The establishment has an interest in denying history (because the big boss was a member of the old establishment), and the accessibility of a site like that helps, however modestly, to prevent them from doing so.
One could compare it to the illustrated anthropological books you can find in any library in Australia, where images of deceased aboriginals are taboo (even if they were living when the images were produced), but I think in general they’ve come to accept that the documentary/educational value of the books is strong enough that it’s worth keeping them (with the customary warning “this book may contain images of deceased aboriginal persons” like they also do on TV).
On this note I heartily recommend a visit to the museum at Hellfire pass outside Kanchanaburi. It was built by the Aussies and is very well done. Plus you can walk the pass afterwards.
I read that the Korean troops under Imperial Japan did pretty horrific acts in Vietnam as well. When the KMT went to accept Japanese surrender in Northern Vietnam after General Order No. 1 was issued, they were also pretty terrible, although not as bloodthirsty.
I’m sorry that my comment seemingly implied “all is good in Germany”. That’s definitely not the case!
Teeming is the right word I think, and the police seems to have similar problems. This is where neo Nazi groups get their hoards of weapons, ammo and explosives. And this is what in my eyes sets them far apart from nowadays “left” groups that some people try to construct as the biggest danger of our times.
Nazism was never thoroughly dealt with, neither in West nor east Germany - and not in Austria either. There was (and is) even a scary continuity in many areas, especially in the judiciary and secret service, but also many other areas like education, military, and many others. Germany likely would be a much better place nowadays if the old and new Nazis had been thoroughly excluded from rebuilding and official functions - and not rewarded with high level jobs because they were “needed”.
The positive difference to Japan in my eyes is that these facts are viewed negatively by most Germans, and society mostly condemns them. Still, open visibility of neo Nazism and related ideologies have been on a steep rise in recent years. And with it revisionism similar to that in the original post of this thread. It’s only cold comfort that this doesn’t come from the government, and that there are no shrines to honour war criminals.
I think that does make it easier to deny, in the minds of some.
And while it was war, and for Germany the procurement of labor became less a matter of pushing Nazi ideology into the world and more a matter of simply surviving, I have to wonder what Germans thought of Todt and the hundreds of thousands of slaves “employed” by them.
From what I’ve read the Todt’s “gray men,” i.e., slaves basically, could be seen all over Germany. If I understand correctly, the adjective “gray” came from the prison clothes they wore, but it also implied a kind of transparency, that the plight of these workers was invisible to German civilians.
How much eye squinting did everyday Germans have to do not to think about the circumstances of the Todt’s gray men? If everyday Germans succeeded in turning a blind eye to their plight by considering them lucky to be alive, wouldn’t that imply the existence of a fate worse than slavery?
eta: upon some reflection I think the term “gray men” is actually something I picked up from a recent novel, Beneath A Scarlet Sky. It may not have been a real term used by Germans in Nazi Germany.
The few that were inside Germany were definitely visible. One word: Dachau. The first Nazi one. Extermination by labour. People knew. “Lieber Gott, mach mich stumm, damit ich nicht nach Dachau kumm (komme)” was a popular rhyme back then, hoping to not accidentally say something that would have one end up in the Dachau KZ.
There were dozens of sub-camps, all around Dachau, including Kaufering IV - Hurlach of Band of Brothers fame (episode “why we fight”. Steven Spielberg / Tom hanks were modeling the setting after there, even though the camps site shamefully has been mostly destroyed in recent years by using it as a gravel pit for a street coincidentally named B17). As far as I can tell from talking to locals there and an local historian, people saw and knew that slave labour was building all those bunkered aircraft or rocket factories between Munich and Augsburg. They saw them marching past the train station. They knew “unwanted” people were enslaved there. Now… whether they thought that’s a bad thing or a good thing, that’s the question.
Edited one detail about BOB where I can’t verify whether my recollection was correct or not
I seem to recall mentioning Dachau in an earlier post.
Here it is:
“At the same time I recall reading that upwards of 40,000 Germans were employed at Dachau, although the biggest concentration camps were outside German borders.”
My father-in-law was a Takasago Volunteer (aboriginal scout) with the Japanese Army in the Philippines. He was pretty vague about the details, though he wore his forage cap a lot.
Well, considering I didn’t get married until 1990, yeah. From various anecdotes he dropped, I think that though it may have been harsh, they were probably inflicting more brutality than they suffered.
