole. The Seminoles never surrendered, and forced the US to deal with them as a nation Hence they stayed in Fla. where in 1977 they opened the first Indian Casino (Bingo)

I'd rather go hunting with Dick Cheney, than driving with Ted Kennedy





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Every now and then even, a blind squirell will find an acorn!

I'd rather go hunting with Dick Cheney, than driving with Ted Kennedy





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Andersonville was a POW camp, not a concentration camp. Captured Soldiers were housed there, not civilians. The South lacked the resources to take care of that many POW's and asked several times for prisoner exchanges but Lincoln calculated it was better to let the Union Soldiers at Andersonville die like dogs from dysentery rather than trade prisoners because the North had a much larger total supply of soldiers.

Very irresponsible for the earlier poster to talk of the UK 'inventing' the concentration camp. The British in South Africa wished to isolate the Boer guerillas from a sympathetic civilian population while the Nazis in occupied Europe wished to exterminate millions of men, women and children.


Pure drivel. There is absolutely no difference between the concentration camps of South Africa and those of Europe. The death rates of the British Concentration Camps and the German Concentration Camps were identical.

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''Andersonville was a POW camp, not a concentration camp. Captured Soldiers were housed there, not civilians.''


"a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc." - Random House Dictionary

"A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions." - the American Heritage Dictionary

Technically under those definitions POW camps count. However, we'll just give them to you. This doesn't change the fact that the British Empire did not invent them and they were used by the US (to house civilians) in the Philippines War and earlier by the Spanish in Cuba.

''Pure drivel. There is absolutely no difference between the concentration camps of South Africa and those of Europe. The death rates of the British Concentration Camps and the German Concentration Camps were identical.
''

Except that the Nazi camps were designed to house people who the Nazis planned to exterminate for the most part, whereas the ones used in South African were not and many British guards also died in them too due to the lack of supplies causing massive starvation. To pretend that they Nazi camps and the British camps were the same and had the same function would be disingenuous. You might as well claim that the US camps in the Philippines were the same too.

Formerly KingAngantyr

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'' namely that they were responsible for the first concentration camps whilst campaigning in South Africa.''

They were refugee camps and anyway, the US had concentrations during the US Civil War. Andersonville was one of them, as were the earlier concentration camps used to house the Cherokee. Many countries had concentration camps before the British Empire used them in the Boer War.

Formerly KingAngantyr

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It's utterly contemptible. Those who say, "Well, it didn't mean the same thing in 1879" perhaps failed to notice that this movie was made in 1979.

On the plus side, it did serve as an unmistakable signal that the movie wasn't going to get any better, so I might as well just give up hope and try to get through the wretched thing.

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Ratings: http://us.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=4996900&s=uservote&s=reverse_uservote

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Im just zooming it off the top of my head, but I thought that as well as Cherokees (of the 5 Civilised Tribes) being ethnically cleansed by Ol'Hickory around 1836 - Trail of Tears etc, that Seminoles were at a later stage 'invited' to leave Florida to pursue their future in Oklahoma Territory. Am I right in saying that Seminoles were a mix of Native Americans and runaways ?

I seem to recall that the great irony was that the Seminoles were sent to the dry plains of Oklahoma whilst Geronimo and Apache friends, when captured, were sent to swampy Florida.



You wanna f * * k with me? Okay. Say hello to my little friend! (Tony Montana)

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I thought that line was utterly disgusting, and the film was a pile of uninspired anti-British rubbish, frankly. Goes to show that the left have no sense of perspective whatsoever. Watch Zulu instead, that doesn't glorify imperialism but at least it sticks up for good old fashioned heroism.

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Nah, that's crap, mate, I mean, if you manage to get the lid off the pickle jar, finally, that proved a bit tough, you're not going to be accused of pickle-jar genocide by saying, 'let's hope that's the final solution to the pickle jar question'. mind you, you could argue you'd hardly say that over a pickle jar.

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by Newonic (Fri Jan 25 2008 15:25:11) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

"Who cares you f* cking idiot. I don't care what the Zulu were like in Africa. They did NOT go to UK and tell the british what to do. The British were invaders in a land that was not theirs. END OF STORY. GOODBYE. NUFF SAID."
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Newonic, old bean - the Zulu's were a warlike martial nation who would attack anyone they could if they thought they would gain from it, including Britain if they were capable of it - which they weren't.
I wonder if you are the sort of self-hating Liberal who believes in the concept of the 'Noble Savage'? It's a fantasy - wash your brain out you stupid liberal. The British Empire, at the time, was also a warlike martial entity as anyone who crossed them could testify to. The Zulu nation ruthlessly defeated many other tribes, but this time it was they who were defeated. Simple as that.

It was a case of tough s***, and all that.

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I hated that line. How heavy-handed do you need to be? That dialogue was completely gratutious, and in aid of nothing.

He's a peeler, 417, come to arrest the Zulus!

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All this for one line?

Good to see that England is still holding on.

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Agree absolutely.Just a cheap,tasteless piece of Anti-Imperialist propaganda,deeply offesive and disrespectful to the victims of the real Holocaust.

Gordon P. Clarkson

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I wondered about the line when I heard it... but outside of the Nazi context it doesn't sound particularly sinister and I wouldn't be surprised if it were something that had appeared in the letters of the fellow uttering it. I know if I were a writer, attempting to portray historical figures, I would balked at putting those words in his mouth unless I had good reason for thinking he'd said them at some point... because even in 1979 it's obvious what sort of backlash they'd get from British audiences.
I'd heard the movie was overall more PC and 'balanced' than 'Zulu'... but after viewing it I don't see it that way. The 'final solution' line seems kind of out there... but the rest of the movie isn't that over the top sympathetic to the Zulu to make me suspect the writer was really attempting to equate the British with the Nazis.

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Does anyone else not think that this is a bit much. I mean it was an unfair invasion and all but i doubt any british person said that and the attempt to create parllels with the Nazis is not necessary.


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FINAL. adjective
1.
pertaining to or coming at the end; last in place, order, or time:
the final meeting of the year.
2.
ultimate:
The final goal is world peace.
3.
conclusive or decisive:
a final decision.
4.
constituting the end or purpose:
a final result.
5.
pertaining to or expressing the end or purpose:
a final clause.


SOLUTION.Noun.
1.
the act of solving a problem, question, etc.:
The situation is approaching solution.
2.
the state of being solved:
a problem capable of solution.
3.
a particular instance or method of solving; an explanation or answer:
The solution is as good as any other.

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final solution is just an English phrase which can refer to thousands of things, including the problem the Achaeans had with the Trojans, &c. To limit it to/associate it with the German word endlösung and its concrete Nazi application to the Jewish question (judenfrage) under the III Reich, especially after 1942, is absurd and ridiculous.

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That line made me spit my coffee out, like wtf. Talk about on the nose, a terrible decision to include that line, takes you right out of the movie. Colonialism was a dreadful thing, but to compare it to the Holocaust is absurd.

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