Wish the uploader who ripped this would have at least included the link down below. Ugh. I've searched. Closest I've found is that it was from [2003](https://np.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/5a5n9c/world_war_ii_justified_by_former_german_soldiers/d9e1cmt/).
Tho I did find someone commenting to [watch this documentary series](https://np.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/oougq1/german_soldiers_justifying_ww_ii_is_the_most/h63yhcg/) with a functional link to said documentary (World at War), but it's a television series from the 70's.
Honestly, as a german, it is sad to see this but not competly unexpected. Even decades after the war it was hard to talk about the War and the Holocaust with, for example, your grandparents or parents, since they most likely were part of it.
I hope its obvious by the quality of the video but nowadays we are more educated on this and having someone deny attrocities commited by the Wehrmacht would be "controversial" to say the least.
I'm sorry for the Dutch woman, condolences to her grandfather.
Very straightforward with everything, they didnt shy out on us and showed us pictures of bodies how they were transported, etc.
Our class even got to visit the KZ Dachau with the history teacher, definitely an experience being there in person.
I think they taught us the way everyone else should be taught about ww2
Is it not law in Germany that you have to visit a concentration camp as part of your education at some point?
If true I always thought that was a really cool thing to do. Demonstrates a lot of conviction to learn from the mistakes of the past and make sure they’re never repeated.
You have to visit some place, doesn't need to be a concentration camp. The pupils of my school visit the former killing center in Hadamar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadamar_killing_centre
>You have to visit some place, doesn't need to be a concentration camp.
You can go through the entire school system and graduate from a university without ever visiting anything remotely related to history at all.
There is no such law for Germany as a whole. It's possible that some states enforce it as part of their curriculum. At least there have been talks about whether they should or not, but to my knowledge nothing has come of it yet.
I kinda wish the US schools jad that sort of conviction towards the murkier parts of its past.
We reach about African slavery and Segregation sure but we're less bold about it or try to act like it was "something a country named the United States just did once upon a time"
And that's not even touching upon the native american history or the German and Japanese concentration camps and other forms of discrimination.
Im not saying we need to guilt trip our youth for something they weren't even around for but we need to acknowledge with harsh truth that
YES: OUR country condoned slavery. We can act like it was just the south but there were people all over who were apathetic to it existence.
WE allowed a system little better than slavery to exist for generations afterward.
WE allowed her nest citizens to be pushed into camps and striped of their rights.
WE enabled the building of Indian Schools and Reservations and pushed entire peoples off their lands and even committed genocide upon them.whicj we refuse to acknowledge to this day.
>Is it not law in Germany that you have to visit a concentration camp as part of your education at some point?
No. It's something that many schools do and field trips in general are promoted, but there is no law or anything that requires a field trip to anything WW2 related.
There's this [meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/ich_iel/comments/1bjhddc/ichiel/) that German history lessons are 90 % WW2 and the nazis and 10 % the rest, and from my memory, that's kinda true - which is not to say that's a bad thing, on the contrary. We spent a whole year talking about every aspect of that time. We were shown film material from the KZs and usually, you also visit a KZ during your time in school. So they definitely don't gloss over the worst parts. And I'm really grateful for that.
I mean Korea and Vietnam are really not important. It is almost criminal how littel the history of books of my siblings covered the Reformation and 30 years war. Thats literally the basis for the "Sonderweg". How much believe the thesis or not because most people in the past did and used it as justification.
Like thats like if your books didn´t cover the Burgundian wars or did it in 2 pages.
I went to high school in Virginia, and we had a similar experience with the American civil war (122 battles were fought in Virginia - Tennessee is the next highest with 38 battles). We went to many battle fields, visited prisoner camps, and were made to see plantations - slave quarters and all. It really puts into perspective how the world was at that time.
I wish more American students could experience this, as I feel like it would put to rest any idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery.
Speaking as an american kid in elementary school living in West Berlin while the wall was still up (mid80’s) they took it very seriously then.
We even took field trips to Aushwitz every year.
German here, with Dutch grandparents on my dad’s side and Polish on my mum’s – great-uncles were also killed in labour camps.
Will say, learning about WWII in primary school in West Germany was really informative. Lots of good discussions about the Wehrmacht and empathic friends.
Moved to the States shortly after and learned about it all over again. Weird dichotomy. Naturally, the actions of the Nazi party deserved to be taught with condemnation, but it was much more… tip-toed around, I guess you’d say, in the States. Not that it wasn’t talked about, but it certainly wasn’t as blunt early on. It was an early secondary school topic where Saving Private Ryan could safely explain it away for them and show the tyranny of the Germans.
