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Teach Holocaust from the prospective of a German soldier?

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Kraichgauer
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12 Jul 2022, 5:08 am

cyberdad wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Not to get off track, but it wasn't everyday German soldiers who carried out the Holocaust, but the SS. There's a clear difference between regular German men fighting for their country - as misled as their country was - and the SS who were genuinely fanatical monsters.


Actually Hitler ordered German soldiers to engage in a war of annihilation in the eastern front which mean't all German soldiers in the east were ordered to kill civilians including murdering women and children when they came upon them.

I don't honestly know what percentage engaged in atrocities but it would have been impossible to disobey the Fuhrer's orders in not shooting civilians on the eastern front. Even soldiers who managed to avoid killing women and children would have witnessed their fellow soldiers killing and raping civilians.

This is what I was saying after the war the surrendering german forces would have claimed no knowledge of war crimes which in retrospect is probably a lie.


I'm sure there were plenty who had committed atrocities, but there were also many who had refused to carry out such orders. While it hadn't been on the Eastern Front, Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa had adamantly refused to carry out war crimes, or to hand Jews over to the SS. Wilhelm Cannaris, the head of German military intelligence, the Abwehr, also had not only refused to carry out atrocities, but even worked to save people from the death camps (it's been since learned Oskar Schindler had been directly answering to Cannaris), and even tried sabotaging Hitler's war effort. Cannaris was executed for his trouble after the failed Stauffenberg bomb plot.


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12 Jul 2022, 5:11 am

naturalplastic wrote:
MaxE wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Not to get off track, but it wasn't everyday German soldiers who carried out the Holocaust, but the SS. There's a clear difference between regular German men fighting for their country - as misled as their country was - and the SS who were genuinely fanatical monsters.

The average person in Germany has ancestors who served in the military during WWII. You can't tell all of them to be ashamed of their ancestry.

Dude. Are you aware of when WWII happened? Only about three generations ago. Living Germans have great grandparents, grandparents, or parents, or were themselves, veterans of WWII. Were not talking about the Thirty Years War of the Seventeenth Century. So its not far enough back in history to speak of "ancestors". :lol:


Also, this newer generation of Germans have come to terms with the crimes their country had committed during the war. Very different from how too many of us Americans are still unable to come to terms with the legacy of slavery and racism.


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12 Jul 2022, 6:01 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
MaxE wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Not to get off track, but it wasn't everyday German soldiers who carried out the Holocaust, but the SS. There's a clear difference between regular German men fighting for their country - as misled as their country was - and the SS who were genuinely fanatical monsters.

The average person in Germany has ancestors who served in the military during WWII. You can't tell all of them to be ashamed of their ancestry.

Dude. Are you aware of when WWII happened? Only about three generations ago. Living Germans have great grandparents, grandparents, or parents, or were themselves, veterans of WWII. Were not talking about the Thirty Years War of the Seventeenth Century. So its not far enough back in history to speak of "ancestors". :lol:


Also, this newer generation of Germans have come to terms with the crimes their country had committed during the war. Very different from how too many of us Americans are still unable to come to terms with the legacy of slavery and racism.

Or Iraq for that matter.

I'm 69, 2 years older than @naturalplastic, but I'm inclined to think that the average person on WP is young enough to think of a forebear who fought in WWII as an ancestor.


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cyberdad
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12 Jul 2022, 4:45 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
I'm sure there were plenty who had committed atrocities, but there were also many who had refused to carry out such orders. While it hadn't been on the Eastern Front, Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa had adamantly refused to carry out war crimes, or to hand Jews over to the SS. Wilhelm Cannaris, the head of German military intelligence, the Abwehr, also had not only refused to carry out atrocities, but even worked to save people from the death camps (it's been since learned Oskar Schindler had been directly answering to Cannaris), and even tried sabotaging Hitler's war effort. Cannaris was executed for his trouble after the failed Stauffenberg bomb plot.


I specifically was mentioning the eastern front where disobeying orders was impossible, Secondly Stalin had ordered all civilians to resist so partisan groups were more widespread (there was much less widespread collaboration with the incoming Nazis compared with France, Scandanavia and Holland). The Slavic civilian population on the eastern front were well aware of what was awaiting them so the German soldiers were told to expect resistance.

Even in Greece and Yugoslavia the Nazis practiced retribution where for every German soldier killed by partisans around 10 civilians were rounded up and shot.

I agree not all German soldiers stooped to killing civilians but orders were orders. We will never know the level of complicity due to code of silence after the war. It's like rounding up school boys after a brawl. All of them will claim they didn't start it.



cyberdad
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12 Jul 2022, 4:48 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
Also, this newer generation of Germans have come to terms with the crimes their country had committed during the war. Very different from how too many of us Americans are still unable to come to terms with the legacy of slavery and racism.


Agreed, the modern Germans have not been exposed to the same indoctrination and subsequent governments since Willie Brandt in the west of Germany have been careful to educate young Germans on the dangers of propaganda. Germans are also used to multiculturalism and encouraged to travel so they tend to be more broad minded and culturally aware.



Kraichgauer
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12 Jul 2022, 6:25 pm

cyberdad wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Also, this newer generation of Germans have come to terms with the crimes their country had committed during the war. Very different from how too many of us Americans are still unable to come to terms with the legacy of slavery and racism.


Agreed, the modern Germans have not been exposed to the same indoctrination and subsequent governments since Willie Brandt in the west of Germany have been careful to educate young Germans on the dangers of propaganda. Germans are also used to multiculturalism and encouraged to travel so they tend to be more broad minded and culturally aware.


Indeed.


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13 Jul 2022, 2:46 am

Here's how one German lady learned by accident her grandfather was Amon Geoth who was an
SS captain and the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... Goeth.html