I'm heading off to a vacation in Germany (with side visits to Prague and Salzburg), and wondered: what's the view of German history from a 30,000 feet altitude?

One view: Nearly two-thousand years of German civilization, which sees Gutenberg invent the printing press, Luther begin the healthy reformation of Western Christianity, the glories of the music of Bach and Beethoven, and the beauty of the poetry of Goethe and Schiller, is not to be overshadowed by an aberrant twelve-year period in the 1930s and 40s during which ensued a somewhat predictably ugly German reaction to a post-Great War Versailles Conference dominated by stubborn French revanchism, fuzzy-headed Wilsonian idealism, and near-sighted British imperialism.

Another view: the Prussian Chancellor Bismarck's violent, forced birthing of the Second Reich through deliberately contrived and bloody military conflicts against Austria and France led to the establishment of a militaristic and aggressive German regime which helped bring about World War One and after losing that round plunged the world into an even greater war 20 years later in the process causing such fear and trepidation that anti-fascist physicists let the genie out of the bottle with the development of the atomic bomb. Germany's reign as "problem child of Europe,” especially during the 1930s and 40s, thus had profound, almost entirely negative, effects on world history.

From an altitude of 30'000 feet I think it's possible to see a pattern of specific difficulties ensuing in nation states comprised by historically and culturally diverse (and adverse!) city states or mini-states. I'm thinking of Yugoslavia, or Italy (which may be weirdest of them all - who knows?) and, of course, Germany. To name a few.

I think that while we should not condemn all of German history because of the Nazis, there were terrible things before that -- such as the World War I behavior. I think it was Hoover who referred to the Germans of that era as a "primitive tribe come down to us from the middle ages."

European history is not taught much in US schools.
Germany becamea nation under Bismarck in 1871. Before that, there were separate states, the largest Bavaria which was Catholic, easy-going, (Think of its capital, Munich, site of the yearly Oktoberfest) & produced musicians like Strauss - walzes , culture, art, music. Then there was Prussia, Berlin its capital, northern, Lutheran, strict discipline & marches & military parades. United after Bismarck defeated France in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 & annexed the provinces of Alsace-Loraine & the deposits of iron ore & coal in the Ruhr valley & set the new nation on the road to militarism.

In The Proud Tower Barbara tuchman tells a great history of the 3 empire building republics, England, France & Germany & the lesser - Italy & the austria-Hungarian empire. Europe has been playing "musical countries" ever since the Romans broke up. what will curb their enthusiasm is the low birthrate of Western Europe & the immigration of laborers from the Islamic countries of the Middle East.

Italy was not united as a country until Garibaldi in the late 19th. century.

The Habsburg empire fell apart in WW1. The Russian empire had a revolution & emerged as the USSR.

The late rise to nationhood in the 1870's by the Germans, the Italians and perhaps the patch-work that later became Yugoslavia, created nations whose cultures often found form and expression through bluster and pompous display, which only served to mask a profound inferiority complex. The rush to acquire bigger armies, navies, and distant colonies, together with brutal attempts to squelch minorities, helps demonstrate that other nations, such as Britain and France, merely had much more time to smooth over the rough edges of similar tendencies in their nation states.

i know that many Germans were deeply bitter about losing WWII, but this is a new generation, and it would be valuable to have your (Chris469) take on the general effect of the passage of time on the German character.

#4 Marian V - I'm not an expert in German history, but there was a Germanic region long before there was a country, and they were loosely linked before Bismark.

By the way, here's are some cool maps of Germany.

in 1815 ("The German Confederation"): http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wggerm...
in 1871: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wggerm...

I've been trying to put together a German history at 30,000 ft, but I guess my Jewishness colors everything. I just can't get over the ~1000 years of antisemitism and the Holocaust. It difficult to see beyond that without zooming in.

(Although the beer still stands out as especially good, as does the educational tradition.)

>4 MarianV: "Bavaria which was Catholic, easy-going, (Think of its capital, Munich, site of the yearly Oktoberfest) & produced musicians like Strauss - walzes , culture, art, music. Then there was Prussia, Berlin its capital, northern, Lutheran, strict discipline & marches & military parades."

Funny thing is, though, most of Hitler's strictly disciplined SS blackshirts were recruited from the Catholic South and West of Germany, whereas most of his brawling SA brownshirts were from the Lutheran North and East. (And not to be Mr. Nitpick, but I think Strauss was Austrian, not Bavarian.)

It is the Rhinelanders that I think of more as the dreamy-eyed poetic types, more peaceful than the oom-pah-pah Bavarians.

Rood, I will try my best to capture a sense of the modern German character but it will be difficult to do amidst the tourist throngs of August. Say, isn't that also a Tuchman book? "The Throngs of August"?

Message edited by its author, Jul 28, 2009, 11:12pm.

6> Is Hessia that blue spot on the map? Somewhere I have a copy of a census page that shows that one of my ancestors immigrated from Hessia sometime in the 1830's or 40's. What was the character of the Hessians?

#9 On the 1815 map the blue spot is "Nassau". "Hessen" is just to the right. No clue as to character.

#8..."The Throngs of August" ... :)

Speaking as an north European I think it interesting to read the above sentiments and speculations. In my travels throughout Germany I think what stands out is that most people feel wwII is a stigma, something that they carry a blame for without being responsible. Remember, a lot of the young and middle aged people had no part in the atrocities and just want to lead their lives without being viewed as inferior or faulty by 'outsiders'.
Not that forgetting is high on the agenda but constantly getting one's nose rubbed in your grandfather's shit do nothing good for the individual.

OFF TOPIC WARNING ;-)
As to antisemitism this has a long history, not exclusive to what became Germany, and you'd better have despise all of Europe, in that case. Sweden, as an example, sent back jews who managed to escape wwII Germany, when they were detected, and during the late antiquity and early middle ages jews were constantly persecuted.
It is also convenient to forget that the Holocaust took out a lot of people, not exclusively jews. The diaspora is a large and (compared to the other groups that got persecuted) culturally homogeneous group that could stand up and react when the war was over and the camps were opened up. Other groups just vanished, including some central european minorities.

This last is not said to excuse anything. I've visited Dachau and other places of memorial, and it is a humbling and terrible experience. What happened in wwII was inexcusable. This is, however, not to say that it was without precedent, or without an after - systematic genocide and persecution still happen, but when the groups lacks visibility and access to high profile media channels no one will notice.

#3, Garp: Isn't there a saying "The victors write the history"? A lot of what I read on the Internet about WW1 and the Germans is deeply coloured by past propaganda still at work...

(Beware: I am German, so that *might* colour my view ;-) ).

Well Girl, I suppose there is an argument that can be made for that. Certainly the Germany of World War I was not the one of World War II, but the Germans in the earlier war were known for their brutality, although some of that of course may have been exaggerated, yet I believe I have read of Germans of this era boasting of this brutality and claiming it represented strength.

Just to be clear, I am no anti-German. I don't believe you can blame a whole people generations later for the sins of their forefathers. I certainly wouldn't want Vietnamese villagers whose parents were napalmed by the good old USA to hold me accountable. The crimes of Germany & Japan in World War II were especially heinous, however, and I think all of us looking back are struck with just how obedient the population of these nations were while their governments slaughtered millions of people in their wake.

I think all people -- Germans, British, Belgian, Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Etc. -- need to be able to view their own national history realistically and measure the good and the sinful with as little prejudice as possible.

#12 - I didn't mean to drag this into a Holocaust theme. Europe's Jewish history is very dark throughout. True in the US too, although less bloody (so far).

I also didn't mean disrespect for modern Germany. The question was on German history. From Bismark to Hitler that history is dark from 30,000 ft - although I'll grant that if Germany had won the WW's, the history would be viewed differently.

#8 Chris469, "...isn't that also a Tuchman book? "The Throngs of August"?"

I think you are referring to Tuchman's "The Thrones of August", (wonky touchstones!) the story of John Crapper and the first public open air flush toilets.

Message edited by its author, Jul 29, 2009, 10:45am.

