|
I have a great number of questions that I'm still curious about although I got the full dose of public German education, which understandably uses a lot of time on the Holocaust. It is a disturbing thought that one's own grandparents were probably at least quietly complicit in such a giant crime. In no particular order: - What role did the Holocaust play in the overall scheme of things for the Nazis? Was it The Most Important Thing, was it pretty important, but not as important as winning the war, or was it just "Gee, we have to do something about the Jews"? In particular, what role did the Madagascar Plan play in it, was it just a fancy or did they honestly think that this could, and should, be done? - Why were the Nazis fighting until the very, very end? I don't necessarily mean the Wehrmacht, which did surrender en masse, particularly to the Western Allies, but the hardcore nazis fought on, knowing fully well that this would only end in their death, yet not committing suicide outright. Was there a genuine belief that they could still turn it around if they only fought hard enough? - finally, would you mind telling us what your thesis is about exactly? The Holocaust is probably the most researched historical event ever, I find it hard to believe that someone could still find really new perspectives about it (not to knock on you!)
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2013 13:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 15:39 |
|
|
Libluini posted:Sorry to butt in, but I can confirm they did have access to uranium ores - there are deposits in the Black Forest. (But I don't know if the Nazis already knew about them.) There were also large deposits in Thuringia, which were already being exploited and which eventually supplied large amounts of Uranium for the Soviet bomb projects. The Germans were definitely aware of the possibility, but in typical Nazi fashion the Army, Navy and Postal Service (No poo poo!) each had their own projects which sucked off resources that were already sparse.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2013 16:04
|
|
|
Xerxes17 posted:There were cases when a German unit would surrender on the condition of being given ice-cream and other such things from what I remember of reading the latter parts of "Tigers in the mud" by Otto Carius. Tigers in the Mud is one of the few books I had to put down because it pissed me off that much. Carius jokes about loving warcrimes and is genuinely upset that Germans aren't more thankful for his service. Zero reflection or regret. He is an absolute facist shithole. I wouldn't take too much of it seriously.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2013 18:22
|
|
|
surf rock posted:Is is true that Czechoslovakia had the military forces, fortifications, and positioning to fight Nazi Germany basically to a standstill before the annexation? From what I've heard, the largest consequence of the Munich Agreement was that it devastated the morale of Czech leadership, who saw that France wasn't interested in honoring their treaty with them, and that the British weren't interested in getting involved, either. So, they surrendered to the occupation without a fight, which they actually could've won. Counter-factuals are always difficult, and military history counter-factuals always have a tendency to end up as giant nationalistic circle-jerks, but the Wehrmacht was a great deal less prepared for war in 1938, the Czechs had extensive fortifications in the Sudetenland, their military equipment was comparable to the rest of Europe at the time (some of it was actually superior to what the Wehrmacht used) and the territory was a lot less suited for mechanized warfare. So the argument could be made that they could have held out for quite some time in 1938, perhaps long enough for France and Briatin to enter the war. After the Agreement of Munich, they lost their fortifications in the Sudetenland, and their strategic position became a lot worse.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2013 00:05
|
|
|
Ableist Kinkshamer posted:Thanks for the replies. I admit that I'm not exactly a historical scholar when it comes to this stuff, but I know the notion that Hitler's rise to power was democratic in any way is just insane. It should be noted that it was perfectly legal (minus the streetfighting), though. It wasn't a coup and it wasn't a revolution. He was appointed in accordance with the constitution.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2013 07:02
|
|
|
Gumby posted:
To be entirely fair, what can you do if parliament is doing everything in its power to run the country straight into the ground? Imagine a congress which filibusters literally everything (shouldn't be too hard) except when they decide to impeach the head of government. Which they do, several times. At some point, you can't really blame Hindenburg for going "gently caress this, we're now a presidential dictatorship until I decide you guys get to have a crack at it again". It should be noted that Ebert, his predecessor, ran much the same line during the crisis in the early 20s and eventually handed full control back to parliament. Parties in Weimar were kinda awkward anyway. They came from a tradition of Imperial Germany, where there was a strong executive (His Majesty's Government) that was controlled by a fairly weak legislative, which pretty much only controlled the budget. Which is no doubt critical, but it is a difference to a system where the legislative body elects the head of government. As a result, nearly all parties in Imperial Germany (and consequently Weimar) were parties that represented the interests of certain classes against the government. They didn't want to work together because they didn't see themselves as being responsible for working together. The result was a situation where pretty much no one liked democracy. When you have representatives writing things like "Well a people that elects this kind of deadlocked parliament doesn't want a democratic government anyway" the republic is pretty much hosed.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2013 18:04
