Since people seem to want to know more about post-war Germany, I’m happy to share.
Initially, Americans wanted to de-Nazify Germany and get the hell out. The American economy was booming like never before, and both voters and politicians wanted to enjoy the prosperity. Before retreating, Americans wanted to do something to make sure that Germans understood what they’d done and started facing the consequences.
Getting Germans to accept culpability for the crimes of Nazism was pretty much impossible, though. With very few exceptions, Germans saw themselves as victims and refused to listen to anything. They’d pout and sulk and feel more sorry for themselves than even the most bratty of Ivy League protesters today know how to do. Americans would, for instance, try to get Germans to learn about the Holocaust. With truly American straightforwardness, they would put on documentary footage about concentration camps and tell Germans that unless they saw the film, they wouldn’t get their ration-cards (which meant they wouldn’t get fed.) Germans would come to the movie theaters but the moment the film started, they’d turn away and simply refuse to look. Obviously, they knew everything but liked to pretend they didn’t.
The British were also trying to feed and de-Nazify in the areas they controlled. It was an enormous sacrifice for them because all of the food given to Germans was taken out of the mouths of the starving people at home. I feel nothing short of amazement when I think about the humanity and the humility of the British who wanted to share their food with Germans after everything Germans had done to them. For a while, however, things started to look as if both Germans and the British would starve to death because there was nothing left to rebuilt the demolished economies in both countries.
There was enormous anger against Germans and a great resistance to getting involved in rebuilding their country on the part of the US. However, the most stringent “let them all get what they so richly deserve” American officials got to change their minds when they saw the suffering Germans were experiencing. Soon enough, the notorious words of one of these officials (“you can shoot ’em, starve ’em, or feed ’em”) became the consensus and Americans reluctantly agreed to sink huge amounts of money into rebuilding Germany and, of course, the rest of Western Europe.
Rebuilding the German economy soon necessitated ending all attempts at de-Nazification, though. For instance, the moment after 333 mining engineers were fired from Ruhr coal mines for having been active in the Nazi party, horrible accidents began to happen. Nobody but these Nazis knew how to run the coal mines. So 331 of the Nazis had to be re-hired because the mines were crucial to rebuilding the economy. And the same thing kept happening in all areas of the economy.
It took Germans until late 1950s and early 1960s to start accepting culpability for Nazism. By that time, Americans had already given the Western part of Germany the gift of prosperity and booming economy. I’m very interested in what needs to happen for a nation to accept horrible things it has done and to begin dealing with guilt and responsibility. I’m obviously waiting for Russians to start facing their role in the history of humanity. It seems that, if Germany and Spain are any indication, I’ll be waiting for a very long time.
Clarissa's Blog 
\ However, the most stringent “let them all get what they so richly deserve” American officials got to change their minds when they saw the suffering Germans were experiencing.
I think it would be much truer to write
“However, the most stringent “let them all get what they so richly deserve” American officials got to change their minds when they began fearing (even more than before) the widening of SSSR influence in post-war Europe “
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No, they were really and honestly sorry for the Germans. At first, there was a lot of anger but, one after another, these Americans were getting swayed by the human suffering they were seeing.
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Well Germans are one of the two most influential groups of immigrants in the 19th century (along with the Scotch-Irish) and lots of Americans had/have non-trivial amounts of German ancestory.
That might have had something to do with it. Germans were closer to being ‘family’ (in the national sense) than most other Europeans outside the British Isles.
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“That might have had something to do with it. Germans were closer to being ‘family’ (in the national sense) than most other Europeans outside the British Isles.”
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Well Germans are one of the two most influential groups of immigrants in the 19th century (along with the Scotch-Irish) and lots of Americans had/have non-trivial amounts of German ancestory.
“Ancestory” sounds like a neologism for a competitor site to ancestry.com.
That may account for the less harsh treatment of German immigrants during the two world wars in America.
As for the Brits:
The current royal house in Britain has significant German ancestry.
The house of Windsor used to be called Saxe-Coburg-Gotha until 1917 and it’s rumored that Edward VIII had Nazi sympathies. It puts Harry dressing up as Nazi for some party into perspective.
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Actually, what a great neologism “ancestory” would be. Jung would absolutely love it because it would work great for his idea of the importance of cultural legacy.
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““Ancestory” sounds like a neologism for a competitor site to ancestry.com.”
