The election of the first head of a county administration by the far-right Alternative of Germany in a rural eastern region recently has led to concern among opponents of the party.
Sadly the denazification was overall a joke and not a success as many claim it to be. The trials held were just for show. Barely any people ended up paying for what they did. Most people that collaborated with the nazi party just signed a piece of paper saying they weren’t Nazis and they were good to go. No such thing as real denazification ever happened.
And then the losers were allowed to write history for the winners, hence a lot of historical myths have endured for so long, such as Clean Rommel, Asiatic Hordes and the apolitical Wehrmact.
Not necessarily defending the church, because screw the church. But the church played both sides since it’s a big institution. My grandmother and her sister were hidden in a Catholic church in Belgium before the war while their parents were constantly moving from place to place to avoid the gestapo. Meanwhile other churches turned in Jews and hid Nazis after the war. Of course, they kicked my grandmother out when her sister put up a fuss about being baptized so their parents took them back and found their way to America before 1942.
At one point, fascism was taught as “evil people marching with evil symbols, to do evil things, for the sake of evil”. Essentially the nazis were reduced to Saturday morning cartoon villains, erasing the memories of how they manipulated the minds of the common people.
This gives an opportunity for modern nazis. And since most people don’t know what kind of manipulation tactics they use, they can still use the same ones in new costume (see “great replacement”, the “groomer” panic, etc.).
At one point, fascism was taught as “evil people marching with evil symbols, to do evil things, for the sake of evil”. Essentially the nazis were reduced to Saturday morning cartoon villains, erasing the memories of how they manipulated the minds of the common people.
That really wasn’t my experience when I went to school in Germany. Nazi Germany was a major topic for many years and across different subjects and included a visit to a former concentration camp. At some point it got a little tiring but it was definitely not simplified in any way.
Maybe it was better taught in Germany, but in the UK I don’t recall any discussion of how Nazis were ordinary people, both educated and uneducated, rich and poor, people like ourselves. Perhaps that was obvious to the generations that lived through the war, but for later generations, and especially since the people who were adults during the war have died off, it needs emphasizing. I think for a few decades younger people were able to think of fascism as a strange, historically specific aberration from the norm of liberal democracy, something relegated to the past, and to think of Nazis as almost a different species. To see fascism resurging all around the world in recent years has come as a surprise, even though neoliberal governments have spent decades creating the conditions that produce it.
This is absolutely not how it is taught in Germany. If anything, our education concerning the WW2 era is what is making germany lag so far behind the other EU states when it comes to far right votes.
We are taught at length the underlying issues that were plaguing germany after WW1; social, economical, political, and how all of them contributed together to the rise of the third reich.
That’s why Germans are also very very wary when we spot developments in our country (or other countries, for that matter) that mirror the conditions in that time.
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Sadly the denazification was overall a joke and not a success as many claim it to be. The trials held were just for show. Barely any people ended up paying for what they did. Most people that collaborated with the nazi party just signed a piece of paper saying they weren’t Nazis and they were good to go. No such thing as real denazification ever happened.
And then the losers were allowed to write history for the winners, hence a lot of historical myths have endured for so long, such as Clean Rommel, Asiatic Hordes and the apolitical Wehrmact.
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Not necessarily defending the church, because screw the church. But the church played both sides since it’s a big institution. My grandmother and her sister were hidden in a Catholic church in Belgium before the war while their parents were constantly moving from place to place to avoid the gestapo. Meanwhile other churches turned in Jews and hid Nazis after the war. Of course, they kicked my grandmother out when her sister put up a fuss about being baptized so their parents took them back and found their way to America before 1942.
One other problem is how history is taught.
At one point, fascism was taught as “evil people marching with evil symbols, to do evil things, for the sake of evil”. Essentially the nazis were reduced to Saturday morning cartoon villains, erasing the memories of how they manipulated the minds of the common people.
This gives an opportunity for modern nazis. And since most people don’t know what kind of manipulation tactics they use, they can still use the same ones in new costume (see “great replacement”, the “groomer” panic, etc.).
That really wasn’t my experience when I went to school in Germany. Nazi Germany was a major topic for many years and across different subjects and included a visit to a former concentration camp. At some point it got a little tiring but it was definitely not simplified in any way.
Same in Czechia. Though I guess we were taught from a slightly different angle than you guys.
Maybe it was better taught in Germany, but in the UK I don’t recall any discussion of how Nazis were ordinary people, both educated and uneducated, rich and poor, people like ourselves. Perhaps that was obvious to the generations that lived through the war, but for later generations, and especially since the people who were adults during the war have died off, it needs emphasizing. I think for a few decades younger people were able to think of fascism as a strange, historically specific aberration from the norm of liberal democracy, something relegated to the past, and to think of Nazis as almost a different species. To see fascism resurging all around the world in recent years has come as a surprise, even though neoliberal governments have spent decades creating the conditions that produce it.
This is absolutely not how it is taught in Germany. If anything, our education concerning the WW2 era is what is making germany lag so far behind the other EU states when it comes to far right votes.
We are taught at length the underlying issues that were plaguing germany after WW1; social, economical, political, and how all of them contributed together to the rise of the third reich.
That’s why Germans are also very very wary when we spot developments in our country (or other countries, for that matter) that mirror the conditions in that time.
EvErYonE i Disagree with is a NAZI!!!
You are litterally defending nazis in another thread. Never seen people take offense with what you’re quoting except your kind of people.