|
|
|
Nckdictator posted:I know these "what-if" questions can be tedious but I do have a question. If Von Hindenburg had 'put his foot down' and stood firm agaisnt appointing Hitler as Chancellor could the whole mess of Nazi Germany been avoided? Doubtful. Hindenburg was already pretty old and died in 1934. The communists were seen as the growing threat, and I would argue that Hitler might have been able to snatch an election afterwards. of course, the German people could just as well have risen up in a grand communist revolution. As for Luther, I have always been taught that he was antijudaistic rather than antisemitic (opposed to the religion rather than the race). Has there been anything to prove that he considered Jews a separate race that would remain a problem even if they converted to Christianity?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2013 22:24
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:Yeah, but if that happened, any state but Prussia would have basically reverted back to being a third-rate European power instead of a great power. Also, Prussia had worked pretty drat hard to make Unification happen in the first place, and they dominated all the other states regardless, so they had a pretty vested interest in staying together. In the 40-50 years between Unification and WWI, Germany got a taste of what it's like to be a world power and even if they got beat in WWI and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, they still had a lot of what allowed them to become a great power in the first place (large population, strong industrial base, etc.), even if they were stuck in a terrible depression. Hell, there were enough people in 1990 who went "This is a terrible idea and will backfire spectacularly". Of course, the jury is still out if they were right...
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2013 16:25
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:
I would disagree, on the account of the massive efforts the Nazis made to ensure they covered their actions legally. If you look at the hoops they jumped through to make killing German citizens legal, you can see that the Nazis were very conscious of the constitution, even though there was no institution that could conceivably challenge them.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2013 18:30
|
|
|
That is an idea of history that I find very difficult to swallow, because it requires a certain amount of human non-agency to work. "Inevitable" is a word historians should use very sparingly.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2013 23:47
|
|
|
Perestroika posted:Yeah, that's fairly accurate. I'd say about 2/3 of my history classes were about the 3rd Reich in one way or another. It was also covered in some other classes and there were day trips to a KZ (we had a subcamp of Buchenwald right around the corner from the school), the holocaust memorial in Berlin and the site of the Wannsee conference. So yeah, it's pretty extensively covered in school. I don't know, we basically had a rotating schedule of Ancient Greece/Rome (Democracy!), Middle Ages (Charlelemange! Also walking through the snow barefoot because the pope is mad at you!), French Revolution (More Democracy!) and Nazis (No Democracy!). They switched to the next topic every six months or so. Only in our last year did we get anything about 19th century German history. We also had the mandatory trip to a KZ, although we only got Sachsenhausen, so a political prisoner camp. It was pretty creepy, but I think Auschwitz would have hit us that much harder. As it was, it seemed more like a really lovely prison where the guards don't care if you live or die rather than a camp where people were actively murdered on an industrial scale. But Germany's struggle with the past had several stages. As noted, there was a first wave right after the war, where the worst of the worst were handled. Then nothing happened for about 20 years. Then the people born during and immediately after the war started to ask questions. The students in West Germany started to rebel against the conservative society, and the fact that major Nazis were still in office. One of the most often quoted slogans was "Unter den Talaren, Muff von 1000 Jahren!" (Under the robes lies the stink of a thousand years). And, of course, the later RAF terrorist Gudrun Enslin's "Das ist die Generation Auschwitz, mit denen kann man nicht verhandeln" (That is the Generation of Auschwitz, you can't negotiate with them). Over the following 10 years or so, there was a massive conflict around the former Nazis still in office, although the new social democratic government was at least headed by a former exile (Willy Brandt). Part of the problem was that you were hard-pressed to find anybody who wasn't somehow connected to the regime. Every little dog breeding club was part of the Nazi system, however small. If you banned the head of every one of them you would quickly run out of people with which you could run a country. But at least the crimes were discussed openly and could no longer be suppressed. However, the Wehrmacht was still considered mostly clean. It was the SS who had committed most of the crimes, so unless Grandpa had been in the SS, he was good. I mean, he always left the room 10 minutes before Santa arrived, and he let you play with his model trains, and he read you bedtime stories so he couldn't be bad, right? Right. In the 90s, a sweeping new exhibition opened that detailed all the ways in which the Wehrmacht was connected to the Holocaust, and the myth died an ugly death. As the war generation dies out, I expect that Germany's treatment of it will change once again because people will be able to look through their parent's and grandparent's files and see what they did. But I think it is fairly widely accepted that most people are related to Germans who participated in warcrimes or the Holocaust in some capacity. 80% of all German soldiers served in the East, and it is almost impossible to get back from the East without having done some disgusting stuff. Even Helmut Schmidt, a former chancellor and utterly free of any charges of fascist tendencies freely admitted that the Flak unit he served with shot up villages with civilians in them.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2013 18:23
