I know what you’re thinking, what didn’t they ruin in Germany with the amount of death and destruction they unleashed. But I’m thinking of more trivial things - in the wider world, for example, the pencil moustache, the name ‘Adolf’, the swastika. All perfectly innocuous but now forever associated with that cadre of gangsters.
What’s it like in Germany today? How many phrases, names and other trivialities have been rendered verboten through their use by the NSDAP?
E.g., the word ‘fuhrer’ - now shunned in favour of ‘leiter’ which doesn’t carry images of Dolfy.
I recall an interview (or more likely a retelling on an interview) of Robin Williams with/for a German media outlet where he was asked why didn’t they have his wild and irreverent comedic style. His reply was something like, “Well, you tried to kill it” (or something close to that).
Forth of July, almost eleven at night, home alone in the dark, not bothering to look for a link.
Without Nazi Germany, we probably wouldn’t have seen the rise of the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons and their censor-happy bullshit.
Similarly, I recall (perhaps not with 100% accuracy) a West Wing bit where Toby Ziegler (a Jew) is telling an anecdote about a conversation he’d had with some Germans who thought he was very dryly humourous.
“They said ‘Why don’t we have people like you in Germany?’ I said ‘Because you killed them all.’”
I went with a German friend to some sporting event here in the US. And when everybody stood up for the Spangled Banner, she kind of freaked out. And explained, that in Germany they do not do that kind stuff anymore.
So count “Deutschland Uber Alles” as a thing ruined. They still play it sometimes but instead of “Germany Germany above everything. Above everything in the world.” The lyrics now are;
**. Unity and justice and freedom
For the German Fatherland!
For these let us all strive
Brotherly with heart and hand!
**
Seriously, to this day waving the (totally innocuous) German flag is kind of shameful outside of very specific contexts, like soccer matches. Even Angela Merkel, on the day she won the elections, didn’t think it was a great idea or visual.
I believe there now is some backlash from the young’uns against this Zeitgeist, with a growing portion of them arguing “Why are we not allowed to say Germany is awesome ? Everybody else gets to say their country is the best !” and the answer, of course, is typically “Because when we’re proud of Germany we wind up invading Poland”.
Patton Oswalt has a bit about Germans, humor and the lack on intersection in that Venn diagram in his “Tragedy + Comedy = Time” show. The YouTube clip annoyingly cuts the joke short, but he then goes :
And then I figured it out - it’s because of the Nazis ! They *have *to be on their toes at all times. If I had their background, I’d spent my time ruining every joke too. That’s the subtext ! “Oh no, zat is not sniper rifles because it vould be a very bad thing to do to bring sniper rifles in public places and look at all ze Jews in ze crowd vhich are not being shot at right now…”
I think plain, harmless normal German patriotism got ruined. Japan is in an almost identical situation - if someone is Japanese and patriotic, people do this leap of logic and connect it to WWII aggression.
It’s not really Germany that’s the outlier here - it’s the US.
In most of Europe, outside football internationals, and perhaps the national holiday and the like, people don’t wave the national flag that much, and those who do are seen as being associated with the far right. Businesses - except perhaps hotels and similar catering to the tourism trade, who display a wide range of national flags - do not fly the flag in the way that is not uncommon in the US. Generally, the flag is flown by government institutions, and it serves to mark them as such.
This goes, broadly speaking, for former Axis countries, former Allied countries, and neutral countries.
I’ve heard Fuhrer used to mean Leader in recent song lyrics, and NOT by neoNazis, so it hasn’t completely disappeared
(Wolfsheim’s Sparrows and the Nightingales)
That is certainly true (and Lord knows you guys creep us out with that shit :o), but ISTM that Germany takes it a notch further. Like, if I (French) saw somebody waving a French flag or wearing one in public, without any other context I’d just assume they were fascist, Frontist bastards and get on with my day. We have those. It is known.
A German in the same situation might feel actively uncomfortable about it, and could conceivably even go up to that person to ask them what’s what. Very formally & politely of course :).
I mean, I don’t recall Sarkozy or Hollande personally waving tricolours to celebrate their election, but the crowd certainly did in spades. Because why not ?