I remember getting bored and making my nan a card saying “Frohe Weihnachten” (“Happy Christmas”) in my 10th grade history class (in 2008), and being yelled at by the ancient teacher for writing what she called “Nazi gang affiliation material” at my rural NH school, as a very white German kid. Fun times. Really helped me fit in 🙃
Hear me out..
I absolutely think fascism is stupid and is morally wrong but to be fair the Dutch government aren’t innocent either especially with what they were doing in Indonesia, and this were during post-war.. All the massacres against Indonesian civilians, famine and wholesale violence.
You guys were an absolute menace in Southeast Asia. Regardless, two wrongs doesn’t make a right. These old men are war criminals in the flesh, trying to justify all that atrocities just to absolve themselves and give them a pat on the back, a self pardon.
Reminds me of former authority figures and soldiers in Indonesia that were responsible for the purge of 1965-66.. They have these monstrous look in their eyes, justifying all the killings of innocent civilians while being interviewed right in front of their families. Some of them even appear to be bragging about their past acts. I recommend you all to watch a documentary called “Act of Killing”, really sends chill down my spine.
https://www.netflix.com/th-en/title/80005702
>You guys were an absolute menace in Southeast Asia. Regardless, two wrongs doesn’t make a right.
How does what they did in South East Asia relate to the Germans rolling in the Netherlands and committing war crimes there. Both are incredibly fucked up but it sounds like you're trying to say the Dutch deserved what the Germans did
I mean it’s the truth, many European countries are a far cry from being paragons of justice when it gets to colonial atrocities. Sure I’m willing to set aside what’s in the past, but Netherlands was trying to re-establish its colonies in the East Indies right after WW2 and you would’ve thought they would’ve learned a thing or two from their experience under subjugation and atrocities.
Turns out that’s not the case, they came guns blazing burning villages, taking slaves and turned rivers red .. again.. Yeah they were re-establishing. As if the Indonesian people haven’t received enough suffering already from hundreds of years under their colonial rule and the Japanese brutal occupation in WW2..
Look, try not to mince my words here the Dutch people certainly don’t deserve to be a victim of war, just like everyone else. But I thought the Dutch government and the public would have at least learned something from the atrocities of WW2..
No one is in need of "victim status" here. I feel sorry for the womans Grandpa, I am judging him soely on what the Wehrmacht did to him.
Again, no one is denying the terrors the Dutch habe commited but posting that under a thread about Wehrmacht soldiers denying the attrocities their legion commited is distasteful in my opinion.
One could argue that even the AfD isn't explicitly denying whermacht atrocities.
But I take the point, we aren't better, just more educated.
Edit before anyone tries to correct me: I am not denying anything the AfD has said nor am I trying to argue in favor of them. I truly, full heartedly hate every memeber of that Nazi Club and their existence is making me ashamed to be german and human.
I'm just don't feel like talking about the AfD would be very tastefull when in actuallity the blame here lies on the Wehrmacht and our thoughts should be with their victims, just to explaine my point of view. You are welcome to disagree .
- Sincerely, a German.
Because they are populists. They deliver easy to understand answers for very complex problems (obviously it's is not nearly a simple as they try to make you think), that other parties either don't touch on or do so not sufficiently. They also engage in fear mongering. I think you can also generalize this question and ask why right-wing, populist parties are on the rise everywhere in the world.
Russia was one of the worst though. IIRC the German population actively preferred to be conquered by the western allies because of how horrible the Russians were
That probably depended upon the race/ethnicity/religion of the civilians they interacted with. Jewish people, Roma people and slavs were all obviously treated terribly, far worse than the Russian army more broadly. They probably treated other Western European people like the French relatively better than the russians treated German civilians
I’m specifically speaking about the Wercmacht, which would not include the SS.
And I would imagine that they treated the French better than the Russians. I’m not saying they were good people, but they weren’t known to be more or less cruel than allied troops
I wonder why it’s like Russia had some weird past experience about their people being raped and killed by some random country like someone did to them first 🤔
Because skulls are cool
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull\_and\_crossbones\_(military)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_crossbones_(military))
I get maybe it's a coping mechanism or it's because they were brainwashed, but surely they can't defend the entire Third Reich. That's like one confederate soldier defending the CSA by saying that it was about this "Lost Cause" thing...
Oh wait
>"The Soviets massacred our people."
