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As a German, born roughly 40 years after the war, I still cannot fathom the atrocities we Germans brought to the world at large and to so many million individua

As a German, born roughly 40 years after the war, I still cannot fathom the atrocities we Germans brought to the world at large and to so many million individuals. I grew up learning the history, I know my grandparents (as well as probably great grandparents) played their part in what happened. I am deeply sorry for what they/we did and even saying it these words just sound hollow in light of the magnitude of cruelty and injustice that happened. I am very sorry what your grandfather had to endure and I am happy he survived. Though it doesn't change the past I will make sure that my children and grandchildren will remember what happened in order to prevent anything like that happening in our lifetimes again.

shrubble 5y ago
The Allies also committed war crimes, the bombing of Dresden being the most well-known I would guess. The Soviets brutally enslaved and worked to death 1000s of German POWs at a minimum also. War is detestable...
- jasonshaev 5y ago
  Playing the "both sides" card is a hell of a take regarding WW2, especially when the article is literally about liberating Auschwitz. Of course both sides committed atrocities in war. But only one side committed mass genocide on an industrial scale.
  - shrubble 5y ago
    I was responding specifically to the German poster above. Crushing guilt laid on a generation that wasn't even alive at the time is unwarranted.
    - morelisp 5y ago
      Germany has an extremely healthy attitude towards the Holocaust; it would do most western nations well to model it as regards their own historical atrocities.
- adventured 5y ago
  If someone initiates war, brings war to your people, threatens the destruction of your people (I mean as a nation state) - you are morally entitled to do anything required to defend your people. Anything. Without exception, and up to including killing every single person of the attacking nation if that is what is required to stop the war (which you did not initiate). Realistically you won't have to go that far, however there is no scenario where you can have total war on the scale of WW2, and civilians from the attacking side are not likely going to die in very large quantities. All of those deaths, without exception, rest on the moral back of those who began the war. The attacking party holds the moral responsibility for what is required to stop them. If you have to kill all the civilians supporting the industrial side of the war in order to stop the war machine supplies (whether in Nazi Germany or under the Empire of Japan), the moral responsibility rests with the party that initiated the war. Your moral duty as a defending nation is not to trade your people's lives at a equal proportion so that you feel great about not killing too many people. It's to make the attacking party stop, capitulate, give up, surrender their efforts, and that is all. If that requires killing their civilians at a 100 to 1 ratio, that is entirely morally rational and just. The guilt of those deaths entirely rests with the attacking nation. Which is also not the same as saying that the defending side should kill as many civilians as possible, just to do it. It means they're absolved of civilian deaths on the attacking side as a concern morally, so long as the civilian deaths serves the purpose of helping to end the war.
  - shrubble 5y ago
    Nothing that you wrote matches the Geneva conventions. Or more properly, almost everything you wrote would be in violation of the Geneva conventions.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - w0de0 5y ago
    All arguments of just war and the morality of self defense aside: this a disastrously foolish way to go about being a sentient species on a single planet.
saiya-jin 5y ago
I would suggest avoiding some sort of self-inflicted trauma from this horrible past (which might not be happening but it reads like that to me). There is no point getting depressed from one's ancestors past - if one looks in the past far enough, there will be probably something utterly horrible that given nation/tribe/group did to somebody innocent. Basically all western european democracies fall into this category, and many, many other nations too. Don't forget about it by any means, tech your kids as I will do, but don't put emotions into this just because your nation was the culprit. There were similar things happening to innocent civilians en masse in the past elsewhere. Genocides are not an invention of Germany or 20th century, life was often pretty horrible and violent in the past.
- distribot 5y ago
  I don't know if personal guilt or shame is the correct feeling either, but I also don't think OP should feel nothing. Time and entropy (empires dissolving or population groups migrating) definitely diffuse the responsibility for a horrific act. Of which there are many in history. But this specific thing happened in living memory, was performed by an organization that still exists (a German speaking nation state, with almost the same borders as before), and by people the OP knows personally. In fact, it's a very wealthy nation that OP has gained a lot of advantage from living in. It's subjective and graduated, but I don't think it's been nearly "long" enough that the Holocaust just background noise next to all other events that have happened in human history. Modern Germany is awesome btw. Really respect how they've reckoned with this awful time in their history.
- vmception 5y ago
  Naaaaaaaah Everywhere else the state just cut off the ability to feed a large population, or a particularly brutal military unit went from town to town. Germany built trains and factories for the express purpose of turning people into jello and ash This is the only reason anybody is interested in German politics, a comical off-broadway show just to see if they’re going to turn the ovens back on. And this is coming from someone that likes Germany and Germans and would avoid some areas. Thats what they did. Their robotic efficiency is still relevant in the industrial way the world went, especially compared to their neighbors. Even the most extremist Germans 100 years ago weren’t inaccurate about that: the cultures around them did not support efficient allocation of resources and making those resources valuable to others. The methodology those extremists chose was not tolerable. Third time is a charm with domination in the form of finances this time. Everyone is skeptical of ongoing German tolerance of the situation.
dalbasal 5y ago
He held no grudges by the time I knew him, certainly not against unborn generations. He visited in Berlin in the 70s, as a tourist, spoke german, had german friends and felt sorry for those who (like him) had their communities destroyed after the war. We were brought up to believe the remembering does matter, fwiw. I have a lot of respect for Germany's honest portrayal and study of its past. It is a rarity, perhaps singular.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
fit2rule 5y ago
I hope you will understand that there are also people in the world who truly love the German people today, and consider their lives enriched by the experience of modern Germany. I am grateful for what the Germans are today. Your society kicks ass in so many ways.
e40 5y ago
> I am very sorry what your grandfather had to endure and I am happy he survived. Though it doesn't change the past I will make sure that my children and grandchildren will remember what happened in order to prevent anything like that happening in our lifetimes again. You might want to check out the new podcast Day X. It's about resurgence of far right extremism in Germany going on right now. Sadly, the same thing seems to be happening in my country (US). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/podcasts/far-right-german-extremism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/podcasts/far-right-german...
aduitsis 5y ago
Hey fellow European. Please allow me to thank you deeply for that. You cannot be held responsible for anything that some people 3 generations before yours did, but nevertheless your sense of responsibility is really truly inspiring.

