Quote (thesnipa @ Oct 6 2023 01:28pm)

sympathy, sure. but im speaking in context of 2 recent stories. 8k "nazis" being imported to the UK and the canadian "nazi" who was applauded. was he a nazi, or a "nazi"? i could care less for sympathy, i just want to know if i should hate him/them or not.

Quote (thesnipa @ 6 Oct 2023 20:28)

sympathy, sure. but im speaking in context of 2 recent stories. 8k "nazis" being imported to the UK and the canadian "nazi" who was applauded. was he a nazi, or a "nazi"? i could care less for sympathy, i just want to know if i should hate him/them or not.

Quote (Malopox @ Oct 6 2023 01:32pm)

I personally think based on what limited info is available online that we should give this 98 year old a benefit of the doubt and let him live out the last of his years with his family in Canada instead of dragging him through the hells of public trials and humiliation. There are worse people walking the streets of Canada than some blind, deft guy who made a wrong decision 80 years ago when he was young and stupid and just wanted to hang with cool kids in Hugo Boss uniform while murdering some Polish Jews. There has to be a way for him to atone for his decisions and his sins if any exist.

"Thanking him for his service" was a catastrophic fuck-up for which Rota has paid with his career.

Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ Oct 6 2023 01:31pm)

Were all german military Nazis? I know the SS are always explicitly Nazis given their oath but I don't know about the military in general. The Canada guy was in the SS.

Quote (thesnipa @ Oct 6 2023 01:57pm)

i tend to agree entirely.

to answer the first question, which is really subjective to a degree, just tell someone "my grandpa fought in WW2 for germany". well, to 99.999% of people they'd instantly think "wow his grandpa is a nazi", and 75% would think "this guy is complicit in the holocaust".

no one asks "did he work in a camp", "was he forced to serve", "does he hate jews", "when did he join up", etc. a german ww2 soldier is a nazi, but not all nazis are genocidal war criminals. some were just soldiers, some were prisoners to their own country, some were jews escaping persecution, etc.

the story of WW2 in germany is a complex and interesting one, simplifying it to "blondies rounded up jews and tried to take over the world" is what a lot of people have done. im sure people will invariably think im a nazi sympathizer once they read this. o well.

Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ Oct 6 2023 01:58pm)

My understanding is that the Nazis were a party with specific membership. Just being associated with Germany didn't make you a Nazi. You had to swear allegiance to the party specifically. Was that a requirement of every soldier?

Quote (thesnipa @ Oct 6 2023 04:35pm)

ahh we're getting out wires cross, when i said nazi above i meant the modern application of it to ALL germans in ww2, not the reality.

the answer to that, and im not a scholar, i would think change over time. pre-war Nazis were members of the party and a minority, then it grew again even pre-war, then after the night of the long knives i'd guess all sorts of people "became nazis" to avoid death. by the end of the war boys as young as 12 or so had the choice of becoming a nazi or dying.

Quote

Most of the men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 were middle-aged family men whose moral compasses were formed before rise of Nazi culture, and many of them hadn’t chosen to join the battalion but were drafted into it, meaning that they didn’t sign up to be a part of the war. Browning turns to the question of why so many of these seemingly ordinary men became mass murderers during the war, especially since they were given the freedom to choose not to kill. Ultimately, there is no single answer to this question. It was a combination of factors, including prevalent racism combined with ongoing war, the tendency to respect authority, the men’s belief in German superiority due to widespread Nazi propaganda, and, as the men themselves admit, the desire to conform to the group. This, however, has some dark implications. Many of these factors are present in most people’s everyday lives, which leads to one important question: if the men in RPB 101 were transformed into killers under such common circumstances, are there many people who wouldn’t?

Quote (Plaguefear @ Oct 6 2023 06:10pm)

I don't get it, the nazi's in this forum hate nazi's now? But only the ones from ukraine or canada not the russian ones?
Some one explain this shit to me.

Quote (Plaguefear @ Oct 6 2023 04:10pm)

I don't get it, the nazi's in this forum hate nazi's now? But only the ones from ukraine or canada not the russian ones?
Some one explain this shit to me.