German...Nazi

[Kimjira19]

1. I'm of German (and Welsh, but that's not important) descent and have lived in Germany, I don't find it offensive because I know the assholes will get what's coming to them.

2. The word Nazi refers to that specific party, which only exsisted in Germany; true there has been, is currently, and will be future parties like it and maybe with the same ideals, but only that one was called Nazi, and it happened to be in Germany.

The thing is, as wrong as the Nazis were, I refuse to see them as Evil. Not all Nazis were in on the whole murdering aspect, many were simply normal men and women trying to give thier country a brighter future.

In short, groups aren't Evil, only individual people are.

On a side note did you know that:
Austria is German too (not all Germans joined the German Nation)?
That Gypsys are the actual Aryans?
That the Swastika is a Hindu Peace Symbol?
English evolved from German?

Actually, the swastika is an ancient solar symbol brought by the Aryan nomads to India about 3000 or so years ago. But in most of the Asian world, the swastika is not a horrible symbol. English did evolve mostly from German initially but was also heavily influenced by the Romance languages.I agree with most of what you say. My mother is very prejudiced against the modern Germans, which irritates me because you can hardly hold the child, grand-children, and great-grandchildren of the Nazis responsible for the Holocaust. I do find it insulting. But I can at least say that all of my German ancestors came here before either world war.

 

[Bran Mugen]

Dude, I put up a minor little trivia thing one day, come back the next to find that everyone wants to argue about it. I wasn't going to devote a page to clarify all my statements. I realise that those triva are more invovled then I wrote them, but thier just there to be little ironies to think about, not full blown discussion.

 

[The Singularity]

Well my Facebook status was more along the lines of "God damn Nazis, allow goddamn instant replay in the game!" but I was referencing more of the rule Nazis that refuse instant replay in baseball, soccer and other sports. People think of Germany as Nazis because it was where the most extreme and most documented acts of horror by Nazis were committed.(Except for Japan, they actually did the worst things in the war, especially to Chinese.

Subjective, for some, the greater scale of what was done in Germany overcomes the increased cruelty found in Japan. Not sure which side of that debate I would be on, I would need more info.

Actually they killed more people, because they occupied China for a very long time. For sure they killed the most foreign civilians, but I think German killed the most of their own civilians.

 

[Syn_UK]

Study history a little more. The Holocaust was neither the only nor even the largest genocide in human history. I don't have any accurate info about rowanda, or any other african genocide, but I have heard it is on a much much greater scale. Stalin killed around 21 million if i remember correctly. The ottoman empire drove several million armenians into the desert to starve to death, 15 million i think. It is a fact of human history, we are a violent people who will persecute and kill those who are different at the slightest provocation. turns out i cant find my source anymore, so none of it is reliable, but you guys are in front of a computer, if you care that much about specifics, use google.

Well firstly, I don't know where you're getting those figures from but Wikipedia begs to differ with all of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history

But nonetheless, my point was not really that it was the only one or the largest, more that it is unique in the fact that it came about in a democratic society and was allowed/endorsed by the people of that nation. Any atrocities committed by monarchs or in colonies overseas are not in the control/sight of the people; but the German nation (of the time) is inextricably complicit in the crimes of the Nazis. Again, you can't use that against the current generation of Germans, but you certainly can't divorce Germany as a country from what happened either.

 

[Syn_UK]

The thing is, you have to understand how just how bad the conditions were in Germany after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Germany had to pay massive, massive reparations to Great Britain, the USA and France. France took away a lot of land from Germany and the Allies took away Germany's colonies.

I suggest you read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles#Impositions_on_Germany

The bottom line is, if there is no money in the country, the country is in ruin, you have a lack of resources and the overall the reception to all of these ludicrous concessions that Germany had to make, would you not want to put someone in power who would promise to change all that? I would, whole-heartedly.

To put it into perspective:

The total sum of war reparations demanded from Germany?around 226 billion Reichsmarks?was decided by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission. In 1921, it was reduced to 132 billion Reichsmarks (then $31.4 billion, or £6.6 billion).

A German author has expressed the view that Germany would not finish paying off its World War I reparations until 2020.

