Posted on 06/06/2004 1:41:10 PM PDT by lizol
I didn't mean to imply that the official line then was catering to the Nazis.
I merely meant to point out which way the winds were blowing at the time.
I could have just as easily inculpated England's policy at the time as being responsible for Germany's rapacious appetite for more land and more concessions from Western Europe.
Blame for this fiasco could be apportioned to many different bodies. The League of Nations, Neville Chamberlain's gov't, Stalin/Ribbentrop and even the United States Congress, all share equal responsibility for ignoring Hitler's rearmament.
I was simply pointing out that as the country neighboring Germany, and as the anchor of the W. European defense alliance, France should have taken the initiative in this arena.
After all, it was the French army that had the opportunity to crush the Nazis when they made an incursion into the Rhineland, but ultimately failed to do so.
Another great book, which I've previously mentioned on these forums, is "Endless Miracles, written by Jack Ratz; he was a man who lived in a nation-which at the time was a Soviet republic-whose entire Jewish population was extirpated during the Holocaust
I also have to second the remarks about the general culpability of German soldiers; these were men very much like their Japanese counterparts.
Even though many Japanese soldiers were fanatical adherents to the philosophy of emperor worship, not every military action they engaged in was purely voluntary.
The bonsai charges and kamikaze missions in particular, were only able to take place after the intended cannon fodder had been supplied with a steady stream of sake and/or narcotic drugs.
As you point out, they fought for the survival of Germany - and the bombs on civilians had an astonishing impact on the soldiers. You said it, they felt Germanys survival was at stake. But if they had known that it actually was not (because the western allies soon would become a more dangerous enemy in the East), they would have loved to lay down arms.
We can be glad that we´re friends now, and we will never have to fight each other.
I think of it as being akin to making a Red Sox fan attend a celebration of NY Yankees playoff wins.
There's something about the line of thinking which absolves the German footsoldier that bothers me. I'll try to come back to it when I've got more time to think about it. I think it comes out of my deep conviction that political power is derived directly from willing cooperation. I wonder if fear and ignorance are any better than outright complicity? This may be a very American view. At some point the citizens are required to stand up to their governments or face more dangerous consequences. If WWII isn't a lesson in that, then I don't know what is. If WWII contains that lesson, then we all had best pay very close attention to it. Of course this is the excuse our war protesters (both European and American) are using now. But the Coalition doesn't have its Waffen SS standing behind its footsoldiers threatening to shoot them if they don't buck up and unleash our modern day equivalent of a blitzkrieg.
I'm still convinced that there was only one patriotic thing for German troops to do in 1938. There are bitter diary entrys written by veteran Japanese troops in the field and upon their return to civilian life that bemoan the fact that they were duped by their worship of Hirohito. Without these duped troops, there wouldn't have been a WWII.
I'm not convinced that we aren't responsible for what our leaders require of us. "I was just following orders" did not hold up at the Nueremburg trials. "I didn't know!" was the frequent comment made by citizens forced to walk through deathcamps just after they had been liberated. In a significant way, both were the same diabolical lie. Hitler spelled out his plans and he was elected to execute them. Most troops were loyal not just to the defense of Germany, but the idea that Germany could be a third empire. The rest is history.
Have you a proof or strong hints for that claim?
"I was just following orders" did not hold up at the Nueremburg trials.
No, not for those who did more than the average, who did more than they needed. But serving in the army was the average, and they had not chosen to kill people. My Grandpa joined the German army in 1930. From that moment, he was no longer eligible to vote. He had no influence on the political leadership, and the Nazis suddenly had the key positions in Germany. There was no escape for the people. The people as well as the army didn´t want the war. And when we see the pictures of happy people hailing Hitler then we should not forget that this was exactly what the propaganda wanted to show.
What WW2 tells us is, that people should stand up early to fight coming-up dictators until it´s too late.
Fact is, there were even soldiers and many private citizen who tried to kill Hitler. And even high-ranking soldiers tried to prevent WW2 in 1938.
