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So who here is German?
Yes 18%  18%  [ 11 ]
Sort of 35%  35%  [ 22 ]
No 47%  47%  [ 29 ]
Total votes : 62

MrLoony
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16 May 2011, 9:06 pm

Laz wrote:
Some of my french relations have a lot of bitterness towards the germans. But then this did kinda happen to them so they do have their reasons having lived under 4 years of nazi occupation.


Go to China and ask the people there how they feel about the Japanese.

Better yet, visit Nanking. We call it the Nanking Massacre. I heard it by its other name.


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16 May 2011, 9:18 pm

Laz wrote:
Just goes to show what you get for having crap old decrepid senile men as your top field marshals


Yep... thinking in terms of World War I instead of how to avoid those exact strategic situations is part of what undid them. Then there was their great emphasis on the Maginot Line, the thousands of men wasted on "Fortress Divisions" required to man it, the varying silly opinions against fortifying the Belgian border against the logical German attack that would (again!) come from there, not the French-German border... ah.. I could go on for hours with why overall, the French brass sucked so hard at that time

As to the OP, as someone who is half-German I've gotten some hate in the past, but I don't really care, their bigotry towards Germans is just an ignorant, ret*d half sibling to the perfectly legitimate hatred of Nazism. Some people erroneously think German = Nazi, Nazi = German. Nobody mentions, of course, that Fascism is not a German invention, or that Hitler was Austrian...


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16 May 2011, 9:24 pm

MrLoony wrote:
Laz wrote:
Some of my french relations have a lot of bitterness towards the germans. But then this did kinda happen to them so they do have their reasons having lived under 4 years of nazi occupation.


Go to China and ask the people there how they feel about the Japanese.

Better yet, visit Nanking. We call it the Nanking Massacre. I heard it by its other name.


People might be more willing to move on in East Asia from those Japanese war crimes if the damn Japanese would take the time to actually admit they happened and start including the full history of World War II in their history books.
The German government on the other hand has paid billions in reparations and has not made these concerted efforts at nationalistic revisionist history as the Japanese. Its really insulting to the millions of innocent victims that the Japanese government is allowed to get away with this dishonesty. Though the same could be said for many other genocides and ethnic cleansing actions of the past 100 years or so (the Armenian Genocide being another good example of government sanctioned information suppression)


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bf109e4
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16 May 2011, 9:33 pm

Regarding to your mom case, I suggest u mom to undergo hypnotherapy, to see what's going on in her sub-conscious mind. Maybe she saw some TV program about how bad the German is, which affect her feeling towards the Germans.

Or even better, to go for a past life regression. I won't be surprise if u mom see herself being "massacred" by the German SS in her past life, which will make her hate every German she came across.

I hope this help



MrLoony
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17 May 2011, 1:12 am

Vigilans wrote:
People might be more willing to move on in East Asia from those Japanese war crimes if the damn Japanese would take the time to actually admit they happened and start including the full history of World War II in their history books.
The German government on the other hand has paid billions in reparations and has not made these concerted efforts at nationalistic revisionist history as the Japanese. Its really insulting to the millions of innocent victims that the Japanese government is allowed to get away with this dishonesty. Though the same could be said for many other genocides and ethnic cleansing actions of the past 100 years or so (the Armenian Genocide being another good example of government sanctioned information suppression)


And yet, people talk about the French hating modern Germans as just something that should happen (overlooking the fact that most of the hatred comes from before WWI, and WWI and WWII were just excuses), and yet are completely unaware of what Japan did in WWII.

Japan's a different nation and culture now, as is Germany. I'm not saying that holding onto that hatred is justified (though disliking the fact that Japan refuses to acknowledge those events... well, I think a little international pressure might help), just that we seem to be really biased as to who we apply it to. Oh, not to mention the whole "atomic bomb" thing...

Apparently, nobody in the US (can't say for other countries) cares about a country unless it's in NA, Europe, or Australia.


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17 May 2011, 1:27 am

MrLoony wrote:
Vigilans wrote:
People might be more willing to move on in East Asia from those Japanese war crimes if the damn Japanese would take the time to actually admit they happened and start including the full history of World War II in their history books.
The German government on the other hand has paid billions in reparations and has not made these concerted efforts at nationalistic revisionist history as the Japanese. Its really insulting to the millions of innocent victims that the Japanese government is allowed to get away with this dishonesty. Though the same could be said for many other genocides and ethnic cleansing actions of the past 100 years or so (the Armenian Genocide being another good example of government sanctioned information suppression)


And yet, people talk about the French hating modern Germans as just something that should happen (overlooking the fact that most of the hatred comes from before WWI, and WWI and WWII were just excuses), and yet are completely unaware of what Japan did in WWII.

