Liberation.

Ah, I’m with you now…

…I hoped that you were kidding when you seemed to be saying that the achievements of the German people under the Nazi party in any way justified, excused or mitigated the horrors inflicted on the world by those same German people under the Nazi party.

As for ‘facts’ I’ll be damned if I could tell you how the Nazis possibly could have been said to have made ‘huge advances’ in ‘law and order’ and ‘welfare programmes’ after being responsible for the Holocaust! Or perhaps you think that is evidence of ‘strong leadership’?

It is a historical fact the Nazis made ground-breaking advances in welfare (both human and animal), and law and order – but they only applied to pure Germans.
As for strong leadership, Adolph Hitler picked up a bankrupt, depressed, and humiliated nation and in a few short years forged it into a force the world had never seen before, one which took almost the rest of the entire planet to quell.
Practically the whole of Germany faithfully followed that one man right to the end, and into the abyss – I can’t think of many leaders who could have accomplished that.
Or does your definition of ‘strong leadership’ apply only to those on the winning side, or who make decisions which turn out to be ‘right’?

Ah, I’m with you now…

…I hoped that you were kidding when you seemed to be saying that the achievements of the German people under the Nazi party in any way justified, excused or mitigated the horrors inflicted on the world by those same German people under the Nazi party.

As for ‘facts’ I’ll be damned if I could tell you how the Nazis possibly could have been said to have made ‘huge advances’ in ‘law and order’ and ‘welfare programmes’ after being responsible for the Holocaust! Or perhaps you think that is evidence of ‘strong leadership’?

Absolutely not and I am appalled my post gave that impression. There are no mitigating circumstances for genocide.

I should have edited Al’s comments – I would not have included some of those points either.

Re 44

What does trouble me is your belief that ‘no one falls into that category, do they’?

That there are some events in human history which are so staggeringly awful as to make them almost unbelievable and beyond the powers of ordinary explanation and comprehension.

But, John, I am saying exactly that. That no one posting here believes anything other than that, do they? I would certainly rank the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides and Stalin’s decades of terror alongside the Jewish holocaust.

I was asking you to enlighten me about something I was “kidding about”.

Ah, I’m with you now…

…I hoped that you were kidding when you seemed to be saying that the achievements of the German people under the Nazi party in any way justified, excused or mitigated the horrors inflicted on the world by those same German people under the Nazi party.

As for ‘facts’ I’ll be damned if I could tell you how the Nazis possibly could have been said to have made ‘huge advances’ in ‘law and order’ and ‘welfare programmes’ after being responsible for the Holocaust! Or perhaps you think that is evidence of ‘strong leadership’?

Re 44

Charlie

Andy also writes that; ‘Auschwitz changed te way we view the world’. I don’t altogether agree with that statement, but that is by the way.

What does trouble me is your belief that ‘no one falls into that category, do they’?

If you think that then you must be tolerant to the point of disbelief! The complete and total point that I’m trying to get across is exactly that.

That there are some events in human history which are so staggeringly awful as to make them almost unbelievable and beyond the powers of ordinary explanation and comprehension.

The Holocaust and the Japanese occupation in the Far East are a clear exposition of that description.

I’m not holding to account the individual modern German or Jap. They can have no connection with the events here described. It is my honest belief that a guilt and a shame so total and complete as to be almost tangible, grips the modern nation state of Germany and Japan and accompanies them into – for all we know – the limitless future.

All of this because the subject matter is so overwhelmingly huge and catastrophic in its totality of outcome, without any redeeming feature apart, that is, from the epic courage of at least some.

The doubters and naysayers contributing to this subject must surely recognise that there are some historical events that are, by several magnitudes of horror, so overwhelming as to totally prevent their expungement from human memory.

John

I don’t think anyone falls into that category, do they?

Just to remind ourselves, Andy wrote “Don’t ever let anyone try and convince you that Nazism had any good points–it didn’t..!!” It is that contention that we are disagreeing about. No one has suggested that these events and others similar will be forgotten, or at least not for several generations.

Re 40

Oppama

Read the book, title quoted, and then tell me I’m wrong.

My friend, you cannot in justice, defend the indefensible. Their moral guilt and shame will be there forever. Yes, and still they deny.

For all those still not convinced of the enduring national moral shame of Germany and Japan’s actions during WW2, consider this. I know that the description ‘killing fields’ is normally associated with Cambodia and Pol Pot but, it can also be applied to the sites of Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau, Sobibor, Treblinka etc.

Someone has previously mentioned that it is unlikely that Germany’s moral guilt and shame will be remembered 1,000 years from now. Really ! These sites are sacred to the memory of the hundreds of thousands who died in the most God awful circumstances imaginable. If these sites were grassed or tarmacked to provide the playing fields and roads and towns of the future and so diminish and eventually eliminate their meaning, that would signal that all is conveniently forgotten would it ?

The doubters and naysayers contributing to this subject must surely recognise that there are some historical events that are, by several magnitudes of horror, so overwhelming as to totally prevent their expungement from human memory.

Some of the crimes against humanity perpetrated one thousand or more years ago, such as in this country, for example, ‘the harrying of the North’ while bearing no comparison with the Holocaust, are remembered still. This, in spite of the then, lack of the means to adequately and repetitively, record and detail the event for posterity. By contrast with present times, we are able to record an overwhelming amount of detailed information thus ensuring that nothing is left to chance or the imagination.

I too recall reading about that….as you say a tricky question but then there were many of those during the war. Lives were lost, which could have been saved because we could not allow the Germans to know that we had cracked Enigma.

So you”re looking for sources? Well, on behalf of Kev 35 and myself permit me to enlighten you.

