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ArchangeI posted:
Seriously, german culture restarted on the 9th of May 1945 and everything that was before didn't matter anymore? So german literature consists of Guenther Grass and Cornelia Funke, german music is Scorpions and Nena, german politics consists of the Greens, FDP and the Pirates? In 68 the students proclaimed "Unter den Talaren, Muff von 23 Jahren"? German culture changed after the war, but only in respect to the previous 12 years, not when compared to the previous 50 years. Adenauer and Luebke were politicians in the Zentrums party in the Weimar Republic, Heuss in the DDP, Kiesinger joined the NSDAP in 1933. The first non-conservative leader of Germany was Willy Brandt in 1969, at the same time the shift to a more liberal and leftist society happened everywhere in the western world. What happened after 1945 was that the society was pushed from the right fringe back to the right of center position it was before the 1930s. Hell, the CDU/CSU decreed a law today that could have been right at home in 1920 (if at the time something like a Kita had existed). I'm not saying the war didn't change anything, of course it did, that's what a lost war, several million death and even more displaced persons and a divided country bring with them. But the people were the same as in 1930, the teachers were the same, used the same education methods, read the same books, sang the same songs in their Gesangsvereine, shot at the same targets in their Schuetzenvereine, drank the same wine on their wine festivals, cooked the same dinners at home. As for the shape of Germany/Europe and the rest of the world, Arminius, Karl der Grosse, Luther, Marx, Engels and Carl Benz (together with Gottlieb Daimler and Rudolf Diesel) had all a lot more influence on the world of 2012 than Hitler. The effects of WWII are fading, the world of 2012 wouldn't look much different if Hitler had caught the shrapnel with his face instead of his groin. But imagine a world without cars, communism, protestantism (and enlightenment), if Charlemagne hadn't unified Central and Western Europe or the roman empire had expanded to the Baltic sea.
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Nov 9, 2012 23:45
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:And bitching is our favourite pastime. You're confusing Germany with Austria here :p
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Nov 10, 2012 00:58
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:Germans are critical of everything though. And bitching is our favourite pastime. What a bummer that being critical does not whatsoever imply critical analysis or anything beyond piss-shallow complaining without even the slightest pretense of pre- or context.
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Nov 10, 2012 03:51
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Riso posted:The constant reduction of German history to those loving 12 years annoys me to no end, as if there was nothing else to talk about. What I really think is remarkable is how a country can try for close to 70 years to do everything humanly imaginable to atone for its sins and change its image, but still not succeed at changing the perception of the masses in other countries. Sometimes between that unfunny Family Guy clip, innocent questions about how the Nazis are seen nowadays in Germany and other little shows of total ignorance, I really wonder if it's worth the public relations effort. (Don't get me wrong, this is only about the PR effort going nowhere with most people - not saying Germany shouldn't have changed after the war.)
