Official clarifies 'Adolf' remark

Washington Times ^ | 9/21/02 | Sarah Means Lohmann

[kattracks]

BERLIN

[Eowyn-of-Rohan]

" 'Adolf Nazi.'Who? What? "

It seems they are superstitious about saying his actual name. Pretty interesting and new to me too.

[Physicist]

To throw Hitler comparisons around is to dilute the significance of the Nazi horror, and such a dilution is the first step towards rehabilitation. For a German to take that step is particularly frightening.

[Wissa]

But she said she never used Hitler's surname, a sensitive word in post-World War II Germany.

So the "H" word in Germany is the equivalent of the "N" word in America?

[jimbo123]

You can contact Herta Däubler-Gmelin here:

http://www.bmj.bund.de/eng/ministry/minister/10000003/

[hellinahandcart]

Yesterday, the minister said that in her speech she referred to public debate in the United States about how foreign policy could divert attention from domestic problems: "I then said that we have known this debate since 'Adolf Nazi.'"
But she said she never used Hitler's surname, a sensitive word in post-World War II Germany.

Okay, she didn't say "Adolf Hitler", she said "Adolf Nazi".

Makes all the difference, doesn't it?

(banging head against wall)

[hellinahandcart]

It seems they are superstitious about saying his actual name. Pretty interesting and new to me too.

Ever see Blackadder III? The episode where Blackadder repeatedly utters the word "Macbeth" just to freak out the superstitious playwrights, who will only refer to it as "the Scottish play"?

Hitler. Hitler. HITLER! HAHAHAAAAAA!

[jimbo123]

The Nazis should apologize for any planes they might shot down over Dresden. What's wrong with that?

[jimbo123]

It's called denial. If the Krauts don't speak his name, he never existed and their crimes were never committed.

[Alas Babylon!]

Actually, we did indeed liberate the German population from Nazism. Just as when Reagan defeated Soviet Communism (and I give him as much credit for this as any one man should have) the people of Russia and the various Soviet "Republics" were liberated. We had to fight a hot war against Hitler, but nevertheless, the world AND the Germans were better off once he and Nazism were no more.

Simply put, we did the right thing, and Germans were relieved from totalitarian opression.

[rockfish59]

I zee votchu min! =^)
30 days, cooler!

[rockfish59]

Oh sure! Now get back to Hades!

[rockfish59]

I wonder if Ilse Koch's husband is related to ex New York City mayor Ed Koch, who had a habit of telling people to 'drop dead?'

[foreverfree]

Just as when Reagan defeated Soviet Communism (and I give him as much credit for this as any one man should have)

Remember the big stink in 1985 when the Gipper and Helmut Kohl (who always looked a little thuggish) placed a wreath on the Nazi cemetery in Bitburg? Didn't the "mediots" (as a FReeper on another thread branded the press) raise a stink about that? I remember seeing a cartoon of a glum faced Reagan wearing two buttons, one saying "I [heart] Bitburg" and the other depicting a smiley face with a Hitler mustache. Should Ronnie have made this gesture?

foreverfree

[Alas Babylon!]

A few years ago, while stationed in Germany (I was at Ramstein AB) I visited a small cemetery in the village of Hohenecken, where we lived, with some older German friends. They showed me a large monument to a couple of families who were killed by an American bombing one cold winter night in 1943. The families killed were cousins to the very people we were visiting. My friend Ruprecht was 13 years old when this happened. At the time he was a Hilter Youth, not because he wanted to be one, but because it was required. I read the words on the stone listing who was killed.

You could feel the sadness in the air, but Ruprecht told me he had no hatred toward America or me. The last day of the war there the SS was rounding up men and boys NOT in uniform and shooting them for cowardice and desertion. Ruprecht's mother hid him, his brothers, and the remaining male cousins in the attic. The SS were just entering his house when an American P-38 attacked their vehicles in the town square. The Nazis hastely left, and the next day, Patton's troops entered Hohenecken. Ruprecht told me he refered to this day as his liberation.

[Alas Babylon!]

They also told me tale after tale about how nice the American troops were to them, especially children. The Germans there were starving, and GI's freely gave them food, candy bars, and gum (Ruprecht tasted gum for the first time that week--would have been late March 1945). His wife Alice, was only 9 and some GI's virtually adopted her and brothers and her Grandfather (her father was killed on the Eastern Front and her mother had died) and kept them alive.

Not long after, I believe in 1946, the Americans left because that part of Germany was in the Occupied French Quarter. The French were beastly occupiers, stealing, shooting livestock for the fun of it, and raping any somewhat attractive (or not) female they could get their hands on. These people simply adored Americans. I left there in 1997. I hope they still hold us in warm regard. Hohenecken was then a CDU stronghold.