I'm no fan of much of US history and I'm appalled at the direction the country has taken. But comparing our internment camps with the German ones is a real stretch and the atom bombs were dropped during a declared war against an enemy population. That's very different than interring and murdering your own citizens.
"we"?
you were THERE? you made the decision? you were in the Plane? I know I wasn't.
save your sh*t for your Liberal teachers
HRE wrote:
As to the original question, after WWI there were significant populations of Germans living in regions that had been taken from Germany and given to its neighbors, the Rhineland had been given to France, the Sudentenland to Czechoslovakia, Austria had never been part of Germany but there were many people in both countries, remember, Hitler was an Austrian, who thought it should be part of Germany, and the Danzig Corridor, a stretch of coastal land along the Baltic between Germany proper and East Prussia which had a large German population but which had been given to Poland.
The Germans managed to acquire the first three regions peacefully but cedeing the Danzig Corridor meant that Poland would have been land locked. Germany invaded Poland when they were convinced there was no chance of getting the Corridor peacefully and that the Soviet Union would not support Poland militarily.
The big parallel between that situation and the Iraq War is that Hitler managed to convince the German people that Poland repreaented a threat to German security. He actually had Wehrmact units stationed on the Polish side of the German-Poland border dressed in Polish uniforms stage an "attack" on Germany allowing him to portray his invasion of Poland as a response to aggression rather than as aggression itself.
So far, I think this is the only post that does a decent job of answering the question.
I don't remember the details, but Hitler was very effective in creating the illusion that the Germanic people of the Rhineland, Sudetenland and Austria were being persecuted, killed etc, and Germany was liberating them by annexing those lands. I think the German people thought they were liberating their brothers.
HRE wrote:
I don't remember the details, but Hitler was very effective in creating the illusion that the Germanic people of the Rhineland, Sudetenland and Austria were being persecuted, killed etc, and Germany was liberating them by annexing those lands. I think the German people thought they were liberating their brothers.
Hitler used Wilson's "self determination policy" to gain Rhineland, Austria, and Sudetenland.
This has to be the best thread ever posted on letsrun. Food for thought... what would motivate the Germans to murder 6 million(?) jews? Could it be that the jews did something to piss them off? Very good question indeed... but I'm not going there.
they didn't . The just started invading and annexing all their neighbours, until the british said stop doing that or we'll come and sort you out.They didn't listen so the English sorted them out, with a little eventual help from others of course.
vandergraafgenerator wrote:
they didn't . The just started invading and annexing all their neighbours, until the british said stop doing that or we'll come and sort you out.They didn't listen so the English sorted them out, with a little eventual help from others of course.
This is highly inaccurate. Germany buried the Brits during the early stages of WWII and would have eventually completely destroyed them if Hitler didn't turn his attention to the Soviets. Britain needed more than just a "little help" from other countries.
Actually, by early 1941 (BEFORE the invasion of the USSR), Britain was already out-producing Germany.
jeez I must learn to do smilies so that I don't get taken to task by idiots all the time.That's not you that's been complaining about getting snobbed down at the running club because you can only run 29' ish for 10k is it Heidi?
In Germany we also have too many stupid people who blindly follow idiots like George W. Bush.
Hitler outlined his motives very clearly. An example of this is the Hossbach protoclas recorded in 1935. This was a meeting between the top military advisors, Von Blomberg, Schmidt, Goerring, Raeder, and the forgein minister Neureth. This was seen as ludacris by Blomberg and Schmidt. The result being there replacement by more "commited" men. Hitler was rather adament that it was necessity for Germany to attack into the east to gain Lebensraum (living space) for the German nation and this of course would result in war with Russia. Clash was inevitable in Hitlers view and it must come on his terms. In order to make the most effective use of his resources wih Germany's not completely mobilized economy Hitler had to attack before France and Britain had reached armament capacity. At the current moment Germany did have an advantage but Hitler feared that if Germany did not invade by 1940 this would be lost. He saw the end of the German superiority being 1945 if nothing was done. Thus there was only a small window of opportunity for Hitler to penetrate this eastern sphere of terriotry. Hitler made it clear that the Army had to attack by 1940 and it was done promptly. IE SEPTEMBER 1939
Versailles can only be used soo far because it completley ignores his territorial ambitions, declaration of war on the United States ( HE WAS UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO). Hitler had effectivley reversed the injustices of the Versaille treaty by the Anschluss in 1938.
The German perpsective is actually pretty ambivalent about WW2. Hitler himself was infuritated with the German populations refusal to welcome the war. There were no cheering crowds and parades. He stated "I cannot fight a war with people such as these!" This can be attributed to the fact that
A) Most Germans thought war would never come (Because Hitler had been able to accomplish so much without resorting to invasion, Anschluss, Rheinland, Armament, and Chezckoslavakia.
