Surely it is not ok to say this..?

[CristinaYang]

I was out with a large group of work colleagues on Friday night. They all seem to be normal, nice people.

We were talking about places in Europe we had visited, and our favourite places. I said my favourite city so far was Berlin. I absolutely loved Berlin. The people were so friendly and welcoming and, I mentioned, that on the walking tours we did I had admired how they didn’t shy away from Germany’s role in the war. I liked the way the dealt with it in terms of their monuments and the way tour guides spoke etc. Granted I was only there a couple of days and I certainly wouldn’t claim to be any kind of expert but I felt it was sensitively and honestly spoken about but there were no attempts at denial or justification. This is a summary of the conversation, a few people chipped in and agreed with me etc.

Anyway one woman then pipes up “I’m sorry, is anyone else just not ok with Germans, even now?!” I was aghast and thought oh dear that’s awkward. I was then even more aghast by the people that nodded in agreement, made comments about relatives killed in concentration camps and how they still “feel weird”, “can’t warm to them” etc.

But how can they blame Germans for that these days? It’s an entirely different generation of people and things have moved on. You can’t blame individuals for it. I realise that may be simplistic but as I said I’m no expert and I don’t want to spout off about things I don’t fully understand.

Drink was taken (not by me, i wasn’t drinking) but no one seemed to be out and out hammered.

Is this a secretly commonly held view these days? I can’t imagine that it is...

Ignorant and thick view. No rational person with a brain cell can hold the current population responsible for the atrocities. The German Jews I have met don't. Dh best friend. Is one. Dh mother is German and he grew up in rural England. He is very non aggressive but tall and fit but said he had lots of fights at school as thugs would sporadically try to beat him up for being German.

We loved Berlin we went in May half term it was hot the kids loved the many massive outdoor pools.

Some people here in the UK dont like anyone whos different in any way, whether that person is foreign, disabled, gay, a single parent, whatever. I think theres a lot of really intollerant people about. Its not on really and it tends to be the middle aged+ plus that are the worst offenders.
Also I cant stand the world cup, its just jingoism gone mad here.

Yes, I have met and know Germans. We had two exchange students stay with us when I was a pre-teen. One got sent to another family because he told his friend that my mum looked like a gypsy or Jew (not sure which one it was). My neighbour's son (who spoke German) said "Mr User, that boy just said something very rude about your wife' . I'm not sure how the coordinator found out but he was sent away. The other student, from Stuttgart, was lovely and well-mannered.

Unfortunately the neighbour's son became a heavy drinker, got into some strange stuff and ended his life last year. He was his parents only child. I don't have a problem with Germans, I only have a problem with those who deny what happened, or worse, think it was justified. And they are not necessarily German at all.

theres a difference betwen the nazis and the ordinary german people. My dad is german and people who attack people because of their race, background, culture and nationality are racists. Most of the german people during the second world war were under a dictatorship, just like other countries, who if they spoke out would be either shot or imprisoned. What would yoi have done if you were an ordinary german person during Hitlers reign? Would you have spoken out?

Barbs - exactly and those same power structures are still at work here

TheVanguard what an amazing post - you sound lovely.

“Yabvvu.
It’s easier to have your stance if you had no relatives murdered by the Nazi’s.
You have your opinion.
Others are entitled to theirs.”

Really missiondecision
IMO YABVVVVU. I had family sent to the concentration camps, but I don’t hate Germans and Germany. My grandmother was German, my grandfather was an Austrian Jew. My mum was made to join the Hitler Youth. They came over here in 1933 to escape from Hitler. My grandfather was instrumental in helping the allies win the war, and my mum was with the Free French and did her bit as well

Your racist attitude stinks. Get back under your bridge

There seem to be some Britain First posters on this thread. You ignorant morons should be ashamed of yourselves

The British have committed more atrocities than any other country so entirely hypocritical to blame all Germans for the Nazis atrocities. Maybe other countries blame us for all the crimes committed in our history. I blame history teaching in schools for this who glossed over the bad things we did particularly when we were more powerful than we are today in the days of the British Empire.The 'British' have committed more atrocities than any other other in the whole of human history? Huge atrocities have happened throughout history. The veneer of civilisation is very thin.

