How can the world forgive Germany?

My impression is that time has been a big factor for these things.

I'm not big on GIF memes, but I saw a relevant one the other day with two panels: a photo of WTC burning (S11: murder of 4,000 Americans) labelled "never forget" positioned beside a photo of a black slave's whipping scars (US slavery: Americans commit murder, forced labour, torture of more than five million people) labelled "meh. get over it." 135 years apart - roughly five generations.

Eventually, Germany will be like Italy in a way: as a British descendant, I don't expect reparations from my Italian colleagues because their ancestors annexed Britain, slaughtered any belligerent locals and their queens, proactively culled large tribes as a matter of principle, took slaves... c'mon that was 1800 years ago.
 
I Ratant said:
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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!
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Check your history, I Ratant.

The Trail of Tears was real. Your purported details are not accurate.
 
Because Beethoven.

(I actually tried to think of something more recent, but drew a blank. What are the good things that originated in Germany?)

ETA: Rammstein?
 
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Puppycow said:
Because Beethoven.

(I actually tried to think of something more recent, but drew a blank. What are the good things that originated in Germany?)

ETA: Rammstein?
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Kraftwerk.

I would rather say Can, but they were always so underground I doubt many will recognise the name.

I lived in Germany for about 5 years from early 80s to late. I met so many lovely people, and found out that the language can sound as sweet and loving as any other. Also, at a time when British culture was becoming ever less radical, there were lots of actively anti-establishment Germans still pushing on.

And as others have said, they are honest in confronting their nation's crimes, and deeply ashamed of their parents' and grandparents' complicity.

What's currently unforgivable is the way the Israeli state is treating the Palestinians. It must be so frustrating for those Jews in Israel who oppose the actions of their government to have the ranks of the supporters of violence and oppression continually swelled by the immigration of fanatics who believe in the manifest destiny of being the chosen occupiers of that land, and who avow that they will exterminate the Palestinians, as they are stealing more and more of their land every day and committing horrible actions against them.

It's the definition of ironic, in the light of their history in Germany.

I say this because my wife has recently returned from three weeks in Palestine and has witnessed the terrible conditions and actions of violent repression imposed on the Palestinians by the illegally occupying military and illegal settlers that the Israeli state condones.
 
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.
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No puzzle if your plan is to steal and rob from the rest of Europe to pay for it all.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
No puzzle if your plan is to steal and rob from the rest of Europe to pay for it all.
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Basically: the Wermacht was a speculative investment for future looting. Paid for by allocating resources out of the free market and blaming the Allies for any shortages (See Heartfield's "[Hurrah die Butter ist Alle]" - a political cartoon from the Third Reich period, playing on the "guns and butter" economics 101 hypothetical tradeoff)

Secondly, they had a lot of citizens to loot. I have a feeling that a great deal of the mistrust of German peerage toward the Nazis was that they knew the Nazis viewed them as walking bank accounts.

It's also a testament to the idea that switching to a partly planned command economy can reverse an economic slowdown.
 
asydhouse said:
What's currently unforgivable is the way the Israeli state is treating the Palestinians. It must be so frustrating for those Jews in Israel who oppose the actions of their government to have the ranks of the supporters of violence and oppression continually swelled by the immigration of fanatics who believe in the manifest destiny of being the chosen occupiers of that land, and who avow that they will exterminate the Palestinians, as they are stealing more and more of their land every day and committing horrible actions against them.

It's the definition of ironic, in the light of their history in Germany.

I say this because my wife has recently returned from three weeks in Palestine and has witnessed the terrible conditions and actions of violent repression imposed on the Palestinians by the illegally occupying military and illegal settlers that the Israeli state condones.
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This is pertinent and is another good reason to cease responding to the perpetual Jewish victim mentality as if somehow the terrible things done to them then are vitally distinguishable from the things humans have done to each other as a manifestation of dominance and control over the weaker positioned races.

The irony that Jews can be as Nazi as any other race given the opportunity. Historically the irony was that Germany did unto the Jews what the Jews had done unto others in their own history.

The strange thing is how the world treats them as somehow different and special which I think spills over from the biblical explanation for Jews being gods chosen people in the first instance but they have worked closely with fascist-like cultures for ages - and have in their own culture fascist-like examples of thinking which translate in today's world particularly in relation to their treatment of Palestinians.