You are – once again – mistaken. I was asking for the actual source of his “Without stain…” quote. It must have originally been translated from Japanese, and – I contend – it probably didn’t originally mean what he thinks it means. Why are you directing me to ( more ) accounts of atrocity when they are NOT being disputed?

Leave no doubt in your mind as to the extreme guilt and barbarity of the vermin that live in the Far East.

There it is again. You write of “…the vermin that live in the Far East.”, but you make no distinction as to whether you are referring to some specific ( presumably still living ) individuals, a whole nation of people, or the population of a whole region of the world ( ‘the Far East’ ). Which is it? You are treading a very fine line, sir.

As I’ve alluded to, if you truly believe that a whole nation of people or even a whole race can be “vermin”, then your thinking is not much different than the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity that we are discussing.

I think they lost a great deal more than credibility and any support they might have had except for nutcases and the faithful.

But I still fail to understand how that affects the facts of what we are discussing. Were there, to quote Al “huge advances in medicine, rocketry, aerodynamics & jet propulsion, submarines, movie-making, welfare programmes, the Volkswagen Beetle, Law & Order, animal welfare,, autobahns,” by Germany during the period of National Socialist government, or not?

I remember watching Horizon (or similar type programme) on TV where they were discussing Air Sea Rescue and peoples survivability in water. It seems a lot of the data the UK Air Sea Rescue teams use was gathered by the Nazi’s, in some cases using fatal techniques on prisoners. It posed the question wether we should use this data and thus save lives, or discard it?
It’s certainly a tricky question.

I think they lost a great deal more than credibility and any support they might have had except for nutcases and the faithful.

But I still fail to understand how that affects the facts of what we are discussing. Were there, to quote Al “huge advances in medicine, rocketry, aerodynamics & jet propulsion, submarines, movie-making, welfare programmes, the Volkswagen Beetle, Law & Order, animal welfare,, autobahns,” by Germany during the period of National Socialist government, or not?

Didn’t the Nazi’s loose all credibility (and thus all arguments for) when they started gassing children and burning them in ovens?

” Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” Heinrich Heine

Bertolt Brecht had no illusions about mankind’s capacities after WW2…
“Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men.
For though the world has stood up and stopped the *******,
the bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

If my Dad wasn’t lying in a hospital bed having suffered from a brain haemorrhage I’d find the sources for you (again) Oppama, but I am a little preoccupied at the moment. I’ve given sources for all the things I’ve said in the past, feel free to look for them if you feel the need.

Sorry to hear about your Dad, and I hope he makes a swift and full recovery.

However, we went through all this before didn’t we? You only seem to have remembered me as some kind of apologist with views diametrically-opposed to your own. And, as I tried to point out before, it’s not as simple as that….

You repeat this ( translated? ) quote that many of those imprisoned were subsequently released “without stain…”, when in fact almost all the released were released on parole. How can somebody be released on parole and – at the same time – be “without stain on their character”? Doesn’t quite add up does it? Look into it a little more closely and you see that things are not quite as clear as they are painted. Do you know why they were paroled?

So many of the things that were done in post-war Japan were done because they were seen as the best way to start clearing up a huge mess, because they were seen as being expedient at the time, because they were economically, politically and strategically useful to one prosecuting side or another. Isolating certain situations ( as you did with Yasukuni before ) and trying to tackle them out of context is not really going to get anywhere. There’s no end to it.

But what’s perhaps more disturbing is the occasional glimpse on this forum, and from some of the people involved in this thread, of the kind of thinking that leads to the very same things happening all over again. If people are actually willing to believe that there’s such a thing as ‘Untermensch’ ( some of the Japanese imperialists called them ‘Chankoro’ – look it up ) then they are tilling the soil for the seeds of another bout of genocide to be sown. I’ve seen long-term forum members with many hundreds of posts to their name call the Japanese “filth”, and one within the last week write about “slitty eyed people” without a word of admonishment from other members, until a moderator deleted the whole post ( thank you ).

So the seeds are out there alright. Truth be told, they are living in all of us…

I was asking you to enlighten me about something I was “kidding about”.

It has nothing to do with ingorance or the lack of it. It has to do with facts.

We cannot deny the horrors of genocide, neither can we deny the achievements in whatever field, which are made under evil regimes.

Well we are agreed about that then, but you had better enlighten me about the second point.

Please, I know you are not that ignorant…

…but if you want to balance Nazi Germany’s ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ points on a case-by-case basis here you go:

The Holocaust: the systematic industrialised genocide of anybody that didn’t fit in with Nazi Germany’s view of who had a right to live. This wasn’t just a secret plan but something that was actually carried out within the society of Germany and the territory conquered by Germany; it couldn’t have been carried-out without the knowledge and cooperation of large sections of the German population. It had little or no strategic value; it wasn’t done to win the war, it was simple cold-blooded murder on an almost unimaginable scale.

So, what German cultural, scientific or engineering advancement can possibly avoid being ‘obliterated’ by that?

I don’t feel the need to apologise for slavery, but by the same token I do not deny that it happened.

Regards,

kev35

Precisely the point I have been making and I am not aware that anyone here is denying the holocaust or any other acts of genocide.

No, I certainly concede that the German people made advances in many fields under the Nazi party but that wasn’t what I hoped you were kidding about.

.

Well we are agreed about that then, but you had better enlighten me about the second point.

Not this again? Whose translation is the “Without stain…” quote from? Source please?

Again, sources please? I personally know that much of what you say is not taught has, and continues to be taught in Japan. Just like all those stories about Japan “never saying sorry”, it’s not quite as black and white as you seem to want it to be.

If my Dad wasn’t lying in a hospital bed having suffered from a brain haemorrhage I’d find the sources for you (again) Oppama, but I am a little preoccupied at the moment. I’ve given sources for all the things I’ve said in the past, feel free to look for them if you feel the need.

Regards,

kev35