How can the world forgive Germany?

[Damien Evans]

Very, very few countries even pretended to have a democratic government before 1919.

How many countries even had universal male and female suffrage prior to 1920? I know Australia and New Zealand did, and Norway as well, but I can't think of any others.

 

[Damien Evans]

With this being the centennial of the start of World War One, I am sure there will be plenty of threads in the near future on who exactly was to blame for the start of World War One.

It should be noted the first shot of the war was fired by Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Nepean

 

[IXP]

Another answer which is simplicity, and is the only answer.
I'd been struck by It could never happen here-ism.
Still, hard to imagine citizens of the US allowing such a regime to stand.

"Oh, that work camp a hundred miles away they shipped so and so from across the street to? No big deal, he was just a ______ (what have you)..."

But we did! We sent citizens of Japanese descent to camps during WWII. Yes, we stopped short of killing them, but still, it is was Nazism lite.

IXP

 

[I Ratant]

If somebody learns about the holocaust and decides a race must carry the guilt of their ancestors and be forever unforgiven for sins they did not commit then clearly they have learned nothing of the holocaust.

Perhaps, if Germans are not to be "forgiven" for their apparent evils we should do something about it... concentrate those with German blood to some kind of hollding camp...

.
NEIN!

 

[I Ratant]

Another answer which is simplicity, and is the only answer.
I'd been struck by It could never happen here-ism.
Still, hard to imagine citizens of the US allowing such a regime to stand.

"Oh, that work camp a hundred miles away they shipped so and so from across the street to? No big deal, he was just a ______ (what have you)..."

.
We did that long before Germany did!
Look up "The Trail of Tears".... an entire culture moved to Oklahoma from Georgia because their "inviolate" homeland had gold! Our Supreme Court authorized that!

 

[I Ratant]

(modified from Nazi policy regarding occupied Russia) Their descendants will be serfs, servants for a thousand years.

But seriously, another simple question I have no answer for... if guys from death squads could go back to being ordinary citizens and having children after the war...
...

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The "it's only gooks or slopes" mentality when in combat overrides normal human decency.
One of my friends wrote an essay for his college class about his unit's participation in operations like My Lai.
He's a good guy.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

.
We did that long before Germany did!
Look up "The Trail of Tears".... an entire culture moved to Oklahoma from Georgia because their "inviolate" homeland had gold! Our Supreme Court authorized that!

Then oil was found and Sooners were sent to invade "the Indian territory" and turn it into Oklahoma. Frankly if anyone has a right to not forgive the opposition it would be the Native Americans. Good thing we killed off most of them and locked the rest up into the crappiest land on the continent, or we'd be where Israel is now with their displaced indigenes.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

But we did! We sent citizens of Japanese descent to camps during WWII. Yes, we stopped short of killing them, but still, it is was Nazism lite.

IXP

Not comparable. At all, really. A terrible decision, awful, but nobody was forced to work at gunpoint until they were too sick to work and then executed.

But it was terrible.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

.
We did that long before Germany did!
Look up "The Trail of Tears".... an entire culture moved to Oklahoma from Georgia because their "inviolate" homeland had gold! Our Supreme Court authorized that!

I'd like to amend my rant as such "could never happen here in the US in the 20th-21st centuries."

My reasoning is covered now!

Aside from all the terrible things my country has done, the USA hasn't ever done anything terrible.

 

[IXP]

I'd like to amend my rant as such "could never happen here in the US in the 20th-21st centuries."

My reasoning is covered now!

Aside from all the terrible things my country has done, the USA hasn't ever done anything terrible.

Listen to the rants of the "Christian" right. I am not so sure. If this mind set became more widespread, I think we could commit atrocities even here at home.

IXP

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Listen to the rants of the "Christian" right. I am not so sure. If this mind set became more widespread, I think we could commit atrocities even here at home.

IXP

We have an interesting mix of the religious who wouldn't tolerate it because God, 2A lovers who wouldn't tolerate it because human decency and if anything is a real threat to freedom it's such a thing, ordinary yokels who'd take up arms against it...

at least, I'd hope. But of course we have lots of, hate to use the expression, sheep.

It could happen here, which is of course Sinclair Lewis' thrust in his wonderful novel.
All it takes is a Windrip...

 

[I Ratant]

Then oil was found and Sooners were sent to invade "the Indian territory" and turn it into Oklahoma. Frankly if anyone has a right to not forgive the opposition it would be the Native Americans. Good thing we killed off most of them and locked the rest up into the crappiest land on the continent, or we'd be where Israel is now with their displaced indigenes.

.
The Confederates held some of their Union prisoners in a concentration camp as vile as any, in Andersonville, Georgia. The commander, a German, was the only Confederate official hanged for war crimes.

 

[I Ratant]

We have an interesting mix of the religious who wouldn't tolerate it because God, 2A lovers who wouldn't tolerate it because human decency and if anything is a real threat to freedom it's such a thing, ordinary yokels who'd take up arms against it...

at least, I'd hope. But of course we have lots of, hate to use the expression, sheep.

It could happen here, which is of course Sinclair Lewis' thrust in his wonderful novel.
All it takes is a Windrip...