B) Germans were not eager to make great sacrifices again, the causalties of the first war were still had a very visible impact on society.
crb wrote:
At the current moment Germany did have an advantage but Hitler feared that if Germany did not invade by 1940 this would be lost. He saw the end of the German superiority being 1945 if nothing was done. Thus there was only a small window of opportunity for Hitler to penetrate this eastern sphere of terriotry. Hitler made it clear that the Army had to attack by 1940 and it was done promptly. IE SEPTEMBER 1939
Quite true. As a matter of fact, Hitler later lamented that the Allies gave way to him over the Sudetenland. He felt Germany had a much more pronounced advantage in 1938 than in 1939, and would therefore have stood a better chance of overall victory had hostilities begun at that time. He regretted that Chamberlain didn't allow him a pretense for war.
Historian Alan Bullock wrote that "the war came both too early and too late" for Germany. Hitler blames this on the Munich conference as a fatal postponement of the his war aims that wasted vital time.
It was the age of nationalism, when 'nations' of people created racial superiority myths and used their newly found industrial might to build machines to supply armies which pigged out their neighbors. Germany did what the USSR, United States, France, Japan, Hungary, England, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, etc. all did, but Germany got bad press since they killed whites and half-whites (USSR, Jews, Gypsies). All of the other countries killed ten times more Asians, Africans, Arabs, Indians, Native peoples, but that was considered acceptable to most of the European and American racists at the time. Today, nationalism is all but gone. The European Union, ASEAN, Nafta/Cafta, Arab League, massive global Zaibatsu, and their copycats, are the norm. Nations must behave according to consensus. Renegade nationalism is frowned upon and on the way to extinction. Witness the case of Islam and the U.S. colony in Israel, once of the last surviving 'nationalist' occupation regimes.
Is it not ironic that Hitler wasnt even a German native ? He was a Austrian who didnt get German citzenship till adulthood.
isnt this ironic wrote:
Is it not ironic that Hitler wasnt even a German native ? He was a Austrian who didnt get German citzenship till adulthood.
Nationalism is a political principle which holds that the political and national units should be congruent. That is, the "state" and the "nation" should be one and the same. The "nation," then, refers to a group of people who share the same culture, and who recognize that they are of the same culture (i.e. there is an element of voluntarism to the nation). States can exist without nations, and nations without states, but "nationalism" cannot exist with only one or the other. Hitler may have been Austrian (i.e. from the Austrian state), but he, along with many other German-speaking Austrians, identified himself with an *idea of a Germanic culture. Hence, German nationalism drew its strength from the fact that European political borders (i.e. states) did not correspond to national ones.
jawjuh wrote: This has to be the best thread ever posted on letsrun. Food for thought... what would motivate the Germans to murder 6 million(?) jews? Could it be that the jews did something to piss them off? Very good question indeed... but I'm not going there.
Clarify for us, which of these two are you suggesting:
(a) there's never any such thing as a victim, because everyone who ever gets genocided or killed or persecuted or raped or beat up or whatever must've done something to deserve it
(b) there's something special about the Jews (and presumably the Roma, gays, disabled, and whoever else) that justified their genocide
Yeah sure, some fine "food for thought" and a "very good question".
Hitler may have never intended to exterminate the Jews and that the initiatives were taken by radical rightest elements of the Party. This was the case in Kyrstalnacht which was actually initiated by Reichspropaganda minister Goebbles, and according to Himmler, Hitler wasnt even notified until the events had occured. There is virtually no written evidence that survived the war where Hitler directly ordered the extermination of Jews. A more likely scenario ( very brief because I could write a paper on this) goes along these lines.
Following the Berlin Olympics there was relatively come period for German Jews. During this time period radical elements of the Nazi memebership Like Julius Streicher, Joseph Goebbles, and Hermann Goering demanded harsher actions against the Jews. Hitler needed to appeal to radical right of the party to keep in force aspect of Nazi rule in tact. Many of these men had animostity towards the Jews for financial reason as in the case of Goering who wanted to accumulate the vast monetary assets of the German Jewish elite. Hitler also had to be satisfy consevatives like Schach and primarily Hindenburg who rejected and protested the conditons of the the Laws for the Purification of the Civil Service passed in 1933 on the grounds it discriminated against Jews who had shown their patriotic commitment to the Reich. Hitler was pushed between two groups in terms of domestic policy. With the death of Hindenberg in 1938 that no longer presented itself as an issue.
But in regards the the exact policy of extermination active acts of Genocide against the Jews (by German forces) did not begin untill 1941. And even then that was strictly isolated to the Eastern European Jews in Poland and the sovier Union. German Jews were still relatively safe. The implementation of the final solution and possible proposal of the final solution came in 1942 at the Wansee Conference. The men directly responsible were Rheinard Heydrich and Henreich Himmler. Hitler obviously approved of such methods but it is unlikley he was the source.
To answer how and why the Jews one should note the condition of political mobility in Nazi government, which consisted of pleasing Hitler. Thus this can be taken to mean that some high ranking government officals may have taken it upon themselves to implement harsher and harsher policies against the Jews as a means to curry Hitlers favor. It Nazi Germany it became common to act not just in accordance with the laws but in their spirit. Meaning that anti semitism may have been taken too far and turned into extermination by men like Himmler in an attempt to please Hitler.
According to Jewish encyclopedia's from the 1970's and maybe after, but I haven't look into later editions, there were not even six million Jews in all of Europe at that time, let alone Germany and Poland. Where did the six million Jews come from? Six million died, yes, but they weren't all Jews, most of them were non Jews.