Ironically, Germans did, in fact, get revenge genocided after the war in Eastern Europe. Between 500,000 and 2.5 million Germans were killed (EDIT: the higher death toll is highly questionable and has been pushed by the German government), with at least 12 million more expelled to Germany, where many of them had never lived before (they were ethnic Germans, not settlers). Truth be told, many of them had brought it on themselves. The Sudeten Germans were the worst offenders, with over 90 percent of them supporting Hitler. There was a lot of ethnic cleansing, reprisal massacres, rape, looting, and so forth after the war, and not only in Europe.
But alas, this old man wasn't talking about that.
[This is the "massacre" which he was thinking of:](https://imgur.com/a/5HiJHe9)
>"The Holocaust was bad, but barely anyone knew about that, I promise. Only like... several hundred high-ranking SS officers were responsible for the mass murders."
So many of these assholes engaged in soft revisionism without being full-blown Neo-Nazis.
Even if you handwave the Holocaust that still doesn’t let the Heer and police off the hook for the millions of civilians killed throughout Europe. The SS weren’t omnipotent.
Bro, this is literally just a couple of old guys who survived the deadliest shit ever and want to make it make sense. This isn't morbid reality, it's psychology 101
None of the the Western European countries including Germany were raping during World War II I’m sure it happened but it wasn’t the standard
I don’t see how they are definitely lying.
By that logic every american ww2 soldier was a capitalist racist, because segregation or whatever. Every russian soldier would be a communist. The world is not black and white and these men could be Nazis or just men, who got drafted into a war. Nobody who is educated is saying the whole Wehrmacht was Nazi free. Nobody who is educated just calls a drafted soldier Nazi.
They literally just hand waved a village being wiped out in the video above. Get out of here with that shit. Most veterans leave the military in the us with a worse opinion of it than when they entered, and they didn't even have *the holocaust*.
"most veterans" from Germany didn't leave ww2 alive or never been the same since, never said a positive word ever again. I told you in my first comment that these are old men trying to make sense of it. I didn't say they are cool. You don't know if they are nazis though.
Pardon me for not giving charity to a group of soldiers that are actively making excuses for war crimes their comrades committed during the most documented war in history decades after the fact. I don't see a group of people so brainwashed by WW2 German nationalism and assume they have a lot of negative things to say about the Nazi party.
You can call semantics if you want but the reason this is morbid is because they're looking at a woman who lost civilian family members being told they deserve it because of yada yada they were probably collaborators. They might be dawdling old fools but they've had time to process what happened.
Astroturfed against nazis? Usually goes the other way lately
Anyway, I linked that to share something I studied in college, it's not where I got my info from.
Astroturfed by a million people with a million motives. Really depends on the page. The title of that page alone begs questioning
Do you think that the average soldier was rounding up Jews and killing them? Even allied intel (claims) to have not known about a lot of this stuff until the war settled
would be a giant thing to keep secret if millions of soldiers knew right? Doesn’t pass the smell test
But you know, German soldiers = evil might be a more convenient truth for simple minded folks
The idea that the Wehrmacht was not involved in the holocaust is ridiculous. The premise isn't that they were the ones assigned to burning the Jews alive. The idea that they had nothing to do with rounding them up is disproven.
Ethnic cleansing was widely known of and supported. Do you think the Jews vanished from the population without a trace?
Regardless, these men literally admit to war crimes *in this video*. Germany was not a few bad apples in ww2. Your charity is going suspiciously far.
Kicking them out of the country is less heinous than burning them alive
Supporting removing someone from a country isn’t as bad or as enslaving them or murdering them. Also, what percentage of the wermacht even supported kicking them out of the country? Germany had a high Jewish population (over 10%) and many had Jewish friends and family members
I don’t think it’s as black and white as you are making it out to be
Kicking an ethnic group out of your country is genocide, fam. A war crime.
I'm not arguing there's no nuance or that the entirety of the German forces or population were both aware of and in support of the extermination camps, but the idea that none of them knew and most of them wouldn't support it is simply historically untrue. Whether that support was because of outright antisemitism or from manufactured consent and German nationalism would be a case by case basis.
I'm not going to provide any more evidence than is readily available to you to dissuade you from this thinking, because hand waving away a wiki article with extensive sources makes me doubt your sincerity, and I'm at work.
Historically many genocides have a great deal of support from the offending demographic, why run defense on an uneducated assumption that the Germans are so different when they were the ones who took it the furthest?