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A serious effort from the religious far-right to "cleanse" the country is always a threat.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

The core question of the OP seems to be about the letting go vs holding on to the emotions of war.

In the case of the US Civil War the point was not to "defeat" the Confederacy but to reunify the nation. War crimes make reunification or lasting peace very difficult. Sherman's March still pisses people off. Ask a guy with a rebel flag on his arm, truck or bong why he has that and Sherman's March will be part of the frothing response.

When the carpetbaggers went in the goal was not punishing the South but returning the South to normal functionality within the Federal system. Same thing is true, more or less, for the US occupation of Japan. Japanese people were for the most part glad the war was over and didn't hold US nuclear-enforced victory against us, nor did we hold Pearl Harbor against the Japanese to a degree that prevented normal relations between nations and economies. Japan to this day doesn't have a military in the sense most nations do -- it's embedded in their psyche and government not to be an aggressive nation again ever.

In the case of Germany, it seems the people there were pretty sick of the war by the end too. Somehow, they found it in their hearts to forgive us for firebombing Dresden.

 

[BStrong]

Because the human race is generally preoccupied with their immediate personal problems, and holding grudges, even grudges justified by genocide, is seen as bad form.

I know a Jew that will not own anything made by a German, will refuse to even ride in a German car - he has a good reason to feel the way he does and some people when informed of his particular story state that they don't understand this, and some have said out loud that "he should leave the past in the past."

I know many old timers that would have nothing to do with any product made by the Japanese, and I'll never forget watching the kid with the first Honda motorcycle seen in town get an earful from an old timer about owning anything made by "the Japs."

Most of those guys are long gone now, some eventually changed their minds but others didn't, but the number of individuals with first-hand experience in WWII drops every day.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Most of those guys are long gone now, some eventually changed their minds but others didn't, but the number of individuals with first-hand experience in WWII drops every day.

That's what I was alluding to in the post upthread where I was accused of a non sequitur fallacy -- the people who can't let it go are dying off and the new generations have new experiences.

Personlly, I'll never forgive "Germany" for putting tupperware on an Audi and calling it a "new" Beetle.

 

[carlitos]

I work for a German company. Whenever we want to do anything like a "support our troops" sort of thing here in the states, it gets kaboshed due to their knee-jerk fear of militarism. I'd say that the current generation of Germans is as resoundingly anti-military and anti-war as any place on earth.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

I work for a German company. Whenever we want to do anything like a "support our troops" sort of thing here in the states, it gets kaboshed due to their knee-jerk fear of militarism. I'd say that the current generation of Germans is as resoundingly anti-military and anti-war as any place on earth.

Well, yeah, it's like Gandhi told Hitler -- "Be the problem you want solved in the world." Hitler did a pretty good job making war in Europe unattractive.

 

[Navigator]

In another thread I'd mentioned watching the series The World at War.

It's appalling what the Nazis did, in every country they occupied. It's horrible that so many German citizens ignored it, or were happy to benefit from it.

I understand that an entire generation had been conditioned by Nazi propaganda to think Jewish people inferior, and the German people naturally better.

But the systematic atrocities. The infrastructure and bureaucracy built to carry out those atrocities.

Combined with the war just two decades gone by... how can the world ever forgive the German people??

If we take that path of reason then we will eventually have to conclude that we can never forgive ourselves as a species.
Take that path an the end thereof is most likely destruction.

How can we forgive the children and grand children of mass murderers?

Perhaps we can start by publishing our own baby photos just to show how innocent we all started out as.

So, we're blaming the current generation for what, exactly?

For being German.

Wouldn't it be racist not to? The German people are no better or worse than any other people. They got led by the nose into all of this by charismatic leader(s), like you or I might have been. Let's not also forget the intimidation and bullying aspect of public opinion. Lesson learned (for the most part). Move on and try to do better.

It is a study in human psychology/sociology, and should be studied as such.

Agreed.

I cannot say if I would have been a hero hiding the enemies of fascism at the risk of being terminated as the alternative to towing the party line.
Most of the time people are generally afraid and the mob is easily enticed, as the infamous protocols mention more than once.
These documents, albeit declared forgeries (which thus are distorted copies of something original) are worth studying for the same reason - to understand completely the human condition in all its myriad variety.
Not to forget that Hitler also puts those documents to use.

Atrocities, grave injustices and public turning a blind eye are still alive globally, Monketey. Only the scale is different.

True enough but there is also a strong move toward understanding and moving on in mutual respect and purpose.

And the feeling of national humiliation due to the treaty ending WW1- that was a big reason the Nazi party got popular, the promise of a strong Germany.

What puzzles me about the story is that Germany wasn't exactly overflowing with money yet they manage to create a state of the art army with some of the bests scientific minds engineering devices of mass destruction and feed and uniform every citizen. One has to be a war machine before one can go out and profit from the spoils.

I find that assigning the "sins of the father to the sons" to be more than utterly abhorrent.

Agreed.

However, science itself verifies the logic of this thinking. DNA genes etc, not to mention the simple act of self identification with 'the familiar'.

