http://chronicle.com/article/The-European-Atrocity-You/132123

Originally Posted By ralfy (6 JUL 2012 10:19am)

http://chronicle.com/article/The-European-Atrocity-You/132123

 

An untold story. Great find. Just goes to show how much media can control our knowledge of certain subjects.

I dunno...interesting, but its sort of like trying to have sympathy for the destitute families of slave owners after abolition and the Civil War. 

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331 (10 JUL 2012 4:24pm)

I dunno...interesting, but its sort of like trying to have sympathy for the destitute families of slave owners after abolition and the Civil War. 

But, not all Germans were National Socialists.

Originally Posted By Szmania (10 JUL 2012 4:43pm)

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331 (10 JUL 2012 4:24pm)

I dunno...interesting, but its sort of like trying to have sympathy for the destitute families of slave owners after abolition and the Civil War. 

 

But, not all Germans were National Socialists.

True, but of the approximate 55% of the population who actually did not vote for Hitler in the 1932 presidential election, once Hitler took power, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things and looked the other way.  So long as the average German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organizations, and didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, the Gestapo wouldn't be "his" problem.

In any event, not all white Southerners owned slaves, but many would argue its still hard to have sympathy for the vast majority of them who supported and fought for the Confederacy.

So...Open season on the Germans was justified after WW2?

Originally Posted By Rolph54 (10 JUL 2012 7:22pm)

So...Open season on the Germans was justified after WW2?

 

 

Wow.  That's quite an illogical extrapolation from anything I posted.  I simply stated that it is difficult to have sympathy for a people who, through their inaction, permitted one of the most systematic industrial genocides in history to occur.

Welcome to the forum.

Sorry for my "illogical extrapolation"...I'm outraged to any abuse and violence done to ANY people and  somebody  found a kind of justification for it.

Thanks for the welcome.

It seems that most of the victims did not vote for Hitler.  Here is a quote from the article.

"Between 12 million and 14 million German-speaking civilians—the overwhelming majority of whom were women, old people, and children under 16—were forcibly ejected from their places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are today the western districts of Poland."

Why do you think there were so many ethnic Germans living in places like Romania, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia? Did the sky just open up and rain Germans?

These eastern European regions were largely populated by ethnic Germans as a result of Germany's nationalistic policy of repopulating territory with Germans by creating numerous German settlements abroad.  Germans forced the indigenous people out (through placing them in labor camps or through plain old fashioned murder) in order to clear the land for German resettlement.

Once again, while its terrible that approximately 500,000 ethnic germans perished during the post-war forced relocation, I'm still hard pressed to shed tears for these people.  My sympathy is mostly reserved for the millions upon millions of "untermensch," which also included old men, women and children, who were simply shot, gassed, burned, or tortured to death by the Third Reich.  I find it quite ironic that the idiom "an eye for an eye," comes from the Hebrew bible.

In any event, if you want to blame anyone for the phase of relocation that resulted in the deaths of most of the Germans, blame the Reds.  At least 7 million ethnic germans were forceably relocated from Russian occupied territories prior to the Potsdam Agreements. 

Alot of really bad things happened because history started badly and has been getting worse

to paraphrase a bit.  No the sky did not open up and rain Germans and relatively few "migrated"

into eastern europe as a result of Nazi policy and those that did were hardly "displaced".

There were however  millions of ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe for some hundreds

of years previous to WW2.  From the VolgaDeutsch to the large German minorities in countries

immediately bordering Germany.  Remember the Sueutenlanders etc.  These German minorities

settled largely in the days of the Hapsburgs but many predated that era.  Read the lyrics to

"Deutchland Uber Alles" first verse...from the Meuse to the Memel from the Belt to the Adige

(refers to northern Italy).  These German minorities are gone.  Nobody had much sympathy for

Germans in 1945 and in a sad kind of reverse turn these people reaped the whirlwind.

They certainly did not vote for Hitler.  My son made a comment once as we were travelling

in Alsace and northern Lorraine.  He said "How come this is France and all the village names

are German?"

^I love how EVERYTHING needs to be spelled out in these forums.

I said "German nationalistic policies..."  I didn't say German nationalistic policies exclusive to the Third Reich. 

Having a bad day?

These people were living there for reasons beyond any recent national policies.

Further to that I have nothing to add.

I hope you have a better day.

Originally Posted By danlongman (11 JUL 2012 10:21am)

Having a bad day?

These people were living there for reasons beyond any recent national policies.

