What did Germans say after the war?

[Protagoras]

how did they deal with the camps? How did they explain away their passivity during the brown shirt raids? What were their excuses about how they had just tried to take over the world and shove their system down humanity's throat? How could they ever look the rest of the world in the eyes again?

The answers are echoing today.

Some day people elsewhere will ask similar questions:

Didn't the American's know about Abu Garahab? What about Gitmo? How did they sit passively by while their leaders tortured and killed people?

What made them think they could rule the world? How come they were so willing to support people who were so absurdly open in their corruption? How could they not see the massive economic collapse in their near future? Why couldn't they see any of the lessons of Rome, or Germany before them?

How could they believe all those rediculous hypocritical myths about being FREE when they were allowing their leaders to spy on them, to control the press, and to silence critics?

How could they ever look the rest of the world in the eyes again?

How did it go so wrong?

The answers will echo through history.

[RagingInMiami]

1. Well for one thing

They banned the death penalty.

[cantstandbush]

2. Excellent!!! Recommended

[DS1]

3. Mein Gott that was loud!

?

[Hubert Flottz]

23. LMAO!!!

I was there in 70-71 and the place was still messed up from the war. Buildings everywhere had bullet holes in them. One big church in the town I was stationed in, had been bombed during the war and the top of the huge stone church was gone, the walls were held up by big cables.

[murielm99]

4. A lot of them said, "We didn't know."

I am sure that is bullshit.

I remember my dad visiting a German relative when his brother was doing the family genealogy. The woman said they DID know. She was not the only one who knew, and did not speak of it. She spoke about the smell from the crematorium, the disappearing people who dissented, the fear. She offered no excuses. She knew. She knew her country had gone bad, and she was sick at heart. But she did nothing. I will keep doing something. Even if they take me away, I will keep doing something.

[Pachamama]

11. They knew, but they were afraid and many didn't know what to do & by the

time they realized that they needed to, it was too late.

After the war, there was much shock. Some people worked hard towards healing and reaching out to helping their community and to making sure it never happened again. There were many Germans who "helped" the Nazis and many of them just tried to lay low and hope everyone forgot.

There is a great movie by the way called "The Nasty Girl"....If you can find it and rent it, I highly reccommend it. It's a story about a young highschool girl in a German town who asks this very question and what the people did and didn't do and they get very upset that she starts digging for the skeletons.

:hi:

PS: I'm with you Muriel...I'll do everything I can, speak out and won't shut up even as they take me away!

[BattyDem]

5. Wow!

Great post! :toast:

K&R :-)

[BuyingThyme]

6. Adolf who?

[Marr]

7. "I'm more of a Libertarian, myself."

Or whatever the German equivalent was.

[tritsofme]

8. There was a saying in post-war Germany

"Don't mention the war"

It just wasn't talked about very much, until relatively recently.

[ThoughtCriminal]

9. What will Wingnut Hawks say?

Same thing they said after Vietnam:

"We woulda won if it weren't fer thim dirty hippie protestors"

[northofdenali]

10. K&R

"I didn't know"; "I wasn't involved"; and the famous "I had other priorities".

FUCK YOU REPUKES AND APATHETIC, UNCARING MASSES.

[ClayZ]

12. K and R

:kick:

[lala_rawraw]

13. The Wave...

I keep telling people that must see this film... it was mandatory in my school (very small, private) that we see this in 10th grade. Based on a real life experiment done in the US>

[undergroundpanther]

15. I saw it in my middle school

My school was public.

[Frank Cannon]

24. We watched it in German class in high school

And yes, it's excellent. One of the few ABC After School Specials that has truly stood the test of time.

I don't know where you could find a copy of it these days. It's not out on DVD, despite ABC having released a few other 1981 After School Specials.

[radfringe]

14. ummmmm....

"No one anticipated that we would lose." ???

[Disturbed]

16. The masses are usually sheep.

They go along to get along. It is usually a small minority of people that bring about change.