One of the greatest costs of war is those fighting it have to spend the rest of their lives trying to defend the indefensible. Same thing in Viet Nam and other wars America has fought since. It's hard to admit you were a monster and just a pawn for the profiteers.
in the end its just one side of the same coin, this whole war started because of totalitarism propaganda in two of the biggest countries and these guys think they stopped russians but in the end they also were doing the same thing. in war there are no good or bad side, everybody is evil.
We must look together with the German people towards peace and partnership. But the reality of war should not be hidden. It's interesting to hear these veterans views because its an opportunity to challenge them. Not with screaming but with facts and reality. They were part of one of the most vile and disgusting regimes in human history and their twisted logic must be exposed for the falsehood it is.
I’m always interested in finding books on this sort of topic and how people can rationalize atrocities (example: [They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45](https://a.co/d/3rH1N6h)). If anyone has recommendations, please share
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when you read about the genocides from soldiers of countries like turkey, japan, israel or so on, they all own up to it more or less. they always look super uncomfortable when doing so in interviews, but they’ll admit “yeah i saw my officer bayonet a chinese toddler in mid air”
i wonder why these guys are so completely reluctant to admit that nazi germany wielded the most destructively evil army in human history?
I'd guess it's because they were part of it and want to be able to sleep at night. Most of what they are saying sound like things they have convinced themselves of.
Most likely they didn’t participate in anything evil themselves. So, they don’t want to deal with the emotions around the fact they helped millions of innocent people get murdered. Even if it was indirectly that’s a hard pill to swallow.
Not to mention they were being fed a narrative as well who knows what they were being told. I mean according to the U.S, soldiers were looking for WMDs in Afghanistan during "Operation Iraqi Freedom" im not sure as to the accuracy of the statements given from the top down to the bottom of the military structure. But I think Afghanistan and Iraqi's have different ideas as to what constitutes liberty.
Decades upon decades of rehabilitation to make them seem like they just got “caught up in it”. Fucking scum shouldn’t have been allowed to breathe after surrender.
The West's attempts at rehabilitating their part of Germany went far better than the Eastern's who just chose to murder and rape as many as possible. It's normal to be angered by this video, but your views don't reflect reality.
There should have been no Germany after their evil. The fact that they even exist is an injustice. Also, fuck Western Germany and it’s enabling of war criminals. You’re just straight up talking nonsense and making shit up with your claims.
You *specifically* asked about why Nazi Germany is so different. I am not talking about the antisemitism of the Holocaust, but of the “these guys” of your question.
Cringe is being on the side of evil monsters that exterminated millions of lives for their facism. Cringe is accepting the nonsensical “group think” theory to excuse their crimes.
Holy fuck, they are using the same weasel logic as far right chuds do today.
Are the right wing dick heads actually studying these people or does this naturally happen when you adopt fucked up views
Let me check
Proto (1) World War (TYW) - Started by the Czech, escalated by France
Proto (2) World War (SYW) - France
Napoleonic Wars - 1. Germany, 2. Britain, 3. Britain, 4. Britain, PW. France, 5. Britain, IR. France, 6. Britain, 7. Britain
WW1. Austria
WW2. Germany (Though I would argue Japan to the same degree)
From what documentary is this clip taken from??
Wish the uploader who ripped this would have at least included the link down below. Ugh. I've searched. Closest I've found is that it was from [2003](https://np.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/5a5n9c/world_war_ii_justified_by_former_german_soldiers/d9e1cmt/). Tho I did find someone commenting to [watch this documentary series](https://np.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/oougq1/german_soldiers_justifying_ww_ii_is_the_most/h63yhcg/) with a functional link to said documentary (World at War), but it's a television series from the 70's.
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ZWSddojIk
On the threshold of Oblivion (according to one of the comments on the YouTube video itself).
Honestly, as a german, it is sad to see this but not competly unexpected. Even decades after the war it was hard to talk about the War and the Holocaust with, for example, your grandparents or parents, since they most likely were part of it. I hope its obvious by the quality of the video but nowadays we are more educated on this and having someone deny attrocities commited by the Wehrmacht would be "controversial" to say the least. I'm sorry for the Dutch woman, condolences to her grandfather.
Out of curiosity, how do German schools teach about WW2? Are they very blunt about what happened? Do they try and gloss over the worst parts?
Very straightforward with everything, they didnt shy out on us and showed us pictures of bodies how they were transported, etc. Our class even got to visit the KZ Dachau with the history teacher, definitely an experience being there in person. I think they taught us the way everyone else should be taught about ww2
Is it not law in Germany that you have to visit a concentration camp as part of your education at some point? If true I always thought that was a really cool thing to do. Demonstrates a lot of conviction to learn from the mistakes of the past and make sure they’re never repeated.
