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Is your comment supposed to make someone feel sorry about a country that helped start wars that led to tens of millions of lost lives and devastated much of the

by eliben 12y ago

Is your comment supposed to make someone feel sorry about a country that helped start wars that led to tens of millions of lost lives and devastated much of the continent for decades?

ntSean 12y ago
As your comment would suggest, we then _shouldn't_ sympathise with a country because of their history. After all, we can safely assume that everyone in that the country in question is an evil person looking to go start wars.
tomjen3 12y ago
It would be rather silly to feel sorry for a country, but why not feel sorry for the people living there? After all Hitler was elected in 1933, which means that anybody who was below 30 when the peace was made couldn't be considered guilty, and Hitler only got 30ish percent anyway. Unless you want to go the collective guilt or blood guilt route.
shangxiao 12y ago
Technicalities about "helping" start either war aside (I'll let someone else more knowledgable in this area argue that), yes I do feel sorry for them, it's just basic human empathy.
rakoo 12y ago
The country did not start the war, people did. People who are not here anymore. And yet we make the people of today and tomorrow pay for what the people of yesterday did. That's ludicrous.
junto 12y ago
I'm British and live in Germany. My grandparents and my wife's grandparents fought on different sides of WWII. In WWI my grandfather won the Military Medal (the highest possible recognition for a non-commisioned soldier) aged 19. My children have dual nationality. Let's apportion your Nazi blame on them shall we? Attitudes like yours solve nothing.
klibertp 12y ago
WW1 was supposedly started by assassination of some Austrian aristocrat, which doesn't look like "Austria helping start a war" in this case. Although I admit that I know relatively little about history and maybe there some other reasons I'm not aware of. But even then, Austro-Hungary was an empire before WW1 and was left in more or less its current borders afterwards (like 1/10th of what it was before? I'm guessing here, but I remember it was a huge difference on the maps). I'd say that's enough of a reparations for any state.

by eliben 12y ago

Is your comment supposed to make someone feel sorry about a country that helped start wars that led to tens of millions of lost lives and devastated much of the continent for decades?

ntSean 12y ago

As your comment would suggest, we then _shouldn't_ sympathise with a country because of their history. After all, we can safely assume that everyone in that the country in question is an evil person looking to go start wars.

tomjen3 12y ago

It would be rather silly to feel sorry for a country, but why not feel sorry for the people living there? After all Hitler was elected in 1933, which means that anybody who was below 30 when the peace was made couldn't be considered guilty, and Hitler only got 30ish percent anyway. Unless you want to go the collective guilt or blood guilt route.

shangxiao 12y ago

Technicalities about "helping" start either war aside (I'll let someone else more knowledgable in this area argue that), yes I do feel sorry for them, it's just basic human empathy.

rakoo 12y ago

The country did not start the war, people did. People who are not here anymore. And yet we make the people of today and tomorrow pay for what the people of yesterday did. That's ludicrous.

junto 12y ago

I'm British and live in Germany. My grandparents and my wife's grandparents fought on different sides of WWII. In WWI my grandfather won the Military Medal (the highest possible recognition for a non-commisioned soldier) aged 19. My children have dual nationality. Let's apportion your Nazi blame on them shall we? Attitudes like yours solve nothing.

klibertp 12y ago

WW1 was supposedly started by assassination of some Austrian aristocrat, which doesn't look like "Austria helping start a war" in this case. Although I admit that I know relatively little about history and maybe there some other reasons I'm not aware of. But even then, Austro-Hungary was an empire before WW1 and was left in more or less its current borders afterwards (like 1/10th of what it was before? I'm guessing here, but I remember it was a huge difference on the maps). I'd say that's enough of a reparations for any state.