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I thought there was a more concise way to write "German WWII soldier".
by mossTechnician 2y ago
I thought there was a more concise way to write "German WWII soldier".
- BenFranklin100 2y agoIs woke-washing the Nazis a thing now? “soldier collected ancient coins as a hobby or perhaps exchanged or acquired them during his military movements” is an interesting way to describe stolen war goods.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoIf social reality is a fabric not giving in, and instead your story starts collapsing in on itself, you can always try to edit reality out of history.
- BenFranklin100 2y agoI have no idea what this means and I’m not sure you do either.
- mossTechnician 2y agoI don't know if it's applicable here, but the title reminded me of how TikTok and YouTube encourage users to use innuendos for things - another well-known one is "unalive" in place of "murder" or "kill." And it's actually entering our lexicon. This isn't intended to be a dig at the archaeology blog (pun intended) but it's just something that reminded me of this shift.
- HPsquared 2y agoI suppose archaeologists strive to stick to the evidence and avoid presumptions.
- heysammy 2y agoIt is for people who see themselves in others and get offended, apparently.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoSaying all German WWII soldiers were Nazis would be like saying all current US soldiers are Democrats.
- sandworm101 2y agohttps://www.army.mil/values/oath.html https://www.army.mil/values/oath.html Yes but it would be accruate to describe all US soldiers as defenders of republican democracy, specifically that outlined in the US constitution. Defending the constitution is the heart of the oath. If that constitution was altered, as is can legally be, then all active US soldiers would become supporters of whatever form of government is described therein. Not being a member of a paticular party does not free a soldier from being described as a supporter of the government they serve. This is not just theoretical. Many US soldiers refused to recognize Obama as legitimate. Those soldiers were shown the door. A similar transition will occur in a few weeks.
- bossyTeacher 2y agoNo, it isn't. In the context it is normally used, Nazi soldier means a soldier that was part of the Nazi Germany army. It's like saying that CCP soldiers can't be called CCP because they might not necessarily hold communist ideologies themselves.
- mewse-hn 2y agoSoldiers fighting for Nazi Germany were Nazis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht
- aguaviva 2y agoThat's not what the Mythos was about. The whole big point of the Holocaust that everyone was supposed to have learned is that not only did one not have to be a "Nazi" (or even particularly sympathize with the regime or its ideology) in order to be an active or passive collaborator. All you had to do was keep your head down, and do what you were told. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42276731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42276731
- Spooky23 2y agoYes. We’re in the new era of the big lie. All of the witnesses to the war are dead, so we’re now doing the equivalent of “Dur dur, my great grand cousin from Mississippi was standing up for their heritage” (as opposed to having been drafted to defend an aristocrat’s ability to own humans) treatment. Now we’ll start hearing about central and Northern Europeans who were defending themselves from godless communists and woke French aggressors. The “just following orders” excuse is not necessary, as those folks are questioning whether anything happened that required that defense.
- skinkestek 2y agoWhat?
- heraldgeezer 2y ago[flagged]
- dh2022 2y agoMy home country of Romania was basically under German occupation through most of WWII. My grand mother lived in a village before,during, and a little bit after WWII. German soldiers did not loot - they paid for whatever food stuffs they got from the village. At a different scale: the German government paid the Romanian Corporations for all the oil and grains they bought to supply their war effort. Germans were remembered fondly by Romanians. The subsequent occupation by the Russian Red Army music less so…
- inglor_cz 2y agoTrue, but this guy fell in Poland, which was treated harshly by the Nazis, and probably fought in the USSR, where the behavior of the Nazis was absolutely unhinged. I would consider looting much more probable in that region. Romania was, at least theoretically, an ally of Germany, so (non-Jewish) Romanians got treated better than conquered nations like Poles, who were Slavic and thus lower on the racial totem pole.
- farialima 2y ago> Romania was basically under German occupation through most of WWII. that's not correct. Romania was an independent country, with a king, government, etc. Romania was allied to Germany, and there was a German presence, but the Germans did not exercise any power. In fact, there was a "palace coup" that switch alliances in 1944.
- dh2022 2y agoGermans did not exercise any power… other than telling Romanians to send their troops to Don’s bend, and to Sevastopol. Or not selling any of their oil to anybody else. Or basically telling the Romanian Prime Minister Antonescu to suck it up while Hungary took a big chunk of Transylvania. About the coup: it took place on Aug 23, 1944. The Red Army already took all of Moldovan and was gunning for the Carpathian Mountains. The German front broke yet again. That was the end of German influence in Romania: at the end of September 1944 Arab was ‘eliberated’ by the Red Army.
