My last comment on Glasses assertions in this forum at least, since it is off topic. However...
See the whole post or what I was trying to get across apparently Charon you have your mind made up that German=Evil in WW2 all of them and they indeed have to die. I won't make the whole discussion again we had a while back.
I don’t know, 39 million European war dead, mostly civilian and mostly non-Axis, directly related to a German war of territorial aggression might have something to do with that. You do remember that there was a happy time of aggressive German military conquest before the “dark days” of 1944?
I, frankly, don’t think the German people of 1933-1945 are particularly more or less evil than, say, Americans who actively or passively allowed slavery to exist during the first 100 years of my great democracy. However, I believe that acknowledging events like Slavery (or the fact that founding fathers like Washington and Jefferson owned slaves), World War 2 (not only the genocide aspect but the war of conquest aspects), European colonialism, etc. provide an opportunity for humanity to move beyond its mistakes of the past. Modern Germany has done a tremendous in this regard, IMO. America could perhaps do a better job in some areas. The truth may be unpleasant at times, but to ignore it, whitewash it, or otherwise “revise and reshape” it to suit some modern fantasy is a disservice to both the past and the future. The only reason I have spent so much time studying the social aspects of Nazi Germany is to see how such an impossible thing could happen in a country of otherwise normal people.
As the Scottish philosopher David Hume once noted: “Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission with which men resigned their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.”
Anyhow after 15 odd years of poverty,unnemployment and despair some Germans were just happy that they finally had a job and a renewed sense of pride after the allies imposed the sanctions in WW1.
After the First World War Germany suffered from inflation. In January, 1921, there were 64 marks to the dollar. By November, 1923 this had changed to 4,200,000,000,000 marks to the dollar.
Some politicians in the United States and Britain began to realize that the terms of the Versailles Treaty had been too harsh and in April 1924 Charles Dawes presented a report on German economic problems to the Allied Reparations Committee. The report proposed a plan for regulating annual payments of reparations and the reorganizing the German State Bank so as to stabilize the currency. Promises were also made to provide Germany with foreign loans.
These policies were successful and by the end of 1924 inflation had been brought under control and the economy began to improve. By 1928 unemployment had fallen to 8.4 per cent of the workforce. The German people gradually gained a new faith in their democratic system and began to find the extremist solutions proposed by people such as Adolf Hitler unattractive.
The fortunes of the National Socialist German Workers Party changed with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. Before the crash, 1.25 million people were unemployed in Germany. By the end of 1930 the figure had reached nearly 4 million, 15.3 per cent of the population. Even those in work suffered as many were only working part-time. With the drop in demand for labour, wages also fell and those with full-time work had to survive on lower incomes. Hitler, who was considered a fool in 1928 when he predicted economic disaster, was now seen in a different light. People began to say that if he was clever enough to predict the depression maybe he also knew how to solve it. Useful link:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERunemployment.htmHow about a US comparison? At the worst point of the Great Depression, in 1933, one in four Americans who wanted to work was unable to find a job. Further, it was not until 1941, when World War II was underway, that the official unemployment rate finally fell below 10%. This massive wave of unemployment hit before a food stamp program and unemployment insurance existed. Where was our Hitler?
For some reason apparently you only see that they all were fanatical uber aryan believing the Nazi rethoric was true. You don't see that was their country that's all, they knew their nation called them up to go to war just as the Americans did oh! and if you refused you would be imprisoned, if you committed mutiny you would be shot. What's that? the Americans also had that policy wow! I bet you forgot that little detail.
Their country didn’t just “call them to war” as the allies did in the face of Nazi aggression, it called them to war in order to slash out some living space in the East as part of a greater Aryan destiny. I believe there is a clear distinction. Some Germans objected, some risked their lives to help Jews and other outsiders, but a great many just went with the program, with seemingly few moral quandaries until the bombs started falling on their cities.
Hitler was leagally elected in 1932/33, his rule was confirmed by referendum in 1936 (99% of the population voted, and 98% of those supported Hitler). There is no indication that fear played a major motivator in their support until perhaps 1944-45. If you were a former radical, then yes, you lived in fear. If you were a common person, then you just had to watch your mouth most of the time (but there was still leeway). Hitler made sure the economy stayed focused on consumer goods through the early years of the way to keep the citizens happy, not afraid. The size of the SA and Gestapo prevented a fear campaign without the full participation of the mainstream population. Records back up the fact that police officer #1 was likely your next door neighbor. Hitler realized that if the German people ever decided to overthrow him, they could. Even so, there are plenty of examples of Germans who said “NO”, and lived to tell about it. Look up the mass Rosenstrasse protest held in Berlin in 1943.
I'm not portraying the German military as Saints I'm really not but, I'm not potraying them as evil as they were not, some of the allies did with their military far worse things the Germans did and vice- versa of course with narrow mind set of evil, evil, evil, evil they should be destroyed, murdered and their children raped (like the Russians did ) you will never understand.
Please provide examples of the “far worse things” that a contemporary Ukrainian or Russian civilian might find sympathetic.
You see and read so many instances of clemency in war by the German military,treating the enemy when they were wounded or rescuing or sending SOS signals to enemy boats so they rescued thier fellow crewmen when a U-Boat struck. I'm not apologizing or making excuses for the Genocide committed by the SS in Europe and the injustice made in the East by them at any one time that! is not excusable. But I'm sorry If I don't agree wholeheartedly with you because that simply is not the truth.
Why were they in position to offer such mercies? Because they were waging an aggressive war to conquer large portions of Europe?
Also, Some disagree with the notion that there was a total distinction between the SS and the regular German military -- The Hamburg Institute for Social Research for example. Here is the outline of an exhibit they offer on the subject:
In 1945 at the end of World War II, shortly after the German Army's unconditional surrender, the Nuremberg trials clearly established that officers and members of the Army (the Wehrmacht) participated directly in the racial and genocidal terror that had characterized the Nazi project for a new world order. In spite of this, the defeated Germans began to construct a myth that became a central tenet of postwar West German society. That myth promoted the idea that the regular army had fought a "normal" war and was innocent of the genocide and mass murders carried out by the SS and the Gestapo.
Popular magazines, dime novels, and films presented the soldiers as "regular guys" – honorable and decent men doing their duty. Officers were portrayed as having been victimized by the orders of a mad dictator. Heroic images of men flying Stuka dive bombers and manning tank turrets and machine guns to hold back the invading barbarians from the East, helped to embed this image. These stories continued to distance the German Army from Hitler, the Nazi regime, and from the atrocities they perpetrated against Jews, other civilians, and prisoners of war.
The Hamburg Institute for Social Research, established in 1984 as an independent private foundation, created this extraordinary exhibition. It powerfully challenges the myth of the German Army's innocence, which has served as a core narrative of postwar German history. Graphic photographic evidence documents the Army's participation in atrocities in Eastern Europe. Harrowing photographs taken by German soldiers depict massacres, hangings, and torture. Official documents direct military units to exterminate Jewish communities. Private letters from soldiers to their families include eyewitness - and often boastful - accounts of war crimes. Military directives prove close collaboration between the SS and the regular army throughout the war…
Cont.