Just as President George W. Bush was so bad that he made his immediate predeccessors like Bill Clinton and his father GHW Bush seem like towering statesmen by comparison, so the insanely barbaric practices of the Nazis make previous German regimes - such as those of Wilhelm II and Bismarck - seem benign by comparison. What's interesting is to try to exam the so-called "Second Reich" (1871-1918) based only on the contemporaneous evidence and comparing them to other nations at that time and seek to determine if there were policies and programs pursued by Bismarck and the Prussian-led Germans that were in some ways more inhumane or savage than other nations. I could argue both ways. Certainly other nations of the 19th century have their darksides: the behaviors of the US versus the indigenous American Indians is nothing to be proud of, and half the US (until the Civil War) embraced the institution of slavery. The British were rather brutal in India and elsewhere and are said to have "invented" the concentration camp during the Boer War. I don't think the French were particularly charming either -- weren't they rather brutal in their treatment of the Haiti rebellion in the early 1800s? But, still, there's Bismarck's decision in the Franco-Prussian War to immediately excecute any captured French soldiers who were African, as he considered them little more than animals. And the German campaign against the Herrero in their Südwestafrika colony in the early 1900s seems to be almost a form of deliberate genocide. Bottom line: pre-Nazi German governments were not run by saints, but I'm not sure they were that much worse than the leaders of any other of the Great Powers.

Chris - a couple edits:

All of Europe committed a type of genocide in Africa, even Belgium. Germany is hardly unique. See King Leopold's Ghost.

To Bismark's credit, he had no intention of setting up WWI. It was Kaiser Wilhelm who played the fool. His blunders lost a critical alliance with Britain, and inspired the British to upgrade their navy. He essentially found the weakest spots in Bismark's precarious (and probably unsustainable) balance of powers. He probably gets most of the credit for WWI because of his incompetence. But, all of Europe wanted WWI, not just Germany.

World War I was a family squabble fought with the resources of nations. It ended when all the cannon fodder was used up or would have had US not provided a fresh supply allowing US to overrun any and all belligerents. World War II in Europe was a continuation of WWI after enough new cannon fodder was made available.

#13 Girl from....

My fathers parents were born in Germany. Father from Wurtenburg weas only 2 years old, but my grandmotherwas a young woman whose fiancee had gone ahead to Ohio
He sent for her & when she reached Ohio, he had died of pneumonia. so she took a job as a hired girl & married my grandfather who was a traveling salesman. She spoke with an accent, he didn't. They moved to Cleveland & lived where a lot of Germans lived, their street wass calld "Kindsvater Strause" but during WW1, it was changed to Standard St.

Our younges daughter joined the army & was stationed in Nurenberg. Another daughter & I visied her & she rented a car & drove on the Autobahnm but it there was a speed limit because it was a bit mountainous. I studied German in sschool & could talk to the people who were reeally nice. During WW2, my husband was in the army & wounded in the battle of the bulge, after the war he stayed as a translater because he could speak russian, Polish & Ukranian. He also got along good with the Germans & was sort of engaged , but she found another American.

What inpressed me about Germany was all the houses had little flower gardens or flower pots & everything was very neat & clean. The scenery was beautiful, we drove near Hitler's retreat, but didn't go there.

To put the blame on any country for starting WW 1 is futile. Even an understanding of European history (which mor American's don't have) it would still be futdile. Think of little boys playing soldier, the fierce nationalism of France, England, Germany Russia, Serbia, the slavic states who wanted out of Franz Joseph's empire & old FJ himself (my polish mother-in-law hated him)
Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower is probably the best at explaining.

There is a thread on the "worst US presidents" & Woodrow Wilson's name is on the list. He endorsed the treaty of Versailles which bankrupted the Weimar Republic & the US should have stayed out of WW1, instead of entering at the last moment in order to get a piece of the pie.

"...isn't that also a Tuchman book? "The Throngs of August"?"

“Tuchman's "The Thrones of August", (wonky touchstones!)”

I think everybody is thinking of the fashion history, Tuchman’s “The Thongs of August”

As July nears its end, maybe we should start a whole new Topic String: "The Puns of August"

#15 - I know, and I (sort of - as a non-jew I really cannot) understand how you feel about this... Just wanted to add a perspective on the issue.

A lot of people think of Germany as neat and tidy and well-ordered. But there's a backside, there as everywhere else. Not everyone gets to see that backside even where they live, of course, so not seeing it when abroad is understandable. And on a global scale Germany is incredibly tidy. So tidy you aren't even allowed to think certain thoughts... But that has more to do with RAF and the whole Baader-Meinhof affair than anything else.
But maybe that part of German history is too recent to register.

And to me as an European those terror groups, like ETA (Spain) and IRA (Ireland), has more impact on life than wwII.

Chris, #17: "What's interesting is to try to exam the so-called "Second Reich" (1871-1918) based only on the contemporaneous evidence and comparing them to other nations at that time and seek to determine if there were policies and programs pursued by Bismarck and the Prussian-led Germans that were in some ways more inhumane or savage than other nations. I could argue both ways."

Obviously Bismarck must have done something that people still admire. Otherwise you can bet that we would have pulled down all the Bismarck statues, blown up all the Bismarck towers and cut down all the Unity Oaks in this country. :-)

What I tried to say to Garp with "The victors make the history" is, that it seems that the old propaganda pictures of children-mutilating, library-burning savage Germans are still there at the back of the heads of (non-German) people and influencing their picture of WW1 Germans.

The same can be seen in Germany, where the prejudices sown by the Nazis against Eastern Europeans can still be found (not in the fierce, deadly way of the 1940s, but in the form of considering the Easterners unable to run a state, to work, being thieves etc. They were handed down to many children just like other racist prejudice). And like other prejudice, you can only work on them if you are aware of them and of their source.

I would also be grateful if we could keep WW1 and WW2 as separate issues. While there is a development from WW1 through the Weimar Republic to the Nazi Dictatorship, to look at WW1 Germans as the clear predecessors of the Nazi hordes is --well, questionable.

*dons fireproof underwear*

Message edited by its author, Jul 30, 2009, 3:00am.

GirlFrom:

There was an interesting article I was reading somewhere, might've even been a review of a book, that discussed evolving British perceptions of the Germans over the last few centuries. According to what I read, the concept of the Germans as barbaric Huns was really a more modern concept, that came to full fruition in World War One propaganda.

Again, according to whoever wrote this, the more common British view of Germans through much of the 1700s and early 1800s was to see them as a group of somewhat impractical poetic dreamers and philosophers. The German as someone sitting on a hilltop overlooking the Rhine composing music in his head. Or in a University town surrounded by books and composing the kinds of densely complex writing I associate with someone like Kant. But they were not seen as warlike.

#24
I live in a part of Ohio that was settled by German (Bavarian, mostly)farmers who have aquired the reputation of being the best farmers, able to take semi-productive land & turn it into profitable crops. Along with the farming tradition, their is still an audience for polka music. German fests in Toledo & other towns are very successful, Oktober fests (usually held in Sept. because Oct. is too cold & wet) songs like "In Himmel es gibt keine beer" (my favorite) are sung in english & German. Polish & Slovak polkas & obereks have been added to the repetoire.

The US, of course, never experienced the horrors of war directly. We cannot compare our experiences to that of the European nations. Yet when we visited Germany, there were tourists from all over.
The memories of WW2 are fading as that generation dies off. WW1 is remembered more for the Flu pandemic than the war itself.

The Germans were great for the US. They with their beer halls and dances brought a sense of celebration and fun to flinty Yankee and dour Scots-Irish settlements, yet it was an orderly sense of jollity - not getting carried away like the Irish.

Wow, I can't believe I missed this thread before now! Well... I guess I can, seeing as I'm staying in another WiFi-less wasteland.. .but still!

I don't even really know where to hop in, but right at the beginning Garp mentioned their "WWI" behavior. I have to say though that this is a little of "do as I say, not as I do" on our part. Obviously they were known as being vicious fighters in WWI, who cared little about the collateral damage they caused...even doing it on purpose in several instances in the Netherlands--Modris Eksteins' Rites of Spring gives some interesting detail into this. There is no way some of that behavior can be forgiven.

But. BUT! As horrible as their terrorism was then (and obviously, again in WWII), the Allies are no saints either. Look no further than the over-the-top demoralization bombings that took place near the end of the war, essentially shoving the German puppy's nose in shit after kicking the metaphorical shit out of it.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great thing Germany lost that war, or the world would be a very different--not to mention, more terrible-place. I just don't agree with this "retaliatory" crap against the civilian population. Yes Hitler did it to the British; but at a certain point, shouldn't we take a certain moral high-road? Absolutely blow their bases and weapons manufacturing to kingdom come, but bombing the historical old-towns of cities across Germany to "get 'em back" just strikes me as childish, yet with grotesque consequences (ask somebody that survived the Feb 13/14th bombing of Dresden--WWII version of napalm, multiple air raids in the middle of the night while people were sleeping). I hate how we tell our kids that retaliating is bad, and yet on a national level we do it all the damn time.