But really? Poking the finger at German offspring and saying 'unforgivable' is more a personal thing to which the individual is projecting. It is sometimes extremely hard to think good of oneself as a human being knowing the atrocities human beings unleash upon one another.

What should the Germans do? Renounce their German-ness and become Jews?

While we are at it, lets look at the Jews and proclaim that they are unforgivable for making the idea of god so obviously evil. We non German non Jews demand they should never be allowed to utter anything to do with 'god' or even make gestures which show they are thinking about god, and anything they have uttered regarding god should be wiped from the records of the world.

Yeah right, like that will ever happen.

Isn't there some famous book that suggests we punish the sins of the fathers upon the children, and grandchildren, to the seventh generation? I don't believe that book.

Yes we all know the one. The Jews formulated it and the Christians brought it to the attention of the rest of the world.
The Jews fabricated it from god idea data they lifted from other cultures the encountered in their wanderings. They apparently didn't settle long enough in any one area to call it 'home' preferring the gypsy life until the got too big to move effectively and apparently stole other peoples lands after lusting to own what they didn't have but someone else did.
Genocide has been around as long as tribes encountering other tribes have.

And their children, and their children's children.

I wonder how many of you Americans feel bad about Wounded Knee?

Who needs reincarnation when we can learn all about this in one lifetime!

It is about time people stopped identifying with their familiars and took a wider look at the world.

There's plenty of evidence that many ordinary Germans knew; many benefited directly from the disenfranchisement.
The official anti-semitism push started early, and progressed. Neighbors dehumanized by the State and sent away-
And the towns near the labor camps could smell the death.

There's an interview with a soldier who showed a disbelieving German woman piles of bodies in one of the camps. The woman looked at the photo and remarked, "But it's only the Jews."

Have the Jews never done this to other races? What does their own 'holy book' say about that?

Do not forget that science had a lot to do with the scale of the situation. It is the scale to which the act seems 'more atrocious' than anything every done by human beings (tribe against tribe, neighbor against neighbor.)
Technology made it possible for that to be carried out on the scale it was.
Jews themselves often appear to be expressing themselves as 'something other than' specifically human, and are even preferentially treated as in racism against them has a special significance and word to describe that special position.

Eventually they will have to stop milking the sympathy card and preying on the good nature of humans who feel guilty - not even for being German, but for being human. They have been granted a 'homeland', so why don't they join the human race?

When will the world wake up and remember the mistakes WE'VE made, and use that knowledge to change the future to one where "blame is not the name of the game", but rather action, based on the unquestionable worth of each individual human being.

I don't think long fosterered resentment is healthy for anyone.

On a global scale, it can be the death of us. I don;t care that Jesus said it. We all have things which we need to forgive in order to move on a grow up.

Isn't anti-semitism prejudice, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage.

What if we applied prejudice, hatred of, or discrimination against Germans for reasons connected to their German heritage?

It would be called 'racism'. That is a bit 'different' to 'anti-semitism' because Jews are 'different'.

Easy answer: time. We'll, time... and the general knowledge that being German doesn't necessarily make you responsible for German atrocities.

Nor does being Jewish make you responsible for Jewish atrocities nor does being human make you responsible for human atrocities.

As a Jew, I have no problem with the German people of today.

But there's a greater problem with being angry at Germans. If we think of WWI and II (and the Holocaust) as specifically German failings, we may ignore those same totalitarian behaviors in our own countries. The Holocaust remains horrific today because it teaches us that regular humans carry around the capacity for evil. If Germans were to blame, we could extinguish Germans and solve the problem. If anyone could do the same thing at any time, we must be constantly vigilant in our thoughts and actions.

Or else, how are we better than they were? They blamed all their problems on a small, identifiable, easily murdered group of people. It would be the ultimate irony if we condemned the small, identifiable group identified as Germans.

You are saying is that you being a 'Jew' is not here nor there, other than you are seeing the human side of things and 'as a Jew' (in relation to Germans) can comment as you have, adding weight to the better argument that race is not here nor there but attitude is. Capacity for evil is as human as capacity for good, and culture/familiarity/ does not have to be the thing to decide which attitude to adopt.

(it often is, but doesn't have to be)

 

[dudalb]

If I can then recommend a book, which I am 90% completed. CATASTROPHE 1914: Europe Goes to War, by Max Hastings. Heavy reading (560 pages) covering the August-December 1914 start of WWI. Hastings makes the case that Germany bears the brunt of the causation of the War, but does not let the rest of Europe off easy. The incompetence of the Military leaders on all sides, the brutality towards the peasants caught in the way, the complete lack of understanding of what kind of war this was--one between societies that had undergone the Industrial Revolution (the last mainland European war had been the brief Franco-Prussian War of 1870--and general conflict between multiple Great Powers hadn't occurred since Napoleon).

Fascinating read, even if you disagree with some of his conclusions. Should be available now in most bookstores.

If you want to cover some of the same territory, but not quite as deeply, Barbara Tuchmans' "The Guns of August (or August 1918) still, 50 years after it's publish date, is still a very readable book.

Hastings has written a good book,but if you want a detailed discussion of the background that led to World War One you need to read furthers. I recommend "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark as a good detailed history of what caused the start of World War One.