Germany

Yes Ab, my BIL's father was old 99 just died two years ago. We have never been told what he did during the war just that he was a civil servant.
I agree bags, the younger generation are not guilty.

My son has lived and worked in Bavaria for the last 10 years, and I have visited him many times. It is a lovely place to visit, and probably to live. The Germans I have met accept their past. The actions of the Nazis have to be condemned in the context of the many millions killed by Stalin, Phol Pot in Cambodia, Mao, the Turkish treatment of the Armenians and continuing treatment of the Kurds. Man's inhumanity to man is in evidence throughout the twentieth century.

wot

I think there is always going to be an issue when words are used such as Hitler, Nazi's. We have the same problem when some think of Colonialism as an English only problem. It is more a problem for the person who cannot differentiate between the past and the present if such words are used to try and sway debate into a negative thought.

I am not saying that history should be wiped out, nor am I saying honesty over such matters should not be spoken of. I am saying that when we are discussing matters that are purely relative to this period of time it's such a shame personal prejudices and connections can creep into debate to drag it back to the past.

I like to think that our generation , most certainly our children and grandchildren, have had the benefit of living in a world that recognises the past, our history but happily lives more harmoniously together. I think of holidays where our children and grandchildren play happily together, school exchanges between Germany and the UK, so many more aspects of our lives that intertwine in a ' positive ' way. I hope you view my words in the spirit of which they were intended. I remember when I was 18 I stayed with a family in Heidelberg. My father was in the Royal Navy, likewise Guss the father of the household in the German Navy. I was accompanying my parents and Guss was hosting our stay as it was a work connection. I had the privilege of being shown around Heidelberg by the daughter , Claudia, it was a long lasting memory of their kindness, hospitality and yes even being shown the Nazi Amphitheater in the woods , is it called the Thingstatte? I raise this point as at no time did I or Claudia and the group of her friends we were with not understand it was not the making of our generation and that is the point I am long windedly trying to make. Claudia and I remained acquaintances for many years .

The gains by the AFD are a wake up call but I believe Fr Merkle will win the Federal Election next year as her position in the European Union is too much for Germany to consider loosing. She is without doubt at the present the most influential woman in politics, IMHO.

Good post POGS.I agree about the AFD, a bit like the UKIP vote here at the last election, a protest vote.

I think it was a bishop during WWII who said not all Germans are bad Germans. this is true of any nation. My uncle by marriage was a German Jew and he and some of his family managed to get out and come to England. His best friend in Germany was a gentile and they managed to keep in touch and maintain their friendship for the rest of their lives. My cousin is named after this friend and is still in touch with this family. (Interesting book - The Past Is Myself by Christie Bielenberg)

Likewise the family of my Indian muslim ex was helped out of India to Pakistan by their Hindu friends at Partition.

No nation should be judged on the evils of the minorities in the past. Think ex Yugoslavia, Congo, White South Africa. The list is endless. Most people of the human race are decent, honest, humanitarian individuals and should be treated as such. It is usually fear that force the many to abide by the few.

Most of us Europeans have not had to experience such privations and should be careful to reserve judgement.

RE Angla Merkel. Long may she reign. If worse comes to worst she will be a major player in dealing with the dreaded Trump.

The young Germans should feel no guilt at all, but at least they do learn what went on, including the death camps.Unlike Japan, where history has been so airbrushed out, that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan is all that schoolchildren know.

Actually I should amend this. it is most of us in the UK who have not suffered. Of course the eldest generations of Europeans suffered horribly during WWII, But the younger generations have thankfully for the most part led a comparatively peaceful and priviledged life.

Lovely post POGS
Strangely enough, in my street as a kid, it was the Japenese that were spoken of most harshly. The chap from te grocery store had been a Japanese POW and he was a bit famous for it!

Actually roses it is only quite recently that young Germans are being taught about the war. I had a lovely German nanny once, and she knew nothing about what happened and learned it from my mother. And her father was a Social Democrat MP!

I felt quite perturbed during the recent commemorations of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima. Of course it was absolutely horrific and massive trauma for ordinary Japanese people. :But it brought WWII to an end. What made me cross was thinking of all those who lost relatives who were Japanese POWs and treated abominably and cruelly. What were they thinking on that day, why weren't their losses being commemorated?

Having seen pics of German youngsters walking around one of the terrible death camps Anni I assumed anybody under 40 in Germany knew all about the war, but perhaps not.
My headmaster from primary school had been a POW in Burma,and he had been tortured and was a bag of nerves ( unsurprisingly.) At least he came home though, unlike others.