Anyway, on a related note, I think it was Busifer who mentioned the feelings re: WWII today amongst the populace. I have to say, I've never come across anyone who is mad about the Germans losing the war (thank god). The only thing I have encountered is older people (like in my Dresden example) who were touched by the war and perhaps wish the Allies hadn't been so harsh. But even these people are quick to point out that at least it led to Hitler's downfall. Younger people especially (ones whose grandparents are even too young to have fought) have an even more dismissive tone about it. They are so far removed from it that they just don't really have any strong feelings about it other than Nazis are assholes. I had a discussion with a German friend once about the wake of WWII, where the Allies passed all sorts of acts to stamp out Nazism, and I was taking a sort of "free speech" side of the argument, saying that maybe telling people that they can't be a Nazi is on a certain level similar to the authoritarian measures of the Nazis themselves. His whole point was basically "yeah but they're bad.... so it's okay to be told not to like them." Perhaps there's something in the German psyche that really does just like to follow orders.. hmm...

Either way, it was interesting to see that if anything, they're just kind of embarrassed by the whole Nazi thing, as a sort of political party, just like some of us are about Republicans, or at least, George Bush ;-)

#26, MarianV: "The US, of course, never experienced the horrors of war directly. We cannot compare our experiences to that of the European nations. "

True. I remember talking about that with friends a while ago, and suddenly I realised that during my childhood in the 1970s/80s I had taken those bungalow-like buildings and empty spaces in the city as normal. No, they weren't --they were bomb-damaged houses dismantled down to the ground floor, and the empty plots were quite often plots where the debris of the destroyed house had only been cleared away years after the war.
Or when I lived in Dresden: In a quarter with all new high-rises, socialist-style, the kerbstones were lowered in silly places, where no driveway was, or in front of a wall. Reason: The kerbstones were pre-WW1, and there *had* been driveways there, when the original 19th century houses still stood.

This is probably the same for the European cities that suffered bombings during WW2, and it keeps the events much more alive. Just like the view from the bedroom in my former flat (towards the Remembrance Tower on the site of Buchenwald concentration camp).

One could probably say that the US Americans don't understand war in the same way that Europeans don't understand slavery and its repercussions --our history has been too different.

Excellent point! :-)

Feicht - just to be clear, I didn't mean to say there are people around who think Germany should had won wwII but that people from around Europe - or at least Sweden ;-) - blames the present-day german population for the atrocities of wwII. I haven't been to Germany in 14 years but during the late 80's I visited often, and a lot of people was pretty pissed at being treated as guilty of a crime they had no part in, back then.

In Sweden most people, at least my age and older, views Germans in a very negative way, always suspecting them to secretly strive for world domination through genocide. Even when we ourselves were eager to help the Nazis, as long as it looked like they were winning...

And I can understand not wanting to live with that.

Off topic, but in reference to my #29: I just now saw a TV report about a Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in celebration of the Bauhaus year (Weimar had and has the Bauhaus University).

Buchenwald is part of Weimar municipality, and someone found that the letters of the gate of the camp ("Jedem das Seine") were designed by a camp inmate, using slightly changed Bauhaus lettering. An act of disobedience that went undiscovered for more than 60 years.

Also off topic but inspired by #33 - a lot of real good/famous design/designers has come from Germany, historically. The heritage is carried on by typographers, graphic designers, etcetera.

I don't know how common this sentiment is among Germans today, but it made a big impression on me in 1979. I was traveling in Israel and met a German guy, around 20 years old. He said he was in Israel to do some volunteering. Clearly he was struggling with his identity as a German, and what the German past meant for him. He said, "You have no idea how hard it is to be a young person from a country with whose history you so much do not want to identify."

I suspect this feeling has changed over the succeeding thirty years. The young Germans I have met in the US recently (I have never visited Germany) seem much less afflicted by the burden this guy carried.

Interesting thread! - If you're really looking at German history from 30,000 feet, surely the thing you would notice is not so much the elephant in the room as the bear next door? Strictly-speaking, next-door-but-one, but that distinction never seems to have bothered anyone on either side much, from Frederic the Great onwards...

Ah, that bear has bothered the region for a long time, and that includes Scandinavia. I think a lot of people forget about what that presence have had, over time and directly influencing every choice, political and personal...

That was always the thing that struck me about (West) Germany in the 70s and 80s: confident and successful from the outside, but when you were there, older people in particular seemed to be very conscious of all those tanks on the frontier, kept out only by courtesy of the "Amis" and (later on) "die Lady".

#37, Busifer,

I am under the impression the bear is populated mostly by the Rus, at least until you cross the steppe into Asia. I am under the impression, also, that the Rus are the same folks who terrified Britain during and after the decline of Roman civilization, just gone east instead of west. Aren't the Rus Scandinavian (Danish) in origin?

When my English born mother wanted to scare me away from a particular behavior as a child she would tell me stories of the Gypsies and the dangers they posed to small children. I think the Germans had the same attitude. Wasn't one of Hitler's targets for extermination the Romany, as well as Jews, the physically and mentally abnormal, and those who opposed the Nazi's. And, as regards the Romany, were as successful if not more so than they were with the Jews? They just don't have as successful a lobby as the Jews. During the age of nationalism, being a European nomad was not a strategy for success.

Yes, I spent some time in Berlin in the 80's and that what definitely what it felt like.

We've also had some close encounters here in Scandinavia, and in Sweden the defence was all about anti-Soviet strategies, pre-glasnost.

>39

Aren't the Rus Scandinavian (Danish) in origin?

Indeed, Scandinavian in origin, although not exclusively Danes. The etymology of the Rus name implies a more Swedish influence, but again they were more than likely an amalgamation of Scandinavians.

Message edited by its author, Jul 31, 2009, 12:42pm.

Until recently, historically recent, weren’t the Rus under the thumb of the Golden Hoard, Chingis Khan’s eldest son’s share of the empire after Chingis died?

When the Danes (or vikings or Norsemen - whatever you want to call them the originated in Scandanavia )& during the Medeaval warming period enough ice melted to open the sea lanes & off they sailed. Including up the Volga where they met with the people who lived their - Slavs, descendents of Mongul invasions. so they settled along the rivers, started towns, traded & intermarried with the population, so much so that the red-hair of the norseman became a common feature & their descendents were called "Russ". The Norse invaders did not kill off the people they encountered unless their was some special circumstance. They intermarried with the Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, & those people became trading partners instead of enemies.

In France they settled along the North sea coast & intermarried & became so numerous that the region was called "Normandy." Later, in 1066, the Norman French (whose language by that time was French) invaded England where their Norman-Saxon cousins lived. Again, the goal was trade & making money & not destruction of the people they encountered.

#38, thorold: Not only the older people. I am in my early forties. Until 1989, you had to be blind, deaf and unable to read not to notice you were living in a "frontier state". I doubt any other region in western Europe (with the exception of Northern Ireland for different reasons) had a comparable concentration of military forces (and nuclear weapons --on both sides of the Iron Curtain).

I thought it completely normal to see the Bundeswehr every few months in and around our pretty normal village on manoeuvre (we were about 30 km from the GDR border), and assorted NATO troops every other year all over the place. It was kind of an adventure for us kids/teens to watch them doing what soldiers do while in a manoeuvre, but then again my mother nearly got a heart attack, when two tanks started shelling each other (with blanks) in front of the church. Snatched us kids and locked us up indoors.
I never got the impression they were there just to play, even as a kid --they were there with a purpose.

And if you ever visited the GDR, they made you feel like a suspect.

Actually no one REALLY know who the rus were. There's some etymological evidence pointing to my region of the world (the finnish 'routsi' for 'sweden', and, some may say 'roslagen', which happens to be the area just north of me AND an important religious centre during heathen times) BUT no one REALLY knows. These last years what has formerly count as 'truth' is being questioned, not least because there are other ways to interpret archaeological evidence. Among other things.