Still, like STFrancis said on another thread that there was an entirely different thinking, which changed because of WW2!
I'd say that kind of thinking has been around as long as the Magna Carta. It's not an accident that the Anglosphere has taken a lead in the global fight for democracy.
What Say the Reeds at Runnymede? A poem commemorating the signing of Magna Carta Runnymede, Surrey, June 15, 1215 Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) At Runnymede, at Runnymede, What say the reeds at Runnymede? The lissom reeds that give and take, That bend so far, but never break, They keep the sleepy Thames awake With tales of John at Runnymede. At Runnymede, at Runnymede, Oh, hear the reeds at Runnymede: 'You musn't sell, delay, deny, A freeman's right or liberty. It wakes the stubborn Englishry, We saw 'em roused at Runnymede! When through our ranks the Barons came, With little thought of praise or blame, But resolute to play the game, They lumbered up to Runnymede; And there they launched in solid line The first attack on Right Divine, The curt uncompromising "Sign!' They settled John at Runnymede. At Runnymede, at Runnymede, Your rights were won at Runnymede! No freeman shall be fined or bound, Or dispossessed of freehold ground, Except by lawful judgment found And passed upon him by his peers. Forget not, after all these years, The Charter signed at Runnymede.' And still when mob or Monarch lays Too rude a hand on English ways, The whisper wakes, the shudder plays, Across the reeds at Runnymede. And Thames, that knows the moods of kings, And crowds and priests and suchlike things, Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings Their warning down from Runnymede!
The French and the Germans for the most part got along quite amicably from 40-45. I see them as just getting back to normal today.
Brilliant observation.
You are absolutely right in your observation about democracies. However, people who have never lived under a totalitarian regime cannot imagine what life was like, what pressures existed. Thus they lack empathy. Some never attempt to understand. Worse, lazy thinking and other agendas result in a doctrine of collective guilt that the Magna Carta was designed in part to prevent by prescribing due process for accused individuals.
A blanket condemnation of any one people is no more valid than the charge that all our countrymen were responsible years afterward for slavery or the eradication of Native Americans. We should always be careful as to what lessons we draw from history.
While I don't think that we should always absolve a country of collective guilt relating to past transgressions, I also don't believe that we can ascribe evil intent to every individual living within the nation which has transgressed acceptable international norms and/or the basic natural rights of man.
A good example of the failure to successfully resolve this issue within the body politic would be Japanese society, which has yet to come to grips with its role in the outbreak and continuation of World War II.
I'm not so naive as to believe that there were "good" Nazis. A case in point would be Albert Speer, who probably should have followed Adolf Eichmann to the gallows but was spared because of political expediency on the part of the Allies.
Yet, when you view it from the prism of a grunt in the Wermacht, the issue is not nearly as simplistic. Just read the "Moon is Down", or view "Europa, Europa", and you'll get a sense of what I'm trying to convey in my posts on this subject.
There were Japanese pilots who severed their thumbs and sent them to the seat of government in Japan as a form of political protest.
Likewise, there were people from Nazi Germany who risked their lives to save innocent human beings, one of them living in China during the days when Japanese troops "raped" Nanjing.
I'm not trying to equate these singular acts with the shameful silence in the wake of-or active participation during-Nazi/Japanese atrocities, which was the norm for most people living in these nations.
I'm simply trying to state that even members of these countries militaries could not all be painted with the same broad brush.
That German troops were willing participants in WWII? Are you suggesting that most of them were unwilling? I think the onus of proof is up to you if you're arguing that they weren't. The business of fighting a war is never done without strong motivation. Hitler was elected. The German people were convinced that they could have and should have won WWI. They were convinced of the injustice of the reparations. I'll say it again: WWI was a just war in their minds, they continued to believe they should have won. Say it again to yourself.
They were convinced of their superiority and the limitlessness of their might. Hitler used the entire nation to fight his war, and without the will of his people, he would have been powerless.
My Grandpa joined the German army in 1930. From that moment, he was no longer eligible to vote.
