Do Germans deserve the amount of s**t they get?

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#1

Ive been in Europe for about 2.5 years now and I noticed that the Germans always get crap for what happened during ww2. Even though most of the ww2 Germans are gone or on the way out. Do they deserve the amount of crap they get. In the beginning of every cross word between Germans and just about whomever … they are called “Nazi’s.” Even thou the German mindset has totally changed since then…they seem forever plagued by their past.

In the US white people get loads of crap for what their ancestors did in regards to slavery. I happen to have a 9xGrandfather that did own a slave. I dont own slaves nor would I. I would surely pay someone to do the crap I dont feel like dealing with thou. :mrgreen: Point being…when is enough? In these 2 cases the people that run things/modern citizens are extremely different from those of the past … yet get crap for their past. Will it never die or should they be reminded of what their ancestors have done?

Anyhow just a curious question!

#2

There is a saying in Russia about war, usually inscribed on war memorials - “No one is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten”.

To forget the horrors of WW2 would be a crime against fallen and those who defeated nazi, and a possible danger of resurfacing of master and slave races theory, it’s rise to power again. But it does not mean that nation should be blamed for this forever, and i don’t think anyone accuses Germans as a nation.

#3

Yes I believe too…never forget. Yet move on. Hopefully someday we will learn but as of yet im not impressed. Seems easy to forget the past.

#4

It’s an excellent question Gen. Sandstorm.

I don’t like to give up details like this. But, I was once was a school teacher. I no longer am, and don’t ever want to be again. But, when I taught professionally, for two years, I had two different female German exchange high school students consecutively (12th or the final grade before college in American schools); for whatever reason. It’s not normal or common by any means. My first year, I showed “Band of Brothers: Why We Fight” (the episode that focuses on CPT. Nixon, and his two run ins with a Nazi officer’s wife: the first while ignominiously looting her house in search of Vat69™ scotch, the second as she is forced to clean up the local concentration camp. The girl, maybe 17 at the time, wept uncontrollably after viewing this.

I think there is in fact a deep collective unconscious guilt for the Holocaust and the war in the current German psyche. The Germans are in fact taught about this from a very early age. The factors that facilitated the holocaust were however not limited to Germany. Anti-semitism runs deeply in the psyche of many Western nations, including: the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, etc. No one nationality can claim innocence in this. It was the Versailles treaty after all that helped facilitate the rise of National Socialism in Germany after all, and all aforementioned have a part in that, don’t they?

#5

(Sings) “two world wars and one World Cup!”

#6

hitler was a product of his mom and his uncle… i think and he took over the country and was a classified S.P.E.D and he ran the country… ofcourse bad things were going to happen but it didn’t mean that people now a day’s should give germans all that crap, i mean my best friend just moved back to germany but i use to call him a nazi as a joke, his xbox live name was Nat So Nazi, but it should be used in such a vauge termalogy… jewish people get mad if you call them a “jew” but christainity people dnt get mad if you call them a christian… no thanks to hitler

#7

well, by the time, the germans seems to blame the jewish for every bad incident that they have encountered, it makes me curious why they do that. however, they have changed and i can see they have really become a peaceful country. So if i am a jewish, i wouldnt mine having a german friend, where his father or grandfather is a nazi before.

but the thing i want to say is, the japanese seems to be going on a opposite direction, where they changed the textbook to justified their war against china. some claimed that the mass murder in Najing is a myth, which is not the right way to improve your foreign relationship with your neighbour.

(P.S not that i care about the chinese, i cared about hong kong though. Maybe its because British were still ruling hk before i come to canada, i never really consider myself as a chinese; more like hong kong Canadian)

#8

Not as much as the French deserve it :wink:

#9

As a POW veteran of the Burma railway told me:
“We should forgive, but we should never forget.”

Unfortunately many people who have not been though the mill of war cannot tell the difference, and increasingly they are venally driven and claim ‘compensation’ for acts that occurred to other people before they themselves were born.

If they were honest and just said that they were greedy I’d have a little respect for them, but the politically correct agenda that they have been abusing just leaves a foul taste in my mouth.

#10

Funny you should mention this(and maybe this is the reason why) coz today I saw a report on the BBC about a lady form somewhere wanting to sue a French train company for transporting jews to concentration camps. Naturally she did have relatives that died at the camps. But Her claim is that they were not forced to ship them to Germany nor forced to put them in cattle cars. I find that rather hard to believe. Well especially the shipment part at least. Im not sure how adiment the Germans were about putting them into cattle cars. The trains that ran from France were staffed by French people thou. Think this is something that should have been brought up long ago instead of now.

Another odd one…couple years ago the NAACP (National Accocation for the Advancement of Colored People) tried to the US government for 400 years of slavery and opression. Didnt work out as far as i know. Seriously our country lost 600000 people deciding this issue (I know this wasnt the sole reason for the US civil war). I think thats enough.

