Reminds me of Weeds:
“It must never happen again”
“It has happened. In Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia…”
“No, to Jews. It must never happen again to Jews”
At least they are doing their best to be sure it doesn’t happen again in Germany, presumably to anyone.
That sounds likely. 
Based only on conversations with German foreign-exchange students, their country seems to be trending more toward something that was specifically forbidden at the Nuremberg trials: collective guilt. They are taught and readily admit that we (the German nation) started the war and did horrible things during it.
To the avoidance of any individual guilt; the guilt of the actual individuals who did the crimes.
My feeling here is partly based on a late-night discussion around a campfire, after much consumption of alcohol by everyone. We were discussing this acknowledged guilt, even though neither these teenagers, nor their parents, had actually been involved (or even born) when it happened. Then someone asked ‘well, what about before that – what did your grandfather do during the war?’ The response from these German kids was all similar: “I have no idea. And I would have to be way more drunk than I am now to even consider asking that question at home. Details about the war are just never discussed.” After a bit, another said “There used to be Jews in our town – there is a building that was a synagogue, and the old Jewish cemetery just across from the main one – what happened to them? Probably they were rounded up one day and shipped off in cattle cars. My mother’s father and a couple of his brothers worked for the railroad all their life, including the war years. So were they the ones who coupled up those railroad cars to the train? Were they there to get the cars loaded with people? It seems very likely. But I would never dare to ask such questions of them, and they would never answer if I did.”
So while the war is discussed accurately, it seems the actions of specific people during the war is avoided. (Even more so than many American WWII vets, who are often reticent about their experiences in the war.)
This may be changing in Germany, as most of the actual survivors are dying of old age now. That is certainly happening in the US.
That’s one of the striking commonalities I’ve heard when I talked to Germans of any age about the war. They always assign blame in terms of first-person plural ownership… we, us, ours. I have to admire that, because they were fully entitled to blame it on a bunch of Nazi lunatics from a time before they were even born.
My maternal grandfather was a bomber pilot in WWII, and in the 50s was stationed in Germany for several years on assignment with NATO. He used to joke that all the time he was fighting the Germans he must have been fighting robots, because every German he met said they’d been fighting the Russians.
I was always curious about the mindset that caused the Baader-Meinhof and other Radical Left German baby-boomers to graviate to the Palistinian Liberation Organization.
“Nazism? That was my parents, not me. I’m so untainted by it that when I kill Jews, it proves I’m not a Nazi, since I’m not tryng to cover it up like they did.”
Or:
“It’s been so thoroughly drummed into me that Nazis were bad that I’ve dedicated my life to fighting the most Nazi-like opressors today: the Israelis!” (notice that these kids never went after South Africans to prove their anti-Nazi cred)
Or were they just fucking Nazis?
I think they blamed the Jews for the situation in Germany after the war, which sounds a lot like the Nazis blaming the Jews for their situation after WWI.
I honestly don’t know.
I mean, sure, honest to God, 100% believer Nazis were, the main actors in the Final Solution were, the death camps guards were, but that’s a given.
As far as the rest of Germany is concerned… well, it’s easy to judge from the comfort of one’s quiet, peaceful living room, just as it’s easy to assume that, had you or I been in the same situation, we’d have done something.
But really, consider the situation in the US just after 9/11 : everybody scared as hell, calls to war ringing, any kind of dissension or critic aimed at the President’s decisions branded as outright treason, Freedom fucking Fries… how long until *you *figured Iraq was utter bullshit ? Now imagine that, only they round you up and shoot you for speaking your mind about it. And it’s been going on for years. And there’s no Internet or foreign or independent media to provide a counterpoint. And racism/anti-semitism is just as pervasive as anti-racism and political correctness are now.
Yeah.
When all’s said and done, I’m *really *not sure I could or would have done any better than the average German, had I been born in Leidenstadt, 1917. And, as the song goes, I pray I never have to find out.
As for the war itself, well, soldiers do what they’re ordered to. Germany wasn’t the first country to start a war, it certainly wasn’t the last. They just happened to lose it. Again, if you think the Allies were any better on the brutality and war crimes front, you’re in for a disappointment.
I can absolutely relate, because here in France it’s the same thing with the Algerian War. I know it happened. I know my father was alive at that time, and that he was just old enough that he could have been a conscript (every young man still had to do a compulsory stint in the army back then), if not during it at least shortly after it. I often wondered about that. But I have no idea. It’s just Not Talked About. Whenever the general subject is brought up, in any context, everybody just clams up. We all know things went badly, we all know some of us tortured & killed civilians, took random hostages, had our own Abu Grahibs… but apparently, we don’t wanna know the specifics.
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:
(in case you’re wondering, yup, both of my gramps reportedly were. In the Resistance, I mean. I have no idea if it’s the truth or not, and no way to find out for sure. And since they’re both dead and buried now, does it really matter ?)
That was called the Nuremberg Defense.
It didn’t work.
I am curious, what did you learn in school about the Vichy government?
It didn’t work as a defence.
It worked pretty well in getting the soldiers to do what they were ordered to do, though, which I think is Kobal’s point.
And they were tracked down and tried for it at Nuremburg.
And executed.