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Nov 10, 2012 07:43
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Re: That family guy recap someone did (couldn't see the video obv.), that's very unlike Germany actually. Japan is the Axis major that completly ignores and denies everything from 1930 to 46. Germany is very self conscious about the period and trying to ignore it away wouldn't go anywhere here.The Brown Menace posted:What a bummer that being critical does not whatsoever imply critical analysis or anything beyond piss-shallow complaining without even the slightest pretense of pre- or context. Are you throwing down? Because you gots to go in a bit deeper if you want to. az fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 09:15
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az posted:Re: That family guy recap someone did (couldn't see the video obv.), that's very unlike Germany actually. Japan is the Axis major that completly ignores and denies everything from 1930 to 46. Germany is very self conscious about the period and trying to ignore it away wouldn't go anywhere here. Germany's self-consciousness has a strange duality to it though. I mean, yes, there's pretty good education and discussion about nazi-times in German schools, although I did find it weird that my girlfriend told me she learned nothing about the actual war part of the war, having instead focused solely on the social and societal aspects of it. It's also completely unacceptable in public life to glorify the period in any way shape or form. Contrast with Italy, for example. However, denazification did not go as far as we all may like to believe or as it should have. Only the absolute top of the German hierarchy was prosecuted after '45, and people who were influential or even powerful, albeit to lesser extents, before the fall of the nazis continued to be so after. Some of the people killed by the RAF, for instance, garner no sympathy from me. And then there's the cases of Klaas Carel Faber and Heinrich Boere. I've made a more extensive post about the former here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3493762&pagenumber=28&perpage=40#post405941768 The short of it is, Germany provided shelter to a convicted Nazi war criminal and member of the SS for nearly 60 years, up until his death. Perversely, the reason Germany cited for doing so was because this man had German citizenship, which he was only granted due to a law granting German citizenship to all SS members. So here's a guy who got away with his war crimes by virtue of being a member of the SS. That very severely does not sit right with me, and to be quite honest, casts incredibly severe doubts on any of that atonement stuff Germany likes to pride itself on so hard. I must ask, if atonement and PR was really such a huge priority, why could an actual convicted SS war criminal not be punished for his murders and why did it take nearly 60 years for another convicted SS war criminal to be punished for his murders? That said, Japan manages to be a lot worse, but I don't think they're really a good standard for anything in this regard.
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Nov 10, 2012 14:08
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Germany did not really confront it's Nazi past before the mid 60s. Without the student movement of the 60s it would probably still be somewhat of an off limit topic.
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Nov 10, 2012 14:22
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^^^^^ It was mostly the children of those who lived through the war, and mostly those who were born after. My mother used to hound my grandfather for information on what he did during the war while her older siblings that were born in 43 and 45 did not.Orange Devil posted:Germany's self-consciousness has a strange duality to it though. I mean, yes, there's pretty good education and discussion about nazi-times in German schools, although I did find it weird that my girlfriend told me she learned nothing about the actual war part of the war, having instead focused solely on the social and societal aspects of it. It's also completely unacceptable in public life to glorify the period in any way shape or form. Contrast with Italy, for example. I think you shouldn't indict the whole country for letting a few bad people get away. Most of the really bad Nazis and SS officers got what was coming to them at the hands of the allies. The fact that denazification was pretty toothless is not actually a German thing, it was an allied decision, mostly the US's. They needed West Germany to be stable in the face of an increasing Cold War, especially with the Wall coming up. Everybody who wasn't a really bad, well known Nazi got pardoned, in essence, to allow them to fill in positions in German politics, the Police and especially the Military. The US Army was very much interested in keep as many east front veterans as possible in the Federal Army, because they had been fighting the Soviets and knew their style and tactics the best. For example, most German officers that were moved to America in Operation Paperclip were put to task to help them establish doctrines and intelligence efforts against the Soviet Union. All in the name of fighting Communism. Many of those that fled the country after the collapse were eventually gotten to by the Mossad. I'm not trying to