Saying that all german soldiers were fighting for the political belif of the NS party, or that all confederate soldiers were fighting for slavery is no diffrent than saying that all US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are republicans who voted for and fully belive in George Bush.

There is such a concept as fighting for your nation, and not their leaders.

I doubt the common russian soldiers who had the nkvd behind him and the germans infront of him, would call himself a communist (unless asked by his leader).

Furthermore, as ive said before, the victor writes the history books, and Germany and the german people have truly been shat on by the world since ww2. The germans of today are still paying tribute to israel for something that their ancestors did.

If my father murders someone, should i go to prison because of what he did?

I know the american mentality, and this post wont change it. But if for one moment you could try to imagine that there is no one true truth, but rather countless versions of how events took place.

Innocent jews slaughterd in a camp, or enemies of the people being concetrated in one area to avoid dissident?

Liberation of frace or an attack on vichy?

Weapons of mass destruction, or maintaining good relations with israel?

:roll: generalisation again

http://www.feldgrau.com/ss.html

Absolutely. I also think that Neal got it all wrong with bringing the Confederate soldiers into the discussion. Because most people in the North didnt give a **** about the slaves. Freeing the slaves was just a shrewd move by Lincoln, it at the same time hit the South at his most vulnerable spot, and raised the political price of foreign intervention. Saying that the South was evil because it was a slave country is pure hippocrisy, because the only difference was that they couldnt do away with it as easily and quickly as the North, which the North used in its favour.

Do you really think so? I think they were treated pretty lenient, at least the ones in the western part.

I think thats a ok because I have some genuine feeling of shame though I was born in the 1970s. We rather have mixed feelings wether its right to support the current policies of the state of Israel, as "we have the right to treating Arabs like animals because they happen to live in the land of our forefathers". I also refuse to ever travel to Israel because I know I would be treated with extreme injustice as well.

Absolutely no. But it would be the right thing to do if you help his family and make it clear that you're sorry for the murder and that it won't happen again.

The problem is that they didnt give a **** about what they were going to do or why. German education since then has mainly aimed to raise the awareness, self-responsibility and opinion forming in the single individual, in order make up for that traditional german defect.

No, but if your father orders you to murder someone, you sure will go to prison.

Shades of grey or ignoring reality?

Slavery is evil. Those who practice and support it, are evil. IMO, it's that simple and direct.

I did not say anything about the Northern Americans caring one way or another about slavery. And despite the continued assertion of willful revisionists that the Civil War was not about slavery, that's historically untrue and unsupportable. The war was caused by the South's demand to keep slavery and the admission of new western states as slave states, as well as the opposition to tarriffs that handicaped slave-powered industries. The Civil War was not about slavery? The Missouri Compromise, the 1850 Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska act, all tried to prevent open conflict. All were major struggles between the pro- and anti-slavey factions in the US. What was the US Civil War about? Oh yeah, states' rights. ;) Primarily, the state's right to practice slavery.

The Confedarate soldier was ferociously supporting a bad cause. And Robert E. Lee should have been smarter, he could have shortened the war and saved a lot of lives by not deserting his country (the USA, not ol' Virginny). Sam Houston is a good example of a man, a smart man with vision, balls and integrity, who had the sense to oppose secession and not to assist it.

Conservative estimates place the number of confederate soldiers from slave holding families at 30%-35%. Tha leaves 65%-70% of an army of 880,000 to 1,000,000 who had little to gain from slavery and perhaps much to loose. Slavery depressed wages much like illegal immigration depresses wages today. These men were fighting for something else.

Also there were an estimated 50,000 black confederate solders. What were they fighting for?

I think the Civil War comparison is hard to make and is a little more convoluted because of the many reasons for the war and neither side was out to conquer or exterminate.

What he said. :o (shudders) ;)

I am not giving excuses for slavery. I'm not insinuating it was right. What I am saying is fact.
Because they were fighting for there home also. They worked as teamsters, laborers, and even soldiers.