shrubble 5y ago

The Allies also committed war crimes, the bombing of Dresden being the most well-known I would guess. The Soviets brutally enslaved and worked to death 1000s of German POWs at a minimum also. War is detestable...

jasonshaev 5y ago
Playing the "both sides" card is a hell of a take regarding WW2, especially when the article is literally about liberating Auschwitz. Of course both sides committed atrocities in war. But only one side committed mass genocide on an industrial scale.
- shrubble 5y ago
  I was responding specifically to the German poster above. Crushing guilt laid on a generation that wasn't even alive at the time is unwarranted.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    Germany has an extremely healthy attitude towards the Holocaust; it would do most western nations well to model it as regards their own historical atrocities.
adventured 5y ago
If someone initiates war, brings war to your people, threatens the destruction of your people (I mean as a nation state) - you are morally entitled to do anything required to defend your people. Anything. Without exception, and up to including killing every single person of the attacking nation if that is what is required to stop the war (which you did not initiate). Realistically you won't have to go that far, however there is no scenario where you can have total war on the scale of WW2, and civilians from the attacking side are not likely going to die in very large quantities. All of those deaths, without exception, rest on the moral back of those who began the war. The attacking party holds the moral responsibility for what is required to stop them. If you have to kill all the civilians supporting the industrial side of the war in order to stop the war machine supplies (whether in Nazi Germany or under the Empire of Japan), the moral responsibility rests with the party that initiated the war. Your moral duty as a defending nation is not to trade your people's lives at a equal proportion so that you feel great about not killing too many people. It's to make the attacking party stop, capitulate, give up, surrender their efforts, and that is all. If that requires killing their civilians at a 100 to 1 ratio, that is entirely morally rational and just. The guilt of those deaths entirely rests with the attacking nation. Which is also not the same as saying that the defending side should kill as many civilians as possible, just to do it. It means they're absolved of civilian deaths on the attacking side as a concern morally, so long as the civilian deaths serves the purpose of helping to end the war.
- shrubble 5y ago
  Nothing that you wrote matches the Geneva conventions. Or more properly, almost everything you wrote would be in violation of the Geneva conventions.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- w0de0 5y ago
  All arguments of just war and the morality of self defense aside: this a disastrously foolish way to go about being a sentient species on a single planet.