defend the German govt. or the allied powers letting anyone get away because it was useful to them. And I really did not understand what was going on wrt to Faber and why he was being protected by German courts. I wouldn't say Germany provided shelter for war criminals because that sounds very much hyperbolic. There are only a handful of cases known to me, all of which are bad but it definitely was not an endemic effort to do it by the government. And how do you mean, no sympthaty for those killed by the RAF, are you one of those that believe every German that died in the war had it coming? Because you know, the RAF especially targeted population centers on purpose and ignored the infrastructure leading east, in an effort to a) kill the people and undermine morale (which never works) and b) let them keep fighting the Soviets to reduce the amount of land they'd eventually get in a peace settlement. The RAF was run by literal warcriminals and committed so many horrible acts it is absolutely indefensible. If you want standards I think Germany is probably leading in a scale of how educated and apologetic a country is after doing something really awful. Some japanese college students I talked to about it did just barely or not at all know there was a war. Those who did had no idea about any specifics besides the nuclear bomb drops. The official stance is to completly ignore any Japanese involvement in WW2, especially towards China. az fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 14:38
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az posted:I think you shouldn't indict the whole country for letting a few bad people get away. Most of the really bad Nazis and SS officers got what was coming to them at the hands of the allies. The fact that denazification was pretty toothless is not actually a German thing, it was an allied decision, mostly the US's. They needed West Germany to be stable in the face of an increasing Cold War, especially with the Wall coming up. Everybody who wasn't a really bad, well known Nazi got pardoned, in essence, to allow them to fill in positions in German politics, the Police and especially the Military. The US Army was very much interested in keep as many east front veterans as possible in the Federal Army, because they had been fighting the Soviets and knew their style and tactics the best. For example, most German officers that were moved to America in Operation Paperclip were put to task to help them establish doctrines and intelligence efforts against the Soviet Union. All in the name of fighting Communism. I'm well aware of this. As more often than not in the post-'45 world, if something bad is going down, the US is involved. Same reason why Japan is as hosed as it is with respect to WW2. quote:And how do you mean, no sympthaty for those killed by the RAF, are you one of those that believe every German that died in the war had it coming? Because you know, the RAF especially targeted population centers on purpose and ignored the infrastructure leading east, in an effort to a) kill the people and undermine morale (which never works) and b) let them keep fighting the Soviets to reduce the amount of land they'd eventually get in a peace settlement. The RAF was run by literal warcriminals and committed so many horrible acts it is absolutely indefensible. I'm talking about the other RAF. quote:If you want standards I think Germany is probably leading in a scale of how educated and apologetic a country is after doing something really awful. Some japanese college students I talked to about it did just barely or not at all know there was a war. Those who did had no idea about any specifics besides the nuclear bomb drops. The official stance is to completly ignore any Japanese involvement in WW2, especially towards China. I agree that Germany is probably the best when it comes to "countries that have done horrible poo poo and how they are dealing with it now", but I think even so, there's still plenty of room for improvement.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:10
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How would you even get rid of all the Nazis? A third of the population voted Hitler into power and a good amount of the rest became just as fanatical during the following years. Most people simply were Nazis, and denying a majority of the population to participate in the new government and administration of the country doesn't strike me as practical. And if you only punish the former leaders, which is of course what happened, it becomes little more than a symbolic act of distancing yourself from the past rather than a real confrontation with it.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:12
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az posted:And how do you mean, no sympthaty for those killed by the RAF, are you one of those that believe every German that died in the war had it coming? Because you know, the RAF especially targeted population centers on purpose and ignored the infrastructure leading east, in an effort to a) kill the people and undermine morale (which never works) and b) let them keep fighting the Soviets to reduce the amount of land they'd eventually get in a peace settlement. The RAF was run by literal warcriminals and committed so many horrible acts it is absolutely indefensible. I'd guess he is talking about the Rote Armee Fraktion  e: and beaten...
