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Do you have a link to the comic? I think it would do well in today's climate, but you definitely need to get rid of the "German" and replace it with something
by nexuist 6y ago
Do you have a link to the comic?
I think it would do well in today's climate, but you definitely need to get rid of the "German" and replace it with something less general, maybe "Nazi"? (It works because VW actually did work with Nazis in the 40s). Not every German worked for the specific team at VW that propagated this crisis, just like not every German even knew about the camps, so they don't deserve to be targeted by a broad brush like that.
- hodgesrm 6y agoIt's hard to decouple "Nazi" from "German." Nazi is the native language abbreviation for National Socialist German Workers Party. The nationality is baked into the name in a very deliberate way. Sad to report, the party and its beliefs were widely supported among German citizens at the time. Its grip was broken by catastrophic defeat followed by occupation. (To their credit Germans faced up to their history in a way that is relatively rare among nations. The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is just one of many examples.)
- __m 6y agoThe abbreviation would be nsdap, not nazi. Nazi includes everybody with that ideology, not just party members
- hodgesrm 6y agoGerman abbreviations work differently. You typically pick 2-3 significant syllables. "Nazi" comes from NAtionalsoZIalistische deutsche arbeiterpartei. Usual pattern is more like GEheime STAatsPOlizei = "Gestapo", which picks the first syllables of significant words. As to the second point, in Germany at least Nazi refers to party members or close adherents like Neonazis. The catchall term is usually Faschisten (fascists). Americans use the term Nazi far more loosely, to the extent it has lost much of its descriptive value.
- __m 6y agoNot all abbreviations work like that, see the Wikipedia entry for the party: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistische_Deutsche_Arbeiterpartei https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistische_Deuts... Nazi is the abbreviation for Nationalsozialist. It’s true that it’s used interchangeably but the official abbreviation is nsdap.
- hodgesrm 6y agoThanks, your point about Nazi being really short for Nationalsozialist seems correct. To be honest I don't think I've ever heard anyone say NSDAP out loud in German. Perhaps I should get out more.
- casefields 6y agoThey faced up to it because the Allies forced them through denazification.[0] Same thing we did in Iraq.[1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification