And particular delight in burning down synagogues . . . with the Jews locked inside. Mind you, that was merely the army, not the SS.
Any nation, any people, capable of doing what the Germans did, does well to ensure that their ‘children’ don’t forget.
ETA: One million of Jewish Holocaust victims were twelve years or younger. So, let them remember; let them be taught.
It is quite impossible to overstate the brutality of the Germans in World War II, especially onthe Eastern Front. Really, the scope and breadth of the evil is just beyond human comprehension or expression. You could write a million words on the subject and you wouldn’t understand how bad it was. It wasn’t just Jews; Poles, Russians and other Slavs were murdered, raped, and robbed in numbers beyond counting. Starving people to death was official German doctrine and was practised to the tune of millions of deaths.
One of the striking things about any detailed history of the Eastern Front is just how common and accepted cruelty and murder was throughout the German armed forces and, hell, even the civilian population. German soldiers in Russia wrote home complaining that there weren’t as many nice things to steal as there had been in France.
To compare the forces of Nazi Germany to some Marines murdering people in Haditha is the absolute nadir of false equivalence. It’s like saying my bathroom sink and the Pacific Ocean are similar because both have water in them.
Well, it would be possible to overstate it, if one were to claim that they raped more than the Russians or Japanese. However, of course the scale of the atrocity in general is quite beyond belief.
Well you can’t be sure, there are plenty of sincere (and non racist) defenders of the Confederacy on this forum and elsewhere.
What do you mean by “the German people” who never experienced a benefit? Surely many many individual Germans did, given the wealth and property that was seized. They didn’t just burn it. I don’t know what the total amount taken added up to, but it was conceivably enough that the tax burden on German citizens was lower than it might have been – for a while.
They’re embarrassed & ashamed. My source for this - my parents, Holocaust & concentration camp survivors. They took a trip to Germany in the 90s, when they were in their late 60s. Especially my father, who was in Plaskow (the Schindler’s List camp) delighted in talking to the younger generations. He hated those old enough to have been his contemporaries, but he said the younger ones are contrite to the point of obsequiousness. When the subject came up, he said most of them were obviously uncomfortable, with many blushing, flustered, or even crying when talking about what their country did. Of course there are exceptions, but the Germans I’ve met my age & younger seem to bear this out.
Quite a few years back, during the early '90s, a young (20-something) German man who had a fanzine for heavy metal bands was touring the United States on a low budget, and he would stay at the homes and apartments of bands to save money. While he was in Florida he stayed at our “band house” where several members of our band lived. It was in Tampa, so it was somewhat centrally located so he could go to both North and South Florida easily to interview bands, see concerts and shows, etc… He ended up staying for 3 weeks.
Sitting around talking, the subject came up. He became very emotional, and said that even young Germans felt a great deal of shame about the war and the atrocities, including the Holocaust but not limited to that, also the great suffering and destruction of the European countries and people, the fact that the German people truly believed in Hitler and the Nazi party at the time and the aggressive and militaristic attitude on the part of the majority of Germans that allowed such a war to happen and allowed the genocide of Jews and other minorities.
He unreservedly apologized and said it was a great shame of the German people and they live with that shame and take responsibility for it. This was, of course, very uncomfortable and it seemed inhospitable to dwell on it, and it really seemed to upset him and he seemed very sincere about his feelings, so we changed the conversation and never brought it up again.
He had recently been a German college student and he asserted that everyone he knew felt that way with no excuses or justification. I believed him then, and I do now.
That was generation or more ago, though, and attitudes may have changed, I cannot say.
My paternal grandfather was German-born. He lived on a small farm that he and his brother inherited when their father was killed in WWI. Their property was devastated during the war and it became apparent it really couldn’t support two families. My grandfather and new bride came to America. My grandfather and his older brother remained close for years - lots of phone calls and letters back and forth. But when the Nazis took power, Uncle Heinrich became a Nazi. The party was quite popular among farmers in those early days. When WWII broke out, Heinrich’s eldest son went off to fight for Hitler. Arnholt (my grandfather) sent his eldest son to fight for America. Both sons survived, although Heinrich’s son was severely wounded.
Heinrich’s choice to become a Nazi cause an enormous rift between the two brothers that never healed. My grandfather was filled with shame at being German after WWII. He insisted that German no longer be spoken in the home, no German customs were celebrated and German food was rarely allowed. I don’t believe my family ever suffered any prejudice because of being German. The nearest town to their farm was mostly populated by German immigrants. But my grandfather had washed his hands of his heritage.
Even when Heinrich and his family immigrated to the US in the 1970s, the two stubborn German brothers never spoke nor met again. But from what I’ve heard via occasional contacts with 2nd cousins, Heinrich and his son have never admitted to anyone in America that they were Nazi supporters.
I’m a little conflicted about my German heritage as a result of this family turmoil. While I certainly don’t feel responsible for the Holocaust, I can’t help but remember that I had close blood kin who were. I know my father could never bring himself to speak about his war experience beyond the fact that he had been a medic and a member of one of the first parties to enter Dachau after liberation. Even though he never talked about it, it was patently clear how deeply it affected him. In some ways, I don’t think he ever recovered from the experience, and I’m sure a large part of the reason why was his own ethnic heritage.
It’s not surprising that modern Germans feel unambiguously awful about WWII. It’s the huge WTF of German history. At the turn of the century, Germany had a better social safety net than Great Britain or France, a higher standard of general education, leadership in the science and the arts, and the most assimilated population of Jews. If you thought of Western European anti-semitism the first name that came to mind was Alfred Dreyfus.
Perhaps what Germany didn’t have in spite of all this was the same assumed right every Englishman and American had: “I can think and say as I please.”
My mother was born in Germany in 1945. Her father and several other relatives served in the German military. While I was growing up, my mother made no effort to cover up this fact, but she didn’t talk about it very much. The same was true for most of the other German relatives and friends I spoke to over the years.
One thing I would say is that the generation which did live through the war remembers quite a bit about their own suffering, particularly during the final months when they had barely any food or fuel and no electricity or running water. Not that they’re particularly bitter about this, but it is a topic that rarely gets mentioned in the history books.
Another anecdote I recall is that when we visited the town where my mother was born in 1994, an elderly neighbor served us white bread and cheddar cheese, because she remembered that the American soldiers had liked those things fifty years earlier.
My mom was a teenager in Germany during the war. Her father was drafted, and ended up spending most of the war as a POW in England. She was shot at, and her mother and young brother were in a hospital that was bombed. She said she and other family members of patients were shown a row of bodies with only their feet showing as a method of identifying the dead. Fortunately, her mother and brother survived.
She was sent to Jena to work for Karl Zeiss, making gunsights, and spent some time performing calculations for rocket trajectories. She was proud to say Werner Von Braun was her boss, although of course she never met him. Eventually, she married an American GI, and moved to the US in the early 60s.
Interestingly, she was not at all ashamed of Germany. She claimed that she didn’t know about the concentration camps. She wasn’t anti-Semetic, but I do remember her saying that no one remembered the good Hitler did for Germany. She also resented the Holocaust being used so often as a symbol of evil; in particular by our minister. She was proud of Germany’s history and culture in general.