Do not play dumb. I am talking about ancestry. That which is different for the Germans, as it is to the Poles, or the Spaniards, or the Japs, or the French.
An empty life? Hardly. You know nothing about my personal life, so I’d ask you not to make ignorant judgments.
I? What I am saying is that I would have fought, not run. I have served the U.S. honorably, so let’s not start talking about cowardice.
I think the name Hungary has roots in the word “Hun”, but I can’t prove it.
They BTW call themselves Magyar
Jan
Louis Hagen fought as well, under the name Louis Haig in the Glider pilot Regiment of the British Army at Arnhem. His account can be read in his book “Arnhem Lift”.
Willy Brandt was the nome de guerre of a young man named in reality Herbert Frahm from Lübeck. He emigrated from Germany (where he would have been imprisoned as a socialist) and ended up working for British intelligence.
Peter Masters (born as Peter Aranyi) in Vienna fought as well, as a member of No. 3 troop 10 Interallied Commando.
And if you ever bother to go to the war cemetary at Arnhem, if you enter through the gate on the left side you’ll find the grave of a young German, who served with the 1st British Parachute Brigade.
There were about ten thousand of these men and women in the british forces alone, plus again thousands in the American and Soviet forces.
Not to forget the people in the various resistance groups.
They were greater german patriots than all those who have been expecting to get free land in some occupied polish or Russian village.
Jan
My mistake…I was thinking “Bastards”.
That is a warped view. They were traitors to Germany.
Thanks for that informative post.
It confirms my understanding of what has been the majority view in Germany for many decades.
It’s self-evident to everybody except Albert Speer that Germans who bore the bitter fruit of the Nazi regime, whether directly or as descendants of those who suffered from the Nazis, are best qualified to judge the Nazis and to determine the future of Germany and its relations with the rest of the world.
I’m particularly impressed by your acceptance of the changes in Germany’s national boundaries and the dispossession of some Germans when those events have personal significance for your family. We’d have a lot less conflict in the world if a lot more people adopted your attitude and accepted things which are not going to change, rather than fighting to right ancient wrongs and to recover ancient lands.
Views like Albert Speer’s make me despair at the prospect of plunging again into the abyss of a major war, for all the bad reasons espoused by the Nazis.
Your views, and the views of the majority of Germans and the majority of other Europeans, show that there is no realistic prospect of that happening in the foreseeable future. It’s a pity Albert can’t get himself up to date with Europe in general and the Germany he professes to love in particular.
I have no desire to “get up to date” with Europe and the new Germany. The last time I was in Braunschweig was 2005, and I probably won’t return to the country for a few years. Liberalism has corrupted Germany and corrupted Europe as a whole.
I expect that Germany will cope in your absence.
You remind me of some migrants who came to Australia between the end of the war and the 1970’s.
They maintained their traditions and kept alive the flame of the culture they had left, and brought up their children in accordance with those traditions and cultures.
Then, after 20, 30, or 40 years they went home to retire.
And found, to their horror, that home had changed. The culture they had kept alive, and the country they thought they were returning to, had disappeared.
Now they didn’t fit in at home, or in Australia. Some stayed home, others came back to Australia. But they remained permanently disappointed; unable to accept change; and still clinging desperately to a past they had lost forever.
Unable to cope? I wasn’t born in Germany under Hitler. I was born in Sacramento, California. I don’t see how I can miss living in the Third Reich when I never did. All I have are stories.
Would that be illegitimate, or the Australian Allah? 
We have the same problem with some of the older Turks. They try to stick to the lifestyle of rural Turkey in the 1960s and don’t realise that Turkey has developed further and has become more westernised and European over the last 40 years. They don’t feel at home in Germany and can’t get back to Turkey either.
Jan
Actually I was a a political demonstration a few weeks ago, which was aimed against the attempt of the rightwing lunatic fringe NPD (which is superficialy operating just within the constitution, but in reality tries to reestablish the old NSDAP) to open an ideological training center in a former school building (I don’t know how they happened to get hold of it) in a village not far from the one I’m living in.
I was pleasantly surprised to se that not just the usual suspects of the leftwing parties and organisations attended, but that the WHOLE town council with all political parties involved (and the region I live in is very rural and conservative), including the conservative CDU was present and demanded the closure of this centre.
If the Nazis would try to get into power again as they did back in 1933, they would have it not as easy.
First, most of the population, including the military and the police would be against them (no more aristocrat Reichswehr officers to support them). There would most likely be armed resistance. Also I’ll bet that our neighbours and the other NATO countries would invade the moment a Nazi would get close to taking power.
Jan
Better stay in whatever hole you are in. We don’t need you here.
Jan
Enough of this! AlbertSpeer has made it clear he would support a new Holocaust against the Jews. No matter how far anyone can listen to his sanctimonious drivel, which I suspect comes from his arse, rather than his mouth, I will not listen any further to his warped logic.
In fact he should be banned from this site for his racist views.
Regards digger
If it quacks and waddles like a duck - it’s a duck!
At the risk of offending another Aussie, I don’t think he should be banned. Yet.
I disagree violently with most of what Uncle Albert says, but, with a slight modification of the statement usually attributed to Voltaire, I’m prepared to lay down his life (i.e Uncle Albert’s life, not Voltaire’s, as Voltaire is already dead) in defence of his right to say it.
Banning the expression of ideas doesn’t make them go away. It just drives them underground and deprives opponents of those ideas of the opportunity to challenge them. Worse, it reinforces the banned person in their usually paranoid belief that the world is against them and that they are the sole bearer of the one true flame. Uncle Albert seems already to be a fair way along the latter path. It won’t improve his opinions by banning him and pushing him further along that path, unless he really goes over the top.
We can dispute his views or just ignore him.
Although I think a close watch should be kept on him because I think that he is at heart a super troll, and if he keeps up just taking the piss then it’s time for him to go.
I don’t agree. He has expressed his desire for mass extermination of a race. if he quoted such sentiments under our present laws, he would at least be charged with a criminal offence. As it is, I feel he has expressed enough of his crap to be extensively challenged numerous times.
Regards digger.
You’re right.
Sometimes I allow reluctant adherence to abstract noble principles to cloud my vision of reality. A bit like Uncle Albert, but his principles aren’t noble and his vision of reality has pits and chimneys in it.
There’s a limit to free speech, and it’s reached when someone preaches harm to others. He has, again and again.
Stuff 'im.
It’s time to pull the lever and drop the trapdoor on the gallows on another Nazi.
I also disagree. The Nazis have shown what they are capable off 60 years ago, hence my lack of tolerance. Don’t give them another public platform to spread their rubbish.
Their tactics are to use democratic freedoms to abolish the same. One man, one vote, one time.
Once is enough. He himself is probably beyond help, so that reason and logic won’t work. Let him hang around on the websites of the NSDAP-AO, Combat 18, White Power or the Ku Klux Klan, but do not give him a platform to poison other minds from.
Jan
You also are right, for the reasons you have given in addition to those already offered.
The sad thing is that my earlier comments express exactly the sort of liberal weakness that Uncle Albert condemns, and principles which I hold dear, yet they give him and his ilk the liberty to continue to attack the system he wants to destroy.