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Badly treated pow do hold a grudge for life, and (try hard to) pass on that grudge to next generations. My grandfather happened to be on the losing side of wwii

Badly treated pow do hold a grudge for life, and (try hard to) pass on that grudge to next generations. My grandfather happened to be on the losing side of wwii in yugoslavia and hot harassed for decades because of that. Having tons of people like him, kindling hatred and privately teaching their children that the state you're living in is run by / controlled evil people, ultimately reignited a conflict half a century later.

dki27 6y ago
Yeah, Nazi Grandpa was a good man and Serb genocide could have been prevented if we had just been nicer to fascists after they lost the war they started to annihilate everyone else.
- ithkuil 6y ago
  It's all about identity. Croatian fascists rose to power riding a nationalistic sentiment that was brewing in the country which has been under foreign rule for centuries. Not sure where you get the "started the war to annihilate everyone else" angle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan too, but I don't think it's a good idea to paint everything with a rough brush and miss the nuances. It's important to understand people and what motivates them and what are the phycological forces at play. And you can do that without having to concede a "good people on both sides" bullshit. Honestly I don't think my grandfather had any idea about politics and -isms. He was just a kid been dragged into the war merely by belonging to a given tribe in a given place in a given time. When I was a kid his whole spiel about fascists va communists, christians vs party, was just our people vs their people. He used the same words and arguments I heard of people when the enemy was the "american imperialists". There was no ideology whatsoever, just the feeling of being oppressed. I don't see anything wrong punishing actual war criminals and top level brass, but when you stigmatize a whole population do you really expect people not holding a grudge and distorting facts to paint themselves in the best possible light?

dki27 6y ago

Yeah, Nazi Grandpa was a good man and Serb genocide could have been prevented if we had just been nicer to fascists after they lost the war they started to annihilate everyone else.

ithkuil 6y ago
It's all about identity. Croatian fascists rose to power riding a nationalistic sentiment that was brewing in the country which has been under foreign rule for centuries. Not sure where you get the "started the war to annihilate everyone else" angle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan too, but I don't think it's a good idea to paint everything with a rough brush and miss the nuances. It's important to understand people and what motivates them and what are the phycological forces at play. And you can do that without having to concede a "good people on both sides" bullshit. Honestly I don't think my grandfather had any idea about politics and -isms. He was just a kid been dragged into the war merely by belonging to a given tribe in a given place in a given time. When I was a kid his whole spiel about fascists va communists, christians vs party, was just our people vs their people. He used the same words and arguments I heard of people when the enemy was the "american imperialists". There was no ideology whatsoever, just the feeling of being oppressed. I don't see anything wrong punishing actual war criminals and top level brass, but when you stigmatize a whole population do you really expect people not holding a grudge and distorting facts to paint themselves in the best possible light?