Anyway, when we in northern Europe talks about the 'russians' (which we called them even when we meant the Soviet Union) etymology or archaeology has nothing to do with it - we mean whatever resides across Karelia, on the eastern side of the Finnish border. And whatever the formal name or the ruling ideology has been the impact has been great.

Busifer is right - the etymology of Rus is uncertain. Yes, Scandinavians did play a role in early Russia. Even way before the viking age: the Goths are after all supposed to have come from that region too and they make their first appearance in real history in the Black Sea area. However, it is also clear that the dominant factor there ultimately wasn't germanic but slavic.

And yes, in popular usage for us Europeans - I'm Dutch - "Russian" referred to anything between Poland and China.

Hm, you make me want to visit the Viking festival and museum at Haithabu next weekend (just a stone's throw away)...

So much to think about here...

#24 - I don't think anyone can argue that the Kaiser and per-WWI German directly lead to Hitler. What can be argued is that, at least in Prussia, Germany had long (and often successful) military culture, one very different from anywhere else in Europe. This DID lead directly to both WWI and WWII.

(not related to post 24) Also, Germany was unique in that antisemitism entered the highest and most respected parts of academia, especially in philosophy, well before WWII. Certainly this was true in the 1890's. Perhaps this existed in other countries in the same way, but I'm not aware of any equivalent. (see, for example: The Politics of Cultural Despair by Fritz Richard Stern). This did lead to Hitler, and was probably essential to the German political acceptance of Hitler's antisemitism.

However, it's important to note that Germany was not the worst place for Judaism pre-WWII. In parts of the Poland the Polish-Jewish hatred (which was mutual) was extreme and far surpassed the antisemitic feelings in Germany. Jewish history in Russia/USSR before, during and after WWII is pretty awful too. It was the Russian pogroms (which weren't necessarily "Russian" in their origins) that drove the massive late 19th-century-early 20th-century Jewish immigration to the United States (and Palestine and elsewhere). Before Hitler came to power, Jewish culture was thriving in Germany and Jewish individuals were prominent in many many aspects, including politics (and socialism). Germany, ironically,was probably the best place in Europe to be Jewish.

Also, as Busifer pointed out, neutral Sweden was hardly neutral and assisted Nazi-Germany in many ways. It's hard to be too critical because Sweden avoided becoming a battleground, a true victory anyway you look at it. However, correct me if I'm wrong, it's also true that the neo-Nazi groups in Sweden are quite healthy and active. At least they were 10 years ago when I was paying closer attention.

On the origin of the Russians...

I'll add that at the same time the Vikings were ransacking NW Europe, they were aggressively trading throughout Russia and all the way to the Byzantine Empire - who used Scandinavians as the Royal Guards. My source is here: Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC - AD 1000 by Barry Cunliffe. Cunliffe discusses the origin of the Russians and has some interesting things to say, and, if I remember correctly, mentions a source that would be really nice for this discussion...alas it was library book and I can't look it up.

#48 - They were indeed. Today undisguised neo-Nazism is not viewed as almost accepted, which it was some 10 years ago, but mainstream politics have gained a nationalistic, and inherently racist, streak; which is not becoming but there. Me and my husband discussed it only yesterday. In the area we live in it's very obvious that people with what could be viewed as a Nazi agenda are accepted, if ignored, while the social democrats don't even want to show themselves because of the hatred they face. Just 20 minutes to the southwest, where we used to live, it's the total opposite.
Which is prevailing is hard to have an opinion on, as you'll understand, but you don't see many skinheads around any more, and no nazi symbols, so the more violent elements are at least not as many as a decade ago.

#49 - Bus, interesting.

However reluctant or enthusiastic they might have been about Nazism, the Swedes didn't have much choice but to cooperate with Hitler. One of the main reasons for the German invasion of Norway was to ensure a ready supply of iron ore from the Swedish mines through the nearby all-weather Norwegian port of Narvik. And, for all that Hitler was pleased by his occupation of Norway, little Narvik was the Grand Prize of the entire enterprise.

Surrounded as Sweden was by Hitler: occupied Norway to the west, Denmark to the south, and Germany's anti-Soviet ally Finland to the east, Sweden was left largely to itself for the simple reason that Hitler didn't need to invade. Not that he didn't threaten war. In the case of Sweden, it was "to be made absolutely clear that pro-German neutrality and complete fulfillment of all delivery obligations of goods is the sole road to preservation of its independence." Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine, SKL I Op., 73/40, Ueberlegungen Studie Nord, 19.I.40: The German Northern Theatre of Operations: 1940-1945.

But to get back to the present, Busifer, would you say that recent Scandinavian/Swedish (Dutch, too) right-wing reactionism is a product of the influx of foreign people into Scandinavia, particularly from the Middle East?

No, I don't think so - it started much earlier. About 20 years ago some vocal, high profile people started a political party based on a policy of discontent (sorry, this is much shorter in swedish but I have no idea what the correct english term for such a party might be).

The discontent had it's source in, among other things, an economical shift. Previously the Swedish economy had had it's base in the forest and the mines, and the products and logistics necessary to sustain that economy. But in the 70's and 80's the wharves, the paper mills, the textile industry, the furniture industry... everything went belly-up, sometimes dramatically so, with a lot of people facing lifetime unemployement. This took it's toll on the swedish social security system, too, and everything had to downgrade. Paired with this we had an influx of refugees, first (70's) from Latin America (Chile) and then (80's/90's) from Africa (mainly Somalia) and then (00's) came the result of the US' rampage in the Middle East.
All the while there have been a steady trickle of people from Turkey, Greece and Finland (from the 60's until present).

This party I mentioned earlier rode on this discontent, openly propagating for what they called 'repatriation' programmes. They were shot down in flames BUT their heritage lives on - they paved the way for the Swedish Party, which existed prior to this but gained footing when that other party fell apart. Later they also understood that an overtly racist agenda was unfeasible, and that's when they started to gain members from both the right-wing parties and the social democrats. Their main - public - agenda is spookily similar to the Nazi one when it comes to internal affairs.This last decade they have gained strength, mainly in the south (where the wwII era support fro the Nazis was strongest) and in areas formerly relying on the wood and the mines for their living. Not strong enough to take seat in any national council BUT the established parties feeling the breath on their necks have turned decidedly unfriendly to non-european foreigners. People who can prove they have been systematically harassed/tortured and facing death threats are turned back to their torturers, citing 'no perceivable threat in the region' clauses, and people who do get to stay here, or got their citizenships or residence permits prior to this change of policy, are facing living conditions unworthy of a civilised society. Many have decided to change their names to swedish sounding ones, to get treated as people.

Message edited by its author, Aug 5, 2009, 4:53am.

> 51: I know very little about the situation in Sweden / Scandinavia, but since you also drew Holland into it. My answer would be: not really.

Sure it's a factor, any influx of strangers will make some people nervous I guess. And some politicians will use that fact. But I think it's mainly a question of "scapegoatism" - it's more comfortable to blame the ills of society on strangers than on your own shortcomings. There were never many gypsies here in Holland, and there are hardly any jews left since WW2, but now there are muslims...

I think we are seeing the same "waves" of immigrants there were in the USA:
In the 1960, for Germany it was the Italians and Yugoslavs, in the 1970s/80s the Turks, in the 1990s the Russians and Arabs plus Yugoslav refugees, and in the 2000s the Afghanis, Iraqis, and various african nations.

The Italians and Yugoslavs and Greeks are pretty much integrated by now (shop-owners, children found in many walks of life/professions). I cannot remember to have heard any prejudices recently against Italians or longtime Yugoslav immigrants, not even campaigning from the right-wing extremists.

The Turks are half-way there, the rest is still struggling.
They just make a better target right now.
My guess would be that in two decades the Turks will be fully integrated, and the scapegoatism will have found another scapegoat.

Or the Germans (and the Europeans as a whole) will have got used to the immigration --unlike the USA, Europe including the UK has only known mass immigration for about 40 years.

#52, Busifer,

"About 20 years ago some vocal, high profile people started a political party based on a policy of discontent (sorry, this is much shorter in swedish but I have no idea what the correct english term for such a party might be)."

In the US we call them Republicans.

#55 - LOLOLOL!!!

The whole topic of immigration is quite hot in Europe, at the moment. Italy and Spain receives a lot of refugees from northern Africa, often by boat and often half starved and half drowned. These countries are very vocal in their campaigning for a common anti-immigrations policy throughout Europe.

