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Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye
Haplo that's a good read, but it still contains largely what i've come to expect from people regarding this topic. To say "we were threatened and couldn't speak out against the Nazis" doesn't work. Hitler didn't end up in control by magic. Millions of German citizens did not enlist in his armies and enthusiastically conquer Europe by chance.
I agree Germans did oppose the Nazis. My point is that not enough of them did. White Rose was mostly made up of a few scattered college students. If German citizens were as opposed to the Nazis as you claim, White Rose and Rossenstrasse would have been much larger and more frequent regardless of threats. We would have seen more men like Oskar Schindler.
But we didn't. Because the reality is German citizens were not staunchly opposed to the Nazis until the Nazis ironically started to turn against them as the war came to a close. Which is probably what she means by German opposition to the Nazis. The problem is, opposing the Nazis in 1945 and not in 1935 is the epitome of "day late and a dollar short".
Neo Nazis exist. I agree the suppression of Nazi party hints in Germany is a bit extreme at times but their is a logical reason Germans try to avoid it. They don't want Nazi memorabilia to be collected or sighted and used as a rallying point for contemparary National Socialists.
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You are correct. Not because I do not agree to Schroeders outlining of what happend and how it happend and why there was so few resistance. I understand where he is coming from and I agree to him in large parts. But understanding does not mean pologizising, and if we do not hold this generation accaountable for what happend...then who is? And what does this say about humanity and it's will to hold up principles in general? If a ppl wants to be percieved as mature, strong willed and capable, in control of their fate instead of just beeing sheep, it has to face the consequences of their actions. And if this includes the acceptance of a brutal Dictatorship, danger for life or not, it has to deal with the results later on.
We could have done much more. A few times mass ralleys happend to protect jews from deportation. These were very few inbetween, but nobody came to harm, the jews were saved and nobody arrested. The Nazis politics relied on stealth and secercy. Public outrage was greatly feared by the Nazis due to the results that led to the end of World War I. Had more germans shown civil courage and gathered to protest, lots could have been prevented. Yes, it was a time of crisis, and the mass exectutions only took place after world war 2 started and the ppl really other problems to deal with. But the responsebility does not vanish just because of that. If you whitewash the happenings back then on the basis of human nature, which you actually can, you undermine the general appliance of morales and ethnics, which is a Persilschein for future occurances of such happenings.