This year the UK are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery :up:

Eisenhauer, I believe, was responsible for nearly 1 million German's starving to death in the Winter of 1945/1946.

I don't think there were any good guys in wwii. But there were honorable career soldiers and sailors, like Ray Spruance who argued against the bombing of German and Japanese cities. People who were protecting their job security more than their country, like Curtis LeMay, were for it.

The real losers in WWII, were the folks of Central and South America, the Middle East, and Asia.

IMO war crimes do happen in war, due to the over-excited and over-pressured soldiers fighting in a deadly war. Thus, German and Soviet always treats their POW in a poor rate, resulting in high death rate in the camps

I believe that Soviet, German, Japan has commited serious war-crimes, but it does not represent that

(1) Allied is free from war crimes (there are some reletive "minor" one)
(2) All the combantants in Soviet, German, Japan in World War II are evil and be blamed

Soviet - mistreatment of German POW, killed and raped Germans after WWII as they are angry about that war ...
Germany - mistreatment of Soviet POW, razed serval villages in vengeance of the presence of sabotages behind front line, the masscare of Jews, ...
Japan - As a Chinese... =( Nanking Masscare + Unit 571 <=Unit 571 is protected by USA from trials in order to get the experimental data
Again, numberous villages had been demolished for retaliation of the guerilla force
They also mistreat Allied POWs...

In conclusion, almost every side commited horrible war-crimes. However, not all combatants are evil. There are still many patriotic guys like Donitz, Rommel, or Yamamoto, who just hope to make their country stronger. I do think that these guys make up the bulk of the force. Unfortunately, there are some "black-horses" who loves to do something against humanity, and unfortunatly, these horses are remembered by us, but not the "white" ones

(p.s. Black horse IS NOT a racial discrimiant OR analogy to anybody except those evil soldiers)

Yes it was. I have a book that I've read myself on the 2nd SS Panzer Division, Das Reich. They weren't the cookie cutter baddies that we generally get the impression of. But at the same time in the early war they were selected based on ideological standings as much as pruity of appearance. Towards the end the SS were more lax in their requirements but nevertheless Himmler always anticipated turning the SS into the universal police force for the Third Reich.

So I don't get why what I said is so incorrect. War is full of generalizations, thats propaganda. Also a soldier doesn't know the full historian's truth about the SS. As you say yourself the SS is hugely misunderstood. And the outward propaganda of the Third Reich was misleading and demonic. But at the same time the SS was far and above a worse perpetrator of crimes than any other military organization under Nazi Germany. There are the many stories of SS crimes, and while this might not characterize the entire body of SS soldiers it did occur that the SS were more brutal and inhuman than their regular army counter-parts.

Nothing is black and white but sometimes, as the SS dressed themselves, things can be a very dark shade of grey.

Your first paragraph is wrong, that thesis has been disproven: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/...brose-001.html

Agree with the last. Disagree sort of with the second.

I disagree strongly with Swede's downplaying of Axis and Nazi crimes.

Where did you get that from? You could also say he was responsible for 60 million Germans surviving that winter by supplying them with food and CARE parcels. I think thats really not fair, because the country was a mess, and the US delivered lots of food, saying anything else would be ungrateful.

Of course, but thats not the question. Doing justice to historic decisions is never simple and direct. Otherwise the USA was evil until 1865, because it was a slave country. Initally Lincoln freed only the slaves in the Confederate states, not the ones in the northern and border states, so doesnt that make him not only evil (because he didnt abolish slavery everywhere when he could and should have), but also a hippocrit and an oppertunist? I am not saying that btw, we just shouldn't demonize the South nor the German population as it was by the post war propaganda.

The South would have abolished slavery sooner or later, they might even have done it during the war had it lasted longer. But they didnt realize how weak their position was on that issue, and by that delivered the North the (post war) casus belli on a silver plate. In reality, the Civil War was a last measure in order to prevent the Union from falling apart when the individual states developed national identity, very much like in Europe several centuries earlier.