Well tomorrow is May 9 and this is the date that Nazi Germany was defeated 59 years ago. I think it is a good time to ponder the lowest depths that humanity has sunk to and to try to remember the horrible vicitims of German racism. Victims that included millions: Russian deaths 20 million, Jews 6 million, Poles 10 million, Central Europe 5 to 10 million, Balkans 2 million, Western Europe 5 million, USA 500,000, Gypsies 2 million, mentally retarded 2 million, old and infirm 2 million, homosexuals hundreds of thousands, communists hundreds of thousands, political prisioners hundreds of thousands all for the mad ideas of not just one “idealistic” German who wanted to prove Germans were superior to everyone on earth, but a whole nation who was convinced that it and it alone should enjoy the pinacle of world power and not just that but that others who were not German did not deserve to live. I think that we should all pray that nothing like this ever happens again and to pray for the countless victims and how they never lived to enjoy their childhoods, adulthoods or old ages, how they watched the Germans murder and torture and mock and kill their families.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten some of the casualties of the war, Fred.
Why should Germans celebrate a holiday that was imposed on them?
Why should they be forced to continually bewail their history, while certain other peoples get off scot-free?
[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]Why should Germans celebrate a holiday that was imposed on them?
Why should they be forced to continually bewail their history, while certain other peoples get off scot-free?[/quote]
My German neighbor here would get along with you real well. Last night at his son’s 1 year birthday party he told a real knee-slapper. The largely German guests all laughed…I sat there and drank my beer.
Q: Why do German showerheads have 11 holes?
A: Because Jews have only 10 fingers.
Both my grandfathers fought in WW2, and I am proud of their afforts against totalitarianism. It was a struggle that planted or watered the seeds of freedom in many ways.
We should not forget history, rather learn from it and remember it. 60 years is a short time in the history of western civilisation, and until the way societies legally and morally relate within and between is vastly improved from even this point, these lessons are vital. The world is immeasurably better now, but there are many forces fighting for ever limited resources, and nationalism/racism is being used as one of their weapons. The acts of a few US soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison give a hint to how small the difference is between correct and abhorrent behavior, even for those from a free and wealthy first world country.
We owe a huge debt to the greatest generation, and should remember that always as we choose to do our best not only for ourselves, but for others.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten some of the casualties of the war, Fred.[/quote]
Yes, it was sad of the Japanese to refuse to surrender, and instead adopt the strategy of Ketsu-go, which was obviated by the a-bombings, costing the lives of 200,000 or so. The war was madness, and the a-bomb its culmination.
Vorkosigan
Today, I think that we need to not only remember the fall of Nazi Germany but also the other evil totalitarian regimes like Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and others. We still have this Kim character in Korea and the mullahs in Iran and the religious leaders in Saudi Arabia but we are getting closer to our goal. Thank goodness most of the world is moving toward higher standards of living and greater freedom. In the past decade, we have added russia and the eastern european nations, we are seeing progress in India and China and other nations in Southeast Asia, we are even seeing progress in the Middle East. During the 1970s and 1980s, the battlefield was Latin America and except for Cuba which we could take out any time we wanted to and Haiti which is abjectly miserable, we have won, won, won and soon given the economic progress in vietnam since they started following the US inspired capitalist model, we may even see democracy there as well. Just what the US wanted and was fighting for all along. The country merely wasted 30 years in between with communism.
The atomic bombs used against Japan were devastating but no worse than firebombing of cities like Dresden with conventional weapons. The kill rates were similar. It ended the war. After all, Japan and Germany were the evil nations then. No one believed that we could pull those militaristic, uncivilized, barbaric nations into the world of democracy and human rights and losing the urge to invade all the neighbors but we did. Look at the generally responsible way both nations behave today. That was not a foregone conclusion and their histories much like Iraq’s today would have been strongly stacked against us in terms of odds to reform them. Thank God Germany is finally a civilized nation today and not the barbaric cesspool of racist violence and oppression that rained down death and destruction on so much of the world for so long.
After all, give the 1930s fascism in Europe, could we not say that Europe then was the uncivilized, barbaric, terrorist-ridden continent and not the Middle East? After all, when did these middle eastern regimes start with all this terrorism. Only after adopting the fascist template of 1930s europe (most were great admirers of nazi germany) so this is just another template that needs to be smashed and smashed it will. Freedom and democracy and human rights for EVERYONE. Not just white people.
We know that, but Germany has changed - and noone below the age of 75 in Germany can with any reason be blamed for the genocide, which they BTW have tried to make up for since.
