# What do German kids learn about WW2? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 8, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-german-kids-learn-about-ww2/545925 "2010-07-08T01:37:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-german-kids-learn-about-ww2/545925/81 "2010-07-12T18:10:52Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Please do not put words in the mouths of men you have never met. I _do_ know what my father said, and I have sat and listened to he and his contemporaries talking about the people they met overseas. They had all seen friends killed in combat, and none of them derided any of the soldiers or civilians they had met after the fighting ended. I wasn’t, Bill Mauldin was. And, ok, your dad and his friends might have been fine with them after the fighting ended, but how did your dad feel about the Germans when the fighting was going on? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Piranha_Brothers)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-german-kids-learn-about-ww2/545925/82 "2010-07-12T18:17:19Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > By comparison, talking about WW2 is no problem. In fact, you don’t even have to, ask any French person : everyone’s grandfather was in the Resistance and every single collaborator was shot ! :dubious:😛 That’s exactly why I feel sorry for the Germans. I know for example that in the Netherlands, the number of SS volunteers is the same as the people estimated to be seriously active in the resistance. Europe still had half the world as colonies. Women and minorities didn’t have equal rights. Of course that’s still a long way from sending six million people to the gas chambers, although stalinist Russia wasn’t too far off. So I feel sorry for post-war generations of Germans having to live with collective guilt for a time when they were not even alive. Meanwhile the Japanese pretend nothing happened, the Turks get angry about a genocide that took place even longer ago, the English seem to forget the 2nd Boer War, and the Chinese still have pictures of mao all over the place. And I don’t know about that quote “american boys being unable to hate” but I think the (in)famous Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments prove otherwise? ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-german-kids-learn-about-ww2/545925/83 "2010-07-12T19:02:35Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I don’t know about other schools but when I went to high school (graduated '07) the showers weren’t used after gym class. Students would have a set of clothes for gym that got washed every few days and maybe a stick of deodorant and a comb. I went to a small school that usually only needed one gym class so it was at the end of the day and you just went home a little stinky and showered there. I don’t mean to generalize but I think very few millenial high schoolers have all that first hand an experience with school showers. Some of us are still a littel confused about the shower issue here. Is it that large shower rooms in institutions are still a little reminiscient of the “showers” used to gas prisoners in the concentration camps? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-german-kids-learn-about-ww2/545925.md?page=4)