Its true, they admire him for his leadership and determination.... not for the evil and tyrany of course, and Hindus are pissed that their symbol has been tarnished so much.
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Will Germany ever live down Hitler?
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Its true, they admire him for his leadership and determination.... not for the evil and tyrany of course, and Hindus are pissed that their symbol has been tarnished so much.
CyclopsRock
Member
I think in some parts of Europe, it's viewed differently. On the one hand, much of our continent was utterly wrecked due to WW2, but on the other hand, our societies and travel are so much more intertwined now. I've been to Germany more times than I can remember, actually, and so of course when someone says "Germany", I don't immediately think of Hitler - but if I'd never been there, I may well have, because he was obviously a very significant figure. No one's ever going to forget he's German, but I think he's much further down the list of "first thoughts" here in Europe.
Austrian, actually.
CyclopsRock
Member
Sorry, you're right. I meant his attachment to Germany.
They used EU to expand the industry and sell their products since it was the only market available to them.
Of course to do so they had to guarantee that the countries they were selling to didn't had a strong industry/agriculture so with the EU agreements they stopped most of that in exchange for money that was given only to certain areas (like building roads). This was also made with the promise that if said countries were ever in trouble they would help them.
Fast forward 20 years and a you have unified economy that strangled the poorest countries and when they needed money (like they would always need given the nature of the agreements) they were forced to do extreme measures of cut costing that are only making things worse to the point that some people are saying those measures shouldn't exist. Germany still insistis on austerity even when everything shows it isn't working.
Of course with the countries that bought Germany products now in heavy recession the german economy is starting to suffer and they will have to eventually back down. Of course until then they will continue to cause unemployment and other issues on other countries.
TL;DR Germany used some european countries to develop after the cold war with the promise that they would be helped. When help was needed they bailed out and enforced extreme measurements in said countries.
Also, I know this is extremely off-topic so I apologise for that.
EDIT: Also, you are german. Don't want to offend you personally. It's just your governments that are making life very difficult for the rest of us.Don't take it as an insult.
lol what are you 95 years old?
hipbabboom
Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
I thought they already had... now will the Nazi's ever live down Hitler? Nope... probably not.
I don't think a lot of people really understand how he came to power. He was a terrorist that managed to grab leadership of a political party and then a country. A foreign terrorist at that. Imagine Anders Breivik doing what he did but in Sweden and then becoming Prime Minister. Complete madness.
Dinosaur Tamer
Member
Don't worry. I wasn't looking for a fight. No offense taken. Just interested in what you were referring to. So thanks for elaborating.
For the sake of this thread we probably should not delve into that topic any further. It's probably complex enough to derail the whole thread.
Nah, that's not entirely true. Hitler only came to power after the small thing called Great Depression. That was in 1929, so at the time Hitler became Chancellor of the Empire (Reichskanzler) Germany wasn't really a "booming" place. There was a negative majority in the parliament for some time (negative in the sense that a majority of MPs rejected democracy), so Hitler certainly didn't come from nothing. He never had his own majority, yes, but he was elected in a correct way.
Even during the "Golden Twenties", which were pretty much like you described them, the Versailles Treaty always loomed in the background. It helped spreading the "Stab-in-the-back myth" (Dolchstoßlegende) that leftist people surrendered even though the army wasn't defeated in battle. Of course that wasn't true, but with the severe repercussions of the Versailles Treaty, it became popular. So yes, the Versailles Treaty certainly did have a large impact on Germany between the wars.
The burning of the parliament (Reichstag) could never be directly linked to the Nazis. Yes, it suited them, but such things do happen (I have a rather recent example, but that could be seen in a wrong way).
The Depression was a setback and Versailles certainly helped, but what I'm trying to combat here is the notion that they made Hitler. Hitler snatched them up alongside the historical revisionism to use as ammunition against his political opponents and to strengthen his own brand, but it was never a given that Germany was doomed to be his. Even whilst suffering the setback of the Depression, Germany was one of the more progressive nations on the planet, and well on its way to finding its feet after the war and paying back its indemnities. Hitler derailed that as much as he could, because it couldn't have escaped him that he was strongest when the nation was weakest. The notion that he merely took advantage of the times absolves him and his cronies of no small amount of confirmed and alleged (as with the Reichstag) sabotage.
peanutbutterlatte
Member
They already have. Luckily, the atrocities will never be forgotten, but I feel like when that generation dies off, people will become more intelligent as a whole to realize that one man does not define a nation.
So on that logic, you'll never buy or use another American product due to the wars in the middle east and the almost complete elimination of the native americans? What about the atomic bombs that America dropped upon Japan that killed millions?
I hope you don't have a Nintendo or Sony product in your house. Japan was on Hitler's side in World War 2 if you didn't know. They were complicit for millions upon millions of deaths and absolute atrocities against humankind. Here's a list! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
I guess you better cancel your PS4 preorder, if you have one. Even the fucking Italians were in cahoots with Hitler. Going to stop eating pizza?
Hell, maybe you should start hating us British too after all the brutality in the middle ages. Shit, better get rid of everything Chinese in your house after millions of people were killed as a result of their actions during the last two hundred years - and god forbid if you ever enter the ground where millions of people were executed by Stalin that we call Russia.
Right. That's my point made. Don't mean to be blunt or abrupt, but Germans have gone a long way to making up for the crimes of a past nation - of which everyone is dead. Maybe you should reconsider. Or take on board the fact that every single nation on this planet has committed atrocities - not just Germany.
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
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/what-europeans-think-each-other
This is amazing
Why is Germany voting for itself? LOL
Brain of J
Banned
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
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/what-europeans-think-each-other
Hilarious. France is so arrogant they voted themselves BOTH most arrogant and least arrogant. Genius.
