Reply #33: Any answer except "yes" is disengenuous at best. [View All]

[AdHocSolver]

Many Germans after WWII, maintained that they were really a "good" people, the Nazi regime was an aberration, and people contributed because they "had" to follow orders. How could the people who contributed so much to art, music, science, and literature be a "bad" people.

Let's see. A country that possessed the most powerful military on the planet, that faked a threat to itself as an excuse to attack a poor country who was no threat to them (Poland), and then went on to reek devastation on its neighbors massacring millions and destroying entire cities. I suppose you could make a case that they were not really an "evil" people (if you really want to make a stretch).

However, my German professor, back in the 1960's, lived in Nazi Germany through the end of WWII. He told about people who readily turned their neighbors, friends, coworkers, and relatives into the Gestapo out of fear, for personal gain, or even for spite. The Nazis came in the middle of the night, sirens often blaring, and people just disappeared. The really "good" Germans lived in constant terror, even of their neighbors.

His conclusion: "German culture: marvelous. The German people: evil."

Then compare that to the U.S., with the strongest military, attacking a country that was no threat to us and destroying its society, turning Iraqi against Iraqi, killing close to a million of its people, and displacing many more. And the U.S. started the Iraqi war, and continues this war, for profit. No different than the Nazis.

What was the purpose of WWII? Profit! How was the profit to be gained: slave labor. Today our fascists send the jobs to places like China, and let them do the dirty work of running the slave labor camps. The U.S. gets the profit out of controlling oil and having the taxpayer pay for no-bid contracts (that the contractors are NOT even asked to fulfill).

One last comment. Germany took care of its returning soldiers. They received medical care and pensions. The U.S., on the other hand, puts its wounded in vermin infested quarters, and asks them to PAY for their own medical care. Meanwhile, 47 million "civilians" cannot afford medical care, the infrastructure is decaying, education is being gutted through scams like NCLB, and many Americans are trying to decide which large-screen HDTV would be the best model to buy.

P.S.

This comment deserves a response all of its own.

"The difference is that our screw ups are more widely known about, and tend to have farther reaching effects."

Many Germans, after the war, claimed to not know about the concentration camps. To this day, there are polls that show that 30 percent of Americans still believe that Iraq had WMD's.