dagmaraka wrote:Most students of history base their opinions on historical facts You, more often than not, tend not to. That is why you cannot expect your opinions will be taken seriously if you keep doing that.
I don't want anyone to take my opinions seriously. I just want the reader to know I have them, and I see few will ask themselves the Socratic question, "Why does he feel this way?" By not asking the question, one can treat my feelings like a high school debating effort; no thought need be given to the cause.
That's another of my points, the generation alive as WWII ended, felt, again in my opinion, no collective guilt. No collective remorse. Nada!
In fact, I'm reading a book now, "Hitler's Beneficiaries - Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State," by Gotz Aly a winner of the Heinrich-Mann Prize, "Germany's prestigious history award."
In page 2 of his preface he writes, "People often talked about how they had suffered from food shortages in 1946-47. 'We were well off during the war,' they complained. 'Food deliveries always went smoothly.' It was the 'organizational incompetence of the Allies' after the war that 'made us go hungry."
Many Germans not in the war were used to getting frequent packages mailed to them from their relatives. Booty from the plundered countries/people.
The Nazis maintained a sort of welfare state at the expense of the invaded countries. The accepting mindset, I don't believe, included any collective guilt, nor remorse for the Holocaust. They just admitted it was wrong to do.
That generation that lived then seemed to exhibit a collective self-centeredness and feeling of entitlement,
in my opinion, naturally.
Don't think I am demonizing Germany, nor the generation alive during WWII. I only read about it. I believe there were too few Jews in Germany before WWII for the average German to even notice that they were all gone (other than the people that lived in those cities that had large Jewish communities) after the war.
But, don't get me started on Poland. They did not need to be taught anti-Semitism, like Germany needed to be taught prior to WWII. No, as I've heard from Poles (Jewish) that lost their entire families during the war, Poland was quite aware of the demise of their Jewish community (three million; 10% of the population). I don't know how Poles felt after the war, but I've been told that for hundreds of years in Poland, Jews were taunted, "one day we'll live in your homes; we'll own your furniture." Now, I wasn't there, but I continually hear that Poland really despised their Jewish brethren (to the point I'm told to teach their dogs to chase Jewish children going to school; reminds me of stories of the Deep South).
So, don't worry about my facts, focus on the feelings, and what might have elicited them.