#11

Hi everybody,
I’ll try to to describe this “phenomenon” from my point-of-view (hope you don’t get barmy of my weird English :wink: ). I remember, when I was a child it was a complex matter to talk about this theme with elder teachers or grandparents. It always was a dismally ambience and in hindsight I think that a lot of people of my grandfathers’ generation simply didn’t want to talk about what happened. Of course, they told you „It was a parlously time“ and so on, but I can’t remember that somebody of the elderly have to say something what really matters. In school you only learned factual shit, sober historic dates without workup of deep-set causes. They taught collective self abasement and that German population have to visualize their guilt to all eternity. Today it’s better, but government preserves that stoop. Many people make this for their own benefit. For example my stepfather went to a Kurdish neighbour and told him that his music is too loud, his answer: “Go away, racist!”

Germany has to look forward, together with other countries and with the descendents of the victims. I guess my generation is on a good way, we can talk about our history and we can do this with people from all over the world, the www makes it easier. We could get feedback and realized that outside of Germany a lot of people talked much healthier about this things than we did. That was something which was not possible in former times. Only now, today we possess enough distance to digest our history.

In this day and age, too much penance is dangerously, it opens the doors for terrorists which are treated with kid gloves, for fear of being racialist.
Greetz, Melanie

#12

Well said Melanie !

Welcome to the site, I hope you enjoy both reading & contributing to the various threads,

#13

Hallo Melanie,
Willkommen!
Firstly I kindly ask you to change your avatar with a ww2 related one. It’s one of the rules of this forum.
Danke schon.
Dani

#14

Thank you for your welcome greetings!
@Dani:
Isn’t Sophie Scholl not ww2 related enough?? :shock:
Now I’m baffled…

#15

No one should hold the Germans responsible for the atrocities that Hitler committed there were 100’s of thousands german troops that had no Idea what was going on so why should you still blame a whole country for something that happened 60+ years ago.There was a great program on BBC I think, about the German POW’s that England kept even after the war and the did show a film to the germans about what Hitler did to the Jews there was not one dry eye in the theater.The name of it was The Germans We Kept if you can find it watch it

#16

:smiley: :smiley: My bad Melanie! Didn’t know that picture!

#17

And something like that is a sheer madness. On the same token someone can sue builders of railway lines on which cattle cars were running transporting Jews to Auschwitz. Does it mean that Russian Tzar, Austrian Franz Joseph and German Kaiser were responsible?

This is another money extracting scheme in the same category like suing US Air Force for not bombing railway lines around Auschwitz.

As a Pole I’m deeply convinced that young generations cannot be responsible financially for things done by their grandfathers.
This also apply to young Russians or Ukrainians or Poles.
Why Germans have to pay for continuously and ever growing number of Holocaust survivors?

Don’t you think that this is very interesting phenomenon? Instead of going down, due to the natural attrition, the number of survivors is growing even today.

Memory and knowledge of history, historical processes and precedents should be separated from what I would call “well being” of the nation.
Why young Germans must suffer from collective guilt?

And being honest we may ask why young Poles or Czechs can be asked questions about forced resettlements of Germans after WWII. They have nothing to do with it. Decisions were made by Great Powers, not even countries affected like Czechoslovakia or Poland had anything to say.

People which are using history to boost their political portfolios like Ms Erica Steinbach in Germany and miserable midget twins in Poland, will soon go into oblivion.
That’s why it’s so important for young people to vote, exercise their democratic rights to eliminate political fanatics and stop “whipping cream” by unscrupulous, greedy people, whether they are Holocaust enterpreneurs or revisionists.

Cheers,

Lancer44

#18

Not all war crimes were commited by SS, wermacht soldiers which ‘had no idea what was going on’ made nasty things too. Germans are nice people, but several millions of these nice people in 1939 took weapons and begun to kill untermenschen. As always, truth lies in between ‘Germans are a bunch of murderers’ and ‘it was all Hitler’s fault, Germans are saints’. As i stated before, it’s a matter of forgive, but not forget.

#19

@Dani:
No prob :mrgreen: This pic is the first I remember when somebody talks about Sophie Scholl. Yesterday it was not conscious to me that it’s only in our history books so omnipresent …
@Lancer44:
Most important is to stay in dialog with others and not get mad from ambiguous messages of media.
@Sneaksie:
Certainly, it’s true that “millions of these nice people in 1939 took weapons and begun to kill” but a lot of them killed the enemy, not “untermenschen” from their point-of-view. They permitted to be used by a sick machinery of power. Many of them grew up with this nutty ideology and were dazzled. It’s not an excuse, but an attempt to understand.
I’d rather say that humankind should not need to forgive, but give a chance to new generations…

#20

Excellent post and welcome aboard. A few people that come here need to read your post and think about their actions before writing I think.