Nazis, or just Misunderstood?

[K West]

 I can't believe I'm replying but I am.  Because RAM deflecting the guiltiness of those who perpetrated murder beyond nightmarious proportions with a pathetic, lame twist of the discussion by saying "what about Stalin...." is beyond contempt.

 Ram,    Stalin, the Soviet gov't and the Soviet people did not forcibly remove millions from thier homes in repressed and conquered countries, based on ethnic and religious identities. Then ship them back packed worse than cattle in train cars to many of the murder camps as Hitler, the Nazi party and the German military did.

 Don't misunderstand me in your warped mind that I support what Stalin did to his own miltary and people. But this topic was about the Nazi party, Germans and the German military.

 But since you mentioned the Soviet Union I'll just add that I find it more than ironic that 8 of 10 German military personal died to the Soviet armed forces. Seeing how the Germans and the Soviets had that non agression pact as they carved Poland up between themselves while they both plotted to attack each other. It worked out rather well for the world it turned out the way it did in that Germany and the Soviet Union went to war which in the long run saved England and much of the rest of the world.

 Westy

[K West]

Hortlund,  I've veiwed the countless German news reels over the years showing the proud marches. The chearing, filled stadiums. The streets line with German civilians waving and smiling at happy German soldiers who are going or coming back from the front - which was in whatever country the Germans invading.

  I've read many of the books written by ex-German military people and seen many of them say the same thing about fighting for the honor of the Fatherland, glory for the Fuhrer and "Deutchlande Uber Alles."    I can't recall reading in thier biographies and stories of them at any time wishing they were not doing what they were, having regret or having to perform thier duties due to threats of death to themselves or thier families.  

 FWIW,  I left my enlistment in the US military when my time was up just after the debacle in Lebanon and the "bully picking on the little kid" stint in Granada.  I was damn glad to have been out before the Panam invasion fiasco (all early-mid 80's stuff).  I left because I did not support those actions in the least. Heck I didn't support at all what we more recently did in Yugoslavia and even earlier in Kuwait.
  I've voted and been active as a citizen in the US to help avoid what I feel is wrong with the policies of the US government.  But for it's faults it's still the best place to live (Australia won't have me )

 Westy

[funkedup]

Well RAM has started the personal comments and this will quickly go down hill.

BUT

I just wanted to clarify my earlier comments for Hortlund.  The people I mentioned earlier, I'm not accusing them of war crimes.  I'm not sure I would have acted any differently than many of them did.  When I say "lumped in" I am talking only about terminology.  E.g. Wehrmacht 1939-45 might be referred to as Nazi troops regardless of whether a few soldiers weren't actually party members or had a Hitler dartboard in their shelter.  I really don't care if it offends anybody or not.  Those people lost the right to be offended when they took money and arms and orders from the head Nazi (Hitler) and his chain of command.  

Otherwise I forgive the overwhelming majority of them.  They tried to kill my grandfathers and one of my great-uncles, but those guys survived, so I don't have any personal grudge.  Many of them suffered during the war, and they had a lot of their cities and industry completely destroyed.  They paid plenty.

[Seeker]

The differnence between a good soldier of Totalitanarism, and a good soldier of Freedom is directly proportionate to the degree in which they support the follwing statement:

              "My country right or wrong"

That, Gentlemen, is the crux of the matter.

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by Hortlund
However, I’d still like an answer to the two questions up there. What where the ideals of the nazi party that these men fought and died for? The glory of the Reich? Racial domination? What in your opinion was “the ideals of the nazi party”? The reason I’m asking this is to see if you can come up with something there that would be worth fighting a war for to the average German.

There were undoubtedly many "ideals" of the Nazi party.  As pertinent to this discussion, it seems to me that the overwhelmingly most important of those was, simply, that the Germans were better than everyone else, and deserved to have whatever they wanted - by force, if need be.

Aggressive war is “bad” yeah, so is state sponsored racism. HOWEVER the difference between wars of aggression, racism, and the holocaust are so enormous it feels wrong to talk about them in the same sentence. So yeah, I am saying that nazism didnt show its true face until 1941.

The face it showed before then was bad enough, I trust?

And you must remember that racism was viewed differently then than it is now. Back then being racist was the normal state. Heck, all European countries were more or less racist back then, so was the US.

Only Germany made Jews wear yellow stars.  Only Germany resettled people in ghettos.

Nor am I trying to pin the blame for the internment on the entire US population living in the years between 1941-45 either.

Well, we have another fundamental difference here.  I do blame the entire US population for the internment of the Japanese, just as I do for McCarthyism a few years later.  It's all well and good to explain how fearful and excitable everyone was, but the fact is that this is America and we are generally proud of making sure that things like that don't happen.  People should have squeaked.

I checked your profile (I admit, I got curious), now since we seem to be colleagues here, let me ask you this: Why are you so hell bent on painting the world in black or white, when you know that it is more complex than that? You wont find that black or white anywhere, only various shades of gray.

I find that there are some (admittedly very few) things that truly ARE black and white.  The Germans in the 1930s and 40s are among them.  Those events are so wholly outside the realm of human experience that I really don't have a lot of trouble dealing in absolutes.