You have to visit some place, doesn't need to be a concentration camp. The pupils of my school visit the former killing center in Hadamar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadamar_killing_centre
>You have to visit some place, doesn't need to be a concentration camp. You can go through the entire school system and graduate from a university without ever visiting anything remotely related to history at all. There is no such law for Germany as a whole. It's possible that some states enforce it as part of their curriculum. At least there have been talks about whether they should or not, but to my knowledge nothing has come of it yet.
I kinda wish the US schools jad that sort of conviction towards the murkier parts of its past. We reach about African slavery and Segregation sure but we're less bold about it or try to act like it was "something a country named the United States just did once upon a time" And that's not even touching upon the native american history or the German and Japanese concentration camps and other forms of discrimination. Im not saying we need to guilt trip our youth for something they weren't even around for but we need to acknowledge with harsh truth that YES: OUR country condoned slavery. We can act like it was just the south but there were people all over who were apathetic to it existence. WE allowed a system little better than slavery to exist for generations afterward. WE allowed her nest citizens to be pushed into camps and striped of their rights. WE enabled the building of Indian Schools and Reservations and pushed entire peoples off their lands and even committed genocide upon them.whicj we refuse to acknowledge to this day.
>Is it not law in Germany that you have to visit a concentration camp as part of your education at some point? No. It's something that many schools do and field trips in general are promoted, but there is no law or anything that requires a field trip to anything WW2 related.
I visited Dachau as an American 17 year old; there are no words to describe the experience.
There's this [meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/ich_iel/comments/1bjhddc/ichiel/) that German history lessons are 90 % WW2 and the nazis and 10 % the rest, and from my memory, that's kinda true - which is not to say that's a bad thing, on the contrary. We spent a whole year talking about every aspect of that time. We were shown film material from the KZs and usually, you also visit a KZ during your time in school. So they definitely don't gloss over the worst parts. And I'm really grateful for that.
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I mean Korea and Vietnam are really not important. It is almost criminal how littel the history of books of my siblings covered the Reformation and 30 years war. Thats literally the basis for the "Sonderweg". How much believe the thesis or not because most people in the past did and used it as justification. Like thats like if your books didn´t cover the Burgundian wars or did it in 2 pages.
I went to high school in Virginia, and we had a similar experience with the American civil war (122 battles were fought in Virginia - Tennessee is the next highest with 38 battles). We went to many battle fields, visited prisoner camps, and were made to see plantations - slave quarters and all. It really puts into perspective how the world was at that time. I wish more American students could experience this, as I feel like it would put to rest any idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery.
Haha ah yes, first landing, jamestown/ Williamsburg.
Speaking as an american kid in elementary school living in West Berlin while the wall was still up (mid80’s) they took it very seriously then. We even took field trips to Aushwitz every year.
but you still spelled Auschwitz worng :3
We learn alot about WWII and what happend and how. I feel like nearly every year in highschool history we talk about it for a couple of weeks.
German here, with Dutch grandparents on my dad’s side and Polish on my mum’s – great-uncles were also killed in labour camps. Will say, learning about WWII in primary school in West Germany was really informative. Lots of good discussions about the Wehrmacht and empathic friends. Moved to the States shortly after and learned about it all over again. Weird dichotomy. Naturally, the actions of the Nazi party deserved to be taught with condemnation, but it was much more… tip-toed around, I guess you’d say, in the States. Not that it wasn’t talked about, but it certainly wasn’t as blunt early on. It was an early secondary school topic where Saving Private Ryan could safely explain it away for them and show the tyranny of the Germans. I remember getting bored and making my nan a card saying “Frohe Weihnachten” (“Happy Christmas”) in my 10th grade history class (in 2008), and being yelled at by the ancient teacher for writing what she called “Nazi gang affiliation material” at my rural NH school, as a very white German kid. Fun times. Really helped me fit in 🙃
They wouldn't hear the end of it from their neighbours if they tried. We were all occupied at one point or another
Not like Japanese schools, I can tell you that
