I NEED SOME HELP IN UNDERSTANDING GERMANS.

One thing I like about Germany is the potato salad.
There are several different kinds of potato salad, as I learned at the Goethe-Institut, and all of them seem to be equally delicious: they were made by the ladies of the group for the end-of-term parties.
In Hamburg, in my youth, I enjoyed Bratwurst mit Kartoffelsalat from the street stalls, and that memory remains as a taste of an exotic foreign land.

10.8 percent of unemployment? We have the same level in Israel, and government refers to it as to a national disaster...Well, it took to me two long months to find a new job: almost no interesting job offers appear in the classifieds of the media... Is the situation in the FRG the same, and people that have lost job cannot find it so much time?

There are no jobs, that's it, not only "no interesting jobs".

Well, somehow, at least.

I can't compare it with Israel, since I don't know the Israelian situation well enough.

No contradiction at all. There is nothing terribly sophisticated or noteworthy about endoparasites, yet (like the united states) they are responsible for widespread death and misery.

From a cultural standpoint, America is every bit as much a "backwater" as the most remote, feces-strewn pit on earth. The fact that it has devoted the bulk of its considerable wealth to developing more sophisticated means of slaughtering other people changes this fact not one iota.

Thanks for the compliment for my wife and me, henrygreen.

Henrygreen,
You should start an American thread of your own to advance these ideas, and garner comment from those who would disagree with you.
Of whom there would be many, I'm sure.

McT

Henrygreen -- Welcome to A2K! :-) I am enjoying your posts very much ... Thank you for sharing your ideas and beliefs.

I couldn't help notice that they seem more directed at Americans than about Germany, though. Sounds like you've been doing a lot of thinking about it ... perhaps the topic is worth a discussion thread about America, similar to these ones about Gemany, France, Latvia, and Ireland?

If you (or anyone) starts such a topic, I for one would definitely read it with great interest ... especially to understand various examples, and think about ways of improving the world!

I doubt if your strategies to get him to go away will do much good, he's eaten up with this hateful obsession. I'd suggest that the best way to deal with this irrational hatred is to ignore him. That's why i've not replied to his latest nonsense, and intend to reply to him no longer.

Germans cant, they really really cant, dance.

Love their beer and cars though....

Not sure why Setana bothers listening to ANYONE, having "spent a lifetime accumulating sufficient information on history, human nature, philosophy, art , spirituality--and all things necessary to live one's life well, making the best choices" as his fatuous bio informs us.

A discussion of Germany would be incomplete without a review of National Socialism, a hateful and destructive ideology which the United States seems bent on copying and indeed, extending in its quest for dominion over the planet. I find the incessant suggestion that Germany must atone for its sins of 50 years ago alongside the blank check for American abominations to be one of the most effective historical snowjobs in all of human history and therefore a more than worthy topic. As others here disagree, I'm happy to leave the forum to discussions of employment data and more mundane fare.

Gautam, Who can argue with that? Their cars and beers are top rate, but so is their sausages. c.i.

Oh I am a veggie - cant comment on the sausages <he says with an innocent look>

um ... we didn't destroy germany. germany came back just fine. they just have a roller-coaster employment rate, like the rest of the world.

also ... yeah - I was right with you, in your anger, until you went to that low point - just because you hate america (and I think you must be american) - you shouldn't resort to pointless (and misguided) namecalling - and by that I mean "backwater of no significance" ... it's just not true. so I was feeling your anger - and I'm happy to hear someone say these things, actually ... but it rather reminds me of this video I saw the other day ...

I went to this exposition of Marina Abramavic's work in Amsterdam. There was a video called "dissolution" ... in it, marina is sitting on her calves, with her back to the camera. she's got black pants on, but no shirt. there is no set dressing. for about 15 minutes, she flagellated herself on the back with a cat o'nine tails.

She's ashamed of Serbian actions with regard to their neighbors. Maybe some other things, too.

That "profile" was ironic sarcasm, which is recognized by all here who know me, as many here do--it was not written in seriousness, and is not to be taken seriously. Your use of the word "fatuous" shows that you are willing to use personal slurs when your arguments fail. This does not surprise me coming from such an unreasoning fanatic. I won't respond to your nonsensical contentions directly, and certainly not when you resort to personal invective. I am going to post a refutation of your claptrap, because i was dismayed to see people describe what you've written as "interesting."

