Originally posted by: raildogg
Originally posted by: Tango
I hear you. I never thought the Us army is raping *millions* of women in Iraq. I was just replying to your phrase: "We didn't rape any women in Iraq, you liar". The exact dimension of this terrible story will probably never been known. But to me it should just be used to never forget that wars are not nice, never. Probably we will never see again the brutal things that happened during WWII, but my guess is that this is probably more because of the icreased media coverage of what happens on the front. Yet, without an internal pictures leak nobody, including me and you, would be thinking that things like those that happened in Abu Ghraib were happening.
To return to the subject... I think that 60 years after the war is increasingly hard to understand what happened exactly. But many historians agree that the personalization of the german and russian people with Hitler and Stalin is one of the biggest mistakes ever made. Many germans and russians young guy were forced into the military to fight in their dictators' personal war and had no personal simpathy for their political causes.While, for example, most SS were zelant nazists and made unspeakable deeds, most young german soldiers who fought on the italian front or in the bulge battle were just praying for a fast end of the war. Usually in movies and fiction books we have the germans act like they were a lot of little-hitlers, but this was hardly the case.
I understand where you're coming from (or at least trying to). I know you never said or hinted at US army raping millions of women in Iraq. My point is simply that a few dozen soldiers, at most, participated in the gruesome acts. But instead of punishing the supervisors and military commanders, we are punishing the soldiers. I guess they are the pawns in this. If you are going to punish anyone for the Abu Ghraib abuses, punish Bush and Rumsfeld. They were the men who had direct responsibility for what happened and we should hold them accountable. If you're going to punish a soldier, punish the men who ordered and condoned his actions. Yep, war is awful, all the time. No war is good. However, I am totally for the war on terrorism. There is difference here, and I hope you realize this.
The thing about Germany and its crimes is that the American media knew of the things that were happening there. They knew about kristalnacht, they knew about the Jewish deportations, they knew about the lack of rights of Jews and the rapidly increasing anti-Semite feelings, they knew about the German aggression and its military buildup. Our politicians certainly knew it, yet did nothing. Maybe they let Pearl Harbor happen on purpose so we could defeat Hitler by entering the war. Noone can ever prove the definate story on Pearl Harbor, its all guesses and opinions. There were much fewer media outlets and much fewer foreign correspondents in Russia at that time, so that helped the Communist cause.
Most Germans and Russians were not interested in politics and day to day activities of their country's policies. They could care less or were too busy making a living. Yes, many Germans and Russians were forced into combat. But there were many volunteers as well. There was extreme nationlism on both sides. One side wanted to defend the Fatherland from the enemy or actually was figthing for the Fatherland, the other was trying to defend the Motherland from the aggressors. The Hitler Youth actually started fighting in combat very early on in the war. Particularly, manning the flak guns, etc. The SS divisions later on had many Youths in them. The SS early was was superior to the rest of the German armed forces and it did fight to the last man in many cases. They were truly great soldiers, yet also very brutal. The German army wanted to figth alongside the SS because they knew that a lot of pressure would be lifted from them as the SS are such superior soldiers with such determination and a will to fight till the end.
Yes, not all German civilians liked Hitler. But there was a sort of a system set up that if you suspected your neighbor or anybody as being a traitor to the Fatherland, or being anti-Hitler in any way, you were severely beaten or even killed. Many people gave the Sieg Heil even if they didn't really believe in it, they just wanted to avoid being perceived as collaborationists.