Well put.
For all their undeniable evil, the Nazis didn’t do a single thing that hasn’t been common down through human history. Only the scale of their evil was greater than routine, and you can make a good argument that even the scale has been considerably exaggerated in a historical context.
In any case, being ashamed of your ancestry is at least as idiotic as being arrogant about it. You are responsible for your own actions, not those of your ancestors.
I’ve always found the notion that the Germans as a people should be held eternally guilty for their crimes against the Jews pretty funny.
If taken literally, the same principle, although at a considerably greater time difference, would make the Jews of today bear the guilt for the death of Christ. Not the sole guilt, of course, but the NT account makes it clear a lot of Jews, particularly their leaders, were heavily involved.
The Nazi persecution of the Jews had little to do with their being “Christ-killers,” but the accusation was fertile soil for antipathy in Christendom for well over a thousand years.
I don’t think many people still holds Germans culpable, however much like every Frenchman was a member of the resistance after the war ended, most Germans after the war claimed to not know about the millions of people who were dragged kicking and screaming from their homes in the middle of the night, their businesses and property confiscated and were never seen again.
In any case, being ashamed of your ancestry is at least as idiotic as being arrogant about it. You are responsible for your own actions, not those of your ancestors.
True.
“...the Nazis didn’t do a single thing that hasn’t been common down through human history...”
Exactly. If you read the Bible, the ancient Israelites conducted several genocides, as did just about every other group in human history. The Roman empire got built because they would slaughter peoples who resisted(such as the Israelites).
People who want to focus exclusively on Nazi atrocities in history have an agenda: to undermine Western civilization psychologically by portraying a group of white, anti-communist Christians as the most evil people of all time.
Conservatives need to reject this attack on our culture and demand that all historical events be treated objectively.
i've thought about this -- and is you compare to Genghis Khan or even worse Timur-e-Lang, the numbers were a bit lower (Stalin and Mao tie for most bodies), the percentages lower (compared to Pol Pot say or the Mongol attack on Iran), but what was horrifying was that the Germans were of a high culture -- think music and you have Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Handel; think philosophy or literature and Goethe, Schopenhauer etc. stand out -- the Germans were high culture and for them to massacre in such an unhuman way shocked us and shocks us
In Poland I see the ravages of war by both sides, but the German one was calculated even though the numbers killed were less than the Russian -- so more horrifying as it showed "no matter how civilised we are, we can descend to barbarity very easily..."