[DemReadingDU]

21. almost like a cult

So many people listen to Limbaugh, watch Fox. If they don't themselves, then they hear people talk about them. And everyone just follows along, thinking what they see & hear is the truth. They don't bother to take the time to actually read and research whether they are hearing facts or lies.

[raccoon]

32. Right, I believe that's true in any society, any century. nt

[theHandpuppet]

17. Well, here's what some of them said

How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,347726,00.html

http://www.washingtonian.com/chats/bookclub/hunt.html

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-10/

[Boomer]

18. The key to Hitler's success

Very interesting:

"A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state."

Of course, Bush is more concerned about making CEOs feel "cared for" rather than the average American citizen, but it's amazing how much abuse Americans will absorb and still see him their protector.

[rman]

22. True; Hitler promised Utopia to the german people

These days we're promised protection from vague shadowy threads.

Of course another factor in Hitler's success was the financial backing by much of the corporate establishment of the time - including some in the US. The latter got of with little more then a slap on the wrist, and individuals from that milieu still hold a lot of power, the Bush family being a most prominent example.

[kaye45]

19. they were made to confront what they had done

The German constitution makes it a crime to deny the Holocaust

Children were taught in school (and they still are) about the horrors of the Third Reich, made to actually go to the death camps and see what they had done.

Many young people in western Germany today are ashamed of what their forefathers had done, and are especially sensitive to human rights issues

In the east, they were not confronted with their role in WW II, and there is still hatred for outsiders

I know this because my family is from Germany

[IndyOp]

27. kaye45 - Thanks for your post & Welcome to DU...

Is there any movement in thought & feeling in the East --

I so believe that truth will set us all free that I would like to hear that there has been progress since reunification, though I won't be surprised to hear from you that the answer is no...

[kaye45]

29. Visit to East Germany

I was in East Germany last fall, many towns are suffering from high unemployment, old communist era buildings stand empty or are being torn down, young people just want to leave. Very sad. The whole country has 11% unemployment after all.

But I must say the Germans did do the hard and painful work confronting their Nazi past, and they are a better democracy for it.

I hope that after the Bush Reich is over, the US is able to confront the fact that this was allowed to happen. It was not just 'those others' who destroyed America's democracy. I believe everyone who watched as if from the sidelines and said nothing must look in their heart and ask themselves how they/we let this happen. Germans after the war saw that that there was no 'us' and 'them', but that there was only 'us', and they acknowledged guilt for what their worst had done. Can the USA do the same?

[barbaraann]

20. They blamed the Austria.

n/t

[barbaraann]

39. oops, too late to edit - I meant Austrians.

n/t

[shadowknows69]

25. Some of us knew

and tried to make a loud noise about it, and are still.

[no_hypocrisy]

26. My friend's uncle was in Germany during the Third Reich. He criticized

the Hitler regime openly in his house, at work, at the Gasthaus. He was warned not to say those things in public, but he continued. He was drafted soon thereafter into the Army and sent immediately to the Eastern Front, where the war was being lost. He wasn't given proper clothing to keep warm against the cruel Russian winter, proper equipment to protect himself and his military group, and enough food to survive. He died a victim as much as any other during the Third Reich. His fate was given ample communication in his town as an example to anyone else. That's why you don't hear too much about why most Germans didn't say or do anything to stop Hitler.

[Radio_Guy]

28. I hope I am wrong

But I fear it will take a country or three to come liberate us from Bushco like Britain, France, Russia and we liberated the Germans from Hitler. How long will it take before the general public makes the connection?

[anitar1]

30. As I recall reading at that time, the Germans denied

knowing about the camps, even when they lived 2 miles down the road and had to smell burning flesh around the clock.Certainly an admirable group of folks.I loved the documentary that showed townspeople having to drag dead bodies out of huge pits.Guess they finally realized that the camps were actually there.