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Nov 10, 2012 15:12
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Stupid RAF really picked the wrong name.Noahdraron posted:How would you even get rid of all the Nazis? A third of the population voted Hitler into power and a good amount of the rest became just as fanatical during the following years. Most people simply were Nazis, and denying a majority of the population to participate in the new government and administration of the country doesn't strike me as practical. And if you only punish the former leaders, which is of course what happened, it becomes little more than a symbolic act of distancing yourself from the past rather than a real confrontation with it. People like Churchill wanted to cut Germany up into several small, agrarian states with no industry in an effort to render Germany powerless forever. Much of the population would have just died off. The cold war pretty much saved our asses from further damage. az fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 15:20
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az posted:People like Churchill wanted to cut Germany up into several small, agrarian states with no industry in an effort to render Germany powerless forever. Much of the population would have just died off.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:38
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A modern (postwar) economy could not feed a large population without the income a decent industrial sector brings. Even with the loss of life due to war, there would have been widespread unemployment as number of labourers meets with pretty sharply diminishing returns after a certain point, and so you'd end up with a large, hungry and landless underclass and a state without the revenues to take care of them in any effective way. This would lead either to a continuous dependence on foreign aid, mass emigration (haha) or death by starvation until the population stabilised at a very low level. It was never a realistic plan in the long term, of course, but they could've done a lot of damage if they'd tried.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:46
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niethan posted:I don't get how the latter sentence follows from the former? Obviously his plan was a lot more than just one paragraph long. Agriculture back then was much much less developed and less supported by other industries like checmicals as we have today. Nazi Germany was still a net food importer before the war. A cut up, broke, industrial-less smaller state couldn't have supported itself even remotely. It was an evil idea that would have ruined Germany and strengthened the UK greatly as the local european power. Remember that in our actual history, we still had millions of deaths in the post year wars up to the 50s, especially due to lack of heating supplies and food, and that was with international support.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:50
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Also while we're sorta on the subject, I just want to point attention to two parts of history that are sadly often glossed over. The first being the German and Italian resistance, and the second being the German and Italian volunteers who joined the International Brigades, who, if such a thing is possible, were even bigger heroes than all the other volunteers, and thus are likely to have been the biggest heroes of the 20th century.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:53
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Orange Devil posted:Also while we're sorta on the subject, I just want to point attention to two parts of history that are sadly often glossed over. The first being the German and Italian resistance, and the second being the German and Italian volunteers who joined the International Brigades, who, if such a thing is possible, were even bigger heroes than all the other volunteers, and thus are likely to have been the biggest heroes of the 20th century. If you feel like it you should make an effortpost about it because even I as a history major know fuckall about the internationals, except the Germans that signed up for the USA.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:57
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Sereri posted:It's kinda cruel to post a link to a website that restricts content to the US in a thread where most people wont be able to see it It wasn't intended to be cruel, it was more thoughtless on my part, as I can't see it either (I'm on Kabel Deutschland). The recap covers it though, it's completely unGerman from what I've seen being over here. flavor posted:What I really think is remarkable is how a country can try for close to 70 years to do everything humanly imaginable to atone for its sins and change its image, but still not succeed at changing the perception of the masses in other countries. This is less to do with Germany's efforts and more to do with the lack of history education in the US. Most Americans still believe that the bomb was the only way to force a Japanese surrender, not knowing or caring that Japan offered terms in July that had only one condition that the US would not accept (leaving the emperor as a figurehead), the same exact terms the US accepted after the bombs. Most Americans don't know the difference between the Weimar Republic and the Nazis, and many think we fought Nazis in WWI My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 16:34
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Soap Bat Derby posted:Most Americans don't know the difference between the Weimar Republic and the Nazis, and many think we fought Nazis in WWI Most Americans also can't point out Germany on a map, so this is pretty huge. Yeah Germany could have done a better job with the whole Vergangenheitsbewältigung thing, but history and civics education is still worlds better in Germany than in Italy/Japan, and even farther ahead of the United States.
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Nov 10, 2012 16:52
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You know what they say about history books. It's not surprising that many people are still somewhat stuck in a 1945 mindset when that was the ultimate moment of glory for most of the countries that dominated the second half of the 20th century. Germans, Japanese and Italians would be no different if they had won the war, but they didn't. So they have to awkwardly try to find a balance between facts, repentance and the accepted mainstream narrative. They all handle it differently and I think none of them really succeeded.
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Nov 10, 2012 17:17
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az posted:If you feel like it you should make an effortpost about it because even I as a history major know fuckall about the internationals, except the Germans that signed up for the USA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDkxq5gbRoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6SRWUoAZuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wx69rDxwGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRcDPTiRjP8
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Nov 10, 2012 18:00
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elwood posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDkxq5gbRoE While certainly extremely commendable, this isn't the International Brigades.
