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Will Germany ever live down Hitler?

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Zuhzuhzombie!! said:
America has lived down it's genocidal past. Winston Churchill killed millions of Indians. The Belgians killed tens of millions of Africans. We don't even hear much of the deaths in Russia or China these days outside of Teabagger sites.

So, basically, eventually.
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I think the biggest difference and the thing that is keeping it alive is that we have video documentation of Hitler's actions. We have people from that era who are still alive today and that it's so recent is a big factor, but I think it will take longer to fade than earlier world tragedies mainly because we have visual proof in motion picture form, that is one of the most popular wars ever and these events are and will be constantly televised probably forever.
 
GusBus said:
There's so much wrong with this, I don't know where to begin. Crack a history book open.
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It's true though. There was no satellites, camps were to far into enemy territory for planes and locations were kept secret to but the people on the camp obviously and people high up in the chain of command. The general populace had no clue and just thought Jews were being deported.
 
So how does the rest of Europe feel about Germany nowadays? Is there still some tension, hate, awkwardness towards the Germans? I would think Polish people would despise the country, but since I'm not from Europe, I don't know.

Edit: I remember reading that it was a bit awkward if Germans showed some pride in events (like Soccer). Not sure how true that is.

Tesseract said:
those who repeat the past are doomsters who forgot.

~goku
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Why did I laugh at this?
 
It's permeated western pop culture/media far too much to ever be forgotten. No doubt the same for Japan within Asia.
 
KillGore said:
So how does the rest of Europe feel about Germany nowadays? Is there still some tension, hate, awkwardness towards the Germans? I would think Polish people would despise the country, but since I'm not from Europe, I don't know.

Edit: I remember reading that it was a bit awkward if Germans showed some pride in events (like Soccer). Not sure how true that is.



Why did I laugh at this?
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Pride outside of general nationalism? Don't know why things like Hitler or the holocaust would come up like that.
 
KillGore said:
So how does the rest of Europe feel about Germany nowadays? Is there still some tension, hate, awkwardness towards the Germans? I would think Polish people would despise the country, but since I'm not from Europe, I don't know.

Edit: I remember reading that it was a bit awkward if Germans showed some pride in events (like Soccer). Not sure how true that is.



Why did I laugh at this?
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Germany hosted the 2006 World Cup and from all accounts it was a great time. The only incident I heard about involved some drunk English hooligans who showed up at an event and started instigating by singing Ten German Bombers.
 
KillGore said:
So how does the rest of Europe feel about Germany nowadays? Is there still some tension, hate, awkwardness towards the Germans? I would think Polish people would despise the country, but since I'm not from Europe, I don't know.

Edit: I remember reading that it was a bit awkward if Germans showed some pride in events (like Soccer). Not sure how true that is.
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I've been kinda interested in knowing what Europeans think of each other. There's maybe a few topics on message boards with europeans talking about it. Here's an article from The Economist
pew-stereotypes_0.png

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/what-europeans-think-each-other
 
Pizarro said:
I've been kinda interested in knowing what Europeans think of each other. There's maybe a few topics on message boards with europeans talking about it. Here's an article from The Economist
pew-stereotypes_0.png

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/what-europeans-think-each-other
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I remember seeing this on GAF before... it is pretty much one of the funniest images I've ever seen.

EDIT: Fuck, I'm going to spend the next 5 minutes just laughing my ass off... France's Most/Least Arrogant. Italy's least trustworthy. Fucking dying.
 
Time heals all wounds. Both Hitler and the Nazis will stop becoming a big deal in perhaps as soon as a few decades.

Especially once you consider that the West is slowly losing its stranglehold on the globe. Indians seem to already admire Hitler as a leader and I doubt the Chinese and other far east Asian much care for 30 million whities being killed in the 40s.
 
diamount said:
It's true though. There was no satellites, camps were to far into enemy territory for planes and locations were kept secret to but the people on the camp obviously and people high up in the chain of command. The general populace had no clue and just thought Jews were being deported.
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This is a topic that's been discussed by many historians. Many agree that at first, people really weren't aware. . A year or two down the road however, it's safe to say most knew what was happening at Auschwitz and Dachau.
 
Cameron122 said:
This is gonna sound real dark, but once everyone is who is related to someone who was around during the second world war. That's when it will be "lived down."