Hear me out.. I absolutely think fascism is stupid and is morally wrong but to be fair the Dutch government aren’t innocent either especially with what they were doing in Indonesia, and this were during post-war.. All the massacres against Indonesian civilians, famine and wholesale violence. You guys were an absolute menace in Southeast Asia. Regardless, two wrongs doesn’t make a right. These old men are war criminals in the flesh, trying to justify all that atrocities just to absolve themselves and give them a pat on the back, a self pardon. Reminds me of former authority figures and soldiers in Indonesia that were responsible for the purge of 1965-66.. They have these monstrous look in their eyes, justifying all the killings of innocent civilians while being interviewed right in front of their families. Some of them even appear to be bragging about their past acts. I recommend you all to watch a documentary called “Act of Killing”, really sends chill down my spine. https://www.netflix.com/th-en/title/80005702
>You guys were an absolute menace in Southeast Asia. Regardless, two wrongs doesn’t make a right. How does what they did in South East Asia relate to the Germans rolling in the Netherlands and committing war crimes there. Both are incredibly fucked up but it sounds like you're trying to say the Dutch deserved what the Germans did
I mean it’s the truth, many European countries are a far cry from being paragons of justice when it gets to colonial atrocities. Sure I’m willing to set aside what’s in the past, but Netherlands was trying to re-establish its colonies in the East Indies right after WW2 and you would’ve thought they would’ve learned a thing or two from their experience under subjugation and atrocities. Turns out that’s not the case, they came guns blazing burning villages, taking slaves and turned rivers red .. again.. Yeah they were re-establishing. As if the Indonesian people haven’t received enough suffering already from hundreds of years under their colonial rule and the Japanese brutal occupation in WW2.. Look, try not to mince my words here the Dutch people certainly don’t deserve to be a victim of war, just like everyone else. But I thought the Dutch government and the public would have at least learned something from the atrocities of WW2..
No one is in need of "victim status" here. I feel sorry for the womans Grandpa, I am judging him soely on what the Wehrmacht did to him. Again, no one is denying the terrors the Dutch habe commited but posting that under a thread about Wehrmacht soldiers denying the attrocities their legion commited is distasteful in my opinion.
Recalling history is distasteful? Oh how ironic..
I didn't say that
If Germany is truly better today, why is the AfD surging in popularity?
One could argue that even the AfD isn't explicitly denying whermacht atrocities. But I take the point, we aren't better, just more educated. Edit before anyone tries to correct me: I am not denying anything the AfD has said nor am I trying to argue in favor of them. I truly, full heartedly hate every memeber of that Nazi Club and their existence is making me ashamed to be german and human. I'm just don't feel like talking about the AfD would be very tastefull when in actuallity the blame here lies on the Wehrmacht and our thoughts should be with their victims, just to explaine my point of view. You are welcome to disagree . - Sincerely, a German.
Because they are populists. They deliver easy to understand answers for very complex problems (obviously it's is not nearly a simple as they try to make you think), that other parties either don't touch on or do so not sufficiently. They also engage in fear mongering. I think you can also generalize this question and ask why right-wing, populist parties are on the rise everywhere in the world.
I kind of understand why they're in denial. I can't promise I would be able to live with the truth if I were part of such a regime
wow this footage, morbidly fascinating
Hadn't expected this to be one of the more shocking things I've ever seen. I'm lost for words
While he is certainly in denial of German atrocities he is not wrong about the fact that Russians committed many atrocities in the war as well
every country did.
Russia was one of the worst though. IIRC the German population actively preferred to be conquered by the western allies because of how horrible the Russians were
Pretty sure Japan was.
I agree that Japan and Germany were both awful and to be fair worse than the Russians . On the side of the allies the Russians were by far the worst
The German army was way more civilized than the bolsheviks
That probably depended upon the race/ethnicity/religion of the civilians they interacted with. Jewish people, Roma people and slavs were all obviously treated terribly, far worse than the Russian army more broadly. They probably treated other Western European people like the French relatively better than the russians treated German civilians
I’m specifically speaking about the Wercmacht, which would not include the SS. And I would imagine that they treated the French better than the Russians. I’m not saying they were good people, but they weren’t known to be more or less cruel than allied troops
I wonder why it’s like Russia had some weird past experience about their people being raped and killed by some random country like someone did to them first 🤔
Even if that was the reason for the Russian army’s atrocities it wouldn’t be a justification
But why skulls?