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Nov 10, 2012 18:20
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Soap Bat Derby posted:
Funnily enough, many historians of the era also agree that the bombs were the best (meaning causing the least amount of suffering) way to end the war. It should be noted that the Allies followed a policy of unconditional surrender, that meaning that the defeated nation does not get to demand any conditions. This was specifically to prevent a repeat of WWI, where Germany could argue that it was unbeaten and that the peace imposed was unfair. Japan wanted out of the war as early as 1944, but they wanted a peace with honor, where they would prosecute their own war criminals (yeah right) and disarm themselves. Leaving the emperor in place was a term offered by the US, which is a major and important distinction. And even then there were people in the Japanese government who wanted to continue the fight. I have also looked around for that peace proposal you mentioned and have found nothing. I would be glad if you would show some sources, because the only things I have read say that japan tried to get the Soviet Union to negotiate on their behalf and that they otherwise decided to ignore the Declaration of Potsdam (which included a provision that the Japanese would be allowed to choose their own form of government, i.e. keep the Emperor).
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Nov 10, 2012 20:11
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ArchangeI posted:Funnily enough, many historians of the era also agree that the bombs were the best (meaning causing the least amount of suffering) way to end the war. It should be noted that the Allies followed a policy of unconditional surrender, that meaning that the defeated nation does not get to demand any conditions. This was specifically to prevent a repeat of WWI, where Germany could argue that it was unbeaten and that the peace imposed was unfair. Japan wanted out of the war as early as 1944, but they wanted a peace with honor, where they would prosecute their own war criminals (yeah right) and disarm themselves. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The Japanese terms in September 1944 may have been peace with honor, but by January 1945 was a different matter http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html posted:In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.) If White House Chief of Staff Leahy, Eisenhower, and others who were highly placed said specifically that the bomb accomplished nothing, then what are historians talking about? Propaganda? The Potsdam ultimatum specifically made no mention of the Emperor because that was literally Japan's only condition, and the White House knew that. The decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, in Truman's own words "A Military Base", had already been made and wouldn't be unmade by popular opinion.
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Nov 10, 2012 23:00
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Soap Bat Derby posted:This is exactly what I'm talking about. The Japanese terms in September 1944 may have been peace with honor, but by January 1945 was a different matter If I recall that right, the main problem with those overtures was that the Allies couldn't be sure that the people making them were in any position to actually enforce a peace. Up until the end it wasn't certain if Japanese units in China would actually obey the order of surrender. Thank you for the article, but it also acknowledges that the memo you quoted does not represent the opinion of the Japanese government at the time. It quotes a meeting between the Japanese foreign minister and the Swedish ambassador: quote:On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." There is no controversy whatsoever that the Allies could have had a conditional surrender of Japan by May 1945 at the very latest. But they pushed on for an unconditional surrender. That they retained the emperor after all is secondary. It was not an acknowledgment of Japanese terms. As for Eisenhower and Leahy, one was in Europe at the time, and the other wanted to starve Japan into submission by blockade, which would have caused a great deal more casualties among the Japanese civil population. That is the gist of the argument for the bomb: any other option would have either increased the number of casualties or meant going off the policy of unconditional surrender. Whether the later would have been a viable option is a matter of opinion, I guess. Anyway, I guess we should end this derail (or move it to the military history thread in A/T).
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Nov 11, 2012 00:13
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az posted:Are you throwing down? Because you gots to go in a bit deeper if you want to. Would I like to thrown down? Heavens no, I sure know my place when faced with calibers such as yours. All I wanted to do was point out that, while Germans are indeed quite critical, people might be misled as to the quality of said criticism. For "critical" sort of implies "critical thinking," which I would not accuse many Germans of. Rather, "bitching" as a word explains the process quite well, for it captures the facet where the process is almost entirely devoid of sound judgement or in-depth analysis quite well.
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Nov 11, 2012 01:29
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The Brown Menace posted:Would I like to thrown down? Heavens no, I sure know my place when faced with calibers such as yours. All I wanted to do was point out that, while Germans are indeed quite critical, people might be misled as to the quality of said criticism. I'm not sure if this is a drive-by shitpost or an analytical masterpiece encapsulating an entire people so succintly.