Who associates France with Napoleon anymore? To paraphrase Hitler... (Can't believe I'm doing this D:) Who remembers Talat Pasha and the genocide of the Armenians?
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I do, but guess that one depends on where you live.

Also I'd say it'll take about a century until they'll be able to live it down.
 
GusBus said:
This is a topic that's been discussed by many historians. Many agree that at first, people really weren't aware. . A year or two down the road however, it's safe to say most knew what was happening at Auschwitz and Dachau.
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It was never in the media and there was no Internet back then, so it's actually highly unlikely. Sure, a lot of people knew the camps existed, but most didn't know what was happening in those camps. I don't think most people in the USA, Britain or France have any fucking idea what was going on in their camps, either.
 
I'm not German. I did however live in Berlin for a few months and have studied their society for some time. It has been a difficult position for the Germans since post-WWII. Immediately after the war, Germans just wanted to move on. They were not accepting or denying anything, they just wanted to put everything behind them. Then there was a period during the 50s/early 60s of "we're sorry, we're sorry, please forgive us".

Then under Willy Brandt in the late 60s a new movement emerged with the youth who had never experienced or lived through the war. They didn't want to be remembered with the image of Nazism or Hitler. It was from this point onwards that a more frank and open discourse regarding the Holocaust began to permeate society and their media.

I'm not sure if it was mentioned yet in this thread, but the Germans have a word for precisely this circumstance: vergangenheitsbewaeltigung or, "overcoming the past".

Please, any native Germans, feel free to correct what I wrote. But I'm pretty sure what I wrote was correct
 
wsippel said:
It was never in the media and there was no Internet back then, so it's actually highly unlikely. Sure, a lot of people knew the camps existed, but most didn't know what was happening in those camps. I don't think most people in the USA, Britain or France have any fucking idea what was going on in their camps, either.
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People still talked, and those within a few miles of the camps absolutely knew what was going on. The smell alone made it obvious, which is why Allied troops who liberated the camps often made the local residents tour the places to see firsthand what they'd been turning a blind eye to for years. Many in intelligence and government certainly knew something of the kind was happening and had been happening for a long time, although it's likely most didn't fully understand the scale of it.

By the end of the war, enough escapees from Nazi Germany and Poland had reported on the camps that Allied Command had a pretty good idea that they'd find something horrible, but nobody was ready for the scale and sheer efficiency (for lack of a better term) on display in the camps like Auschwitz and Dachau. The soldiers on the ground who liberated the camps certainly weren't.

So no, the average citizen of the world at the time did not know about the death camps of the Holocaust, but high ranking Allied officials certainly had an idea, and civilians within a few miles of the camps absolutely knew what was going on, but were either powerless or too cowardly to stop it, depending on your point of view.
 
It's a shame the world wars had to happen since Germany is also renowned for its scientists, philosophers, writers, musicians, and all kinds of people in the arts. I think they'll live down Hitler though because even at the time 60-70% of the country didn't even want him in office so it's not representative of the German people then and obviously not representative of them now.
 
PS3GamerKyle said:
I'm not sure if it was mentioned yet in this thread, but the Germans have a word for precisely this circumstance: vergangenheitsbewaeltigung or, "overcoming the past".
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They really have a word for everything. Found A fun NYT article of new German words proposed, among them 'Looking up rude words', Being startled when exiting a movie theatre into broad daylight', and 'Stepping down heavily on a stair when it isn't there'. Amazing.

BTW why isn't Mao ever mentioned, he killed off at least 45 million people according to estimates during the 'Great Leap Forward'.
 
They have done more than US has done to atone for it's support for dictator regimes in the past. That era still defines many things in Germany today: http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...uch-saner-cheaper-and-nicer-than-ours/280081/

His party was busy knocking on 5 million doors, something unprecedented as far as German campaigns go. The only problem? They had no idea whose doors they were -- supporters, opponents, swing voters -- because Germany doesn’t do microtargeting.

The memory of the Stasi, the secret police who spied on East Germans before reunification, looms so large there that Germans are wary of releasing any information about themselves to anyone. Even voters I tried to interview on election day seemed reluctant to tell me their names or who they cast their ballots for.
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But the US media will not allow them to live it down.
 