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Pretty much. You should probably also keep Hindenburg on that list. The last democratically elected government fell apart over the question whether unemployment insurance should be raised 0.5%. Putting the blame on Brüning and von papen is overly simple, because like it or not, the legislative system had failed completely and everyone was pretty sick of it. When you have elected Reichstag members go "Well a population who elects a gridlocked Parliament doesn't want a democratic government anyway" you're not staying a democratic republic, period.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2013 10:34
|
|
|
Doctor Malaver posted:I was joking and being a little provocative but I think the question is interesting - would any of the experts care and dare to list a few positive traits that at least some of these men probably had? How do you become a key XX century figure without any? I don't think it will turn anyone pro-nazi. Hitler was a charismatic speaker and had a bunch of ruthless sociopaths working for him. Most of the military successes were the work of people only loosely (if at all) connected to the Nazi party. I guess the best that can be said is that, in the beginning, Hitler knew not to micromanage too much.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2013 12:05
|
|
|
I don't disagree with your points (the autobahns, famously, were originally planned and begun by the Weimar goverment), but why do you consider Rommel to be a lovely general?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2013 15:13
|
|
|
Ferrosol posted:Calling him a lovely general is unfair but I do see his point. Rommel's greatest achievements were as a divisional commander where his lead from the front mentality and disdain for staff work could be covered for allowing his tactical and operational skill to shine through. As a corps and Army commander though Rommel was a disaster Generals at that level are supposed to be coordinating the strategic picture and seeing to it that their troops are properly led.fed and trained. Rommel meanwhile rather than doing his job was more inclined to be leading a regiment from the front. Once he came up against Generals who did understand logistics and had the resources and strategic nous to exploit the Allies material superiority he never stood a chance. To quote Sun Tzu "Tactics without strategy are merely the noise before the defeat". Rommel was a tactical genius but wars and campaigns are won on strategic level and that was an arena where Rommel just couldn't compete. Fair enough. I guess he just looks good in comparison to the generals he was facing, and until Monty they weren't anything special. I still hold that Monty is only seen as a great general because he shortened the usual allied strategy of Attack->Defeat->Attack->Defeat->Attack with overwhelming support->Victory to just the last step.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2013 17:38
|
|
|
Alekanderu posted:Göring was a fighter ace in WW1, although that's before he became a Nazi leader, of course. By WWII he wouldn't have fit in a fighter cockpit, anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2013 00:26
|
|
|
Slark posted:I would like to ask about the background of how Hitler came into power. Some suggest that it is Hitler who took many crutical measures to recover the Germany economy after decade of mess during Weimar Republic. He is definitely a devil for war crime, but could he be considered as a hero for his achievements in bringing back economy and industrial power of Germany? Considering that he bascially ran the German economy on a pyramid scheme, no. He just ignored common wisdom and went all in on spending to build an army for conquest. By 1937 Germany was running dangerously low on foreign currency because all the money they spent didn't go into exports, it went into tanks and bombers. They were bailed out by annexing Austria. By 1938, the situation was the same, and they were saved by annexing the Sudetenland. In 1939, they had the same problem again, and were saved by annexing Czechoslovakia and Poland. By 1940 the problem had returned...and you get the idea. Basically, Hitler wasn't an economic genius by any stretch of imagination. The Weimar government could have done the same, but chose not to because Hitler's approach was insane.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2013 01:28
|
|
|
celestial teapot posted:Given that Hitler spoke openly about wanting to outlaw all the other political parties even before he came to power, why did any other political organization negotiate with him at all? That should have triggered them all to lock arms and do everything possible to keep him out, shouldn't it? He never said anything about outlawing all the parties, just the left. Fun fact: the social-democratic party was the only one actually banned. They never even bothered to ban the communists.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2013 00:54
|
|
|
EvanSchenck posted:This is not correct. On 14 July 1933 the German government made illegal all political parties save the NSDAP. You are right. I misremembered something about the SPD being the only party actually banned while it existed, while the other parties were either crushed out of existance (KPD) or "volutarily" disbanded (Zentrum etc.). They banned creating new parties on July 14, which has the same effect since the NSDAP was the only one still existing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2013 01:27
|
|
|
Groke posted:A pity they didn't sink even more resources into expensive projects that wouldn't have helped their war effort at all. The H-Series is the perfect example of engineers doing crazy poo poo to avoid being drafted into the infantry. "No Sir our super-massive battleships are absolutely critical, the Führer himself said so!"