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Nov 11, 2012 01:36
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The Brown Menace posted:Would I like to thrown down? Heavens no, I sure know my place when faced with calibers such as yours. All I wanted to do was point out that, while Germans are indeed quite critical, people might be misled as to the quality of said criticism. That's basically what I said in the post you quoted. So congrats on being able to comprehend sentences I guess.
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Nov 11, 2012 01:47
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az posted:I'm not sure if this is a drive-by shitpost or an analytical masterpiece encapsulating an entire people so succintly. Succinctly. Either way, you might even come out ahead here by considering this an exercise in the Hegelian dialectic. "I don't know poo poo about poo poo, thinking is  " and "I sure am mad about things, graarrr" combine to form the sort of uneducated rage against some (?) machine that Germany prides herself on.My point, I suppose, was to sufficiently divorce the whole "critical" part from "critical thinking" to capture the reality on the ground.
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Nov 11, 2012 02:11
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The Brown Menace posted:Succinctly.  Now if you will, tell me about where Germany touched you.
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Nov 11, 2012 02:16
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az posted:
Hmh. Man. Barely feel like replying. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 11, 2012 02:20
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Orange Devil posted:Germany's self-consciousness has a strange duality to it though. I mean, yes, there's pretty good education and discussion about nazi-times in German schools, although I did find it weird that my girlfriend told me she learned nothing about the actual war part of the war, having instead focused solely on the social and societal aspects of it. Orange Devil posted:However, denazification did not go as far as we all may like to believe or as it should have. Only the absolute top of the German hierarchy was prosecuted after '45, and people who were influential or even powerful, albeit to lesser extents, before the fall of the nazis continued to be so after. Some of the people killed by the RAF, for instance, garner no sympathy from me.
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Nov 11, 2012 02:25
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flavor posted:I'd say those aspects are about a thousand times more important than who fought what battle with what exact type of weapons. Note the "some" in the sentence you quoted. When you have people like Schleyer saying he was proud to have been in the SS it gets kinda hard to feel too much sympathy for him. You don't even have to get all "ra-ra complicit with war in Vietnam ra" on them. Doesn't excuse the way the RAF happily killed whoever happened to be in their line of fire, of course. Its just that some people are slightly less innocent than others.
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Nov 11, 2012 02:38
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ArchangeI posted:Note the "some" in the sentence you quoted. When you have people like Schleyer saying he was proud to have been in the SS it gets kinda hard to feel too much sympathy for him. You don't even have to get all "ra-ra complicit with war in Vietnam ra" on them. It's just giving in to your basest feelings. As civilized people, the reason we're not just killing bad people without a fair trial (and even then I don't believe in the death penalty) is not because we like them or feel sympathy for them, it's because we're trying to be better than them. I also seriously don't think having been in the SS and being proud of it is enough to warrant killing someone. ArchangeI posted:Doesn't excuse the way the RAF happily killed whoever happened to be in their line of fire, of course. Its just that some people are slightly less innocent than others. This is such a platitude. With that kind of reasoning you can excuse just randomly killing people in the street, someone will always be slightly less innocent.
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Nov 11, 2012 03:21
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Drone posted:Most Americans also can't point out Germany on a map, so this is pretty huge. I don't think it's too important to know the exact position of some country you maybe hear about once or twice a year in the news, if that. Most Germans won't be able to point out many major American cities either. It's hard for Germans to swallow, but Germany just isn't as important to the people of the US as the other way around. Drone posted:Yeah Germany could have done a better job with the whole Vergangenheitsbewältigung thing Like what? Talk about it 25/8 instead of 24/7? When I went to school there, we went through the whole Nazi era three separate times in two courses (German and history), to give just one example of things. The era was NEVER portrayed in a positive light in anything public institution. Dealing with the Nazi past is a major part of the culture now. I'd like to know what country on earth has ever dealt with its past like this. All I ever see from other countries is sweeping things under the rug (e.g. Japan) or white-knighting them (e.g. Russia), unless the bad things happened at least a century ago.