Mind you, my little Freddie, there are Europeans on this board, who are in family with people sent to Hitler’s camps (The bloke survived, btw), and well, we are a bit more relaxed when it comes to Germans - even after one specimen tried to teach me the “Horst Wessel” song once.
When I lived in Germany in 1972 my landlord, when I commented on how peaceful and united the country seemed, made a comment to the effect that all the troublemakers had been eliminated by Hitler. This from a man who kept his SS memoirabilia (?) in a locked back room. Trouble was the guy and his wife seemed really nice. Scary how people can do the most evil things and have those things not bother them because they have the belief that they did what was right and justified 
All countries have that attitude to some extent (including the US) but not nearly as fanatical as in the middle east and the fundamentalist islamic organizations.
I think that the problem with Germany and Germans has always been their obsessive belief that they are as close to perfection and that their neighbors must be removed in whatever way necessary for them to have more room to expand the purity of the world. This is a kind of Manifest Destiny akin to America’s and Russia’s. Unfortunately for Germany, this urge to expand was bottled up by stronger neighbors. And because this urge was bottled up it led to frustration and we know the rest. The point is not that such urges are not natural (look at the Muslim world today) but that they do need to be controlled and that sometime dialogue is not the answer. Hence, feeding the German sense of wounded pride and unfairness was just as disastrous as doing so with the Muslim world. But another point to remember is that this did not happen to “everyone.” Germany has been a very special case. One that will go down in the annals of history as one of the most truly evil regimes to ever exist. Others like the Soviets were evil as well but more within the context of civil war akin to Mao, Pol Pot, et al. Germany brought its “civil war” to the world and that is why it is especially deserving of contempt and opprobrium. In a similar way, so are the Muslims with their terrorist acts.
fred
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this sentence strikes me as utterly non-sense. It comes close to a hate-rant. People are people - culture is important, but there is not such a thing as bad and good people. Just read in a book that the communist regime in the PRC is responsible for about 50 million death… which
I disagree. Some people are good and others are bad.
The notion that there are no good dogs or bad dogs, but only our thinking makes them so… does not apply to humans.
sure some individuals are good, what I meant is people in sense of ‘people of a nation’ - the way fred described Germans made me think he believes otherwise. I think all sentences who start with
“the problem with ‘this country’ has always been” are wrong.
I thought that the US was trying to keep a bunch of cunts who most vietnamese hated in power.I thought the argument was better cunts than commies? Don’t remember democracy having anything to do with it. And what about Chile. Walking down the road of democracy just fine and dandy when oops… is that a big viscious right wing dictatorship that has just taken power in a US backed coup? My, I’m suprised they don’t have special holiday to commemorate just how lucky they are to have had such a great friend as the US to help them towards civilisation.
Fred, Fred, Fred…just where did you get your insights into the German collective mind from? Maybe you should consider sources other than your grandad who “fought off them bloody Krauts back in '44”.
This would not only educate you on matters you seem to have no clue about. It would also make your posts appear a tiny little bit more credible than they are now.
And on top of that, you would not sound like a bitter, frustrated ass.
[quote=“tigerman”]
The notion that there are no good dogs or bad dogs, but only our thinking makes them so… does not apply to humans.[/quote]
Why not? Sometimes we hear of child soldiers being brutalised and this is what keeps them fighting (re: Sudan, Angola, Kampuchea, Sierra Leone, Abu Ghraib, etc. ) If we can accept that kids can be brutalised in order to be made to fight, then why cannot the dog comparison be made? These kids were not born brutal. They were made so.
BA (very mellow and mild)
[quote=“BroonAle”][quote=“tigerman”]
The notion that there are no good dogs or bad dogs, but only our thinking makes them so… does not apply to humans.[/quote]
Why not? Sometimes we hear of child soldiers being brutalised and this is what keeps them fighting (re: Sudan, Angola, Kampuchea, Sierra Leone, Abu Ghraib, etc. ) If we can accept that kids can be brutalised in order to be made to fight, then why cannot the dog comparison be made? These kids were not born brutal. They were made so.[/quote]
There is still a difference between dogs and humans.
Even a child soldier, forced to fight, has the cognitive ability to understand that what he is doing is right or wrong, and thus good or bad. A dog turned mean by abuse doesn’t understand this… at least I don’t think he does.
An 8-year-old child soldier does NOT possess such cognitive ability. You might want to read up on Piaget’s stages of cognitive development in children.
…yeah…, just like I did before I dared challenge the Tigerman DogManDog theorem. 