In Sweden we have a long, relatively speaking, tradition of making a home, temporary or permanent, for refugees. Note that I do say 'refugees'. People from Africa or the Middle East or the former Soviet Union who comes here to seek their fortune are generally not met with open arms. Anyway, agreeing with these southern siblings of ours on this issue is not viewed as acceptable by the general public, even if our current politicians would like to do so.
They walk a tight rope (see my post above on their flirt with racism) ;-)

Anyway, I agree with those who talks about 'scapegoats'. But it's rather valuable to understand why those scapegoats are needed... and that's partly an issue of a very thorough structural change in the economies of the old world.

Hahaha Geneg... I was going to say the exact same thing until I scrolled down and saw you beat me to it :-D

Immigration is a tough issue for any country, but I would think it has to be more difficult in Europe than the US. Our whole country has been based upon immigrants (whose nature has varied significantly over the years) so the concept of assimilation is more a part of our social and political landscape here. It has to be much tougher if your country has an identity that is a thousand years old of being French or Norwegian or British and you have immigrants of a different language, color, religion, culture, etc. The mechanism to assimililate is not in place.

Not to say it's smooth sailing here, because it is not, but I think most people here at least recognize that it is part of our tradition, even if there many who want to change those traditions.

...or deny the fact that it IS a part of our tradition. Or, claim it only works for "white" people... despite the definition of "white" changing every generation. (The irony of a guy named "O'Reilly" complaining about immigrants today is hilarious to me).

But - US immigration came to a comparative halt circa 1920. I think today it is much easier to immigrate to Germany or Sweden (legally) than to the US. So, in actual fact we've been a xenophobic country for a long time.

The "halt" though was an artificial thing brought about by immigration restrictions on the flood of southern and eastern Europeans coming into the country. It's basically gone on to this day, and intensified as the authorities have only made it harder and harder to move here and become a US citizen.

I'm not so sure it's "easier" to immigrate to Germany or Sweden, as you mention, though; perhaps just "less hard". They seem more apt to accept "refugees" than we are, but actually immigrating to there seems just as mind boggling as it does here.

#62 Good points, thanks.

It depends. I don't know much about how immigration works in the US, other than that a friend of mine who married an guy from New York had to pass some rigorous testing, including scrutiny of the family album, before being allowed a citizenship/marriage.
And I don't know much about becoming a swedish citizen either, to be honest. Refugees have legal status if, and that's a BIG if, the immigrations bureau accept them. This decision is made on an individual basis, and sometimes the handling officers seems almost sadistic. We've had some rather big scandals revolving around this, lately...

What countries should have their citizens eligible as refugees is decided by official policy (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Presently they only think places heads on in war qualify, meaning homosexual men have been sent to Iraq, only to be imprisoned and tortured on their arrival.
This I do not agree with.

Anyway, anyone who have lived here for two years or more can apply for permanent residency status, and from there you can apply for citizenship. A permanent resident is eligible for voting in local and county elections.

Until eight years ago swedish law did not permit double citizenship. I still remember when a swedish ice hockey player (don't remember his name, atm) got sent home from the world championships because he had acquired an US citizenship (or was it canadian?) without understanding that this lost him his status as a swedish citizen.

Message edited by its author, Aug 10, 2009, 11:41am.

I remember that!

They're usually lenient about that stuff these days though. Some older players are basically "grandfathered in" to certain teams too. For instance, there are still a few guys playing for Russia who are allowed to because they started off in the Soviet system...whether they were from Russia, or Kazakhstan, or Ukraine (or even Latvija, but those guys are all retired now I think).

And the "Team Italy" roster from the last Olympics was a total joke, really; the majority of their team was either Canadians whose grandparents came from Italy, or Canadians currently residing in Italy...haha

Message edited by its author, Aug 10, 2009, 11:54am.

Well, no one can accuse Italy for being a hockey nation ;-)

Just got back from Germany (and Prague and Salzburg too).

Going back to my original post that started this all, I now think that the correct view has to be a melding of the two alternatives I presented. With German history, you can't ignore the crimes of Nazi Germany, but you can't focus only on those either.

Sadly, and I hate to say this knowing there are Germans posting to this site, I believe that the crimes against humanity committed by elements of the German government and their allies, in the early 1940s, mostly in the East (Poland and Belorussia) against Jews and many other targeted groups were so horrendous, so utterly beyond the pale, that the stain can never be washed away from the German soul - the mark of Cain is on the German people for all eternity. Thus the Germans of today and the future who were not even alive then become themselves victims of the depraved violence of the Nazi's. Victims in a different way than the millions who were murdered en masse, but still victims.

I think this is a view shared by most people who have ever visited Germany, or who lived or lives within the German sphere of influence.

It is also a view sustained by what schools teach, at least in Sweden. Even when atrocities just as horrible have been committed (and ARE committed) elsewhere. If I was even the tiniest bit into conspiracy theories (which I aren't) I'd say it's a deliberate smoke cloud, to take the eyes from what governments have done and do, in the present.

I mean, in Afghanistan rapists go free if they agree to wed the girl they raped!!! Or do I need mention Cambodia, and the killing fields? Or the way the romani people are treated in Hungary? Or Stalin, perhaps, for those who won't feel comfortable by facing present day history?

This is NOT to belittle wwII. Just saying that some groups have been very vocal in making this The Worst Crime Ever committed; something which is conspiring to make it impossible to make a coherent analysis of something that reappears continuously throughout human history. Not that that's what they intend - it's just one of the side effects.

If we treat it as 'evil' it's just a random event, and no one can do anything to prevent a random event. If we treat it as something that we can see happen in certain situations we can instead device strategies to prevent it from happening.
Or that's my hope.

Edited to fix some typos.

Message edited by its author, Aug 13, 2009, 2:07pm.

I have sometimes held the view you express, Busifer, but I think that there is an application of moral/cultural relativism at work that in its own way is a bit "racist" and that is this: that the Germans, by virtue of being an educated, civilized, and yes-Christian, Great European Power, should have been more likely to recognize the evil that they were doing, as they deliberately and carefully did such things as conduct scientific research into alternative technologies to more effectively and quickly cremate thousands of gassed, emaciated corpses, or make sure to loudly play orchestra music as trains disembarked at Auschwitz so that the cries of alarm of the first passengers weren't heard in subsequent traincars, just to give two of thousands of such examples. Mid twentieth-century Germans, fairly or unfairly, are held to a higher standard than, say, an African ethnic group that machetes to death thousands of another ethnic group. Either way the victims are dead, but the two situations are viewed differently.

Although Jews were the most numerous and from all evidence the primary target of Nazi exterminationist policy, they were certainly not the only defined group of victims. I am not myself Jewish so perhaps I cannot fully understand, but sometimes I do think that Jewish-oriented Holocaust rememberance groups can damage their own cause by over-exposure and by focusing exclusively on Jewish victims. A friend of mine comes to mind who has the habit of checking the Index of any book he sees about the Holocaust, and if there is absolutely no reference to gypsies or Roma in the Index, he does not buy the book.

Message edited by its author, Aug 13, 2009, 2:35pm.

#68
Hear, Hear! I agree completely and I am of the Ordinary Men school of thought. Any population and be seduced into these sort of atrocities.

Absolutely agree, TLC. And I'm with Busifer too; there have been so many horrible atrocities in history (and unfortunately, will be in the future) that I sometimes can't believe how much emphasis is put on a particularly brutal and horrible period in Europe in the 30s and 40s, when Americans were basically killing Indians for sport for 200 years, the Sudan is being riven by ritualized slaughter, rape and ethnic warfare... and so on.

You bring up a good point though Chris about focusing only on the Jewish victims. I don't think ANYBODY ever remembers that the first group to be persecuted and put in concentration camps by the Nazis were the communists. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that we in the west were being told for so many decades that they were just as evil.

Message edited by its author, Aug 13, 2009, 3:04pm.

#69 - Prior to the fall of die Mauer the Hungarians and the Czech were generally viewed as the most intellectual/scholarly of the nations of the Eastern Bloc. Now they race each other for who treats the romani the worst. In swedish press we regularly see reports of killings, systematic harassment, etcetera.

Today most people who engineer atrocities are educated people, often with the main objective to sustain their own power base, so they can continue to stay on top/enrich themselves. Sometimes they use religious or ideological disguises, but let's see them for what they are.
That way it's easier to counter their strategies.