Damn! Even my spelling mistakes prove to be fruitful vehicles for analysis, is there no end to my profundity?
“The current royal house in Britain has significant German ancestry.”
Well one of Elisabeth II’s nicknames among her detractors is “Her Royal Heinie”
(Heinie being an old derogatory term for Germans)
“it’s rumored that Edward VIII had Nazi sympathies.”
I thought there was nothing rumored about it (that is I thought was confirmed beyond reasonable doubt).
“It puts Harry dressing up as Nazi for some party into perspective.”
I’m less inclined to ascribe any deep meaning there beyond his being young and dumb and wanting to rebel against the fishbowl.
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“Her Royal Heinie”
I read that as her royal ass, but not specifically German.
It puts Harry dressing up as Nazi for some party into perspective.”
I thought there was nothing rumored about it (that is I thought was confirmed beyond reasonable doubt)
Someone really cleaned up that wikipedia page.
I’m less inclined to ascribe any deep meaning there beyond his being young and dumb and wanting to rebel against the fishbowl.
More like his grandma. Wasn’t Elizabeth in London during the blitz?
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General Clay himself in charge of part of the occupation said “There is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on 1000 calories”.
The Russians were managing to provide 1500 calories a day in the sector they occuppied. For a starving people the choice would be a no brainer.
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There was no choice about being a communist in the Russian occupation zone, period. Isn’t it strange how all those 1000-calorie-a-day Germans in the Western zones didn’t rush eastward en mass into the benevolent arms of the Soviets?
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Stalin officially allowed Soviet soldiers to rob Germans. There were official quotas on how much loot each soldier could send home each month based on rank. Stalin also unofficially allowed mass rape of the European women. When he was told that incidence of rape (including rape of small children ) was becoming really horrific, he said that soldiers were entitled to some fun. The result was hundreds of thousands of rapes. Most of them took place on the territory of Germany.
So yes, it’s a mystery why Germans weren’t eager to get more of this royal treatment.
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Are you seriously glorifying the treatment the Soviets gave to the occupied Germans??? Seriously?
Do read Svetlana Alexievich, seriously.
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“For instance, the moment after 333 mining engineers were fired from Ruhr coal mines for having been active in the Nazi party, horrible accidents began to happen”
This is always the problem with emerging from a dictatorship and the parallels with de-communization (or de-Baathification) are pretty clear. It’s hard to disentangle those who were committed to the system from those who had to join for career reasons. I don’t know about the USSR but the Polish communist party (along with the hacks and vicious criminals) had lots of people who didn’t care at all about defending socialism but were smart and competent and had to join in order to advance. Excluding those people from public life is going to take a big toll but separating them out from the hacks and criminsals is not very easy.
I tend to take an attitude that might be described as “tolerate unless there’s strong evidence that they were actually monsters”.
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In Russia, it would have been a huge achievement if anybody not affiliated with the KGB were given access to power or property. Yes, the Communist party had crowds of poor, innocent schmucks among its members. It’s the leadership that was and still is horrible because it’s all still the same people.
Of course, nobody protested against the same people remaining in power, so now they have nobody but themselves to blame.
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Many years ago I read of all kinds of weird plans for Germany after WWII and I have no idea how realistic these were (some of them sounded close to something from a dystopian novel).
IIRC there was one plan to deindustrialize and largely depopulate the country and turn into mostly into farmland with no major cities, just some villages. I have no idea how this was going to be accomplished without mass starvation or other cataclysmic tactics or how seriously it was considered but I seem to recall it was on the table for a while.
The idea of turning it into a regional economic superpower was probably not on anyone’s radar….
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\ The idea of turning it into a regional economic superpower was probably not on anyone’s radar…
Yes. Ironically, this superpower is playing a crucial role in turning Europe Jew-free as fast as possible via unrestricted Muslim immigration and the subsequent rise of antisemitic extremely Right-wing parties.
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Oh, so jews are fleeing Paris for the safety of Israel? Israel must be pretty safe then, if it’s safer than Paris or Berlin. But then you also justify the occupation and murder of civilians by saying that Israel is under existential threat from those people. Seems like Israel must not be very safe.
So, which is it? Can you be more consistent with the propaganda you constantly regurgitate?
“..unrestricted Muslim immigration and the subsequent rise of antisemitic extremely Right-wing parties”
Oh yeah, those right wing parties in europe, welcoming muslims to their fold.
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\ Oh yeah, those right wing parties in europe, welcoming muslims to their fold.