Just this week in the news there is a man who's father stole a lot of art/paintings from Jews during the war. The son has been living off these paintings for decades. We're talking Picasso, Matisse, etc. It's going to be awhile before it's completely forgotten because in some ways it's not ended. We're still finding wanted SS soldiers hiding from justice.
Also, it's hard to compare to other atrocities because it's so meticulously documented. The Germans did themselves no favors there.
Also, it's hard to compare to other atrocities because it's so meticulously documented. The Germans did themselves no favors there.
Soyongdori
Member
The poll proves that the Greeks are possibly the least trustworthy of all.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
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/what-europeans-think-each-other
Crimsonclaw111
Member
lol. I love how every country voted itself for most compassionate.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
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/what-europeans-think-each-other
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
The blank check helped cause WWI and the Treaty of Versailles is imo the reason for WWII because it allowed someone like Hitler get in power in the first place.
If you don't know what the Treaty of Versailles is, basically it made Germany pay reparations for WWI.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Im sure Germany can live that period down as alot of nations have lived horrible periods down. But it will never be forgotten in our life time.
R10Neymarfan
Member
And WWII is the reason why we currently have problems in the MIddle East, North Korea, Russia, and China. See one major events created a chain that continues to this day.
I recently heard in history class that Germany just finished off paying the reparations from World War I back in 2012! It's crazy.
Many countries never pay those reparations.
God bless you
While getting taken out by an old woman with a sick arm is kinda embarrassing, I'm not convinced it equals gambling away one's homeland and being vilified by history
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
that's essentially what i was hitting at, anyway. he is completely vilified in every way possible, and if you try to say "well hitler was trying to..." then you're just called a neo-nazi and people get angry at you for "defending" him.
I think it will live on for another century or two since American/British television is very fixated on it. Every time I hear about Germany in a SitCom they either make jokes about bretzels and beer or Hitler's Third Reich and then there are also hundreds of documentaries about how great the Americans are for rescuing the world from this great evil.
You know that most countries have a bloody past, right?
Lol, are you serious?
You know that most countries have a bloody past, right?
Wiktor
Member
No country got damaged worse by Germans in WWII than Poland did and nowadays there isn't a lot of bad will here towards them. In fact they're considered our closest partner and the biggest friend in Europe.
XANDER CAGE
Member
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
That's under selling it a bit. It also stripped Germany of its colonies, transferred Elsass-Lothringen to France, established the free city of Danzig, ceded Posen to Poland, and placed the Saar basin under League of nations administration. Then they placed severe military restrictions on the country, whereby Germany was not permitted to have an army of over 100,000 men, conscription was abolished, Germany was not permitted to have an air-force, tanks or poison gas, nor construct or operate submarines. Finally, they were not permitted to station any military assets within a strip of land roughly 50km from the French border.
TacticalFox88
Banned
Were the people who wrote this treaty idiots?
How could anyone remotely rational look at this list of concessions and not think "Yeah...this might bite us in the ass in the future."
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
It was the collaboration of several powers who had conflicting ideas. The French wanted it to be much more severe than it was, while the British and Americans wanted it less severe. You could probably make the case that either of those alternatives would have been better than the compromise.
Skellig Gra
Member
I think we also need to consider that international diplomacy was a lot different almost 100 years old. There weren't a lot of poli sci majors coming out of uni and this was unprecedented territory.
To the OPs point. Eventually Hitler will be just some ancient crazy guy in a history book like so many others before him. People don't hate Italians for all the horrible stuff the Romans did or Scandinavian people for Barbarian raiding/pillaging. Eventually people just won't have a reason to care.
Boom Boom Pow
Banned
how did Germany build its army and airforce then to invade all the other countries without the allies not knowing or doing anything about it?
They weren't idiots. It was lenient compared to the terms Germany imposed on Russia to close the eastern front (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), which snatched up huge tracts of land out of Russian hands. Or the consequences for Germany after the Second World War, which laid low practical military and imperial ambitions far in excess than Versailles had. The Versailles Treaty in Hitler's mind was the stuff of bombast and propaganda mixed with a sliver of truth, much like any of his pet causes.
A combination of secretly violating the restrictions, and when these violations could no longer be concealed, boldly committing to them and silently taunting Europe to do something about it. Hitler gambled successfully in that fashion over and over again, until Danzig and Poland.
dragonelite
Member
True. Unless it is in Football..then there is no such thing as 'bad taste'
We dutch pretty much dont give a fuck who's feels get hurt when it comes to soccer
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
The Germans had been violating the Versailles arms limitation even before Hitler came to power. A German company in the Netherlands had submarines being developed in Finland for the Germans by proxy. Later on you would have the Nazis creating great "recreational flying clubs" to train future combat pilots in aviation, and the German industry developing "fast mail aircraft" which were planned to be equipped with bombs and guns at a later date. There was economic voodoo going on with "Mefo bills", where the Germans basically payed companies in IOUs so they could keep things secretive.
But no amount of secrecy was going to hide it forever sheerly on account of its scale, and the fact that the Germans were rearming was essentially an open secret, known to all major governments. There were legal grounds here for French and British to put a stop to all this by force, but it's complicated. People in 1934 don't have perfect knowledge of the future and don't know that Adolf Hitler is going to become one of history's greatest monsters. Not many people are willing to start a war over this, and a lot of people think that Germany should be allowed to rearm.
In 1936 you have Hitler reoccupying the Rhineland, the German territory on the French frontier that they were not allowed to have any military forces in under the Versailles treaty. Again, political willingness just isn't there to take strong action against this. They're moving soldiers inside their own country. The French have been sitting on the others side of the border for the whole intervening period between WWI and WWII, so why shouldn't the Germans be allowed to have token forces on the other side?
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