I also think that by victimising people just for being born to a certain nationality (like we do with the Germans) is the first mental step towards a crime not dissimilar from what happened in wwII - every little step takes you closer, without you or me ever realising when or where we passed the threshold.

Like TLCrawford I think no one is immune. Only way to inoculate is to understand the process that moves to seduce us.

In the Harry Potter stories, there are three curses that are called the "Unforgiveable" curses. They are usually used by the bad guys. Is what the Germans did directly (or caused to occur) in World War II “unforgiveable?” Perhaps we can understand why it happened, tell ourselves that it could’ve (and has) happened in another country. But is it forgivable? I guess if you’re a Christian this would really test your concepts of forgiveness of sin: if Heinrich Himmler were to have confessed his sins and begged the Lord for forgiveness, would he have received it? The epistle of Paul to the Romans tells us: "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." (Romans 10:9-10.) If a Christian God might forgive a repentant murdering Nazi, then should not we also forgive? Or is it truly unforgivable by we mere mortals?

Message edited by its author, Aug 13, 2009, 4:59pm.

#73 - I think the German Holocaust calls in the question everything we value about Western civilization - and its morality and its ability to reason.

We can blame Russian mass killings on Stalin's insanity. We can blame China's mass death a full imperial collapse - provoked by Europe. We can blame African mass killing lead by Europeans on greed - and racism. Ditto the native American mass death. We can argue Japan's crimes in WWII were not causes by the West. But, we can't do this with the Holocaust, or not as easily. At root Western culture is to blame.

I'm no expert of divinities, Christian or otherwise, but I'm pretty sure a defining characteristic is that they are capable of things outside the reach of us mere mortals.

Yes, I think some things are unforgivable.

I believe that the only people who are able - or who have the right to forgive the nazi perpetrarors of the holocaust are the few remaining survivors & those whose relatives were killed.

As for the holocaust being worse because it was caused by a "Cultured" people - people who feel threatened can be easily lead by any charismatic leader. They might be interested at first, because they feel that could be a way to right a wrong - & the treaty of Versailles & the inflation that rocked Germany in the 1920's & the rise of communism in the large country almost next door - we in the US have not been without a fascination for fasiscism. Respected men like Henry Ford & Charles A. Lindbergh both favored the nazi party line. And the US has gone to extremes to "root out" any hint of comunism. There is a book 1919 which details what happened immediately after WW1 to prevent and "infiltration". An interesting side point is the founding of the American Legion for veterans of WW1 to keep them in line with "American" values. There was also the McCarthy era in the late 1940's. An ocean separated us from Stalinist Russia. Can we imagine how much more threatened those countries on the border felt?

So many bad things have happened in this world. We heer, today, are lucky because we never faced any immediate threats to our lives or way of life. We can't really judge any group of people who were not born before these things happened. All we can do is to make sure nothing as evil as that is allowed to surface again.

Here, here, Marian. I'm with you. We are none of us immune to manipulation in the right circumstances.

This is a complex subject and everyone makes really great points.

I suppose I remain closest to #74's take on it.

There is something about the Holocaust -- and that something in this sense has really nothing to do with Jews -- that sets it apart from all other atrocities. It is because it occurred in the heart of what we call Western Civilization that it remains so terrible. We want to say that other people commit these kinds of crimes but not us. Well, in this case "we" are the perpetrators and it cuts to the quick for all of our celebrations of our wonderful western civilization.

Sure, we have done terrible things to all kinds of people in all kinds of places. But this crime was so vast and there was so much complicity from the general population that it still makes out guts wrench. It is that complicity -- average people willingly toasting other average people (and we saw this in Serbia in the '90's again) -- that is what frightens us so. Why are we frightened? Because we know how easy it might be to happen all over again. Jews are -- and perhaps rightly so -- focused upon their victimization and the likelihood that they could be victims again. But for me, it could literally happen to any group deemed "the other". That is why the right-wing in this country frightens me so.

Some things are unforgivable but let's not put the blame on innocent people. How long should we carry the yoke of the penultimate sin? As a non-christian I say we should not force it upon anyone at all. The sins of the fathers are the sins of the fathers, and in most cases (not all) even the fathers can be forgiven.

I think maybe people from the new world - you know, overseas from us in the Old World, lol - want Europe to be 'clean', but it isn't, and that's why wwII is so central. With US monopoly on ideas it then become central to everyone within the US sphere of influence.

The complicity of everyday people is a key success factor when atrocities are committed, or 'people' or 'common sense' or 'what is accepted' had stopped it from going on/happen.

Some things are unforgivable but let's not put the blame on innocent people.

Indeed. And I agree with #74 that this is ultimately a "blemish" on western civilization as a whole. I think the most important lesson is that our species (and I see no reason to limit this to any particular sub-group of our species - Germans or other), even when supposedly ruled by civilization (western or other) is capable of such evil.

What can I say, I have a fairly bleak view of humanity.

apropos line from Woody Allen's "Hannah and her Sisters"--

Frederick (Max von Sydow): "You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question 'How could it possibly happen?' is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is 'Why doesn't it happen more often?' "

Message edited by its author, Aug 14, 2009, 10:05am.

If there was a "blemish on western civilization,"
wouldn't there have to be some western civilization with a special claim to "morality and reason"? History demonstrates that morality is malleable, and reason can be used to justify the foulest atrocities.

I'm not sure I would call it a special claim, but if you read back to earlier sources western civilization was supposed to be reasonable and moral. Late 19th and early 20th sources often show a remarkable "superiority complex" in that respect.

Well, if so, it didn't live up to its standards. But of course (looking back into history at things like the transatlantic slave trade, the crusades, the colonial expansion, &c) we should have known better.

Message edited by its author, Aug 14, 2009, 11:46am.

I just don't buy the supposed "uniqueness" of the Nazi period, and think it's dangerous to think of it as such. This thinking has turned the "never again" mentality following WWII to "well... not too often ever again... and not in western Europe"

If you think the Srebrenice massacre (IN EUROPE) in the 90s was anything other than an ethnically fueled, politically charged rationalization of mass murder, you need to think again. They were "just doing what they were told" too.

Yeah. It didn't get to that same scale - but that's about the most positive thing to be said for that one.

When human beings become lumps of flesh and blood and bone with an advanced brain then acting on the thought of the disposable or undesirable human is as easy as euthanizing a dog. No matter how you feel about religion, it is through religion that we learn humans are more than lumps of flesh and blood and bone with an advanced brain. Without some countervailing narrative on what it means to "be human" slaughtering people is no different than slaughtering cattle.

As for the current Germans and national guilt, those who lived through the war know what they did, what they could have done, and which side they came down on. Their own consciences will condemn or justify them. Those Germans who were either too young to understand what was happening or what they were doing to facilitate it, or those born after the war must come to grips with their nation's past, but their sense of shame or guilt is totally on them. I will not condemn Germany for The Third Reich. In fact I generally tend to blame the French, but that's just me.

As has been obliquely pointed out upthread, if the European settlers of the America's had lost their battle with those they found in residence already, we (their descendants) would hear no end of massacre's, torture, failures of resettlement and so forth. I fail to see a difference between Hitler's drive for Lebensraum and Manifest Destiny. Both were land grabs which entailed removal, one way or the other, of large chunks of the population. The solution to the Jewish question was one way of opening up that Lebensraum. Had the Third Reich been victorious there would be no Palestinian problem and the Holocaust would be taught in schools today as a repugnant but necessary step in cleansing evil from the world.

Remember, those who write the history are the winners. Winning doesn't necessarily make them right, it just bestows the power of how the story will be told.

One other thing. US imported a lot of fascists from Germany, I mean fascists here, not ordinary but useful Germans like Von Braun (we aimed for the stars but hit London instead), but real SS fascists to identify and help us track Communist agents trying to sneak into the US from Europe during all the post war confusion. If there is a thread of fascism in our country, it is a self inflicted wound. The enemy of my enemy is my friend has created this world we live in. Using useful idiots to achieve political ends is never useful in the long run.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practice to deceive. Oh what a tangled web indeed!

I feel that I have degenerated into rambling. I do that sometimes.