[JNelson6563]

31. I have wondered this too

How will the reich-wingers explain their blind support of this lunacy??

[magellan]

33. Some Germans took matters into their own hands

There were many who resisted the Nazi movement in every way they could, including sacrificing their own lives and safety to help the Allies overthrow Hitler from within Germany. When it ended, these Germans knew who the sell-outs and informants were in their communities. It wasn't long before the brown shirts started turning up shot or hung from the lampposts.

That's a lesson certain lurkers here would be wise to remember.

[Gold Metal Flake]

34. There is a wonderful German film called "The Nasty Girl"...

It's about a young woman who begins to investigate and publish about the people in her German town that worked with the Nazis. Of course, all hell breaks loose as those who thought the past was buried were faced to confront themselves.

[Protagoras]

35. Sounds very interesting.

I'm plugging it into my netflix queue.

I wish there were something in our psyche that would let us say "Never Again" and make it stick.

[Crankie Avalon]

36. They blamed Michael Moore and the imaginary librul media. nt

[TheBaldyMan]

37. you only sing when you're winning

there was a lot of popular support for the axis up until roughly 1943, when the tide of war started to turn against them there was increasing opposition to the war and the Nazi/Japanese governments.

As the war progressed there were an increasing number of Germans incarcerated in concentration camps for opposition to the regime. Brutal repression and summary justice became increasingly commonplace right up to the end of the war.

People still living in Nazi controlled areas became ever more fearful as this stage of the war progressed. The offences that could get you 'disappeared' became minor, just expressing anything that wasn't total support for the Fuhrer could get you a one-way ticket to Belsen.

There are quite a lot of reasons why the germans went on fighting right up to the end but why they went along with the groupthink is debatable. There was no monolithic opinion and some participants would have been willing while others would have been coerced.

[x-g.o.p.er]

38. Well, right after the war they probably said...

Scheisse, did we ever get our asses kicked!!!

[cassiepriam]

40. Americans can't say they didn't know anything....

Most likely they will insist that it was all the right thing to do.
Like Bush will do forever.

[stepnw1f]

41. Alot of them Committed Suicide

for different reasons.

[lfairban]

42. I disagree with most of these responses.

I am not sure whether you are asking a historical question about Germany or a question about current America. I did some reading about the second world war.

As for Germany, the ones that would answer you in total candor would say that you could never understand unless you had been there and lived through what the German people had gone through.

You live in a country where malnutrition is unknown with borders that are with countries that you have good relations with and have not had a major war in a century.

Imagine if the respective populations of Canada and the US were reversed and America was outnumbered and at war every generation or so against Canada allied with Mexico. Imagine the humiliation of losing a war compounded by having the winning counties sucking you dry with war reparations.

Imagine if a major segment of your population had to struggle for enough food to eat year after year. Imagine the great depression lasting for two decades, not one. Imagine seeing your kids slowly starve to death because you can't find food for them.

Shove their system down everybody's throat? Everybody thinks they have the right answer and everybody wants to rule the world. Look at what the US is doing in Iraq!

Which brings us to your question about America in the current era. Once people get psychologically invested, they are very reluctant to admit their mistake. Do you think all those people who were screaming, "Support the troops!" at the anti-war rallies are ready to admit that they were totally lead astray? The New York Times will, but they won't.

The analogies between Germany in the '30s and '40s and current America are numerous and obvious, but they will not convince Republicans of their errors, they will only infuriate them.

[Inland]

43. That's interesting--

If I understand you, it took a lot for Germans to embrace fascism and agression. I see a good portion of the US practically chomping at the bit for it, after a single attack. One more terror attack and we'll be there.

And I also know the answer to what we will say. We'll say the same as we say for, say, civil rights. In the movie, everyone will be asked to identify with the protagonists, the antagonists will be cartoonish figures that everyone will claim represent someone else, maybe a state or a type of person, like "neocons", who were entirely out of the mainstream, did it all against the will of all the good people.