Hitler and Germans the laughing stock of History

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by elenos I can understand where you are coming from, but Hitler and the Nazis ruled by force and were not elected by the people....   Hitler was elected. However, when he took power he simply forgot the rules and become a dictator.   It is not fair to blame German people about the actions of theirs ancestors. 99.99% of germans weren't born by 1921, so they have no responsability at all on what happened since 1939! It is also not fair to blame all Germans for what was done under a war and a dictatorship.   Now, blame the origins of the Nazi idiology rather than German people, that was under the control of a dictator. The origin of the racist ideology are deep in the history of Europe, and can be traced to everywhere in Europe, including France, Britain, Russia, etc. and also to the Christians polgroms of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition and other criminal actions of the past. So, the whole Europe is in part guilty of what happed in Germany those tragic days.

Originally posted by King John I'm with Majkes, Pinguin. Regardless of whether 99.99% of Germans weren't born by 1921 Germans are still responsible for what happened. By the way I think that number is a little high. I'd like to know where you got it. Racist ideologies can be found in every country not just European countries, so that argument is really moot. All that line of reasoning is doing is acting as an apologist for the Nazi and Allied atrocities. The people that are responsible for Hitler and Germany's crimes (since the Nazi were tried and convicted of crimes against humanity) are Germans.

If so, Germans are also responsible for things like the most enlightened policis towards Jews during the Middle Ages.

You might call Germany out on the issue of responsibility for Nazism, but not individual Germans.

The way the Germans themselves have put it there's the "Deutshcland der Richter und Henker" (the Germany of judges and hangmen), but there's also the "Deutschland der Dichter und Denker" (the Germany of poets and thinkers). You can't focus exclusively on the former, but not on the latter. Or at least that's what the Germans are hoping.

Besides, compared to the kind of soul-searching the German people has done since 1945, it makes just about every other nation on this earth look as if in denial of the less salubrious parts or its history.

Originally posted by Joinville If so, Germans are also responsible for things like the most enlightened policis towards Jews during the Middle Ages.

Originally posted by Majkes Besides, You know well Pinguin that Nazi had a lot of followers and support in Latin America.

Of course the Nazis are guilty. Everyone in the party and its followers. And to certain degree that generation of Germans that went crazy.

I agree Temujin, but that makes a rather convoluted statement! Learning about the Nazis and how they worked cannot be explained in just the one paragraph, what really happened takes time to absorb, that is if any of how Hitler and his henchmen  fooled an entire population can be absorbed at all. I try to get down to the clean basics bits before moving on to the more advanced dirty details.

I once knew an old  guy who lived in wartime Berlin and he told me how seeing men and women hanging from lamp posts became a common sight and you only threw up for the first few times. 

Originally posted by King John Individual Germans allowed Hitler and the Nazis to come to power. So explain how individual Germans are not responsible for Nazism. The thing about "-isms" is that it takes individual people to implement them. I'm not saying that all Germans held the beliefs of Nazism, but a majority of them did buy into the belief system of Nazism. So, again, I ask how Germans aren't responsible for Nazism?

Those German already dead before Nazism and those German not yet born for starters.

People want to hold Germans in general accountable for Nazism, even essentialise Nazism as "German". That's what I'm reacting to; blanket indictments of Germans and Germany, which conveniently excises all history before and after the fact as somehow "inessential".

Makes as much sense as holding all modern Americans accountable for slavery and the destruction of all those native Americans. I.e. not really. But the US is still historically implicated in those events, just like Germany is over the Holocaust.

On a side not, I'd be curious to know how you have concluded that "a majority of them [Germans, back in the days] did buy into the belief system of Nazism"?

I'd say that Nazism succeeded by being able to buy into the belief system of a majority of Germans at the time, finding the lowest common denominator (in a double sense). That's what populists do.

Nazism is only possible at that time and that place. It didn't just suddenly appear all pristine and sway large number of Germans from a zero position. The Nazis were very good at picking up things already in circulation, and then they recycled them with their own nasty twist. Really, it helps to explain why the Nazis in some ways appeared so damn "normal" to many Germans at the time.

Within every country there are fringe groups and usually they remain on the edges of society. However, given certain conditions they will flourish to cause a lot of trouble and extreme cases grab political power as happened in pre-war Germany. 

Im just waiting for them to find out that germans are desendents of Irany chinese people that where attacked by aliens and mixed mated and to flee the aliens they ran away to present day germany around bc 19,030,344.Then aliens setteled around Iran afghanistan and west china and those people their now are desendents of aliens from uranus .

Originally posted by elenos A debatable point. Depends on which history you read.  You have to admit there are many, and all with their own axe to grind!

Edited by Babak - 02-Nov-2007 at 21:02