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It was pretty frustrating to see the allusion to the German army of the second world war. There was, if my understanding is correct, a large difference between

It was pretty frustrating to see the allusion to the German army of the second world war. There was, if my understanding is correct, a large difference between the rank-and-file and officer corps of the Germany army, and the more political SS/SD personnel. Indeed, the former tended to have older aristocratic connections and didn't particularly care for the party. Had the author made that distinction it would've been helpful, or had they perhaps instead used some of the Japanese or Soviet forces as an example it would've been better.

JadeNB 11y ago
> Had the author made that distinction it would've been helpful, or had they perhaps instead used some of the Japanese or Soviet forces as an example it would've been better. But even for these forces, I think the claim that they are all to be regarded as evil goes too far. Were there individual evil Japanese, Soviet, and German soldiers? To be sure—but there were also evil American ones. More importantly, does serving an evil government make you evil? Since 'evil' is determined, as history is written, by the winners, this would seem to amount to the claim that being honourable largely amounts to picking the winning side in advance. (I think positing instead an absolute definition of 'evil', as a disagree-r may be tempted initially to do, is probably untenable.)
Tomte 11y ago
It's true that the original army command wasn't a big Hitler fan, but it was still an enabler. Like all the aristocracy who looked down on Hitler and thought they could use (and contain) him. The thing with the German army ("Wehrmacht") is that for decades Germans told themselves that sure, SA/SS were evil and did horrible things, but the Wehrmacht was "clean", so granddaddy never did anything wrong, he was only defending his country. Then in the nineties, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung came along, showing how the common Wehrmacht committed its share of atrocities. When I went there with school I actually had my grandmother calling me on the phone, in tears, telling me that her husband was no murderer. This exhibition ripped apart a few lies we Germans had told ourselves about our honorable Wehrmacht.

JadeNB 11y ago

> Had the author made that distinction it would've been helpful, or had they perhaps instead used some of the Japanese or Soviet forces as an example it would've been better. But even for these forces, I think the claim that they are all to be regarded as evil goes too far. Were there individual evil Japanese, Soviet, and German soldiers? To be sure—but there were also evil American ones. More importantly, does serving an evil government make you evil? Since 'evil' is determined, as history is written, by the winners, this would seem to amount to the claim that being honourable largely amounts to picking the winning side in advance. (I think positing instead an absolute definition of 'evil', as a disagree-r may be tempted initially to do, is probably untenable.)

Tomte 11y ago

It's true that the original army command wasn't a big Hitler fan, but it was still an enabler. Like all the aristocracy who looked down on Hitler and thought they could use (and contain) him. The thing with the German army ("Wehrmacht") is that for decades Germans told themselves that sure, SA/SS were evil and did horrible things, but the Wehrmacht was "clean", so granddaddy never did anything wrong, he was only defending his country. Then in the nineties, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung came along, showing how the common Wehrmacht committed its share of atrocities. When I went there with school I actually had my grandmother calling me on the phone, in tears, telling me that her husband was no murderer. This exhibition ripped apart a few lies we Germans had told ourselves about our honorable Wehrmacht.