WWII Memorial Firm has "Nazi ties"

[NHFoxtro]

Lawmakers called for a probe yesturday on the parent company of the firm contracted to build the new WWII memorial. The american based company is owned by a german company that was involoved with using concentration camp labor during the war.
The german company Phillip Holzman, owns Tompkins builders, which last week won the bid on the new memorial, a $56 million dollar contract.
Holzman contributed to a $4.5 billion fund to pay labor camp survivors.
The project recently got a green light from Congress,but was slammed by critics because it resembles architecture favored by the Nazis.
The American Battle Monuments Commission is defending the deal as "the nature of buisiness"
I don't see this monument going up any time soon without protest.  

[mrfish]

no, there is an entire industry centered around reaping profit around germany's involvement in wwii. it is a real money maker for certain groups and isn't likely to go away as long as any slight profit can milked. just ask ibm who is being sued for making early primitive computers for germany in the 30's.

i mean really... the war was only 60 years ago. why dont we still obsess on the war of 1812 or hassle england for 'making' us revolt? when does the blame thing expire? as far as dictators and cruel regimes go, before 1870 it was the french! lets go back in time and blame them and take down all that napoleanic "hate art" in the louvre. and all those byzantine icons - burn em!!!!!i hear some companies are invloved with the catholic church - maybe we should boycott them for their actions in the inquisition and persecution of galileo!

btw - i hear the u.s. govt was involved in the ruthless ethnic cleansing of untold millions of native americans in the 1800s,rounding them up into camps, sending out slaughter parties for them, killing them for sport and collecting body parts as trophies, raping their women and taking their land and possessions without provocation.

they called them inferior savages believing themselves biologically more evolved and superior and did terrible things to them. what ever happened to that brutal regime? oh yeah they are the good guys our govt. see anything can sound dastardly, just add rhetoric - and any amount of ruthlessness is ok as long as its your guys.

why arent we up in arms about all that ethnic cleansing of the native americans? wheres the witch-hunt?

i guess the native americans didnt have a very good media department and networking skills or they could have publicised their plight more and maybe sold a few books. perhaps we should start  a reparations campaign and guilt movement there? we could certainly finance a lot of lecture tours. or i know,maybe we could just get over it?.........

[Fatty]

You'll notice the protesters are still driving their BMWs, VWs, and mercedes.  (Heck might as well throw in Chrysler too now that they're german owned)

[Maverick]

Think of the irony here guys. A company that has had (60 yrears ago) ties to the nazis is now building a monument to the Americans! If you look at it from a certain perspective they are getting their noses rubbed in it.  

Mav

[Animal]

Ok I'm tired of this toejam.
Fatty, you are gonna be getting a call from my lawers.

200 years ago your ancestors made MY ancestors their squeakes, and its only fitting I will make YOU my squeak now.

[Nash]

Even though I think it's merely coincidental (but hey, who knows), the planned monument DOES look like it was drafted up by Albert Speer himself (who incidentaly also used concentration camp labour for his projects).

Yeah, it's high time for a monument, but it still amazes me how a design like this could get the green light.

[AKDejaVu]

Kinda hard to find a non-British European company that's over 60 years old that didn't have ties to the Nazis.

Kinda seems to be a big deal over something minor.

BTW.. I find it somewhat funny to learn that a German company is building a memorial to their defeat.  Its akin to having Brits build fireworks for our 4th of July celebrations

AKDejaVu

[Montezuma]

Originally posted by mrfish:
when does the blame thing expire.....

When the survivors are dead.  

Until then, companies who used slave labor should cough up compensation to their victims when it is proven.

[NHFoxtro]

Originally posted by Maverick:
Think of the irony here guys. A company that has had (60 yrears ago) ties to the nazis is now building a monument to the Americans! If you look at it from a certain perspective they are getting their noses rubbed in it.  

Mav

You can rub my nose in anything for $56 million.

[Toad]

Fish, you have a few facts wrong.

I quote from a previous flamefest   :
 http://www.hitechcreations.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=4&t=001525

"By 1650, records suggest that only 6 million Indians remained in all of North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Subtract 6 million from even a conservative estimate of the 1492 population--like Denevan's consensus count of 54 million--and one dreadful conclusion is inescapable: The 150 years after Columbus's arrival brought a toll on human life in this hemisphere comparable to all of the world's losses in World War II."

"By 1700 the white population far outnumbered that of the North American Indian."

"You've discussed the ending. After the US became a nation, the remnants of the "natives" were pushed further and further West over the next 100 years and their lands taken. Finally, they were left with the unwanted grounds and their numbers greatly diminished. Primarily by disease, not by combat. There have probably been far more "Indians" killed on Hollywood film than were ever killed by settler or Army bullets. Certainly not the proudest moment in a young nations history in any case."

