Yo, Hortlund! Believe it or not, I didn't forget about you.
Originally posted by Hortlund
Make up your mind. Would it matter to you or not if the Germans honestly thought that they were fighting a just war, or a defensive war?
Heh heh. You lawyer, you. OF COURSE they thought they were fighting a just war. That doesn't mean it WAS a just war. If I think the people I'm shooting are witches, doesn't mean they ARE witches (was actually involved in such a case, long ago). Give you an example pertinent to the Germans, I will. All this Nazi business got me to dust off some old books, including a couple by Nazi pilots. And so we have Willi Heilmann (in his book, "I Fought You From the Skies," Award Books 1951, 1966, p. 122), ultimately a honcho in JG54 (altho' Caldwell thinks he's a liar about many things) declaiming at Christmas, 1944: "The times of real soldiering, of manliness, honour and duty have gone for ever. Look, we soldiers have wagered our lives and our blood to wrest a place in the sun once more for Germany, something the other world powers wanted to prevent. To help the Fatherland acquire fame and wealth; to make it large and strong so that it could become a flourishing well-run country guaranteeing our families a decent future." And we have Heinz Knoke, a pilot who circulated through a number of fighter formations, in his book "I Flew for the Fuehrer," Paperback Library, Inc., 1953, 1967, p. 12, saying: "The Hitler Youth was like every other Nazi organization. It eventually became intolerable, because of failure to apply correctly in practice the fundamental principles of National Socialism. It must be remembered, however, that the fundamental principles and ideals appealed very strongly to young epople. We supported those ideals with unqualified enthusiasm, and we were able to take a real pride in the powerful resurgence of our beloved country during the years when we were young."
Well, frankly, Hortlund, the youth of America, or England, or even Sweden, were not thinking quite that way at that time.
Let me ask you exactly what you are questioning in what I said.
1) That the official German version was that Polish troops had attacked a German radio station. And in the weeks prior to that attack numerous reports on how the German minority in Poland was mistreated had been broadcasted. Heck, the Germans even presented 10 or so dead poles wearing full Polish uniforms. (The Poles were concentration camp inmates)
2) That France and England declared war on Germany, not the other way around.
3) That the German invasions of Norway and Denmark were counteractions to the British and French plans to invade Norway and Sweden.
What do you oppose in 1-3 above? What is not true? And you really surprise me when you say that Im the first person who ever suggested this scenario to you. I thought that points 1-3 above was common knowledge.
What I "oppose" is your notion that many/most of the Germans actually believed that they had been assaulted by the rest of the world and were merely acting defensively. This was the propaganda, true enough, but I've never seen anything to make me think that even the Germans believed it. Indeed, just the two isolated sources cited above are to the contrary.
Well, Im gonna stick my neck out here, and say that I cant think of any nation (in modern times) that got stuck with such a toejamty peace deal as Germany at Versailles.
You just aren't trying. The Russians at Brest Litovsk certainly got a much worse deal from those sensitive Germans who were so concerned about whether the Russians would feel bad.
And allow me do demonstrate my ignorance here, who was/is A.J.P. Taylor, and what does he have to say with what I wrote?
Taylor was a well-known British historian who fell for the "fame through shock" siren, and published a book called "The Origins of the Second World War." It is engagingly written, and it posits that Germany was forced - forced, mind you - to start World War II. Newspaper editors loved it, but historians have uniformly trashed it, simply because Taylor prints his opinions and speculations as if they were fact. Read it some day (AFTER you read Goldhagen's book), and you'll see what I mean.
The reason Germany went over the edge in the late 20:s/early 30:s WAS the fault of the Versailles treaty. If you remove all possible economic growth from a nation while you humiliate them at the same time you will get stuck with some counterreaction.
An alternative view is: the reason Germany went over the edge was because it was filled with steaming radical nationalists who had no tradition of democracy, a thousand years of tradition of autocracy, and who were willing to kill just about anyone who was not like them in order to make themselves feel important again like they had been important before.
Im not saying that this is the US fault.
Thank you.
Im simply pointing out that in such a situation the two extreme absolutes (communism and extreme nationalism) will grow. Germany or (the Germans) in the early 30:s longed for 3 things. Stability, pride and decent living standards.....
We'll go into more depth on the rise of Hitler some other day. This thread is already sort of unmanageable.
All this is something classical. Take a person with a low self esteem. Tell him he is worth something, give him someone to blame his misfortunes on, show him trust. Or take a group of people and present them with a perceived threat. The person will be fiercely loyal to you, the group of people will tend to put their differences aside and work as a team.
And in Germany - alone, among all other Western countries - those grateful people became Nazis.
Im also trying to point out that hindsight is 20/20, and when you judge the German population, you judge them on facts and events that they at the time had no knowledge about. If you cant understand why that is wrong, then I really dont know what to say.
Enough of the hindsight-is-perfect wail. Plenty of people at the time were pointing out that the Germans were following an evil path.
- Oldman