- the_af 2y ago
- otwall 2y ago“Stolen war goods” is an interesting way describe a handful of antique coins.
- heraldgeezer 2y agoNo, lefties LOVE calling everything "Nazis" that they don't like. *not american
- astrange 2y agoYou can't be complaining like this about a /WW2 German soldier/.
- aleksiy123 2y agoI was kinda curious if Nazi and German WWII soldier is equivalent. From an academic point of view it seems not. But from a popular point of view it probably is. Some threads I found on the topic. https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/40gq95/is_it_fair_to_call_german_soldiers_during_ww2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/40gq95/is_it_fair_... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hw2fv/comment/cub4zwb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hw2fv/comme...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lolinder 2y ago> From an academic point of view it seems not. More than a purely academic point of view, the distinction actually does matter. It's the difference between someone who affirmatively made a choice to join the Nazi organization and someone who simply didn't actively decide to dodge the draft or desert. The level of agency invested into the Nazi cause varies dramatically, and it's useful to have language that can distinguish between those shades. We can get into philosophical discussions about whether it's worse to affirmatively support evil than to just go with the flow and not make waves either way, but that's more than an academic discussion—it has real relevance for today.
- wutwutwat 2y agoEvery soldier in the German military at that time was a nazi soldier. They reported to hitler, who was the person who brought the nazi party into power, the party who controlled the government and military. They took orders from nazis. They were nazis. Their officers had skulls on their uniforms. They were rounding up and slaughtering people they viewed as less than them, they had posters in the streets painting them as rodents and infections. Nobody saw all of that and said “well, I don’t want to dodge a draft, I better just sign up and do this evil shit, it’s my moral duty to serve”. Nobody was blind to what was happening and nobody accidentally went and did those things without believing they were somehow right. They were doing those things because they wanted to, the same way everything any person does when they have something that they have the power over to choose between. Edit: not sure why I’m getting downvoted. Downvote the people trying to claim German soldiers in wwII were not nazis.
- aguaviva 2y agoBecause they weren't all in the category you're referring to, of course. To misunderstand this (and apply the N-word to all of the regime's footsoldiers and helpers) is to fundamentally midunderstand how the dictatorship worked, and got so many millions of ordinary people to trudge along and do its dirty work. Or to at least shut up and try not to think too much about whatever they saw and heard.
- BenFranklin100 2y agoThe N-word? Jesus Christ.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y agoYou can say Nazi, it's okay. Better to remember history than to bury it in obscurities.
- aguaviva 2y agoIt's not about burying anything. People know exactly what is meant. I just like to deny that little hormone activation spike that some people seem to get whenever they encounter that word.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y agoI think we as a society need to stop trying to make everyone comfortable all the time. All it does is remove the requirement of taking responsibility for your behavior. You can't prepare the world from the people, you have to prepare people for the world. Give them the tools to handle uncomfortable situations. To quote John Wayne: "I’m responsible only for what I say, not what you understand."
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aguaviva 2y agoHeavens -- it had nothing to do with wanting to make people feel comfortble. Or walking on eggshells otherwise. It was just a way of showcasing how vacuous it was, the commenter's suggested innuendo -- that the reason the internet's favorite word didn't appear in the title was because someone was too squeamish (or for other reasons reluctant) to use it in that context. Like the reluctance you're suggesting, for example. When the obvious, but infinitely more boring reason they didn't use it was because it had nothing to do with the core substance of the article. It wasn't even about stuff from the soldier's grave, but from the area around it. So if it had appeared in the title, it would have been meaningless clickbait. I was also, if rather obliquely, making fun of everyone's obsession with the word, and the extent that its very appearance seems to inevitably cause the discussion to more or less instantly start veering into silly territory (regardless of the topic what anyone is actually saying). As evidenced by this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42283656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42283656 Which I wasn't intending to trigger of course - but there you go.
- fhars 2y agoWould you count these members of the German WWII army as nazis, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malgr%C3%A9-nous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malgr%C3%A9-nous Totalitarianism uses many mechanism to fabricate cooperation.
- mrln 2y agoThe link does not work.
- michaelcampbell 2y agoWorked fine for me.
- justinclift 2y agoFirefox seems to load it ok, if that helps.
- Rebelgecko 2y agoIs this comment a new subtype of nerdsniping?
- ggm 2y agoYes. Pedantry is the new normal. I did nazi that coming.
- veltas 2y agoI think it is respectful and appropriate, this is someone who died fighting in war who we don't really know anything about. Could even be closely related to people today. We don't know if they were a member of the 'party', or how they felt about it, or anything. This is a fallen individual.
- Snoozus 2y agoEven if all soldiers had been nazis, not all nazis were soldiers. So definetly not equivalent.