What happened to that tiny detail we call intent?

Let me try to abstract things:.......I dont think there is any legal system in the world that would make D responsible for A’s action in this case....it is impossible to hold someone responsible for something that he has not taken any part of, nor has had any knowledge of.


Because you've stacked the deck again, by assuming that D doesn't know what's going on.  My point (and, as you must surely know, it ain't original with me) is that the Germans weren't unwitting accessories.  They may not have known the details of the crematoria, but, as Charon and Westy and many others have pointed out, they had to know - had to know - that bad things were happening to their erstwhile neighbors.  And, of course, the invasion of the rest of the world was a well-publicized fact.

I think you are oversimplifying. If you take a look at German soldiers behavior on the eastern and western fronts you will notice quite large differences. In 44-45 the war had become a war of survival for Germany. Knowing full well what they had done inside the USSR, they knew that the revenge should the commies reach German soil would be horrible (and indeed it was). The average soldier has no choice, he HAS to fight. The war is not a war about good or bad, right or wrong. It is a war about survival. His own survival, and the survival of his family. In the west, the Germans surrendered readily, and deserted in numbers. In the east this was practically unheard of. In the east they kept fighting against hopeless odds, more often to the death than not. All the way back into Berlin, heck some units even kept fighting after the official cease fire in may 45 in order to break through to the west and capitulate to the western allies. Now I ask you: Why? If all German soldiers were motivated by the notion of the higher good of nazism, shouldnt they fight equally hard on both fronts?

I begin to feel like Ronald Reagan...."There you go again."  Of course the Germans at war's end wished they'd never heard of Hitler or the Nazis.  Most mass-murderers express regret somewhere down the line.  What's important is what's going on in their clever little minds when they set out on their journey to oblivion.

You tell me, how could the average German citizen, or average German soldier possibly know or even suspect what was going on in the east?

Well, the average German soldier in the east knew because he was SEEING it, and reporting it back home to his buds.  But you don't have to know about Babi Yar to know that Germany has invaded the world and that the Jews have all disappeared and their houses have new owners.  

On what page in Mein Kampf does Hitler write: “And then I shall construct large extermination camps and murder over 8 million innocent civilians?” Or is this something that can be read between the lines?

Sorry, left my copy at home.  David Irving, of course, says there's no proof Hitler even knew about the extermination of the Jews.  Without going off into that discussion, I think anyone who's read "Mein Kampf" has a pretty clear idea that there was not a good future for Jews if Hitler took over.

But again you oversimplify things. Take a look at the situation in Germany in 1933, a snapshot in history if you will. Then take another snapshot at 1938. The difference between those two images are enormous, and THAT is what nazism meant to the average German in 1938.

So we are supposed to forgive them their little tantrums that resulted in overrunning Europe?  The average German then knew that his country was preparing to do just that.  So did most of the rest of the world.

What would the opposition focus on?

How about things like, "Hey, it sure is a big world out there!  Maybe it isn't such a good idea to start a war!"  How about things like "Hey, where did all the Jews go?"

No, you are dehumanizing the Germans when you keep insisting that they all were nazis.

I wonder if you even realize this.

I admit to having some serious problems viewing that generation of Germans the way I view other people.  Some real problems....

- Oldman

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by R4M
Damn right. What a fediddlein idiot you are. You're full of toejam up to your last hair, Mr. Westy. Your'e an idiot who has no clue.

Westy, he's found you out.  You can stop pretending to be Mr. Nice Guy now.

Did someone forget to feed R4M his lunch?

- Oldman

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by R4M
And I'd love to see you repeating that kind of statements before a living Luftwaffe ace...say, Franz Stigler, for instance. I think I recall recall reading that he punched someone who called him nazi once. That says it enough.

I do hope he got punched back.

- Oldman

[Elfenwolf]

Originally posted by K West
I though about replying earlier to this topic, then thought twice about it til I saw a sig from another AH player in a post on the General Forumn.

""As long as I can shoot down the enemy, adding to the honor of the Richthofen Geschwader and the success of the Fatherland, I will be a happy man. I want to fight and die fighting, taking with me as many of the enemy as possible." -Helmut Wick Staffelkapitän of 3./JG 2 "Richthofen"

 IMO this guy may not have been an actual Nazi but he is just as guilty for EAGERLY supporting them.  He could have flown to a neutral country if what he was doing he felt was wrong. He did not and neither did many others.

 Because the Germans, lead by the Nazi party, started the war millions lost thier lives and for that I don't care to make any distinction between eager Nazi and someone reportely just "doing thier duty" while feigning ignorance of the cruelties and murders being commited.

  Guys like this, as well as millions of other Germans, Italians and Japanese (just to name the three leadin Axis powers), freely took up arms and supported repressive, murderous and evil causes.

 Period.

    Westy

Sheeesh, Westy, by your definition of what you think a soldier's duties should be to their Country then I assume you feel like all Viet Nam veterans are criminals too then. After all, we were invaders, oppressing the will of a foreign populace just like the German soldiers in WW2 did. They just did it on a much grander scale is all.

