To think the Daily Mail have totally surpassed themselves by calling the current German administration 'The Fourth Reich'

[LaurieFairyCake]

Isn't that appalling? I can't believe they are insinuating that Germany has an 'empire' or 'kingdon'.

CharminglyOdd The something they had was massive investment at the end of WW2 by the US. Meanwhile, the countries they had occupied were left to pick up the pieces unaided - this includes Greece which had millions (worth billions in modern money) plundered by the Nazis and did not receive any compensation for this.

Hope that makes sense, reading it back it sounds a bit clumsy - doped up on antihistamines so brain not fully functional

But that was a decision taken by the US to halt Communism/ensure Nazism didn't return and it only affected half the country. It's not something the Germans actively pursued (and also not likely they were going to turn down free money - who would?). I don't know... it just always bothers me that the Germans get the blame when, by and large, the Germans I know are liberal, open minded, nice people who work very hard to come to terms with what their grandparents/great grandparents did or had done to them. As opposed to the British who like to take every opportunity to rub in their faces that we 'won' and they lost.

Theresa, this is taken from Wikipediaand refers to the reparations paid by Germany at theend of the second world war. Sorry that it's only Wiki, cannot vouch for its accuracy.

After World War II, according to the Potsdam conference held between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Germany was to pay the Allies US$23 billion mainly in machinery and manufacturing plants. Reparations to the Soviet Union stopped in 1953. In addition, in accordance with the agreed-upon policy of de-industrialisation and pastoralization of Germany, large numbers of civilian factories were dismantled for transport to France and the UK, or simply destroyed.[citation needed] Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950.
In the end, war victims in many countries were compensated by the property of Germans that were expelled after World War II. Beginning even before the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents and many leading scientists in Germany (known as Operation Paperclip). Historian John Gimbel, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, states that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion.[5] German reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor. By 1947, approximately 4,000,000 German POWs and civilians were used as forced labor (under various headings, such as "reparations labor" or "enforced labor") in the Soviet Union, France, the UK, Belgium and in Germany in U.S run "Military Labor Service Units".
See also: Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union, POW labor in the Soviet Union, and World War II reparations towards Yugoslavia
Germany paid Israel 450 million DM in Holocaust reparations, and paid 3 billion DM to the World Jewish Congress to compensate survivors in other countries. No reparations were paid to the Romanies who were killed during the Holocaust.[6]
According to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, Italy agreed to pay reparations of about US$125 million to Yugoslavia, US$105 million to Greece, US$100 million to the Soviet Union, US$25 million to Ethiopia, and US$5 million to Albania. Finland agreed to pay reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union; Finland also was the only country which fully paid its war reparations. Hungary agreed to pay reparations of US$200 million to the Soviet Union, US$100 million to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Romania agreed to pay reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union. Bulgaria agreed to pay reparations of $50 million to Greece and $25 million to Yugoslavia. According to the articles of these treaties, the value of US$ was prescribed as 35 US dollars to one troy ounce of pure gold.

I like you, CharminglyOld. Have you spent time in Germany?

after the first world war, Germany was 'overpunished'. after the second world war 'punishment' and reparations were more measured. so that Germany would not end up full of resentment again and start a third world war further down the line.

the americans went straight on to fighting the cold war afterwards and had to use Germany as a bulwark against the new Eastern block. that is probably why they got so much help from the americans

I should add that I do not believe that this part-paid reparations do not negate the evil that was done, but I just wanted to say that Germany did not get lff scott free.

I don believe, from my history lessons in school, that much of the reparation money was recieved from the US in the first place, allowing various countries to pay others. In this, the US really went above and beyond to prevent further fighting in Europe.

Do* not don.

Theresa - That is very true. Also they had British investment - while British cities had blitzed bombsites & British people's food was rationed for years afterwards.

My Dad (born 1947) remembers rationing, & my Mum (born 1949) remembers there were bombsites in Southampton & Portsmouth until the 1960s at least.
The investment in Germany was to give the Germans NO EXCUSE to get bitter again (as they did after WW1) & to de-Nazify them.