PS3GamerKyle said:
I'm not German. I did however live in Berlin for a few months and have studied their society for some time. It has been a difficult position for the Germans since post-WWII. Immediately after the war, Germans just wanted to move on. They were not accepting or denying anything, they just wanted to put everything behind them. Then there was a period during the 50s/early 60s of "we're sorry, we're sorry, please forgive us".

Then under Willy Brandt in the late 60s a new movement emerged with the youth who had never experienced or lived through the war. They didn't want to be remembered with the image of Nazism or Hitler. It was from this point onwards that a more frank and open discourse regarding the Holocaust began to permeate society and their media.

I'm not sure if it was mentioned yet in this thread, but the Germans have a word for precisely this circumstance: vergangenheitsbewaeltigung or, "overcoming the past".

Please, any native Germans, feel free to correct what I wrote. But I'm pretty sure what I wrote was correct
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I haven't even been within a stone's throw within Germany, but that picture of Brandt in Warsaw still destroys me.
 
diamount said:
Killed millions of Indians? The Japanese were basically at their doorstep.
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Churchill/England starved millions of the Bengali people and when told of the devastation he complained that it also hadn't killed Ghandi. Churchill also orchestrated the murder of roughly a thousand Allied French troops stationed in North Africa.
 
This colbert guy sure sounds intelligent.

How bout we whip out a picture of native americans every time US blames someone for atrocities.

Stupidity.

And any critical thinker understands, that nazis can happen anywhere given the circumstances.
 
davepoobond said:
he is the embodiment of evil in human-form.

no.
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This kind of attitude actually genuinely rustles my jimmies. People who are content to package Hitler into a neat little "evil" box are doing the world a disservice. I don't think Hitler was that different from any other fucked up person, his position and reach just meant the results of his fucked up-ness was greater.

Not that everyone needs to be a watchdog, but it would be better if people knew a bit more about Hitler so they can read the warning signs when the next suitor shows up.
 
Yes, but not for a long time. Once everyone who live through WW2 has died, then the even will only be 2nd hand news. There will be no one to their story about what happened, that's when history starts getting murky and things get forgotten.
I say in 100 years he won't have the same persona anymore.
 
zoukka said:
This colbert guy sure sounds intelligent.

How bout we whip out a picture of native americans every time US blames someone for atrocities.

Stupidity.

And any critical thinker understands, that nazis can happen anywhere given the circumstances.
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Stephen Colbert is playing a character.
 
GusBus said:
This is a topic that's been discussed by many historians. Many agree that at first, people really weren't aware. . A year or two down the road however, it's safe to say most knew what was happening at Auschwitz and Dachau.
Click to expand...

My grandmother moved from Germany to the US in the 50's. She went to the grave thinking the Holocaust wasn't real. She didn't like the Jews, but didn't think Germans ever would do such a thing.
 
zoukka said:
This colbert guy sure sounds intelligent.

How bout we whip out a picture of native americans every time US blames someone for atrocities.

Stupidity.

And any critical thinker understands, that nazis can happen anywhere given the circumstances.
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Do you seriously not know what The Colbert Report is?
 
hardly anyone remembers that andrew jackson was a ruthless native ethnic cleanser, we now glorify him on our 20 dollar bill. time and being on the winning team helps. hitler and germany only have time. :/
 
SiteSeer said:
hardly anyone remembers that andrew jackson was a ruthless native ethnic cleanser, we now glorify him on our 20 dollar bill. time and being on the winning team helps. hitler and germany only have time. :/
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You're kind of ignoring some key differences there. Hitler brought the world to war- a war he was on the losing side of- and was responsible for tens of millions of deaths. That fact will not be washed away with time. You really think in a couple hundred years people will "hardly remember" Hitler for his atrocities? What else would he be remembered for, the VW Beetle? It's been 70 years and he's still humanity's poster boy for evil.
 
SiteSeer said:
hardly anyone remembers that andrew jackson was a ruthless native ethnic cleanser, we now glorify him on our 20 dollar bill. time and being on the winning team helps. hitler and germany only have time. :/
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shit, i just read up on him.. not a nice a President at all
 
Well if you're an engineer the land of Germany is where the top of the line/groundbreaking and I will always think of them that way.


Aber wie können wir es besser machen!
 
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