Wagner was a Nazi and his operas are long-winded and pretentious. He also wore women's panties. Give me good heroin-induced jazz (Germans suck at jazz too) any day....America may have it's backwaters, but at least those backwaters have cool, broken down rusty cars on the lawn to look at.

I have written that i will not respond to Henrygreen again, and i will not. However, it has been written here that one of our number found what he wrote interesting, and worthy of discussion. I could not have been more surprised and dismayed. I can only describe what he has written here as interesting in the same sense that any other pathological example of obsession can be said to provide a sort of horrified fascination. What he has written is predicated upon a series of statements by him about history and culture which one would have to take as a priori bases for discussion if one were to argue these points with him-and in so doing, would lend a credence to his wildly inaccurate statements which is undeserved, and would place his disputant at an immediate disadvantage. This is what i meant about a "have you stopped beating your wife" style of debate, in that to answer such a question, one is first obliged to acknowledged having beaten one's wife in the past. To answer Henrygreen's ridiculous contentions through debate on the heads of discussion he has outlined would be to accord to his arguments a possibility of validity which is not deserved. So i will address his points in detail-not because i give a tinker's damn what Henrygreen thinks-his mind is obviously poisoned, and likely beyond any definition of redemption. But i would be appalled to think that any intelligent person might read what he writes and consider such tommyrot worthy of serious consideration. In this discussion, i consider, as always, that the modern nations of the Americas are European nations, and that in a discussion of Germans, the Austrians are included-throughout most of European history, they are included in the definition of Germans, as well they ought. I will begin with his absurd contention that Germany is browbeaten for a single, 12-year episode in their history. Germany is well-respected in the international community, and so they ought to be; there are certainly many who do not wish them to forget their Nazi past, but, then, they seemed determined themselves not to forget it. This past does not haunt Germany in its international relations, for however it may cause them anguish at home. Of course, as in the case of all of his contentions, Henrygreen does not provide any examples of this, or evidence for the statement. This leaves us with the contention about 12 years of Hitler and it's effect.

In 1918, the Allies, bolstered by the growing American Armies, had fended off Ludendorf's spring offensive, and began planning for and building up forces for a counteroffensive. This plan had the Anglo-Belgian army and l'Armée du Nord swinging wide upon a "hinge" provided by the Americans to drive the Germans from northern France and Belgium. It assumed a rather mediocre performance by the Americans. The Americans immediately disappointed this expectation-for example, the 43rd Division, the "Rainbow Division," was to have taken Sedan within one week. Lead by the Acting Division Commander, Douglas MacArthur, they reached Sedan in a little more than two days. The other American forces performed just as well. The Allied plan had envisioned pushing the Germans back to their border, to provide a better negotiating position at the conclusion of the war. But the unexpected fury of the American drive surprised their allies, and panicked the Germans. Ludendorf, a military opportunist and pervericator of limitless dimensions, convinced the Prussian imperial authorities that if they did not negotiate immediately, the Army would be cut off and rounded up. This was very clever of him, as it allowed first him, and later many others, including Hitler, to claim that the Army had been prepared to fight on, but were betrayed by the government.

This is all significant because of what ensued. Socialists in Germany, where the Socialists had been the most well-organized of all European Socialist parties before the war, launched a bloody rebellion, with a good deal of support from the High Seas Fleet, in which their recruiters had enjoyed a good deal of support, and where many Socialists had served during the war. With an armistice in place, Ludendorf was able to rush regiments from the west to put down this revolt. With Ludendorf losing his mental grip, he was not useful as a figure-head for any party in Germany, as Hitler learned to his dismay, but his fairy tales about the army's performance in the late war stood many demagogues in good stead. After the street fighting in 1918, groups of unemployed veterans of the war were organized according to their political views into gangs of street thugs to intimidate or to actually assault their opponents. While Hitler was languishing in prison after his failed "Beer Hall Putsch," the most successful of these, Ernst Rohm, was building his organization, popularly known as the "Brown Shirts," after the paramilitary garb they wore. Rohm was a very canny gutter politician. He put up a facade of social welfare-soup kitchens and make-work projects for the unemployed-over the darker elements of his program, which included a heavy streak of anti-semitism. After Hilter got out of prison, he allied himself to Rohm, eventually incorporating Rohm's organization into his party. His party was the National German Workers' Party, and used the same veneer of socialist welfare-but Hitler could be very charming at need, and he received large scale monetary support from German businessmen and industrialists who were favorably impressed with the Fascists' policies in Italy. This allowed him to set up soup kitchens and pass out bread right across Germany, and to pressure the Weimar Republic into public works programs to provide employment. This gave him a national base. When his ploy to make the Socialists the boogey man with the suspicious Riechstadt fire did not produce the results he wanted, he took a page from Rohm's book, and focused his political distractions on the Jews. The evil effects of Rohm and Hitler began well before Hitler took the Chancellery in 1933, and the effects lasted well beyond Hitler's death in 1945. Speaking of "12 years" is very disingenuous, and willfully ignores the scope of the evil loosed in the world by Rohm, Hitler, Moussolini, Mataxas, Franco and their ilk.

