Where you born in Germany? Possibly but I'll bet, not. Are you a US citizen? I'll venture a guess, Yes! Then you are NOT 100% German. My answer to those questions is YES, NO! I AM 100% German! therefore I'll use my personal experience growing up with German parents, Opa/Oma, Unkle, Tante. The strict parenting style of my German family kept me from being a juvenile delinquent. I THANK my German family for their Prussian discipline, Teutonic precision, and authoritarian ethic. I have been a productive adult with good/kind productive children and grandchildren who will grow up to be good/kind and productive.
"I have read tons of material.....about serial killers, pornographers, concentration camps, etc."
IMO your choice of reading material has expanded the dark side of your mind to condem people you don't even know.
Oh, and just so you know, your BROAD statement "Many parents (especially German and Russian parents prior to 1930’s) were very cruel to young children."not only hit my German nerve. My Oma & Opa farmed in a German community in what was called Volhynia (USSR) before 1939. That's in the Ukraine. They were somehow able to somehow make a living, raise children, and keep their humanity. YOU have a soft life in the USA. They suffered thru government policies of starvation, the savagery of WWII but were the kindest people you'd ever meet.
Of course YOU, live in a lovely country where 1000 babies are aborted per day thanks to Planned Parenthood being government funded! That's almost 500,000 a year. Since 1999 that's 6,000,000 inocent children.
Remind me, what is it they say about living in a glass house?
Whoa.... You are over sensitive. I love my German roots...and yes, I was born in the US but both sets of grandparents came over on a boat and one almost died. My mother spoke German and my father didn’t but was raised on a huge farm. I have only German blood through 6 generations. True, I am an American and I do love this country and thank God I was born here, which was still a largely Christian country. My parents were very strict also but never cruel to us and always just. We had to work in the fields when we were 5 and up every summer. It was good for us. Strict is not cruel and never should be.
I have read a lot about the Weimar Republic and the Postmodernism was rife since the Frankfurt University was in your country. The ugly philosophy that seeped into your culture was rife in Berlin and the cities and Christianity was demeaned and ridiculed and marginalized so much that Christianity is pretty much wiped out of Europe—exactly as the Postmoderns in Germany planned back in the 1800’s. Were all Germans of the mindset of Himmlers and Eichmans....the books I read, said that Germans had no qualms about euthanasia for the mentally retarded, etc. They were comfortable in the adoption of utilitarianism which is anathema to Christian ideology.
Did you read Dostoevsky? Do you honestly think that most parents in Russia and Germany were conscientious and loving to their children? Did they drink? Some were good parents, yes, absolutely, but enough weren’t, so that we had thousands who were able to butcher and torture and kill millions of human beings without batting an eye.
Study serial killers....they have one thing in common....abusive and ugly childhoods. They were treated in cruel ways—inhuman ways—like the Romanian orphans....they had no ability to have any compassion.
Yes, there were some very kind parents....strict is always important, but children need nurture and love if they are going to have any empathy for fellow human beings. Otherwise, they end up like Manson who was an illegitimate kid who was abused by a series of adults in his young life.
So, you think Hitler had a kind father? Himmler????? Eichman?????? I say they had horrible childhoods. Their parents could not have taught them biblical worldview.