Fuck Man....When GERMANY Accuses You of War Crimes

[DeistPaladin]

Why could that be eh? Well maybe because Obama kept open all the torture camps and would be just as subject to prosecution if Bush is prosecuted.

No doubt.

Have I mentioned lately that Obama is no liberal?

[Tonus]

Given this reasoning, I stand by what I said earlier. There are few Germans alive today from that era, and criticizing Germany as a whole for the possible misdeeds or inactions of 1.4% of the population is unfair on its face.

Yahweh: "I don't see how it's unfair at all."

[Anomalocaris]

I don't believe there are very many Germans from that era alive, and I reject the concept of collective guilt.

According to the latest statistics, Germany has 7,468,552 men and female 9,659,265 women alive who were born in 1949 or before. I doubt there's going to be that radical a difference in numbers between people born before 1949 and people before 1945.

You do realize that when talking about a group of people at least 75 years in age, the fraction who are actually 5 years over the qualifying age would much less than if you are talking about a group of people at least 25, 35, or 55 years old, right?

You also realize a german infant born in 1942-44 is absolutely certainly without any guilt whatsoever, right? If legal age of responsibility is 18, then we are talking about people at least 18 in 1944, which would make them at least 88 now, right?

Take a random group of people at least 75 years in age, what do you suppose is the fraction who would be at least 88 years in age?

Using the following age distribution curve:



It would appear those Germans who would have been of the age of consent and legal responsibility in 1945 would now, in 2014, number around 100,000 males and around 400,000 females, a total of 500,000 out of modern german population of 80,000,000 could conceivably have been of the age to be responsibility for anything that was done under the Nazis.

Now how many of those do you suppose actually did anything criminal?

[Rev. Rye]

Okay, I rest my case.

[DeistPaladin]

Have I mentioned lately that this whole counter argument is an Ad Hominem Tu Quoque? This thread is about American war crimes. "Oh yeah, well what about Nazi Germany" is not a defense.

[Rev. Rye]

Well, here's one more thing. A speech from Judgment at Nuremberg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjCGpBUCOOM

If Germany today remains culpable for the crimes of the Nazis, so does everyone else.

Granted, quite a few of the examples Max Schell gives are problematic:
* The Churchill quote, if it was even actually from him (and I can find no evidence that it was) was almost certainly taken out of context (And I personally find Churchill overrated!)
* There is serious debate as to how much of the atrocities committed in the next 12 years were truly planned before 1933; especially since, when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, he was in prison, and, in any competently run democracy, his political career would have been over.
* Hardly anyone actually READ Mein Kampf anyway until the war ended. They sold like hotcakes, but hardly anyone actually read them.

But, still, the perfect storm of the Anti-Semitism endemic in Christendom before Hitler, the eugenics theories people were using to justify their pet hatreds, and the extreme nationalist movements were happening all over the Western World at the time. Then again, all the restrictions the Weimar Republic was forced under made some sort of dictatorship inevitable.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I don't think the specific atrocities were planned. I'm fairly certain that the death camps weren't; they only came about after it became evident that the Einsatzgruppen were unable to murder Jews quickly enough. However, it seems reasonable to conclude that the general outline of "ethnic cleansing" by settling Jews in the East was in Hitler's mind even as he wrote Mein Kampf. Shirer makes exactly that point in R&FotTR -- that Hitler laid bare the basics of his plan in his book, but few read it, and fewer believed him. Even when he spoke to the Reichstag in Jan 1939 and stated that if war broke out, it would result in the annihilation of the Jews, nobody took it as anything more than overheated rhetoric.

As for Churchill's quote, if I remember correctly, he owned up to it in Their Finest Hour, the second volume of his WWII memoirs. My library, which includes all six volumes of that set in first or second edition, is still back in California so I cannot confirm it.

Also, DP, I don't think anyone here is trying to exonerate American criminals on the basis of German history.

[DeistPaladin]

Also, DP, I don't think anyone here is trying to exonerate American criminals on the basis of German history.

ATheist did. That's how this subject came up.

No, but I can tell you how to "kiss my ass" in English. This comes from a country who murdered millions of Jews in their own state sponsored death camps. Not too many atrocities from history compares to what Germany did....and the German people were apathetic to it.

[abaris]

But, still, the perfect storm of the Anti-Semitism endemic in Christendom before Hitler, the eugenics theories people were using to justify their pet hatreds, and the extreme nationalist movements were happening all over the Western World at the time. Then again, all the restrictions the Weimar Republic was forced under made some sort of dictatorship inevitable.

Mainly it was the great depression being ultimately responsible for the rise of the Nazis and the communists at the time. People tend to look for the easy answers when things go bad. You can see a similar development today with populistic parties cropping up all over Europe in the wake of the recent crisis.

Hitler wasn't elected in the sense of the word. In the last free elections in the fall of 1932, the Nazis actually lost support. What finally brought him to power was the support of the national conservatives lobbying the president Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor.

[Rev. Rye]

[quote='abaris' pid='828031' dateline='1419454227']

Mainly it was the great depression being ultimately responsible for the rise of the Nazis and the communists at the time. [/url]

Of course, remember the Great Depression wasn't the first time the Weimar Republic's economy tanked. Part of the terms Germany had to submit to in the Treaty of Versailles was they had to foot the bill for WW1, a bill that took several years just to tabulate. Eventually, they had to keep printing more and more money just so they could keep up with the payments, which led to the Mark becoming useless and, at the height of inflation, workers had to be paid multiple times every day just so they could be sure that, by the time mealtime came, the money wouldn't be worthless.

To solve this, they came upon the Dawes Plan, and the US had to loan Germany money to pay their debts, and when the US economy tanked, Germany's had to tank as well.

About the Churchill quote, the only references I could find to it all referred to the movie, which usually is a sign that it was made up, but it wouldn't surprise me if he actually said something like that, likely more slagging off the percieved wishy-washy nature of the appeasers in his party (forgetting that it was mostly due to their buying time that Britain was even able to prepare to fight the Nazis) than truly praising Hitler.