Mmm. I think for many people the atrocities carried out during the war are still very much a living memory. My mum will always think of the Japanese as evil because of a bamboo torture they carried out on a friends uncle that left him severely disabled and in pain. My dad doesn’t like the Germans as the first few years of his life Germans were the enemy all he heard about was people living in fear and dying because of the Germans. He was twice told his brother was dead after two of his boats were sunk. He saw his brother spend the rest of his life very ill. Because of the Germans. He hates the EU because he sees Germany still trying to control Europe. I’m sure there are people in other nations who think the same about all the sides in the war. I don’t think you can enforce view points in people who first hand saw the atrocities carried out. But it has to stop somewhere otherwise you end up in a situation where people several years down the line still have issues eg demanding apologies, ripping down statues etc.

I am German and have been up against some of these views in spite of having been born more than 20 years after the end of WW2.

The veneer of civilisation is very thin.
Indeed. This is very true.

IMO (and I have thought about this rather a lot) what sets the Holocaust apart from all sorts of other atrocities committed in human history is its sheer scale, its systematic approach and the bloody marvellous organisation.

Sadly, had as it is to conceive of something like that happening again, I just have to look at the 'othering' that is going on in current UK society to see the very thin end of a rather horrible wedge.

Generations not years

I have a very German sounding surname, but it isn't German. I work in sales and regularly get people who, when corresponding through email and see my surname, make assumptions and always act 'pleasantly surprised' when I talk with a broad, Geordie accent.
When I've told people that I am not German, a common response is "ah but which side did your family fight on in the war?"

I think there is some dreadful rewriting of history going on in this thread. Which chimes with the current left wing trend to minimise and excuse antisemitism.

Germans weren’t simply bystanders. The Nazis were elected with over 48% of the vote in the final election of 1933 on a specifically anti- Semitic ticket when they had already begun an overt, public programme of persecution of the Jews.

German resistance to the Nazis was patchy, disorganised and low level, unlike other countries which were occupied by the Germans like France or Poland where it was even more dangerous. And it frequently wasn’t even done by Germans but by foreign citizens. It’s been described by historians as ‘resistance without the people’. And much of the resistance there was, wasn’t actually anti-Nazi, but anti-Hitler which intended to get rid of him, but not the Nazis or their anti-semetic policies.

45 million Germans were members of Nazi organisations by the end of the war and they also had massive support from German business and industry.

Post war when the denazification programme began the allies had to massively scale back their plans when they realised the huge scale of the numbers involved with the Nazi regime made it impossible. This is a matter of historical record.

I think it’s extremely dangerous when you start getting people prepared to completely rewrite history like this. That’s when you’re in danger of it happening again.

Absolutely Bundlesmads.
This is not something that 'happened to' the German population at that time.

I live in Germany. Memories of the war and the Nazi regime are all around. But anyone who wore a swastika is either very old or dead. You cannot seriously hold modern Germans responsible for what their grandparents did.

"You cannot seriously hold modern Germans responsible for what their grandparents did"

Except they, and those who joined in (it wasn't just Germans), get to swan about in beautiful houses, fancy cars, exotic holidays and boss the rest of us untermenschen about.

I think for people of my grandparents generation it’s easy to see why they hated the Germans.
If you’d been sent to Burma, or Egypt, or northern France for cannon fodder as a 19 year old, away from your family and home I can see why you’d hate them for life.
If you’d been sent away, separated from your siblings as an evacuee, to a strange family at 7, I can see why you’d hate them for life.
If you’d seen your next door neighbours house bombed, killing all the inhabitants, I can see why you’d hate them for life.

If you were a Jew in a concentration camp- well thank fully “lest we forget” quite rightly means the actions of the German nation will never be forgotten or forgiven.

Comparing it to 9/11 and Muslims is insulting and shows a certain immaturity. This was a nation acting in war, with a sole view of defeating and conquering. Not a minuscule number of terrorist groups who happen to share a religion with half the world.