Henrygreen has also contended that the United States is much worse than Germany in terms of crimes against humanity, and by the absence of any other examples than Hitler, seems to suggest that this was the one misstep of the German peoples in all of their history. This is absurd, as well, and i will address this topic next.

A further significant basis for Henrygreen's obsessive hatred for the United States is his contention that the United States is guilty for crimes against humanity of a unique extent, for which it's destruction is the only reasonable remedy. Without considering the vast, almost incomprehensible horror of Stalinism, and leaving aside the question of Hitler, already discussed above, one would have to take such a position based on an interpretation of American history which i do not believe could be supported.

First, however, i would make some remarks about the inferential contention that the Germans only did a bad thing once, while Hitler was in power. This ignores the misery and strife visited on northern Italy for a more than a thousand years, beginning with the Babenberg emperors and their wars with the various Popes, and not ending finally until the bloody battles at Magenta and Solferino in 1859, when Napoleon III finally broke the back of Austrian military power in Italy. Without that campaign by the French, it is doubtful if Cavour and Garibaldi could have made successful revolution in Italy. This ignores the delightful practice of hunting Latts and Balts as though they were wild game, which was practiced by the Knights of the Teutonic Order for as long as they could make the justification that these peoples were pagans, and not christians. This position ignores the great misery visited on the Germans themselves, and many of their neighbors during the Wars of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War. This ignores the misery visited on Czechs, Germans, Austrians and Italians when Frederick II launched his preemptive invasion of Silesia in 1740, precipitating the War of the Austrian Succession. This ignores the two partitions of Poland, concerted by Russia, Prussia and Austria. This ignores the war with France in 1870, on a flimsy pretext, which also helped to set the stage for the First World War. The contention that any nation should be destroyed on the basis of past sins is not supportable in any pragmatic context-and is precisely why i opposed the war in Iraq. The more extravagant contention that the United States is worse throughout history than anyone else, is almost unbelievable. I've written these brief notices of German heavy-handedness both at home and among their neighbors throughout history in order to show that these things can be found in the history of any great nation, and not to belittle the Germans. Americans are no better than, and certainly no worse than, the Germans or any other European nation.

World War Startin' Tally

Germany: 2
America: None...yet (still ahead of the game)

I thought WWI was started by serbia or someone?

For my part - I think it's perfectly fine for mr. henry green to spout his angry expressions ... <shrugs> as long as he's not being purposely lame.

stasia

I've already taken notice of the desultory efforts of the Teutonic Order to exterminate the Latts and Balts, and other slavic peoples whom they accused of being pagan. There is a distinction to be made between committing genocide and attempting it. Hitler and his regime attempted it, and failed. There was not a concerted effort at genocide in the United States, and more Amerinds died at the hands of their fellow Amerinds and from diseases for which they had no resistance, than from direct military action by the United States. And these people survive today. I won't deny the great injustice and generations of warfare--that, however is a far cry from the almost Breughellian vision of twisted, gnomish figures of culturally benighted Americans working busilly at the forge to produce the weapons with which they hope to destroy mankind, the image which came to my incredulous mind when Henrygreen contended that Americans have and have had no cultural life and made no cultural contributions, while spending all their treasure on the sinews of war.