Well, some were. But in both Germany and France (and the US and the UK, though not necessarily to the same extent in every country) there would have been many soldiers who were not charged with anything after the war, but who witnessed or participated in actions that they would later be heartily ashamed to have witnessed or participated in, and reluctant to talk about. And society would have accommodated that by not asking.
I know, but the honest truth is, if you’re an enlisted soldier and you’re given an unlawful order, you’re pretty much fucked no matter *what *you do.
If you refuse to comply, they throw you in the stockade or put you in front of a firing squad for disobeying orders. If you do comply, you’re a war criminal and you have to live with it, trial or no trial.
What’s a body to do ? Again, it’s one thing to say one should be ready to die for one’s ideals, and another to keep that moral bearing when the metal threatens to meet the meat.
Well, everything and nothing, really.
We were taught that part of France directly or indirectly worked with the Germans, they didn’t shy about dropping the major names or the most infamous events, we were taught to despise the *Milice *and so on ; but OTOH the history books also followed DeGaulle’s fiction that most Frenchmen opposed the hated oppressors (either openly or in secret), and that it all got sorted out by the Free French army once the war was over. Bad guys were punished, good guys won, we all lived happily ever after. A few of my own teachers hinted that it wasn’t the whole story, but I don’t remember any of them out and out proclaiming it was a big ol’ lie.
It wasn’t until much later, when I was in my early 20s, that I learned/figured out that the post-war “collaborator hunts” were a huge clusterfuck of arbitrary killings and petty vendettas, that most claims of resistance were bogus, that lots of people went straight from full collaboration to positions of power in DeGaulle’s postwar regime etc…
Not that those topics are super-secret, in fact I’d vouch that most Frenchmen are aware of them - it’s just that you learn about them by osmosis rather than high school books. Kind of like sex ed, if you will
(BTW, my “soldiers do what they’re ordered to” comment wasn’t related to criminal orders to begin with.
What I meant was : the brass tells you to invade Poland, you damn well figure out how best to invade Poland. Soldiers all over the world are raised and trained to leave the “why ?” to the politicians, the better to focus on the “how ?”. Theirs is not to question why, theirs is but to do or die. The poor, bloody idiots )
I think the idea is more for the common soldier.
If Private Otto is told to attack the enemy column, he attacks it. He is not part of a war crime. It’s not the Nuremberg defense and he cannot be tried for following lawful run-of-the-mill war orders.
So: “Fire your mortar against the enemy tanks” : I was folloeing orders.
“Go rape those blind orphans” : No defense.
“many” nothing, the vast bulk of soldiers were never charged with anything. I can’t think of any grunts other than the ones in the death camps who were punished. Nuremberg was a trial of the high-ups.
I do think that societies have a profound effect on the ethical capacities of their members — that, in fact, this is such a clear truth that everyone realizes it for most cases. This is a less relevant point when the nasties come to power in a legal manner in an electoral democracy. However, keep in mind that the Nazis eliminated (killed) their opposition as quickly as they could, and by the time the death camps were up and running, they had a clear monopoly on power. They also never got a majority of votes in a free election, but of course that’s common in democracies. Also keep in mind that, unlike in (say) Rwanda, the people doing the killing were a pretty small subset of the population, and the killing was kept as far away from the public as possible. This doesn’t mean that it was a secret, but it does mean that it might weaken collective blame. But quite beyond that, the Nazi regime was totalitarian. It maintained a monopoly on public discourse. Personally, if I could control everything that people read, I’m sure I could get a sizeable group of them to do whatever I wanted.
Actually, that last sentence sounds kind of appealing.
Side note: I get the impression that first-generation Germans and ethnic Germans living outside the country have much more of a sense of national pride and less of a sense of national guilt than German Germans in Germany.
ETA: Looks like I was too slow on the “common soldier” thing… oh well, you get the point.
That’s how it looks from the outside, but is surprises me that you’re aware of it.
When I was studying German in university (minored in it), our 4th year German seminar had a guest lecturer come as part of our focus on “current events in Der Deutschsprachigenraum” (Probably butchered that one; it has been a while :D)
He talked to us about precisely this topic. More specifically, the holocaust and the legacy of the concentration camps in German education. Now, it’s been four years or so, so I don’t remember the exact details, but what he was saying was that there was a seismic shift in thinking from 1946 to about, oh, 1970, or so? When German textbooks really started to emphasize the genocidal aspect of the war, and the feeling of collective responsibility/culpability you that was described here.
However, he was clear to note that this was the case in the BDR alone. The DDR, by his estimation, portrayed the “innocent” German proletariat, Jew and Christian alike, being oppressed by the Western Capitalist forces. In Austria, they too supposedly use their school textbooks to emphasize the land of smiles, “we were conquered” narrative, neglecting to mention all the parades for Hitler after the Anschluss.
The same teacher during my time as a 4th and 5th grader would teach us not only the “Pledge of Allegiance” but also the “Star-Spangled Banner”, “America the Beautiful”, “My Country, 'Tis of Thee”, “Marines’ Hymn” and “This Land is Your Land”.
We’d recite the pledge and then sing two songs each morning. This was at a public elementary school in eastern Los Angeles County with mostly minority kids during the early 80’s. As far as I knew, hers were the only classrooms that practiced this.