That said, I think that generation of British people did a noble job of raising their children and grandchildren not to hate, so that the views described in the OP really are a tiny minority. The German people have also done an admirable job of reconciliation and consolidation, and have dealt with their shame in a dignified and honest manner.

It’s far more successful and mature than some of the insulting posts on this thread, anyway.

I couldn’t agree more with bundlesmads who I cross posted with. Excellent post.

"45 million Germans were members of Nazi organisations by the end of the war and they also had massive support from German business and industry."
German men had to join the Nazi party because if they didn't they would have lost their jobs. What would you do when faced with the 'choose' join or you will loose your job and end up killed by the SS/SA.

Some were enthusiastic Nazis others were forced and others had no idea what was really going on.

"Except they, and those who joined in (it wasn't just Germans), get to swan about in beautiful houses, fancy cars, exotic holidays and boss the rest of us untermenschen about."
user you sound like a GF or dangerously uninformed and prejudiced. Which is it?

If you compare the Japanese and German responses to the war, I think it becomes apparent how much the Germans have done to atone for what happened. There are memorials everywhere, Germans are all well educated about the war, you can see camps and learn the history. The most touching for me is the little memorial stones in the pavements that show the people who were taken from each house. It’s very personalising and really shows the scale of the war. Japan, it’s a very different story - no monuments, no education about it. The Japanese barely know they did anything wrong.

But then neither do the Brits. So many people have no idea about anything to do with stuff within the UK (even the Troubles fgs!), or in India, Kenya or any of the other countries we brutalised.

Messed up that people can judge the Germans so harshly while we went about flag waving and being all jolly hockey sticks about conquering 1/3 of the globe.

*when faced with the 'choice' to join

This happened in most of the countries Germany invaded, in the Baltic countries it was the local population who carried out most of the killing in death squads. The local populations needed little encouragement to join in.

Yes the industrial nature of the holocaust is what made it so horrific but the sad thing by some of these posts is that some people have not learnt from the lessons.

In fact parts of our press were equally zenophobic about refugees coming into the uk

www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/jewish-refuge-and-the-nazi-regime

The British and their allies also knew about the gas chambers and refused to bomb them. How many more lives could have been saved by destroying the gas chambers and extermination camps?

Not even taking into account that post war many local populations murdered and refused to accept the returning Jewish survivors because their homes and businesses had already been taken over by the local populations.

My point is the 2nd world war and the build up is one of the darkest parts of European recent history. No one knows how they would have acted unless they were there and human nature is complicated.

Blaming current generations for the past is completely ridiculous and we should be trying to learn the lesssons of the holocaust and the 2nd world war as genocide is still happening even if it is not as industrialised as the holocaust.

The worst ‘ ethnic cleansing’ was committed by the Americans against the native Americans. Hardly ever gets a mention against the German ethnic cleansing during the war which wasn’t just about Jews but somehow the German dissidents, intellectuals, disabled people, gypsies, homosexuals etc seem to be forgotten. It needs to be remembered as an horrific thing which happened but consigned to history. Constantly dragging it up and beating the German race - the majority of whom weren’t even alive- serves no good purpose and only keeps the hatred alive.

Christ yorkshireyummymummy this is an awful awful post and you should be ashamed of yourself.

1. what aboutery- I’m sure you can appreciate people in this country care more about something that happened in the U.K and Europe 80 years ago affecting their friends and family than America.

2. I think everyone knows it was not exclusively Jews in concentration camps because your exact point frequently gets trotted out- why? So the Jews can’t feel sorry for themselves because they weren’t the only ones? Massive anti Semitic tones to this.

3. it should NEVER be consigned to history. It has been quite rightly agreed that forgetting it means it will happen again. Never again.

My Mother ( as a baby) my Grandma and my Grandfather were removed from their home on the island of Jersey and placed in internment camps!
My family have never received compensation from the German government. So, l don’t think they are doing all they can to fix past mistakes! My mother and Grandma never recovered.
Nothing to do with German people now - obviously!

Prejudiced. Not uninformed.