Reply #17: really?

[sui generis]

I have personal knowledge sir.

My family is from Bavaria, with my jewish grandfather marrying into an aristocratic family (the Wittelsbachs). Before there were jews in prison camps there were socialists in prison camps. And catholic priests. He should know, he was sent to Dachau twice, the first time for having socialist friends, and the second time for being jewish. My older 14 year old uncle died in Dachau, a victim of a decompression experiment, for the crime of being gay, something he confessed to a counselor at school.

Ironically, my grandfather was also in the German army serving in his vocation as a master civil engineer. He wore the uniform. He had a choice, about being in the army. If his wife wanted food stamps to get rationed butter, sugar, milk, flour and what few eggs there might be available (and you needed stamps, not money), he had to serve. German soldiers didn't have a choice about what party they were aligned with, even if only nominally, in a one-party system, if they wanted their children to eat.

An American would have shot my grandfather on sight. There is considerably more horror and grief in this story that is not appropriate for casual discussion on DU.

But what I can say is, my younger uncle also died a few days ago, in 1945, at the age of four, while my grandfather was in Dachau the second time. He died of malnutrition and pneumonia, with only a few undeveloped photos to document he was ever here. My grandmother, alone, deposed and destitute, buried him quietly in the field out back of the house she was staying at in Ansbach.

After the American occupation took hold, my grandfather actually was able to get miraculous things from the Americans -- fresh apples, a small tube of toothpaste, some soap, from the Americans. On the way home, carrying the camera that had the last undeveloped film of his son, an American soldier stopped him and asked him for his papers and searched him. He accused my grandfather of being a FUCKING NAZI, roughed him up, confiscated the fruit and toothpaste, and when my grandfather pleaded for him in English to not destroy the film because it was picture of his son, the soldier tore the film from the camera and threw it on the ground, and ground it into the dirt.

So tell me again, what is a Nazi? Is it whatever you or any other American thinks a Nazi is, based on some internal dialogue? Or some stereotype? And how willing are we to act on those narrow definitions? The only "nazi" there that day was that American soldier, by the most common american definition. He finished what Dachau started; assaulted a man for an idea, and took away the last link this man had to his son, forever, beat him physically, and almost destroyed him in spirit.

I can step away and think that most ignorant use of the term today just means unreasonably authoritarian, and let it go.

Life is too complicated for simple blanket rules in language.