Oh yes, & the U.S. had their own interests in mind - they hired Nazi scientists (who had experimented on Concentration Camp prisoners) for their expertise in designing weapons, jet engines & rockets for use in Space exploration.

And they wanted a stable Germany to act as a buffer against the USSR (the U.S. historically feared Communism more than they cared about the Nazis & only joined WW2 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.)

But sorry, the term 4th Reich is still offensive.

Cheers Psammead I have spent a lot of holidays in Germany and DP is German, as well as some close friends. One of the friends is also Jewish so it has made for some extremely interesting conversations.

DP never met his grandfathers and he has never asked what his grandparents did during the war (although one side was part of a group forced on a starvation march out of what is now Poland (Silesia)).

It's such a difficult, horrible topic to engage with outside of academic historical discourse.

I just realised I called you charminglyold

Cringe.

I didn't mean anything by it! Just my toddler addled brain trying to read

My DH is German, too. One of his grandfathers died in Russia, the other rebelled and helped people escape.

It's easy to forget when certain words are bandied around that these men were just kids doing what they were told. Makes me cringe when people compare relatively mild situations to the holocaust, or use the word nazi lightly.

Charming - yes very difficult topic - especially for the Poles who had hundreds of towns & cities burnt when the German Wehrmacht (the regular army, not just the SS) marched INTO Silesia WITH NO PROVOCATION.

Then there was the Aryanisation of Silesia - the deportations during 1939 & 1940 of countless ethnic Poles & Jews into the General Government part of Poland (when thousands died of cold & starvation).

Plus the initial massacres of Polish 'Intelligentsia' in Silesia.

And wasn't Auschwitz in Silesia?? - lots of ethnic Germans worked in the factories in the 'Auschwitz Zone of Interest'. By choice. Lots of them employed Polish & Jewish slaves too. By choice.

But obviously most Germans never saw the millions of East European slaves working in their homes, farms & factories. They had no idea where all the new clothing & household goods could have come from that arrived in Germany from millions of murdered people.

I think it's time for me to leave this thread.

Latara, his family had lived there for generations, they were absolutely native (in as far as one ever gets in Europe) to that region. They were farmers. I guess you are Polish or of Polish descent? This is exactly what I mean about it being a difficult topic, for everyone.

I met a college-educated man in the USA who (he didn't realise I was dating a German) said he would love to visit Europe but would never go to Germany because he was Jewish. He had written off an entire country, mostly comprised of people who had nothing to do with WW2.

Psammead, I didn't even notice and I don't have the excuse of a toddler

At least the Germans, like most of europe have a balanced and proper democratic electroral system not the shambles we have been stuck with for so long.

That is shocking! I hate the DM and what it stands for. How could it not be offensive when we know what the third Reich stood for?

Yes, it's true some reparations were made, and also that the US were acting for the greater good, but many countries were left at a disadvantage. I should also add that I'm not some mad, anti-German/EU type (I've spent time in Germany and like it a lot), it just irks me to see Germany being compared to countries like Greece because it isn't a fair comparison.

I'd be more eloquent but I'm really going have to go and lie down; feeling so wappy now I just made a cup of tea, then poured it away and put the kettle back on

Hope you feel better soon, Theresa.

Charming - i guess your DP's family were ethnic Germans? Does your DH know if they signed the Volkdeutsche register? I don't blame them if they did - the alternative for ethnic Germans in occupied Poland was a concentration camp if they refused to sign the register. If they signed it then the Polish Underground considered them traitors. Very difficult & i don't know what i'd have done in that position.
It's wrong & sad that because of the actions of the Nazi Germans your DP's family were forced to leave their ancestral homeland.

I have German Jewish ancestry & Polish friends from Silesia.
I know that i hate many (not all) Nazi-era Germans because I know that but for the RAF's bravery my Gran's family would have been shot by the Germans (and their clothes & possessions would have been sent back to Germany for use by Germans). (google Dr Franz Six, the Einsatzgruppe, & Operation SeaLion, then you will know what the plans were & how narrowly we avoided that fate).
I dislike the (WW2-era) U.S.A. government because they did not defend Britain, & they could have saved many more Jews than their quotas allowed. As could Britain (but we did more for the Jews pre-war than the U.S.).