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2013 14:49
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Indeed, the very weak shape of the German economy is why I find theories that, had both the Soviet Union and United States remained as neutral as they had been on 1 January 1941, the British alone probably still would have won the war, on a 1948-1950 timeline. Given the shape the British Army was in in 1945, I find that hard to believe. They had serious manpower issues by the end. And without an eastern front, the Germans have no serious drain on resources, and they have a way to circumvent any blockade.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2013 06:12
|
|
|
Wehrkraftzersetzung can probably best be translated with "Diminishing/Disrupting the fighting strength/spirit". It was a catch-all term for all activities that were not in full support of the war, such as saying that it sucks or telling someone that Germany would lose the war.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2013 07:09
|
|
|
Business Gorillas posted:
Yes. They might let you off with a warning if they think you're just being an idiot, especially if you are a foreigner, but it is illegal. Its the same if you wear a swastika...anywhere.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2013 04:18
|
|
|
To Battle posted:
Not to diminish his efforts, but the amount of bravery it takes to meet Himmler when you have diplomatic immunity isn't quite so high.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2013 06:37
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:How safe were diplomats in Nazi Germany? Can't really argue either way without knowing that. Were they safe? Besides a spat about safe passage for the American ambassadors after war was declared, I haven't read anything about the Nazis disrespecting diplomats. I mean, obviously an allied fighter bomber strafing vehicles on a road isn't gonna look and see if it might be a diplomatic convoy, and if your embassy gets bombed because it is in Berlin you are still better off in an air raid shelter, but still...
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2013 07:14
|
|
|
The Monkey Man posted:Is there any merit to the argument that the Allies would've beaten the Nazis easily if they'd made a preemptive strike in 1936 or '37? Certainly. It depends on the definition of easily, of course, but the Wehrmacht was nowhere near as capable in 1936 as it was in 1939. There are obviously secondary concerns, such as the Allies taking the offensive, popularity of the war at home and so on.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2013 01:43
|
|
|
Andy Cancer posted:Why'd Hitler invade France if he just wanted to spread east? Just Adolf being Adolf? They were kinda at war at the time.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2013 14:15
|
|
|
gyrobot posted:So what was the stance on murder of "unacceptable races" before the holocaust, say if some member of the regime or a sympathizer decided to kill a couple of unacceptables in the ghetto along the lines of an adrenaline junkie decided to take his edge off acceptable targets. Even during the Holocaust, killing a Jew in Germany itself was by German law a murder. The Nazis went through a lot of effort to strip Jews of their German Citizenship before they killed them. There was never a point where the official line was "killing a Jew is not a crime, go hogwild". There is a world of difference between the state killing someone and a private person killing someone (see also: why Police killing a bank robber isn't murder or manslaughter).