Japan's a different nation and culture now, as is Germany. I'm not saying that holding onto that hatred is justified (though disliking the fact that Japan refuses to acknowledge those events... well, I think a little international pressure might help), just that we seem to be really biased as to who we apply it to. Oh, not to mention the whole "atomic bomb" thing...

Apparently, nobody in the US (can't say for other countries) cares about a country unless it's in NA, Europe, or Australia.


That is often the case. Of course, there is the atomic bombings. But then again, the 'conventional' bombing of Tokyo actually resulted in greater casualties and deaths than Hiroshima, and most of Japan's cities were obliterated as well but not by nuclear weapons. Then there is the whole strategic bombing of Germany, which was also comparable to the one done to Japan (in that almost all of Germany's cities were targeted). There is certainly a lot of pain in the memories of a lot of Germans about events like the bombing of Dresden and debate continues to this day about strategic bombing as a tactic. But it still comes down to the Germans accepting responsibility on an official level and the Japanese... not really... Its a real shame.

Japan is different but in many ways it still is the same. This whole 'textbook controversy' (as it is referred to there) about events like the Rape of Nanjing or the twisted medical/biological warfare experiments conducted on Chinese people and sometimes POWs... Then there is their horrible track record with POWs... Korean 'comfort women'... many shameful things that shame the honor of Japan to some to the extent they just want to paint over it and hope its possible to move on


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MrLoony
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17 May 2011, 5:15 am

That's pretty much how I see the events (though I was unaware of the casualties of Tokyo bombing).

As I said, though, Japan (and Germany, for the record) is very different than when it was during the war. It's like Italy having to make amends for the actions of the Roman Empire. It may be in the same place (and, in the case of Japan, shares the same name), but it is not the same. The same holds true for Germany.


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17 May 2011, 6:16 pm

My family has a strong German heritage.
Most of them are as*holes.
Therefore, I agree with your premise.



MasterJedi
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17 May 2011, 7:45 pm

YourMother wrote:
Psychopompos wrote:
CockneyRebel wrote:
There's a lot of racism against the Arian race. Why can't people just leave each other alone?


Did you mean "Aryan" ? Because "arian" are the followers of a christian heresy which disappeared several centuries ago. :lol:



This +there's no such thing as the "Aryan race" anyway... :roll:

^This^

We are the species human. The collective term for a group of humans is a race despite superficial differences.

A school of fish, a murder of crows, a pack of dogs, a race of humans.


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17 May 2011, 9:48 pm

I have German ancestry and I was asked once if I hate Jews. It's a load of crap really. Racism drives me up the wall, regardless of who's the target. :/



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21 May 2011, 12:46 am

I am "sort of" German. I am Canadian by citizenship, and my family has been here for hundreds of years. I do, however, have German ancestry through both my mother's and father's side of the family. While I have a lot of Western European genes in my DNA, German is one of the main ones.



Tequila
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21 May 2011, 1:44 am

Bloodheart wrote:
In England this sort of thing towards Germans is almost okay, it's a bit silly really.


Ah, yes. The "Two World Wars and one World Cup" factor.



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21 May 2011, 1:47 am

MrLoony wrote:
As I said, though, Japan (and Germany, for the record) is very different than when it was during the war. It's like Italy having to make amends for the actions of the Roman Empire. It may be in the same place (and, in the case of Japan, shares the same name), but it is not the same. The same holds true for Germany.


Yup. It's ridiculous to expect young Germans these days to feel responsible for what happened under Nazi Germany. Completely different people, different time, different mindset. This does not mean that the lessons of Hitler's Germany should ever be forgotten - the lesson is often overlooked about how minorities can be demonised by ordinary people and the mechanisms and events that brought this into place. Dislike of Jews, the disabled, Polish people and Roma didn't just magically appear in 1933.

It's like wanting regular British people today to feel personally responsible for the Amritsar massacre. It's just not on.



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21 May 2011, 2:16 am

Descartes wrote:
By no means am I siding with your mom, but being German is a nationality, not a race. Your mom is prejudiced, but not racist.


I'm was thinking the same, just because I hate anything to do with newcastle doesn't make me a racist. I like to think I'm a realist :D



christian77
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21 May 2011, 5:39 pm

Well, I am German, Really. One hundred percent. But I was not alive during the Third Reich, neither were my parents. My family and myself are certainly not accepting any responsibility for what was done by other people a long time ago and of course we do not feel guilty or anything like that. Why should we?

I also have got a very good friend and co-worker from Japan and I am going to Japan every year for more than 3 months. I understand the Japanese people living today hesitating to say Sorry. I know quite a few Japanese people at my age and they are totally normal and nice persons, maybe even nicer than people from other countries.

There are different people living in every country, some nicer and some being not so nice. There are much more important things that matter. like education, character or intelligence. If you are judging people by the country they were born in and the "history" you have been taught in school, well, then you are a quite stupid thing.



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23 May 2011, 3:09 am

I have an excellent relationship with Germany.Krautrock , German National football team...