Thats more than what Great Britain owed for the Lend Lease Act, which I believe was just over 1 billion pounds (I could be wrong). We (Britain) only just paid that off in 2006.

I personally don't condone the actions of the holocaust or the mass killings then went on to secure Hitler's power, but rather the reason as to why that madman was put in power in the first place.

I do understand those facts, but as you say that doesn't mean that knowing them I go on to condone anything that happened. Also I think you're talking about a slightly different point to me, I can understand that National Socialism was a very attractive option at the time of the election, but the point is more that in the early stages when the Jews were being persecuted (not as in the concentration camps; more when there were bills passed prohibiting Jews from owning businesses, or from being allowed to move freely around the area they lived etc.) the German people allowed it to happen - mostly because on an individual basis it benefited them.

 

[DSK-]

The thing is, you have to understand how just how bad the conditions were in Germany after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Germany had to pay massive, massive reparations to Great Britain, the USA and France. France took away a lot of land from Germany and the Allies took away Germany's colonies.

I suggest you read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles#Impositions_on_Germany

The bottom line is, if there is no money in the country, the country is in ruin, you have a lack of resources and the overall the reception to all of these ludicrous concessions that Germany had to make, would you not want to put someone in power who would promise to change all that? I would, whole-heartedly.

To put it into perspective:

The total sum of war reparations demanded from Germany?around 226 billion Reichsmarks?was decided by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission. In 1921, it was reduced to 132 billion Reichsmarks (then $31.4 billion, or £6.6 billion).

A German author has expressed the view that Germany would not finish paying off its World War I reparations until 2020.

Thats more than what Great Britain owed for the Lend Lease Act, which I believe was just over 1 billion pounds (I could be wrong). We (Britain) only just paid that off in 2006.

I personally don't condone the actions of the holocaust or the mass killings then went on to secure Hitler's power, but rather the reason as to why that madman was put in power in the first place.

I do understand those facts, but as you say that doesn't mean that knowing them I go on to condone anything that happened. Also I think you're talking about a slightly different point to me, I can understand that National Socialism was a very attractive option at the time of the election, but the point is more that in the early stages when the Jews were being persecuted (not as in the concentration camps; more when there were bills passed prohibiting Jews from owning businesses, or from being allowed to move freely around the area they lived etc.) the German people allowed it to happen - mostly because on an individual basis it benefited them.

Well, personally I don't have a definite answer on why such things were condoned.

 

[Syn_UK]

Well, personally I don't have a definite answer on why such things were condoned.

I don't think I have a 'definite answer' but some of the museums in Berlin that I went to talked about this, it seems to form the national guilt in Germany.

 

[spartan231490]

Study history a little more. The Holocaust was neither the only nor even the largest genocide in human history. I don't have any accurate info about rowanda, or any other african genocide, but I have heard it is on a much much greater scale. Stalin killed around 21 million if i remember correctly. The ottoman empire drove several million armenians into the desert to starve to death, 15 million i think. It is a fact of human history, we are a violent people who will persecute and kill those who are different at the slightest provocation. turns out i cant find my source anymore, so none of it is reliable, but you guys are in front of a computer, if you care that much about specifics, use google.

Well firstly, I don't know where you're getting those figures from but Wikipedia begs to differ with all of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history

But nonetheless, my point was not really that it was the only one or the largest, more that it is unique in the fact that it came about in a democratic society and was allowed/endorsed by the people of that nation. Any atrocities committed by monarchs or in colonies overseas are not in the control/sight of the people; but the German nation (of the time) is inextricably complicit in the crimes of the Nazis. Again, you can't use that against the current generation of Germans, but you certainly can't divorce Germany as a country from what happened either.

a) I told you that I wasn't posative about the numbers, and for the armenians in turkey, no one could agree on how many died when my history professor talked about it. He said estimates ranged from 1 millino to 50 million, but he thought it was somewhere in the middle, i think he said 15 million.
b) "no government can survive without the consent of the governed" Or something pretty close to that, i don't remember who said it, maybe ghandi? Think about it, if a majority of the people in a nation really disagree with something that nation is doing, they can stop it. no military has much of a percentage of it's nations adult population, and even without training or weapons, it's pretty easy to win when you outnumber someone 10, 20, even 50 to 1.