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2014 17:18
|
|
|
spider bethlehem posted:John Ringo is a crazed rape-hungry old man who hates environmentalists and queers as much as he loves good old fashioned fascism. He's the anti-Arthur C. Clarke. He is the unwinding of the great spring of human progress, where all good things about modern humanity are inverted in favor of a kind of brutalist contrarianism and military fetishism that borders on the maniacal. Black is white, up is down, only pussies give a poo poo about trees, and "I'm just asking questions!" It should be noted that Tom Kratmann somehow manages to outdo Ringo in this regard. Watch on the Rhine is what Plato thought of when he said that written language was a bad idea.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2014 02:57
|
|
|
Mr. Sunshine posted:Yup. The outside perimeter and the officers barracks were guarded by SS, but the inmates were guarded by Ukrainian "volunteers" (people recruited from POW camps and the like). Stangl himself, in his interviews with Gitta Sereny, goes on about how brutally the Ukrainians treated the Jews. When Sereny asks "But weren't you in charge of the camp? Couldn't you have stopped them?", Stangl goes "No no, I was just an administrator! That was out of my hands!". Werner von braun really put it best: "Yeah, we launched a rocket, but where it comes down isn't my department."
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2014 11:47
|
|
|
ThePriceJustWentUp posted:I'm not and will never be a Neo-Nazi and I think you are still susceptible to your own brand of foolish thinking. Insinuating the whole German Army is directly complicit in war crimes for example. What about rearward support units? Do you know how modern militaries are structured? It's funny, because this is exactly the coping mechanism German soldiers developed. "No, no, we didn't do any of the bad stuff. We were a rear area unit. The atrocities happened near the front." "No, no, we didn't do any of the bad stuff. We were a frontline unit, we didn't have the time to commit all these atrocities. Those were committed by the guys in the rear." Also, the idea that truth and objectivity exist (or should be goals to aspire to) in historical discourse is hilarious to anyone who actually works in the field.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2014 03:22
|
|
|
Ghost of Mussolini posted:Oh come on it wasn't all bad. The trains ran on time.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2014 13:50
|
|
|
Rookersh posted:Secondly, how do German kids nowadays feel about all this stuff? Growing up in Poland there was this sense of national pride in how we were the first to fight the Nazis, and how something like 3/4ths of the country kept fighting even after the occupation. In America it seems to mainly focus on D-Day, followed by the brave allied front, then victory. Both sides are the victors though. How do you get told your great grandparents knowingly helped in the extermination of thousands of people, and your grandparents were tortured, killed, and imprisoned in response to this? I can't speak for the 14-18 year olds, who probably care very little about Nazis and the Third Reich on account of being teenagers. In general, the time is seen as probably the most important 12 years in German history, to the point where German historians, at times, have to argue against writing the rest of German history as "the time before Hitler" and "The time after Hitler". But I can tell you about how you feel about the fact that your own Grandparents fought in that war. It is very strange, because the thing to remember is that the vast majority of Wehrmacht soldiers weren't psychopaths. It would be easy to accept that Uncle Karl always tortured cats when he was young and then joined the SS and headed an Einsatzgruppe in Ukraine during WWII, being eventually executed for war crimes. But how do you reconcile Opa Heinz, the guy who read bedtime stories to you, who build a model railway with you, who always left the room 20 minutes before Santa showed up on Christmas with a man who executed civilians on the Eastern Front? You don't. I always believed that my grandparents didn't know about the Holocaust. They were good people, they wouldn't have stood idly by while humans - some of them their neighbors - were murdered in gas chambers if they had known. Then one day I realized how many people it took to organize the Holocaust. This wasn't something you could run with a few hundred psychopaths. You needed people in every town's record office who compiled the lists of Jews and where they lived. You needed people who trucked them to the railway stations. You needed engineers to run the trains and people who would throw the switches to steer the trains to the camps. Then you needed people who build the camps and who organize the forced labor jobs in the factories (if they aren't killed outright). You have people who work alongside the forced laborers. All these people have families and friends who they talk to, and who have friends of their own. That day I realized that my grandparents had to have known. And they still did nothing. I'm hardly the only one who thought that, though. The clean Wehrmacht myth was so readily believed because the alternative was to acknowledge that a large part of Germans were at least complicit in war crimes. If someone told you that your son, your brother (who died), your husband (who also died) and your son-in-law all were war criminals most people would vehemently disagree. After all, only crazy manics could do such a thing, right? Your son came home and married his girlfriend and then they started having a family. He didn't do anything wrong in the war. That idea only died in the 1990ies, and it was an ugly death. There has been an ongoing debate whether VE-day was a day of defeat or a day of liberation for the Germans, with good arguments on both sides. I don't think WWII will ever be just another war for Germany, at least not unless we somehow get involved into an even worse one (and after that, there probably won't be a Germany left).