[Hortlund]

Oldman

Alas, my "real" reply will have to wait until tomorrow (getting late over here) I will leave you with two small things to ponder over though.

Only Germany made Jews wear yellow stars.  Only Germany resettled people in ghettos.
Sweden demanded that Germany put a large "J" in any jewish passport to make identification easier. That was in 1938 if I remember correctly.

And I believe you called them "reservations" in the US.

[funkedup]

I've met Herr Stigler.  I didn't call him a Nazi and he didn't punch me.  He was not your average Jagdflieger.  He risked the most severe punishment by escorting a crippled B-17 to safety one day.  He now lives in Canada, and is good friends with the pilot of that B-17.  My squaddy Ratenp asked him at dinner, "What could you have done if you had more jet fighters?"  Stigler replied that the best thing would have been to have "gone East".  Not to attack the USSR.  To attack certain buildings in Berlin.

[Naso]

Very interesting thread, heavy to read, btw one statement is maybe the real answer:

Originally posted by miko2d
.
 Neither had full knowlege of what their government was doing but was raised in the belief that their government was doing the right thing.
 

"Right or wrong, it's my country."

Anyone want to tell me what was "the bund"?

[midnight Target]

None of us knows how we would have reacted to the propaganda barrage in NAZI Germany. We all like to think we would be brave enough to fight the system and try to protect the Jews. I hope we never need to find out.
I had an old girlfriend who's family was at Manzanar. They lost everything, house, land, ancient antiques. Few Americans said a word about it. The difference here was that those who spoke against the deportations of Japanese Americans were fairly certain the Government wasn't going to execute them for their words. Germans who disagreed with Hitler's actions didn't have the same frame of reference.

[Wotan]

wtf fek westy Helmut Wick died in the bob Nov. 28, 1940

openly supporting what?

the liberation of lands that until the end of ww1 were german. Also it was broadcast over germany that poland had attacked germany. This turned out to be set up by hitler to justify a campaign in poland but at the time it was real.

Also britain declared war on germany so the average citizens who has trust in his government and believes his country is just hardly views himself as a co-conspirator.

He fought and died for the country he believed and trusted in.

Just like them lancaster pilots did when they were fire bombing dresden.............

this discussion is always the same evil horrid nazis every damn one of umm.


Heres a link
Helmut Wick

And ya could have asked or followed the link in that sig

[Charon]

quote:
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Originally posted by Charon
Ignorance is dangerous, particularly when a society decides to act from a position of ignorance.

Charon
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You are an American right? *bites tounge*

Hortland

Yes, and I think I know where you're going with this. It is popular to bash the great satan, America today. Frankly, I agree, Americans can be just as ignorant, and just as arrogant as those in ANY other country in the world.

I make no excuses for my country's sins. It is mortifying to me to this day that our great democracy was founded with a formal acceptance of slavery. I will not make excuses for the treatment of the Native American population either, though the evil is perhaps less clear in some ways. In both cases, at the time there were those who thought these were monstrous events and as a country we should have known better and done better. In the end, greed for land or cheap labor won out. Again, I offer no excuses, though there are some who do and who look on these as romantic periods in our history (the Civil War and the Wild West).  And yes, the Civil War was about state's rights, but given that a main "right" was the determination of slavery in the newly settled Western territories, well, not much of a distinction to me.

If you go to the National History Museum in Washington, DC, you will see that we make no excuses there either. Hell, from my direct observations we devote about as much space showing our failures as a people (Japanese-American Internment, Slavery, Native American Issues, Vietnam) as we do showcasing our accomplishments. And yes, we have a few of those too, and I'm quite proud of them, and if that makes me an arrogant American then, well, why should I care, I'm an American I also think the German’s do a good job of remembering the past, as unpleasant as it may be.

In a similar vein... Elfenwold, I think the Vietnam War was a tragedy for many reasons, and a conflict that was, IMO, unwinnable and that caused tremendous suffering. Things would have been much easier if we had done the right thing in the region after WW2.  But, you are WAY off base with that comparison.

You can criticize the tremendous collateral damage that took so many civilian lives. You can criticize our pushing a "democracy" that was nothing more than a corrupt puppet government (why would a S. Vietnamese peasant want to die for Diem?) You can criticize our direct but entirely DEFENSIVE involvement in another country's civil war.  But Vietnam was not a worldwide war of aggression and domination by a power that set up production-line death camps for those it found inferior. The goals (stopping Communism) had at least some validity at the time, especially for those living West of the Fulda Gap, even though the execution was heavy-handed, brutal and poorly thought out. In my estimation My Lai's were the exception more than the rule, and occurred with some measure of provocation from local partisan elements. Wrong of course, I’m not going to argue that these events weren’t, but not official government or military policy.

Charon

[Elfenwolf]

Great post Charon, . My point was that to expect a soldier to do anything other than what he has been TRAINED to do and to then call him to task for his actions later, such as stating that all German pilots are somehow Nazi war criminals, is wrong on so many levels. To actually expect them to defect rather than fight is laughable.