I'm sympathetic to him. I have no hatred for him whatsoever. But to suggest that his willingness to join with Hitler without giving his life to stop the madness was anything but a moral lapse I think is too kind. If leaders can come along and stir their people to commit horrors, or support the commission of horrors, or simply to do nothing to stop them, then the human race is in trouble. And I tell you it is in trouble.
The charade we witnessed at Normandy yesterday set my teeth on edge. The French and German leaders there were as impotent and morally bankrupt as Neville Chamberlain was, or the French of the late 1930s. And why is that? Why is the world still incapable of taking evil at face value? Why is America yet again facing down a vile threat to the world order without the aid of their continental "allies?"
It's because Europe has not learned anything in the last 100 years about the difference between right and wrong. Saying that the people themselves weren't responsible for WWI or WWII is more of the same sort of moral bankruptcy. Yes the people did support both wars. And their decendants are once again willing to sit back and do nothing while Islamic terror gathers its forces, and while China seeks greater and greater military power.
Fact is, there were even soldiers and many private citizen who tried to kill Hitler. And even high-ranking soldiers tried to prevent WW2 in 1938.
And those are some of the most admirable people in human history. It's too bad there weren't more of them. The biggest tragedy next to Mao and Stalin's murder and starvation machines could have been averted if more Germans, Italians, and Japanese had joined them. That is my proof. It took numbers, and the Axis had more than enough to overwhelm the paltry resistance.
But the real question on my mind as I watched our president making his D-day speech next to those shameless European leaders: is the past prologue? Given contemporary European rhetoric, I would say so.
My advice: don't ask what your grandfather should have done in 1938. Instead of trying to minimalize the guilt of the German people, you should ask yourselves what you should be doing today to keep it from happening. And you should be asking why your elected leaders are so eager to assert their geopolitical force against Americans. The world order we built benefits all of you, and yet your leaders would spit on the sacrifices we made at D-day and Tarawa and Anzio and the Chosin resevoir and the Berlin Airlift and the jungles of Vietnam by saying that American power has gotten out of hand. Does it not matter to you that Americans see it this way? Won't you stop what you're doing a minute and think about that?
From the Marshall plan to the fall of the Berlin wall, Europe has needed America. If Chirac and Schroeder had stood on those ghost-swept hills of Normandy and spoken of reconcilliation and shared committment to the future of our world order, I would not be writing this today. Instead, their cold, calculating words left a nauseating chill in the air. Chirac demanded that Bush not refer to the war in Iraq. And Schroeder did not even refer to America or the United states once in his speech.
Gentlemen, I have nothing but contempt for the Europe of today. And yes, individual citizens are responsible for what they do and do not do -- and were then just as much as they were today. As long as you think otherwise, a Holocaust or or a jihad is just around the corner. In fact it stuns me to read what I read on this thread. Anyone who thinks a Holocaust can't happen again should read what we've written here very carefully.
One Freeper often tags, "The darkness will come. It will find you,and it will scare you like you've never been scared before."
He's got good reason to suggest that.
"Gentlemen, I have nothing but contempt for the Europe of today."
I presume you mean certain countries, but not all. Several joined with us, for Iraq efforts.
Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Denmark...and others...I believe.
Isn't it France, Germany and Belgium which piss you off?
BTTT!
Yes, thanks for asking me to clarify. Old Europe has earned our contempt.
Three to five thousand kills in one day for a single foot soldier? Boy, those numbers seem farfetched imo. Anyway, if this guy does exist, no way in hell should he have been invited to the D-Day ceremonies.
This guy actually existed? Wow. It's nice that some American veterans have met with him and everything, but there were others in attendance that might not have been too forgiving. Yes, he was just doing his job but some memories are too painful to forget.
The French and Germans do everything together these days. Happily reminiscing about France's surrender, rape and plundering for four years at the hands of Germany is something both would expectedly celebrate.
After the D-Day ceremony, I'm sure those cuddly two had to be hosed down.
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