To even point out those hypocrisies/ironies could be labelled as being 'anti-Semitic' which is as likely as any reason why nations are loath to do so. Again, this reflects upon the extent of the crime Germany committed against Jews using state of the art science to engineer and perform the atrocities, and the guilt and shame association added to the incessant reminders from the Jews themselves as to how cruelly evil the world has been to the Jew.
 
blutoski said:
Basically: the Wermacht was a speculative investment for future looting. Paid for by allocating resources out of the free market and blaming the Allies for any shortages (See Heartfield's "[Hurrah die Butter ist Alle]" - a political cartoon from the Third Reich period, playing on the "guns and butter" economics 101 hypothetical tradeoff)

Secondly, they had a lot of citizens to loot. I have a feeling that a great deal of the mistrust of German peerage toward the Nazis was that they knew the Nazis viewed them as walking bank accounts.

It's also a testament to the idea that switching to a partly planned command economy can reverse an economic slowdown.
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So how easily done it is to create money out of the prospect of war but to hell with thoughts of Utopia.
 
If we are going to criticise the German people for the excesses of the Nazis why not include:

  • Americans for the slave trade, genocide of the Native Americans, and fast food restaurants.
  • Brits for their actions in just about all parts of the world (Indian mutinies, provoking the existence of the US, the Opium Wars, and the stiff upper lip).
  • France - for just about anything, they're French so what the hell...
  • Italians for being macho and giving us a god-awful grammatical system.
  • Spanish (again for being macho), for their actions in South and Central America, and for provoking the Brits to be such pains in the arses.
  • Greeks for spawning the most awkward language in the world and then giving it to the Russians to mangle it even further.
I could go on for a long time... :D
 
Another thing Monketey Ghost mentioned was how so many participants in the Nazi push got away with it and went on to live out their lives in relative ease.

The Nazi German scientists which Russia and America divided among themselves as spoils of war were requisitioned into those countries agendas...was that a good move? Is the world a better place because of that?
 
John Jones said:
Check your history, I Ratant.

The Trail of Tears was real. Your purported details are not accurate.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears#Legal_background
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"The statutory argument for Native American sovereignty persisted until the Supreme Court ruled in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), that (e.g.) the Cherokees were not a sovereign and independent nation, and therefore not entitled to a hearing before the court. However, in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the court re-established limited internal sovereignty under the sole jurisdiction of the Federal government, in a ruling that both opposed the subsequent forced relocation and set the basis for modern U.S. case law.

While the latter ruling was famously defied by Jackson,[9] the actions of the Jackson administration were not isolated because state and federal officials had violated treaties without consequence, often attributed to military exigency, as the members of individual Native American nations were not automatically United States citizens and were rarely given standing in any U.S. court.

Compounding this was the fact that while citizenship tests existed for Native Americans living in newly annexed areas before and after forced relocation, individual U.S. states did not recognize tribal land claims, only individual title under State law, and distinguished between the rights of white and non-white citizens, who often had limited standing in court; and Indian removal was carried out under U.S. military jurisdiction, often by state militias. As a result, individual Native Americans who could prove U.S. citizenship were nevertheless displaced from newly annexed areas.[8] The military actions and subsequent treaties enacted by the Jackson and Van Buren administrations pursuant to the 1830 law are widely considered to have directly caused the expulsion or death of a substantial part of the Native Americans then living in the southeastern United States."
 
Alvy Singer: "You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, 'Did you eat yet or what?' And Tom Christie said, 'No, JEW?' Not 'Did you?'...JEW eat? JEW? You get it? JEW eat?"

But seriously, the world has been cruelly evil to the Jew. Many are humorous about it, and many are stoic.
 
Navigator said:
Another thing Monketey Ghost mentioned was how so many participants in the Nazi push got away with it and went on to live out their lives in relative ease.

The Nazi German scientists which Russia and America divided among themselves as spoils of war were requisitioned into those countries agendas...was that a good move? Is the world a better place because of that?
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I worked with a "captured German scientist" at Lockheed.
After the Sylmar earthquake, he said "A tausand B-17s make more noise." :)
There was another engineer, who'd been drafted from the Fieschler Aircraft factory for the push at the Battle of the Bulge. He said he got to the front lines, dropped his rifle, raised his hands and walked west.... stopping in California after his release. His son worked there also.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
...But seriously, the world has been cruelly evil to the Jew...
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This makes little sense.

It places the 'Jew' in some position which is seen to be different from 'the world' and why has 'the world' been 'cruelly evil to the Jew'? What is it about 'the Jew' which to 'the world' requires such treatment?
 
Navigator said:
This makes little sense.

It places the 'Jew' in some position which is seen to be different from 'the world' and why has 'the world' been 'cruelly evil to the Jew'? What is it about 'the Jew' which to 'the world' requires such treatment?
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Jesus!
They killed Christ!
 
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