One more thought and I'll let you go. I can't help but believe the oligarchy with which we are currently battling over the direction this country should take is fascist, or at least using fascist tropes, at heart. Consider: money has replaced God as our primary element of worship, as a result business and wealth are the power centers in this country, not the people. People become pawns of forces so large they can't see that they are like flies in aspic, controlled this way and that by the world wide capitalist oligarchic conspiracy (I am not, in general, prone to conspiracies and I'm not sure this conspiracy is intentional or it just fell out that way, but it is a conspiracy, accidental or not, it is the nature of capitalism to create markets and ensure the future viability of those markets through subtle coercion, in this country we call it advertising, I call it commercial propaganda), people in government chase after wealth and power, doing the bidding of the powerful rather than the people, propaganda is rampant in this country, where do we get unvarnished, unbiased information with which to make decisions - from those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, our information is controlled by the oligarchs, we have been trained to discount what people who know what they are talking about say in favor of those who don't, witness the bustup over health care and the rampant misinformation being spread by those with a vested interest in the status quo, I fear as a nation we may never accomplish anything again because the nexus of money and power is so strong that it will block any real attempts to change things, we are in the midst of a never-ending war that can't be won or lost, as a result our government has ratcheted up the nationalism. We now have Dick Cheney talking about Bush's weakness in listening to the people instead of him. After all Dick knows what's good for America and only people like him have the internal strength to do what has to be done, the wishes of the American sheeple be damned. How is this attitude any different than Hitler's?

Yes, fascism can happen here and I think we are seeing the opening salvos in a war for the soul of America with its liberty and freedom. And the teabaggers are pawns, useful idiots, on the side of the fascists.

When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans came to power in 1994 I said at that time under Republican rule we will become the largest, most heavily armed, most pissed off third world nation on earth. Well, I submit the US is well on its way.

I agree with almost everything you have said.

Religious zealotry has caused more human suffering then any other source with the possible exceptions of disease and famine.

The vaunted "western civilization," indeed.

I'm with TLC; I think expecting too much from religion is a mistake. Sure sometimes they'll teach you that everyone should be treated with respect and is important...but other times they tell you quite the opposite, and then what? You kill people or go to hell, it would seem.

I would much rather see a secular approach where everyone in the world learns to respect human life (and indeed, with my personal bent, all life) for what it is, and have preservation of life be its own reward, rather than any hokey spiritual reasoning.

Chris, #81 and Feicht, #84: I wrote a lengthy message in that direction, and deleted it --I do that sometimes, people tend to get pissed off when a German says that there have been genocides after 1945, which did not produce the same "numbers" but were meticulously planned and (sorry, but:) executed nevertheless.

Feicht wrote about Srebrenica. Just a year before, all of us were watching the news from Gorazde, while the most effective** genocide of the 20th century took place in Rwanda. We all (especially the politicians, who HAD the information) did nothing. 270 Canadian and Ghanaian UNAMIR soldiers were stuck in Kigali and told to keep out of it. Do I sound pissed off? You bet.*** The news only really reported the extent when it was too late. TIA. This Is Africa, so it doesn't count. As a footnote to this, see the Kongo war(s), triggered by the fights spilling over from Rwanda, with 5.4 million dead between 1994 and ~2002.

Mark my words: It will happen again. In our lifetime.

**most effective as in: More people died per day during that 100 days in Rwanda, than in the German camps during the years of extermination.

***BTW, don't blame the UN. She is only as powerful as the governments backing her let her be. So look towards your own governments, and look at their record in this (or other) crisis.

Using religion as a cause for our nation's (& other Western nations) imperialistic attitudes is takeing a detour away from the main problem. The main problem is desire for power and money. Most religions teach that power & money do not endure, what does endure is love & kindness to our fellow man. Unfortunately, religion, especially in the west has often been hi-jacked to justify the "Will to power" which guides too many nations. This is not true religion. Study the teachings of the 3 Abrahamic religions, the Buddha, Confucious, the Tibetans, & they all agree that the love of money and power leads to the ruin of man. Not all practictioners of religion adhere to their religions core beliefs which can turn people away from religion itself. (An example is the novel Elmer Gantry a
supposed "Christian") Hitler tried to use the old Norse (Germanic) Gods & Godesses, but when these stories are studied carefully, the rich and powerful lose Vahalla. Siegfried, the warrior has a change of heart.
Whether people believe in religion or not, it is not the champion of the well-to-do, but rather those who have the spirit of the poor who will gain in the end.

God teaches that we must wage holy war on the unbelievers. Or so I was told at a christening I went to, not long ago. So I'm sorry but I don't buy that religion is what gives humankind ethics talk. I'm an atheist, and the most important value judgement for me is that all life is of equal worth/value, and should be treated with respect. It's central to me and it also means no one will be able to tell me I have to go kill that person or I'll never end up in heaven. Not least because I don't believe in an afterlife - that's just a convenient story, to keep the horrors of The End at bay.

Fact is people sharing this fundamental judgment are far between - almost everyone alive thinks some people are worth less or more than they themselves.

> 86: it is through religion that we learn humans are more than lumps of flesh and blood and bone with an advanced brain. Without some countervailing narrative on what it means to "be human" slaughtering people is no different than slaughtering cattle.

Hm, yes, there is an element of truth there. But don't get me started on the atrocities caused by religion. Religion was used to excuse the slave trade, the crusades, and - by the way - religion laid all the foundations for the antisemitism of Nazi Germany (even if it admittedly wasn't religious itself).

#92: your last comment is so true. I don't know how many times I've heard people in America compare Middle Easterners to "bugs" that need to be "exterminated." It's terrifying to hear really, but people will say it the same way you might say "oh I had Cornflakes for breakfast this morning."

This is one of the main reasons I don't buy the "uniqueness" of the Nazi phenomenon. You've hit the nail right on the head that people everywhere will always see some "other" group as inherently less important and worthy than themselves, so "who cares" if they die?

The problem with most religions is people don't look to religion to understand how to act and what to believe, they look to religion to valorize their actions and beliefs. Two entirely different things. Unfortunately, what with Christianity being all about the poor and powerless, people who want wealth and power do exactly those things it disparages while using it to support themselves. This is not a fault of religion or Christianity, specifically, it is a human fault prompted and promoted by Satan.

Don't blame the religion for its practitioners' misunderstanding of it. There are two distinct world views in Christianity and both of them stem from the Bible. In practice they are essentially irreconcilable. This is Satan's greatest triumph. the subversion of holy writ. It is also why we have two testaments: the Jewish Testament and the Christian one. The OT teaches one world view and the NT teaches the other. When combining the two, both hilarity and tragedy ensue.

I think it's disingenuous to suppose that religions don't themselves morph and become recodified to align with the views of their participants. They are by their very nature organic and malleable, despite the best efforts of people like the so-called "Church Fathers" of Christianity to standardize the wildly inconsistent threads of traditions and beliefs into a streamlined version which upheld certain "values" (male-dominated hierarchy, for instance) while condemning others.

People tend to look at religions as these monolithic institutions which have always been just and fair and never varied from their idealized form, when this is almost never the case.

96 > You are absolutely correct.

To return to the topic of German history...-- there have been a number of reports on the official memorial services and interesting articles and interviews in both German and Polish newspapers these days. I hope some of it will be translated, so that I can link them here. It's amazing how far Germans and Poles have come in mutual understanding in the last years.

From recent news articles it sounds like the Poles have patched things up better with the Germans than they have with the Russians.

Speaking as a next door neighbour I think it can be difficult to patch anything up with the Russians. The bad blood is not only from the time of the war, or the Soviet union, but from long long before that. At least here in Scandinavia. It's hard to change prejudices that ingrained in the culture.

My MIL was born in a village near Krakow. When she settled in OH, she did not hide her prejudices. She hated the emporer Franz Josef because (among other things) he drafted Polish young men into his army. Her husband, also from Poland came here to avoid service in the Austria-Hungarian army.

One of their sons married a girl from the Russian Orthodox community. No body approved. MIL was very vocal about her dislike of Russians. After the war, the youngest son was stationed in Bavaria. He married a girl there & when he brought her over here, she was welcomed with open arms. But they moved to California, so I never got to meet her. I, with a German last name, was also welcomed among the Polish community. I can't think of any inter-marriages during those years between Polish - Slovaks & the Russians.

I just read through (okay - skimmed through) this topic for the first time and its name has become terribly misleading; all this focus on Germany post-1850 or so is a lot lower in altitude than 30,000 feet. I've run a text search on "Holy Roman Empire" on this page, for example, and came up with zero instances!