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Nov 11, 2012 03:33
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ArchangeI posted:
Leaving the emperor in place was a deliberate calculation on the part of the United States to 'prevent the spread of communism' in Japan and to create a postwar elite that was pliant to US interests during the Cold War, regardless of the loathsome or genocidal things that elite had been up to. That's why Kishi Nobusuke, the prime minister who signed the mutual defense treaty with the United States, was the Munitions minister of Japan DURING the war. Imagine if Speer or Fritz Todt had been the West German prime minister in 1960 and had been the US's best buddy in Europe. Same basic thing. The reason Japan 'sweeps things under the rug' is because doing otherwise would endanger the US's military hegemony, not because Japanese people are recalcitrant.
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Nov 11, 2012 03:47
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flavor posted:The deeper wave of dealing with the past started at some point in the 60s. And it's nice to white knight the RAF, who killed people like drivers and airline pilots or were complicit in it. I see no justification for this. Dude, he was hardy white knighting the RAF by saying some of the people they killed were despicable. Which they were. Honestly, hitting old nazis who have remained in positions of authority has got to be one of the least offensive acts of terrorism in history. This doesn't necessarily excuse the remainder of the RAF actions (and actually, it makes no attempt at justifying even those actions themselves, saying only that the victims garner no sympathy), but it's legitimate to bring them up as they specifically targetted "rehabilitated" nazis (as you no doubt know very well). It's like you've willfully misinterpreted a perfectly legible sentence because you know and dislike the person uttering it. This is not productive and you shouldn't do it.
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Nov 11, 2012 04:24
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V. Illych L. posted:Dude, he was hardy white knighting the RAF by saying some of the people they killed were despicable. Which they were. Honestly, hitting old nazis who have remained in positions of authority has got to be one of the least offensive acts of terrorism in history. No. It's simply inexcusable. People deserve to be put in front of a fair court because they're people. Exceptions didn't apply here. You're also painting people like Schleyer and other RAF victims as some kind of mass murderers, which they simply weren't. At least according to his German and English language wikipedia entries, he was certainly a nazi, but not a war criminal. That alone is not good enough for me to just shoot him and feel good about it. V. Illych L. posted:This doesn't necessarily excuse the remainder of the RAF actions (and actually, it makes no attempt at justifying even those actions themselves, saying only that the victims garner no sympathy), but it's legitimate to bring them up as they specifically targetted "rehabilitated" nazis (as you no doubt know very well). No, I don't know that very well, because it's simply not true. The goal of the RAF was not to go after old nazis, they were going for some kind of revolution. If they'd really have wanted to focus on old nazis, they wouldn't have focused on someone like Schleyer, and their priorities would have been different. Mossad and others went after nazis who had found cover in some places. I don't have much of a problem with that.
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Nov 11, 2012 04:47
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flavor posted:No. Not feeling sympathy for him is not the same as cheering for his death. I also have my doubts that Schleyer was not at least complacent with war crimes when he was helping to organize the war industry in Czechoslovakia. He must have known about slave labor at least.
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Nov 11, 2012 05:40
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ArchangeI posted:Not feeling sympathy for him is not the same as cheering for his death. To me it's both based on the feeling that someone deserves to die. The cheering or lack thereof is just based on how strong the feeling is. ArchangeI posted:I also have my doubts that Schleyer was not at least complacent You mean "complicit"? ArchangeI posted:with war crimes when he was helping to organize the war industry in Czechoslovakia. He must have known about slave labor at least. He probably wasn't a nice guy at the time or even later on. But again, that doesn't justify killing him. And your doubts don't justify it either. And four other people were killed in order to kidnap him. To somehow even get close to defending this, tolerating this or whatever is disgusting.
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Nov 11, 2012 06:39
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