Further to that I have nothing to add.

I hope you have a better day.

I'm not having a bad day.  I just don't like your attitude.  And I also do not like Nazi apologizers or WWII era German sympathizers.

I am neither and you are truculent at best.

What is ironic is how many of the "Germans" who lived outside

of Germany were of Jewish origin and were rounded up and deported

by the Germans right before the rest were run off by the Eastern Europeans.

First, the murder of over 10 million people in concentration camps by the Nazis can never be excused.  Enough said.

The only point I was making with that quote was that these 12 to 14 million people who were moved after WWII were apparently too young to vote for the Nazis, and most were not born in Germany to begin with.  It appears that most of these people had nothing to do with the German government, and therefore they were moved and murdered as revenge for what other people (the Nazis) did.

A far less brutal example is when the Japanese Americans, many who were born in the U.S. and couldn't even speak Japanese, were put into internment camps because the Empire of Japan's surprise attack on the U.S.  Those Japanese Americans had nothing to do with what the government of Japan did.

So we have two horrible tragedies, the Holocaust and the forced migration of 12 to 14 million people after WWII. 

I don't think that the what happened to people who happened to speak German and live outside of Germany can be excused any more than the Holocaust can.  What was done to these German speaking people did not bring back to life one person who was murdered by the Nazis, it just spread more misery through out Europe.  And all the time the devil is laughing and doing a dance as he whispers "hate and revenge, hate and revenge" to all of us.

"Just don't like your attitude"? And to suggest that the people who don't agree with you on this subject are "Nazi apologizers or WWII era German sympathizers"; what do you think of this attitude!!!

I think that this is a very interesting topic, and its somethings that is completely new to me.  I would like to focus on the topic.  So I respectfully ask that everyone stop the personal attacks, respect each others opinions, and lets learn more about this historic event.

(I am not going to ask "Can we all just get along."  No way!)

Darnit, I want to learn more about this, so lets get back on topic.

Nah.  Jarhead doesn't like my attitude.

Besides Goodwin's Law has been broken ending the interchange.

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331 (11 JUL 2012 10:50am)

Originally Posted By danlongman (11 JUL 2012 10:21am)

Having a bad day?

These people were living there for reasons beyond any recent national policies.

Further to that I have nothing to add.

I hope you have a better day.

 

I'm not having a bad day.  I just don't like your attitude.  And I also do not like Nazi apologizers or WWII era German sympathizers.

OK. Let's sit back, relax, and pour ourselves a bourbon on the rocks.

Originally Posted By Rolph54 (11 JUL 2012 5:56pm)

"Just don't like your attitude"? And to suggest that the people who don't agree with you on this subject are "Nazi apologizers or WWII era German sympathizers"; what do you think of this attitude!!!

 

Originally Posted By danlongman (11 JUL 2012 9:49pm)

Nah. Jarhead doesn't like my attitude.

Besides Goodwin's Law has been broken ending the interchange.

Let's not escalate the situation.

Is it just to take out ones anger on the ethnic and civilian population of a nation you were once at war with, after that war is over? 

TOTAL= approximately 10-13,000,000 civilians expelled or displaced, over 2,000,000 dead.

@danlongman...its called "Godwin's Law" and I don't see how it applies here as we started off talking about Hitler and the Nazis.

@Szmania...I think you'll find your quoted statistic on deaths due to the expulsions are inflated by at least a factor of 3.  That doesn't mean that 500,000 dead as opposed to 2,000,000 dead isn't a travesty, but given how sensititve the people participating in this thread are to the struggles of Germans during WWII, I think we should strive for accuracy.

Let me make it absolutely clear once again, there can be no excuse for the crimes of the Nazi government, and the adults in Germany who elected them and looked the other way are also complicit in their crimes.  10 million innocent people were killed by those thugs in their death camps, not to mention the millions killed by their wars.  I do not think that anyone on these forums will disagree with this unless the president of Iran goes undercover and posts on this forum.

If you look at the original qoute, assuming the accuracy of the article, the 12 to 14 million German speaking people were mostly born outside of Germany whose only crime was that they spoke German.  Most were women, the elderly, or children under 16.  My point is that we had two horrible tradgedies here, the holocaust, and then the forced migrations after WWII.  Neither of these horrors can be excused.  Think back to all of the pictures and movies we have seen of the death camps, and look again at the horrific picture of the girl in the article.  We must never forget either tragedy.

Very well said,Scotters!