Surely, you understood what I meant. In case not, here it is: both Arabs and Right wing parties are against Jews. The Right wing parties become stronger as the result of uncontrolled immigration of everybody from every third world country. For instance, Africans from Morocco. Here I googled and immediately saw today’s article. At last, Germany begins to act in a sane fashion:
The German government says North African countries cannot expect German development aid if they are unwilling to take back failed asylum seekers. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said he was sending that message to North African leaders. Migrants from North Africa were blamed for many attacks on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Germany may soon list Algeria and Morocco as “safe countries of origin”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35342818
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\ But then you also justify the occupation and murder of civilians by saying that Israel is under existential threat from those people.
I do not think Israel is under existential threat from Palestinians. I do think they want to murder me and that I do not want our politicians to take big risks which would lead to making my enemies more capable to inflict more harm (kill more Jews).
I and, heaven forbid, my relatives can be very very dead without them being existential threat for a country. See the difference? I do not want Hamas government of independent Palestine to shoot really good rockets at me, instead of what they have now.
\ Oh, so jews are fleeing Paris for the safety of Israel? Israel must be pretty safe then, if it’s safer than Paris or Berlin.
As for Jews coming to Israel, many share the view: “we may be attacked everywhere, but only in Israel we have national independence and our army to protect us rather than being at the mercy of others.”
Only in Israel, Jewish interests have the first place rather than 1001 -st and Jews don’t get treated as the inferior Other because of our nationality. I was born in Ukraine and, despite leaving it in early teens, got to feel and understand the difference between being a Jew abroad vs in Israel.
Some news about “safe” Europe are easy to find, if you are interested. A casual Google search will suffice.
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What about FSU treatment and view of Germans under their rule? Weren’t those influenced by what Germans did in FSU in contrst to American soil being free of German murderers?
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Yes, the horrors inflicted on Germans by the Red Army were unrivaled. Things will never get better for any of us until we acknowledge it and take collective responsibility. The recent Nobel Prize to Svetlana Alexievich could be a good start because she was the first Russian speaker to write about this.
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The horrors inflicted by the Red Army were certainly rivaled by those of the German Army on its earlier invasion of Russia. In fact they were almost mirror images.
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The invasion of Soviet Union. Most of Russia was untouched by the Germans.
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“I’m obviously waiting for Russians to start facing their role in the history of humanity. It seems that, if Germany and Spain are any indication, I’ll be waiting for a very long time.”
Given the disccusions on your blog about the loss of relevance of the nation state,
why would you expect individuals to acknowledge culpability for the actions of a now non existant nation state 70 years ago?
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What non-existent state??? They are killing Ukrainians, torturing, mutilating people today. And a few years ago they did the same thing to Georgians. And a few years before that to Chechens.
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Expecting some admission of culpability from the current people of the Russian Federation for acts of the army of the Soviet Union 70 years ago makes no sense.
The Soviet Union no longer exists that is why we write FSU when refering to it.
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My grandfather was in the war. Until I came to terms with everything that means and everything that did to shape my reality today, I was a wounded person who wasn’t getting better. It wasn’t easy to accept that the myth of a saintly, haloed war hero in our family was only a myth but it had to be done. Not for him since he’s been dead for 30 years but for me.
Nobody is a blank slate. We are all a product of our histories, our families and our cultures. Of course, people are free to keep denying it and dumbly repeating the same mistakes and playing out the same scenarios. But I find that sad and very lacking in respect for the self.
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Germany still has its war guilt on steroids. The German government is about to put a 95-year-old man on trial because he was a medical orderly for one month at Auschwitz.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/german-man-faces-trial-over-auschwitz/ar-BBoms5L?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=MIE8HMPG
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At what point, in your opinion, would the trial of this man not be evidence of “war guilt on steroids?”
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The fact that he’s being put on trial at all is absurd. It’s not a war crime to be a medical orderly ANYWHERE. Perhaps the German government should also try the surviving farmers who sold milk to the concentration camp.
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What milk? You think prisoners at Auschwitz were given milk??? And provided with medical care?
Just think about it. What tasks could this “medical orderly” have at the concentration camp?
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Like you said, the prisoners didn’t get medical care. There’s been no evidence presented that this man did anything other than provide legitimate medical orderly services to the German military — not a crime by any reasonable ethical standard.
Should the doctors who treated Hitler have been put on trial at Nuremberg?