I think man's inhumanity to man has been evident since God was a boy and before. My Stepfather was a POW with the Japanese. He was captured after the fall of Singapore, having been seconded to escort a women and children on the last ship out of there. The ship was torpedoed and foundered, many lives being lost. S.father and a friend got to an island where they were soon captured. Friend was sent to Japan but was torpedoed again, by an American submarine and this time was drowned. S.Father was sent back to Singapore and survived!
My natural father was killed in 1942. In 1957, my mother, through a peace and reconciliation society organised by the Baptist Chapel that my S.Grandparents attended, opted to have to stay with us, a German girl. Inge came to us aged 17 and spent two months as our guest and it was an enormous success. Two years later I went to stay in Stuggart and was given such a warm heartfelt welcome both by her and her wonderful parents, it was hard to believe that we'd been bitter enemy's such a short time ago. I do think that we all do have to try to move forward as these two sets of parents did when we were young, the past is important but not as an excuse for more horror. Mind you Japan was a bit of a No, No in our house right until death! I'm not quite sure what I think in this regard, they were so very dreadful, not only to POW's but all over the Far East, but then I suppose so we're Germans which does rather contradict me moving forward!!!!!

My Dad who's been in Japan would never have a Japanese car or Japanese gadgets. He was fine about German cars and technology. A lot of his friends were the same. Never talked about what they'd seen or done.

Sorry I meant in Burma during WW2.

Let's just say I could never have had a Japanese boyfriend, well, not to take home!! My parents doctor had been in Burma during the war, they never discussed it other than to mention it, but it made a comforting link, particularly when my S.father suffered from his many bouts of malaria.

My uncle who was with the RAMC in Burma when the men came out of the Japanese camps would never buy anything Japanese but was happy to have a VW Golf. What did I buy with part of my inheritance? A Toyota.

My husband who lived through the war like I did feels no guilt about the Nazi regime. Why should he? My children feel no guilt either. They know about it, learn about it in school but it was not their fault.

They get asked about it as soon as they set foot in England, get called Nazis. I suppose all Germans get to expect it, I wouldn't know not being German.

They get asked about it as soon as they set foot in England, get called Nazis.
Surely that's not true MargaretX? DB and DSIL belonged to the German exchange group and welcomed many German visitors to their home and had happy memories of visits over in Germany.

My DF was in WW1 and WW2 but not, as far as I know, in the Far East except between the wars. When I was friendly with a German exchange student (dark hair, brown eyes) in the early 1960s he welcomed him to our house.

Well my family didn't feel like that as my previous post has demonstrated. We lost two family members to that war, and two others, one severely wounded, and the other traumatised in the first war. None of us have ever blamed ordinary Germans. It was a terrible regime where evil flourished, but certainly not the fault of post war Germans. I have, however, got a Dutch friend who is married to a German, and this poor chap unfortunately is riddled with guilt, which is very sad.

My brother's wife is half Dutch and she blames all brothers bad behaviour on us being German.

In the 70s my best friend at school lived in Germany before we both started secondary school mid term at the same time. In Germany my friend and her brother went to an American school and were not taught about the role of Germany during the war. Her Mum is German and when her grandparents came over for a holiday in England, I was told the war was never discussed because of the shame. Also if something like a film came on the TV to do with the war, the channel would be changed without any mention of why. That never happened when I was there, but they didn't speak English so I wouldn't have known what was being said anyway.

Our son went to what was then West Berlin in 1978 when he was 14. It was an exchange through my S.father who was an amateur radio ham. Uwe came to us for a month and our son went back with him. Again the exchange was a great success, and our son was able to visit the wall and see into the East, and has never forgotten this as an amazing and sobering experience. At no time was any derogatory reference made to the war, or remarks about Nazi's either within the family or amongst friends on either side, in fact quite the opposite. Perhaps young people were more tolerant then and there were less misconceptions about what really happened that may have now got lost in the mists of time. Or perhaps with East Germany there for the world to see, everyone was just kinder.

Until recently I was prejudiced against what I thought of as the German nation, because of going through the war, and Dad being away fighting them. My sister was born after the war, and she's very pro-German, studied there and has a degree in German. She had a German penpal too, they exchanged visits. She and Dad used to have big rows about it, he never got over his mistrust of them.
The last 10 years or so I've been reading as much as I could find about what it was like to be a German civilian before during and after the war, and that's changed my feelings a lot. And the nature of forgiveness.
Anyone read The Sunflower by Simon Weisenthal?

The war ended 68 years ago, we were supporting apartheid in SA until the 1990's ,

When you say 'we' anniebach I hope you don't mean all of us collectively.
Some of us were on Peter Hain's side.
Some of us had relatives and friends in Zimbabwe in the 1960s and 1970s (Southern Rhodesia as it was then known), many of whom were very uncomfortable indeed with the status quo and doing their best to educate people. Some of them were unable to leave. Others managed to leave with nothing.

I was anti-Apartheid as far back as 1961. If "we" is meant to refer to successive UK governments, it may be fairer to say that they did not manage to do much about it rather than that they supported it; what to do for the best without harming the non-white population was a very contentious issue.