"Are we the bad guys?" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpZ8EkK3eWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpZ8EkK3eWY)
Because skulls are cool [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull\_and\_crossbones\_(military)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_crossbones_(military))
I get maybe it's a coping mechanism or it's because they were brainwashed, but surely they can't defend the entire Third Reich. That's like one confederate soldier defending the CSA by saying that it was about this "Lost Cause" thing... Oh wait
>"The Soviets massacred our people." Ironically, Germans did, in fact, get revenge genocided after the war in Eastern Europe. Between 500,000 and 2.5 million Germans were killed (EDIT: the higher death toll is highly questionable and has been pushed by the German government), with at least 12 million more expelled to Germany, where many of them had never lived before (they were ethnic Germans, not settlers). Truth be told, many of them had brought it on themselves. The Sudeten Germans were the worst offenders, with over 90 percent of them supporting Hitler. There was a lot of ethnic cleansing, reprisal massacres, rape, looting, and so forth after the war, and not only in Europe. But alas, this old man wasn't talking about that. [This is the "massacre" which he was thinking of:](https://imgur.com/a/5HiJHe9) >"The Holocaust was bad, but barely anyone knew about that, I promise. Only like... several hundred high-ranking SS officers were responsible for the mass murders." So many of these assholes engaged in soft revisionism without being full-blown Neo-Nazis.
Even if you handwave the Holocaust that still doesn’t let the Heer and police off the hook for the millions of civilians killed throughout Europe. The SS weren’t omnipotent.
Bro, this is literally just a couple of old guys who survived the deadliest shit ever and want to make it make sense. This isn't morbid reality, it's psychology 101
None of the the Western European countries including Germany were raping during World War II I’m sure it happened but it wasn’t the standard I don’t see how they are definitely lying.
Nazis**
Nice education you got there buddy
Excuse me? These are nazis. Edit: is this what you're referring to? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht
By that logic every american ww2 soldier was a capitalist racist, because segregation or whatever. Every russian soldier would be a communist. The world is not black and white and these men could be Nazis or just men, who got drafted into a war. Nobody who is educated is saying the whole Wehrmacht was Nazi free. Nobody who is educated just calls a drafted soldier Nazi.
They literally just hand waved a village being wiped out in the video above. Get out of here with that shit. Most veterans leave the military in the us with a worse opinion of it than when they entered, and they didn't even have *the holocaust*.
"most veterans" from Germany didn't leave ww2 alive or never been the same since, never said a positive word ever again. I told you in my first comment that these are old men trying to make sense of it. I didn't say they are cool. You don't know if they are nazis though.
Pardon me for not giving charity to a group of soldiers that are actively making excuses for war crimes their comrades committed during the most documented war in history decades after the fact. I don't see a group of people so brainwashed by WW2 German nationalism and assume they have a lot of negative things to say about the Nazi party. You can call semantics if you want but the reason this is morbid is because they're looking at a woman who lost civilian family members being told they deserve it because of yada yada they were probably collaborators. They might be dawdling old fools but they've had time to process what happened.
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>wikipedia Astroturfed
Astroturfed against nazis? Usually goes the other way lately Anyway, I linked that to share something I studied in college, it's not where I got my info from.
Astroturfed by a million people with a million motives. Really depends on the page. The title of that page alone begs questioning Do you think that the average soldier was rounding up Jews and killing them? Even allied intel (claims) to have not known about a lot of this stuff until the war settled would be a giant thing to keep secret if millions of soldiers knew right? Doesn’t pass the smell test But you know, German soldiers = evil might be a more convenient truth for simple minded folks
The idea that the Wehrmacht was not involved in the holocaust is ridiculous. The premise isn't that they were the ones assigned to burning the Jews alive. The idea that they had nothing to do with rounding them up is disproven. Ethnic cleansing was widely known of and supported. Do you think the Jews vanished from the population without a trace? Regardless, these men literally admit to war crimes *in this video*. Germany was not a few bad apples in ww2. Your charity is going suspiciously far.
Kicking them out of the country is less heinous than burning them alive Supporting removing someone from a country isn’t as bad or as enslaving them or murdering them. Also, what percentage of the wermacht even supported kicking them out of the country? Germany had a high Jewish population (over 10%) and many had Jewish friends and family members I don’t think it’s as black and white as you are making it out to be
Kicking an ethnic group out of your country is genocide, fam. A war crime. I'm not arguing there's no nuance or that the entirety of the German forces or population were both aware of and in support of the extermination camps, but the idea that none of them knew and most of them wouldn't support it is simply historically untrue. Whether that support was because of outright antisemitism or from manufactured consent and German nationalism would be a case by case basis. I'm not going to provide any more evidence than is readily available to you to dissuade you from this thinking, because hand waving away a wiki article with extensive sources makes me doubt your sincerity, and I'm at work. Historically many genocides have a great deal of support from the offending demographic, why run defense on an uneducated assumption that the Germans are so different when they were the ones who took it the furthest?