saiya-jin 5y ago

I would suggest avoiding some sort of self-inflicted trauma from this horrible past (which might not be happening but it reads like that to me). There is no point getting depressed from one's ancestors past - if one looks in the past far enough, there will be probably something utterly horrible that given nation/tribe/group did to somebody innocent. Basically all western european democracies fall into this category, and many, many other nations too. Don't forget about it by any means, tech your kids as I will do, but don't put emotions into this just because your nation was the culprit. There were similar things happening to innocent civilians en masse in the past elsewhere. Genocides are not an invention of Germany or 20th century, life was often pretty horrible and violent in the past.

distribot 5y ago
I don't know if personal guilt or shame is the correct feeling either, but I also don't think OP should feel nothing. Time and entropy (empires dissolving or population groups migrating) definitely diffuse the responsibility for a horrific act. Of which there are many in history. But this specific thing happened in living memory, was performed by an organization that still exists (a German speaking nation state, with almost the same borders as before), and by people the OP knows personally. In fact, it's a very wealthy nation that OP has gained a lot of advantage from living in. It's subjective and graduated, but I don't think it's been nearly "long" enough that the Holocaust just background noise next to all other events that have happened in human history. Modern Germany is awesome btw. Really respect how they've reckoned with this awful time in their history.
vmception 5y ago
Naaaaaaaah Everywhere else the state just cut off the ability to feed a large population, or a particularly brutal military unit went from town to town. Germany built trains and factories for the express purpose of turning people into jello and ash This is the only reason anybody is interested in German politics, a comical off-broadway show just to see if they’re going to turn the ovens back on. And this is coming from someone that likes Germany and Germans and would avoid some areas. Thats what they did. Their robotic efficiency is still relevant in the industrial way the world went, especially compared to their neighbors. Even the most extremist Germans 100 years ago weren’t inaccurate about that: the cultures around them did not support efficient allocation of resources and making those resources valuable to others. The methodology those extremists chose was not tolerable. Third time is a charm with domination in the form of finances this time. Everyone is skeptical of ongoing German tolerance of the situation.

dalbasal 5y ago

He held no grudges by the time I knew him, certainly not against unborn generations. He visited in Berlin in the 70s, as a tourist, spoke german, had german friends and felt sorry for those who (like him) had their communities destroyed after the war. We were brought up to believe the remembering does matter, fwiw. I have a lot of respect for Germany's honest portrayal and study of its past. It is a rarity, perhaps singular.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

fit2rule 5y ago

I hope you will understand that there are also people in the world who truly love the German people today, and consider their lives enriched by the experience of modern Germany. I am grateful for what the Germans are today. Your society kicks ass in so many ways.

e40 5y ago

> I am very sorry what your grandfather had to endure and I am happy he survived. Though it doesn't change the past I will make sure that my children and grandchildren will remember what happened in order to prevent anything like that happening in our lifetimes again. You might want to check out the new podcast Day X. It's about resurgence of far right extremism in Germany going on right now. Sadly, the same thing seems to be happening in my country (US). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/podcasts/far-right-german-extremism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/podcasts/far-right-german...

aduitsis 5y ago

Hey fellow European. Please allow me to thank you deeply for that. You cannot be held responsible for anything that some people 3 generations before yours did, but nevertheless your sense of responsibility is really truly inspiring.