I am somewhat aware of the criticism of Aly’s book. But my point was (and I think it is valid) that the National Socialists made of point of seeming to take care of ‘real’ Germans. I think everyone has a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that Germans were loyal and willing to die for the regime up until the very end.
Of course the Germans fought tooth and nail against the Soviets; they knew that payback was going to be very unpleasant. But they also fought until the end in the west.
The National Socialists were in power for just about the same time as FDR (only weeks difference) and American were sad at FDR’s demise, but I’ve never heard of suicides over it. Good German young men, brought up in good Lutheran or Catholic homes did their bit in the camps and atrocities on the battlefields.
I think Aly does a good job of describing how German Jews were slowly cut off from the rest of German society and economy, not unlike a constrictor tightening up its squeeze every time a breath is taken. And then after the Jews were dead and gone, all of their ‘stuff’ was auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Well, I would say that in the camps, there were the worst of the bunch.
And when your country is under attack, you do your best to fight for your loved ones, though you my not like, or even hate, your political system. Soviet soldiers did, and Axis soldiers too, as soon as their countries were affected full force.
Yes, that is one of the reasons why Russian and German veterans got quite often well along - on a personal level. They were in a similar situation.
Yes, and I regretably cannot be impartial, as I consider this dirty Turk Aly a godforsaken leftist swine, as well as a Nazi‘s son (that says it all about these foolish racial theories, on which Nazi ideology was officially based, and which had more than enough supporters in other countries. At the top, of the Nazi state, many didn’t believe in parts of it themselves)
My family saw the seamier side of the regime, I lost two family members to the Nazi terror, thus, unlike that Aly, I see no reason to spit on my heritage, my people and the whole two millennia of her history.
Maybe that explains his hatred… I should have been a psychologist 😀
P.S. :just do be absolutely clear: the years between 1933 and 45 were the worst in my people‘s history- hands down - but still I am a limb on her body. For better and for worse, till death us do part…Aly could do something I never could, he could emigrate to Turkey, where he could be among his people. Turkish nationality law has a clause to provide for a case like his (as do the nationality laws of so many European countries, to provide for their diasporas in times of need).