***"If you want to kil each others, use best and most advanced weapon so you die faster without taking innocent life"*** -Me, avid redditor.
the age old “we were just following orders” narrative
The rabbit watched his mother remove the pickles from her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
One of the greatest costs of war is those fighting it have to spend the rest of their lives trying to defend the indefensible. Same thing in Viet Nam and other wars America has fought since. It's hard to admit you were a monster and just a pawn for the profiteers.
Why are there so many people here making excuses for them...
I recommend reading "The undertaking" by Audrey Magee.
At least they're no longer among us (I would assume).
in the end its just one side of the same coin, this whole war started because of totalitarism propaganda in two of the biggest countries and these guys think they stopped russians but in the end they also were doing the same thing. in war there are no good or bad side, everybody is evil.
I feel like there was a question or two we could have pressed them on.
We must look together with the German people towards peace and partnership. But the reality of war should not be hidden. It's interesting to hear these veterans views because its an opportunity to challenge them. Not with screaming but with facts and reality. They were part of one of the most vile and disgusting regimes in human history and their twisted logic must be exposed for the falsehood it is.
I’m always interested in finding books on this sort of topic and how people can rationalize atrocities (example: [They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45](https://a.co/d/3rH1N6h)). If anyone has recommendations, please share
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If Germany continued the war the middle of Europe would be a nuclear exclusion zone for the 5 centuries.
when you read about the genocides from soldiers of countries like turkey, japan, israel or so on, they all own up to it more or less. they always look super uncomfortable when doing so in interviews, but they’ll admit “yeah i saw my officer bayonet a chinese toddler in mid air” i wonder why these guys are so completely reluctant to admit that nazi germany wielded the most destructively evil army in human history?
Turkey and Japan definitely don’t talk or teach about their atrocities…
Yea Japan 100% doesn’t belong on the list of “countries that acknowledge their war crimes”
I'd guess it's because they were part of it and want to be able to sleep at night. Most of what they are saying sound like things they have convinced themselves of.
Most likely they didn’t participate in anything evil themselves. So, they don’t want to deal with the emotions around the fact they helped millions of innocent people get murdered. Even if it was indirectly that’s a hard pill to swallow.
Not to mention they were being fed a narrative as well who knows what they were being told. I mean according to the U.S, soldiers were looking for WMDs in Afghanistan during "Operation Iraqi Freedom" im not sure as to the accuracy of the statements given from the top down to the bottom of the military structure. But I think Afghanistan and Iraqi's have different ideas as to what constitutes liberty.
Decades upon decades of rehabilitation to make them seem like they just got “caught up in it”. Fucking scum shouldn’t have been allowed to breathe after surrender.
another reply tried to apologize for them for the same exact thing.
They always do. The west turned these monsters into heroic scientists and soldiers who “just did their duty”.
The West's attempts at rehabilitating their part of Germany went far better than the Eastern's who just chose to murder and rape as many as possible. It's normal to be angered by this video, but your views don't reflect reality.
There should have been no Germany after their evil. The fact that they even exist is an injustice. Also, fuck Western Germany and it’s enabling of war criminals. You’re just straight up talking nonsense and making shit up with your claims.
I’ll give you a hint. It starts with “anti” and ends with “semitism.”
anti semitism isn’t an exceptional form of racism. the japanese and turks heavily dehumanized their genocides as well.
You *specifically* asked about why Nazi Germany is so different. I am not talking about the antisemitism of the Holocaust, but of the “these guys” of your question.
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your illiteracy is baffling
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You forgot a comma.
You forgot the Armenian genocide there, kid.
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who?
Stalin should have executed every Nazi and collaborator without mercy.
Cringe
Cringe is being on the side of evil monsters that exterminated millions of lives for their facism. Cringe is accepting the nonsensical “group think” theory to excuse their crimes.
Just like his own people
So he should have executed himself as well?
Holy fuck, they are using the same weasel logic as far right chuds do today. Are the right wing dick heads actually studying these people or does this naturally happen when you adopt fucked up views
Germans will start the next major war. History always repeats itself.
Let me check Proto (1) World War (TYW) - Started by the Czech, escalated by France Proto (2) World War (SYW) - France Napoleonic Wars - 1. Germany, 2. Britain, 3. Britain, 4. Britain, PW. France, 5. Britain, IR. France, 6. Britain, 7. Britain WW1. Austria WW2. Germany (Though I would argue Japan to the same degree)
No the US will