The "millions" were lost long before the US became a nation. After 1776, hundreds and perhaps even more than a thousand were killed in combat with US troops and settlers.

Take a look at the Little Big Horn. Perhaps the largest "pitched battle" fought between the Army and the Native Americans.

"While Custer's immediate command of 210 men was wiped out and more than 250 troopers and scouts were killed in the fighting on June 25-26,the Indians lost only about 40 or 50 men. "  http://www.thehistorynet.com/WildWest/articles/1998/0698_text.htm

Thousands were undoubtedly lost to disease, however.

But I think you're overstating the losses by a large margin in the period after 1776.

[ 06-13-2001: Message edited by: Toad ]

[NHFoxtro]

Thanks for clearing that up Toad, I was wondering about that myself. Got me thinking about Geronimo and all he killed, but was'nt murdered himself. He was moved to a resivation in Florida I believe,after his surrender.

[Pongo]

I really wish people wouldnt post stupid "Hitler was no worse then this, Hitler was no worse then that" posts.
It is so transparent.
People spout off as if the French in the 19th century did any thing like what the Germans did in the 30 and 40s.
Like the Americans have ever done anything like what the Germans did in the 30s and 40s.
Like the 2-4000 people killed in the spanish inquistion in 200 years is comparable to the Nazis?
Its such revisionist crap. The holocaust wasnt so bad right..It was just made to seem special by the Jewish media so they could make mony from it.

The disease genocide of the north american natives is as horrible a historical event as I can imagine. But there was no Adolf Hitler involved to mastermind it. And maybe no way to prevent it other then leaving the western Hemisphere to the earlier immagrents.
The Slave campaign against africa is as horrible and evil an act as has been perpetrated anyewhere. The preservation of that system in the US as long as it continued is of course chilling. But the US corrected that situation themselves. I dont believe that restitution was ever offered but I dont know what form that would take. The slave states where practicaly destroyed economically by the civil war and short of turning the land over to the blacks I dont know what could have been done.

Should current day Germans have thier noses ground into the dirt and live with some kind of guilt about the war they where probabley not alive for? No more than I feel guilt when I see a picture of an abandonded Nootka village. But I do feel a little guilt about that.
People should be kept aware of what happend. And they should be made aware of the other horrible things that man has done to man.

And if the US WW2 memorial looks like it was designed by Albert Speer that is wrong too.
My opinion.

[mrfish]

good excuses - your versions of history are a lot more comfortable than the actual one.

[Toad]

Are you talking to me? Are YOU talkin' ta ME?  

Here's one of my sources:
 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/970818/18indi.htm

What supports your claims of "i hear the u.s. govt was involved in the ruthless ethnic cleansing of untold millions of native americans in the 1800s"?

[mrfish]

come on toad   -

manifest destiny. the trail of tears. the miriam act....was that a serious question? i read your article but it seemed to be more of a debate about statistical sampling methods than specific examples of indian removal and persecution. i learned a lot about possible population densities a long time ago from it but it didnt explain why treaties were broken and people were moved off their lands. did that not happen?

secondly, i sited a lot more than the u.s. transgressions so why not attack my whole point rather than one facet of it. wanna take a swipe at excusing the spanish inquisition?

or was it just that i dont agree with the shiney clean scrubbed p51 exterior image of america portrayed in history books? i dont regret america's past - we didnt do it anyway, people 150 years ago did - the past is passed but i think this country should stop waggin its finger at 60 years dead regimes. and definitley stop assisting in the persecution of the palestinians before they climb on that high horse.

my point isn't strictly about native americans - it is about wondering why we apply a moral standard lopsidedly to different parties. the soviet gulag state may have murdered over 61,911,000 people in this very century as opposed to the nazi regime being responsible for about 20,946,000. thats not excusing anything but if numbers are an indicator of cruelty then wheres the rage? We have no problems doing business with russia even though some of those people were communists. how about the chinese? 35,236,000  are estimated to have died in the communist revolution and subsequent years. you guys have no problem getting enraged about them -  should we be up in arms about that? (figures are quouted from: “Death by Government” by R.J. Rummel - New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publications, 1994 btw)

a blame industry exists in this country (read: for profit) - i say don't feed it! or it will never go away and we will be hunting great great great...grandchildren of history's all time bad guys 300 years after the war! the new mentality should be 'get over it' otherwise we can all trace our lineage to some past event and turn ourselves into sniveling victims.