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Have you heard of Dr Mengele?
I don’t think you fully understand what was going on at the camps and who served there. At the Soviet concentration camps, there were no criminals scarier and more cruel than “medical personnel.” Nobody invited good, innocent people to serve there. These were all horrible, perverse individuals. Let them all burn in hell
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Of course, I’ve heard of Dr. Mengele. I remember when he was finally declared dead in Brazil.
The Nazis didn’t “invite” draft-age German youths to serve anywhere. They were treated like draft-age men in every warring country in the world — ordered to put on a uniform and go wherever the government sent them to whatever duties the government thought they could competently carry out.
Some of the draftees committed war crimes, willingly or because they were given no choice. Whether you think the enlisted man pulling the trigger is as guilty as the officer giving the order is a debate for another time.
But until this man is accused of committing ANY crime other than providing legitimate medical care to the German military, there’s no basis for any trial.
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This is not how the selection of personnel for death camps worked at all. These people were carefully vetted and no regular draftee could just end up there. Regular draftees all were sent to the dreaded Eastern front to die.
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Good. This fucker should never see light of day again. And his age should not be an excuse.
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Who said his age was an excuse? There’s NO evidence that he committed any war crimes by being a medical orderly. The milk from the local farmers probably benefitted the Nazi war effort more than he did.
Do you want to hold EVERY adult German who was alive prior to 1945 criminally accountable for the Nazis? Virtually all of them paid taxes, held jobs, or raised their children, and thus contributed in their individual, meager way to the function of the society that sustained the Nazis. Should they all be on trial?
How about all of the adults who lived in the old USSR?
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I think you need to read up on what was actually happening in the German concentration camps. Because these fantasies about milk and cookies are disturbing.
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You still haven’t told me what crimes this man has been accused of, other than being a German military draftee. Criminal trials require facts, not fantasies about collective guilt.
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This all needs to come out at trial. But investigating these rabid dogs is crucial.
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(I’m posting this out of sequence at the bottom of the page so the on-screen column won’t be one inch wide.)
If this is correct in all cases (and I doubt that it was, since in the final months of the war the Nazis, realizing that the war was lost, specifically dedicated resources to keep the death camps running) then evidence of this needs to be part of any charges brought against surviving camp underlings.
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Seems a suitable place to link to:
Hungarian Holocaust film faces backlash at home
Prize-winning Oscar nominee ‘Son of Saul’ sparks anti-Semitic reactions, with social media users slamming it as ‘Jewish propangada’.
…
Far-right attitudes and racism, encouraged by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, have recently shot up in Hungary following a deluge of refugees and migrant workers.
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Many Hungarians have expressed discomfort with the prospect of the film bringing the coveted Oscar to their country, claiming that the film is “Jewish propaganda”.
According to Hungarian reports, references to the film as a “Holomaku”, or Holocaust joke, have spread on social media networks. Others have mockingly called the film – called “hyper-realistic” by the New York Post – “science fiction”. An online campaign argued that the film was not an achievement for Hungarian cinema because it is “Jewish propaganda”.
Some people even went on Prime Minister Orban’s Facebook page and posted a content warning, “a film about Jews meant for Jews only,” after Orban praised the film for winning the Golden Globe. Some Hungarians complained that only Holocaust movies are made in Hungary, while subjects related to national history are ignored.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4755036,00.html
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Btw, I especially liked the “ray of light” (beginning with the words “even if”) in the article about Hungarians’ reactions:
\ Many Hungarians praised the film, however, or argued that it should be supported even if the subject is not to their liking.
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Could we add the British (my own country!), the Americans, the other European colonial powers for the mistreatment of native peoples during the days of empire and colonial expansion? At least the government of Australia has apologised to some of what it did to the Aboriginals, what about the rest?
I think the thing is we are probably complicit in a lot of things which contribute to human suffering around the world even today, without necessarily either knowing or caring. But I think if we were to overdo ourselves with guilt for these things, we would never live.
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I agree, guilt is useless and counterproductive. What is a lot more productive and meaningful is learning about history and relating to it in terms of sorrow for some things and joy for others. I don’t feel guilty for what my ancestors did or might have done because that would be weird. But I feel sad for some things and happy for others.
The words “I’m sorry” are very useful in that they don’t necessarily denote guilt but also compassion. “I’m sorry for your loss” doesn’t mean “I caused the loss.”
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