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2014 08:42
|
|
|
Rookersh posted:Thank you for posting it. I imagine that realization was hard, and posting about it probably wasn't easy either. It was mostly a "Here but for the grace of God" moment. I was 18 at the time, and my letter summoning me to the medical examination for my conscription had just arrived. I wondered what I would have done if I had been born perhaps 60 years earlier, in time to turn 18 sometime in the late 30ies. What do you do in that situation, to optimize your chances of survival without getting the blood of innocents on your hands? You'll be drafted. Not showing up means prison, and execution during the war. Your parents won't spring for emigration to the US (and besides, why would you do that? things are going so well in Germany!) If you get drafted, you'll probably end up in the infantry, and that means you either fight in the East (very probably), giving you the options of death, crippling injury or several years in a Siberian labor camp as well as the added bonus of probably becoming a war criminal in some fashion (participating in a war of aggression being ignored for the sake of the argument), or fight in the West, where you fight on the side that is increasingly outnumbered and technologically behind. But at least you'll probably be treated well if you get captured. Or maybe you volunteer? Of course, the biggest volunteer organization is the Waffen SS, so that means you'll be shuffled from hotspot to hotspot (with increased likeliness of injury or death), are even more likely to become a war criminal and have the added bonus of probably not being taken prisoner. The navy gives you the choice between a handful of surface ships, which end up being hunted down mercilessly by vastly superior forces, or the U-boats, which have something like a 70% death rate for personal. The Luftwaffe might be your best bet, provided that you somehow manage to not get shot down and killed (good luck with that). of course, if you end up ground crew, you'll end up being drafted as infantry later in the war, with the added benefit of practically no training for the role. It's a lovely situation all around, and I am glad I wasn't in it. But it also makes you wonder if you'd have the courage to resist the regime (that is a death sentence, by the way). I for my part have come to the conclusion that I probably wouldn't. Which makes it hard to be outraged at the people who didn't either.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2014 17:45
|
|
|
Alekanderu posted:Nobody's disagreeing with the assumption that a completely dismantled Germany in 1919 most likely wouldn't have been able to start WW2 in 1939. It is, however, a massive stretch to point to actual postwar Germany as the reason for why no more major wars broke out in Europe, since other factors are much more important. It should also be noted that demanding a dismantlement of Germany, or a return to the status before 1866, would probably have been the one single thing that could have made Germany be willing to continue the war.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 12:57
|
|
|
Gambrinus posted:Were there any Germans that took up arms against the Nazis? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20th_Plot
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2014 22:19
|
|
|
meat sweats posted:Nobody should ever be afraid to work towards establishing historical truth, but the uses of that truth can be very warped by context. There have been as many films made about the White Rose as there were actual members. Is this a proportionate treatment of an extremely minor and uninfluential blip of resistance, or is this an attempt to assuage German guilt about how little resistance there was by endlessly overplaying every scrap that can be found? Or maybe it is showing modern Germans what they should be doing if another totalitarian regime arises. I mean, we are talking about a country that has explicitly included the right to resist against the government in its constitution (whether or not situations exist in which someone could claim that right in court and win is debatable). What is the alternative? Movies showing every German to be a diehard Nazi, with the moral lesson of "Be ashamed!"? How does this help to fight those Germans who argue "We had no choice, everyone was doing it!"? Every national myth includes heroes, and national myths are part of what makes a nation. The actual impact of the actions in question is secondary. Passchendale was fairly inconsequential to the course of WWI, and yet Canada built its nation around it. Gallipoli was a disaster, and yet the Australians created a myth out of it. Who should the Germans consider national heroes, if not the handful of people who had the goddamn backbone to stand up to the Nazis?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2014 22:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 15:39 |
|
|
I think the confusion might come from Hitler's Third Reich being explicitly a continuation from the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2014 17:30
|
|