Henrygreen introduced the term genocide, and unless his view of American history is far more twisted than i am capable of imagining, he can only refer to the wars with the Amerinds. First, i would repeat that much of their population decline is attributable to the introduction of diseases for which they had no resistance. Specious and unsupportable AND unsupported claims about traders handing out blankets infected with smallpox have been made down through the years, and are foolish on the face of it. Those who traded with the Amerind had no reason to want the decline of the population of their customers, and a germ theory of disease and its spread were unknown in the eras referred to, no one would have known that they could spread disease through "infected" items. First and foremost, disease destroyed the populations of the aboriginal tribes of the Americas. In the second place, this position, quite a popular one, ignores what Amerinds did to one another. When Cartier siled the St. Lawrence valley in the 1530's, he recorded some of the vocabulary of the natives he met. Later scholars were able to show that these words came from the Huron-Iroquois language group. When Champlain arrived three generations later, the Iroquois had been pushed far to the south, to the Mohawk valley of what is now New York, by the relentless pressure of the Algonquian-speaking tribes. Champlain estalished good relations with the Ottawa, and when they asked him to accompany them on an expedition against their enemies, he agreed. They found a large Iroquois raiding party travelling north, and killed many and scattered the rest. The survivors never forgot, and a century and a half of warfare between the Iroquois Confederation and the French was precipitated.

The Jesuits sent missionaries among the Huron and the Algonquian tribes. They recorded, grimly, the beginning of the great wars by the Iroquois in 1640. The Iroquois had determined that they should exterminate the competition, and engross the entire fur trade out of the great lakes. They wiped out the Cat People, likely a sept of the Hurons, although we will never know, because the Jesuits had not yet recorded their language nor described their culture. They very nearly wiped out the Hurons, their own linguistic and cultural cousins. They drove the Potowatomie out of what is now Ohio and northern Indiana, until only a remnant remained in souther Indiana and in Illinois. In 1687, Henri Tonti, one of LaSalle's faithful Lieutenants, was travelling from Peoria back to Montreal. He stopped briefly to visit with the Illinois at their winter gathering site at what is now Starved Rock State Park in Illinois, and then crossed the river. Shortly after, encountered a war party of the Iroquois, who were intent on exterminating the Illinois. He went back to warn his friends, and then lead a party across the river to attack the Iroquois. This provided a set-back to their advance, and the Illinois improved upon the opportunity to gather their families and to retreat down the right bank of the Illinios river. The Iroquois crossed the river, desecrated the graves of the Illinois, and then, for no good reason, re-crossed the river, and paralelled the Illinois' march by moving down the left bank. When they reached the Mississippi, the Illinois crossed that river--all except the Tamaroa sept, which apparently believed they were now safe. The following morning, the Iroquois attacked. The warriors of the Tamaroa fled, and crossed the Mississippi to join the rest of the tribe. The old men, the women and children were all killed by the Iroquois, and the Tamaroa ceased to exist within a generation.

I've put this detail about the Iroquois in to point out that it was not just the English colonists who were a threat to the Amerinds, nor the French either. The Sioux were driven into Minnesota and the northern great plains by a similar attempt at extermination by the Ojibway. The last three centuries of American history are not so facile as though who contend the United States has practiced genocide would have people believe. The situation was complex, the justifications for government actions were not criticized in the "civilized world," including in Europe. Beethoven wrote a fair amount of good music (can't touch the production of Haydn and Mozart, but hey, he did ok) in the 1820's; i don't recall any protests on his part, or of any of the other "cultural giants" of Germany about the "Trail of Tears," or of any other such actions of the American government. It was a much different world than that which exists today, and the values of nations were considerably different as well.

Henrygreen's conention that no other nation can match Germany's cultural production is absurd on the face of it. To compare French and Italian composers unfavorably in comparison to the production of the German composers is an exercise in taste, not a statement of historical fact. In others of the fine arts, it is doubtful if any nation will ever match the output in opera of the Italians. There is no school of painting in Germany to match the centuries of fine art produced in Italy, France and in the Low countries. None of this is to say that the Germans did not produce fine art, simply that there is no basis for the statement that their production is superior in either amount or quality. The "feces-strewn pit" of the United States to which he refers has produced the Hudson River School of landscape artists, as well as many other painters of note, Jackson Pollock being the most recently example which comes readily to mind. Aaron Copeland and Leonard Bernstein are valued in Europe, and their works are played in Europe regularly, because the Europeans recognize the worth of their production. No nation has a corner on culture. If Henrygreen wants to prefer the German cultural contribution above all others, this is, once again, and exercise in taste. It does not justify a contention of German superiority, nor does it justify the vile things he says about America.