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You are IMHO absolutely correct about the need to find ways to "break the cycle", and FTR I'm not just blaming the French. It was after all called WORLD War for a reason. Everyone had a stake in it. IMHO any peace accord should recognize they are creating a powder keg if the terms are too punishing. When it literally took a bushel basket full of German marks to buy a pair of shoes alarm bells should have rung if not way sooner. If your dog bites a family member you must decide between training and putting it down. Daily ongoing beatings will not make it less dangerous. So unless we wish to promote genocide the only viable choice is a solution that does punish but is negotiated, regulated and monitored to actually and ultimately improve conditions which should be possible when we are not talking about animals immune to concepts but thoughtful humans subject to political and economic conditions. Blaming and harshly punishing the entire nation of Germany for what a few caused is not a thoughtful response, just a knee-jerk reaction and one to be avoided. It is worthy of note that treaties and treatment after WWII was more reasonable and beneficial to all than those of WWI. |
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“A whole people can rot from the inside. Been there, done that!”. Now face it and stop fantasizing about the degree to which most of Germany approved or disapproved of anything. Affronting the Soviet block had been given precedence so quickly, that “punishing” or just confronting the Germans with their own rotten attitude had been canceled, mayors stayed mayors, judges stayed judges and Nazi-Killers like the butcher of Warsaw were running for political office. As regards “a mere few” who did something, this concerns any action of resistance. It is surely not “The Germans” who have invented selfhypnosis, but if we had been given the chance to get out of it, much of what followed would not have been possible. Dream on and enjoy your war fun... Ω |
Michael, you do realize I was talking about post WWI in reference to "a mere few", right? There's no way to know for certain but it is certainly possible that had the treaties been more carefully constructed after WWI, there would not have been a WWII.
I am in no way excusing the atrocities of WWII. One side of my family is Jewish and I have documentation of over a dozen ancestors who died, effectively murdered horribly, in a handful of "camps" and I have no idea how many more that were not documented or "fell through the cracks" were likewise robbed, tortured and killed. I am no apologist. |
One excellent thing that the Allies did after the German surrender in 1945 was to arrange and carry out the Nuremberg Trials. Instead of just punishing "the Germans" en masse as had been done in 1918, they put those architects of the Nazi state who were still alive on trial, so that the German people as a whole could see exactly what had been done in their name. I have read that they also rounded up many of the small town leaders and forcibly escorted them through their local concentration camps so that they could see and even smell what they had for so long ignored. It seems to have worked. Instead of thinking of themselves as martyrs and seeking revenge, the Germans became truly ashamed of what they had done and have worked hard to rehabilitate themselves.
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Until 1990 it would've been political suicide to say "I'm proud to be a German". We never learned traditional folk music, but went through the horrors of Nazi Germany and WWII in 3 separate school subjects. Etc. Of course there will always be blod-hungry monsters amongst us, but that holds true for every country in the world, and of course those from post-Hitler Germany will always get special treatment and special attention from the rest of the world. Also, Godwin's Law at work here? :D |
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Same as rounding up German citizens/civilians, putting them in pens outside for 2 weeks, no shelter, no food, and letting them die. That is a war crime. They just got away with it because everyone was mad at the Germans, because of those prison/death camps. The Germans/German state had lawful authority to try their own citizens for crimes committed contrary to German law. International agreements/law/The Hague did not exist yet. The nations of the world should have watched while the restored lawful German state elected officials tried the nazi's for war crimes and violation of German law. Quote:
I am an America. I've stood on the grounds of Dachau prison camp. I'm certainly not pro 3rd Reich. But, Germany rising up in WW2 did not happen in a vacuum. Between the wars the communists were trying to seize the country. The Germans knew quite well what that would mean for them. The French were assaulting whatever citizens that they wanted to in the south that they occupied, carting away whatever german property that they wanted from the Rurh valley area. Germans were dying from starvation. And out of that malaise of competing political parties, violence, low national moral, hopelessness, rose a national party to fight for Germany that said "Vote for us" and we'll restore Germany. Sound familiar? Could almost be a modern newspaper. |
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