I'm not DM-style obsessed with 'the war' & Germany - WW2 was in another time, & to be blunt - the Channel Island (the only part of the British Isles to be invaded) has a shameful past regarding the Jews during the Nazi Occupation. The local Police collaborated in rounding up Jews. The British administrators of the Islands handed over details of local Jews.
Worst of all? C of E congregations shunned members of their church who were literally only QUARTER Jewish - that rarely happened even in Germany.

I have no illusions about how many British people would have collaborated, just as many thousands of French, Dutch, Belgians, Baltic peoples, Ukrainians, even Poles etc etc etc collaborated & happily joined in with the atrocities against Jews & others.

My basic point is that Nazism did not just expose the 'bad' side of many Germans - it exposed the 'bad' side in many people of all races & nationalities.

We can learn from those times (& sadly, from many other conflicts since then) not to be complacent about our own human character & about what we are capable of - whoever we are.
The DM likes to paint 'the Germans' as the 'potential enemy' still because it's easier to face an 'outside enemy' than to face the truth that we all have inside us the potential to behave as the Nazis did.

completely unacceptable

I thought this from a few months ago was a splendid example of the DM's hatred of Germans.

If you're talking about moving to CET why not 'Paris Time' or 'Rome Time' .

The 'hating Nazi era Germans' is an interesting thing - one of my closest friends is from when I lived in Germany and we had long discussions about our perceptions of our grand-parents because (and I acknowledge this is a huge generalisation) for a lot of British people my age (child of 'baby-boomer' parents) our grandads were by default 'heroes'; applying the same generalisation to my German friends and their grandads were by default 'Nazis'....

Grasshoppers hating on the Ants for working and saving.

That is not nice.

Acekicker - i see your point; but it is NOT that simple - one Grandad didn't feel like a hero as he was sent to Burma & saw the very horrific side of war (As one example: Japanese soldier ran at the tank he was driving; shooting at the slit where he was sat... i don't need to say more but it haunted him forever.). But he was a hero - mentioned in despatches for pulling a man out of a burning plane - which plane on whose side i don't know.
My other Grandad was with special forces supporting Partisans against the Germans in Yugoslavia - he never spoke about it but my Dad found photos in his belongings of the aftermath of atrocities that Serbs / Bosniaks /Croats committed - google Jasenovac & you may understand. He was part Russian Jewish himself, but he became good friends with the German couple with whom he was billeted after Germany's surrender - they were proven anti-Nazis which is why he was allowed to befriend them.
My Jewish Gran was a heroine - age 16, delivering messages through the Manchester Blitz for the ARP by bicycle as the bombs fell - at that time (1940-41) she expected an invasion any day which would have meant death for her.

The Germans - well; by joining the armed forces they had to take the Nazi oath. By invading & bombing other countries who had done them no harm - well sorry but clearly that's morally wrong. The regular armed forces committed atrocities as did the SS; or witnessed them & didn't stop them, they looted & burned especially in the East. Unless they were age 7 years or under in 1933 (when education was Nazified) then there is NO WAY that they didn't know that what they did was morally wrong.

If they were firefighters during the bombing raids on German cities, or ambulance crews then yes, they were heroes. But sorry their soldiers were not heroes (unless they carried out individual acts of heroism under fire).

That's why i don't see British soldiers who went to Iraq & Afghanistan as heroes i'm afraid - they just did as they were told without questioning the morality of the wars. In WW2 most (most) of our armed forces fought in the defence of ours & other countries against soldiers who were fighting for evil dictators in order to take over most of the world & exterminate whole populations.

But Latara, how much choice do you think an ordinary German citizen would have had? By taking charge of education, the regime made damn sure that all of society was under control. I think it would take an incredibly brave person, living in Germany in the 1940's to refuse to join the armed forces - can you imagine the fallout for that person's family. It was a society built on fear and I think a lot of ordinary people just wanted to keep their heads down and hopefully get through it.

The Germans were also victims of atrocities - look at the behaviour of the Russian soldiers as they raped and murdered their way across Germany. It's hardly a source of pride that Britain was allied to a regime which allowed such behaviour.