Granted, given how well documented WWII was and the horror with which the atrocities committed are viewed, it's hard for images of Nazism not to come marching (sorry) to mind right behind the word 'Germany' even now, half a century later. But to dwell on that gives too little attention to all that came before, from original Germanic tribes through to Charles V and then onward, up to when Bismark comes on the scene.

I've only recently read the fascinating story of teh common origin of modern France and Germany from what was originally the Franks. A great topic of interest to me is why Germany didn't unify centuries earlier, as France was able to, but remained an amazing conglamoration of tiny states. Look at an old map of the Holy Roman Empire ("not holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire"); that is one crazy puzzle of a map! (and they often include a note saying many states were too small to be depicted). Henry VIII's fourth wife came from one the northern ones, I think. It looks like too many different nations there for anyone to pull it all together - yet France wasn't much better off after Charlemagne, but managed it (I think you have to look back to Philip II and Louis IX or so to find the answer for that one). Meanwhile the HRE had the likes of Otto and Barbarossa, and all those entanglements with Italy and the Pope to worry them; it had the beginnings of a chance at unity, then it all fell apart.

I vaguely recall German history was one of the birthplaces of northern humanism during the Renaissance (Erasmus was from Germany?). You can't really discuss Germany without the Hapsburgs, at least up to the Thirty Years War (and of course there's lots of Austrian influence on Germany after that, too - I'm thinking ahead here to Metternich's slap-down of the student protests). Germany was home of the Reformation led by Martin Luther. Prussia doesn't come onto the scene until absolutism, but then we have the Hohenzollerns and the Fredericks (enlightened despots), and the victorious Prussian alliance with England in the Seven Years War (thanks to Prussia in part we have the beginnings of the British Empire at this point). After that there's Napolean's influence on German nationalism, and the 1848 revolutions... Plenty of stuff to chew on here and appreciate when touring Germany, that dates way back to long before Bismark and then Hitler arriving on the scene.

102: Cecrow - I think that's the way thread was intended, WWII is just kind of like a bright thing in the night sky that obscures all the other stuff around it.

I've only recently read the fascinating story of teh common origin of modern France and Germany from what was originally the Franks.

I'd be interested to know what you were reading.

lol - just my university world history textbook. We only covered about a fifth of its content in class, so now I've made it my mission (several years later) to read it cover to cover. I just arrived at the Second Reich / German Empire, so this discussion's timely!

Edit: what I gathered from this truly 30,000 ft overview was that Charlemagne's empire was split among his grandsons. One of them got what became France, one of them got what became Germany. I think there was also a third one in the middle that no longer exists.

Edit again: oops, Erasmus was Dutch. The famous German humanist was Ulrich von Hutten.

Message edited by its author, Oct 21, 2009, 10:40am.

Sort of: http://www.tacitus.nu/historical-atlas/f... gives a fair overview of the tribulations of Frankish empire after Charlemagne.

Wow, tribulations is right! Good link - thanks

Yeah thanks for that link, I love maps :-)

I've always found it fascinating too how with empires, sometimes the native population adopts the language of the conquerors, and sometimes they don't. France under the Franks is the obvious example. But the "marches" of Charlemagne and others in the east seem to have been more heavily "Germanicized", and for the longest time they were really only under relatively weak imperial control, whereas in many ways eastern France was the "heartland". Fascinating! My best guess would be that there was a lingering cultural continuity with Rome in the Frankish (French) lands, whereas the conquests of pagan German and Slavic lands in the east didn't have this and more readily identified with the newly conquering culture. Or something. :-)

EDIT: Although, having been to Europe a few times now and going different places, I have to remark on the sort of "myth" of linguistic uniformity. I had read before that some linguists consider the German lands to not be united by one language, but rather speakers of various related but disparate languages. France has a similar situation but their country became a monolithic entity much earlier than did Germany, so they had the pressures to abandon their regional languages/dialects from an earlier time. There's a name for this whitewashing of French culture, but it escapes me at the moment. Suffice to say, the recent work by Graham Robb, Discovery of France goes deeply into this topic with regard to France, showing how even up until the First World War, there were people from the corners of France that had no idea what each other were saying, even if they were indeed speaking "French." Many of these regional identities still persist today, but with TV and the internet, people can at least converse with each other in "standard" French most of the time. The same is true with German, though perhaps because, as I say, the "melding" was more recent than in France, to my ears anyway the differences amongst dialects are much greater (with the exception of say, Breton with standard French). I can more or less speak German but I have to just speak English in Switzerland and Baden-Württemberg because it just sounds too different (plus they have different words for everything!) Coincidentally, I find that these places tend to be the exact areas where you're the most likely to run into someone who has no idea how to speak English, hehe.... with the possible exception of some areas of the former East.

Message edited by its author, Oct 21, 2009, 5:37pm.

Feicht: "I can more or less speak German but I have to just speak English in Switzerland and Baden-Württemberg because it just sounds too different (plus they have different words for everything!)"

I speak German as my mother-tongue and I remember vividly coming to rural Hessen for the first time and understanding exactly --nothing. It took me almost two weeks to learn to understand the dialect (not just an accent, but different grammar and of course vocabulary). Same a few years later, when I was on holidays in eastern Bavaria. I understood 40% max. To be fair, it would be the same the other way round: If people around here are speaking low-german, southerners don't stand a chance. But since Low-German is starkly different from standard German, few people still speak it (unlike with other dialects, there is no continuum from Low-German to standard German --it's "digital": either you speak Low-German, or standard German, there is no mix). That is also part of the reason for the demise of low-german as an everyday language, schools used to pressure parents to speak standard German with their children.

107> Wasn't Gaul occupied by Germanic people who were conquered by the Romans? So I'd say it was Gaul that was Romanized and Germany is still speaking a variant of their ancestral tongue.

>109: The thing is, the Franks were speaking a kind of German (at least in the same sense as our own linguistic ancestors were speaking a kind of German at the time) when they conquered Gaul. But whereas ours gave their language to the natives (Angles+Saxons+Jutes+etc=English..more or less), the reverse was true in Gaul where despite the fact of giving their name to the region, the Franks largely seem to have become acculturated from the ground up. There are many potential/partial reasons this may be, but none are 100% satisfactory. Both areas had a Celtic foundation overlain with a Roman superstructure, and both were conquered by Germanic "barbarians." Gaul however maintained much of its "Romanness" whereas Britain turned into an absolute backwater for a few hundred years. A quick and easy way to explain this might be that Gaul was "Roman" for quite a bit longer, and even had pre-conquest "contact Romanization" for longer than that, whereas the Britons were only "Roman" for a couple hundred years before the disintegration of the political structure in the west. Still, I don't think this tells the whole story.

>108: It's funny you should mention Hessen because I spent a good deal of time there this summer (you may recall :-D). Luckily though, I found the people there were at least CAPABLE (or perhaps, "willing") to speak Hochdeutsch, whereas people further south are unable (or unwilling) to speak the linguistic standard on command. (Interestingly America is similar in this way...haha). I guess my accent throws people though because at my uni we all learn (standard) German from Austrians or grad students from the Austria program. So I can't tell when I'm talking but apparently I sound like an Austrian trying to speak Berlin German....haha. Of course matters are complicated by the fact that my German friends are mostly from Niedersachsen, so I also use a lot of slang terms and pronunciations for things that I picked up along the way. Sometimes my brain just refuses to pronounce a word in class the way the prof says it because in my mind that's not "the right way." :-D

Funny you both should mention Hesse. I have an ancestor who according to census records was born in Hessia (not Germany which I guess didn't exist at that time?) in 1833. So I'd like to know more about the history of that region.

Yeah "Germany" wasn't really a country until 1871. Until then it was dozens, or even more, earlier, mini countries... kingdoms, duchies, city-states, and so on. Hence why my Great Grandfather's place-of-birth is listed as "Wurtenberg" (yes I know it's misspelled ;-)) as opposed to "Germany", since he was born in the 1860s or so.

On another note, it's a shame the census takers weren't more concerned with peoples' origins back then. I know the region my family came from, but not the specific town or anything. Luckily though, my grandmother's genealogy is much more thorough, and I (albeit with some suspicion) know some family members' names from little towns in Hessen in the late 16th century.

Despite 2000 years of German history, the Nazi period of the 1930s and 40s will for a long time be "the elephant in the room" of German history - the big ugly thing that is impossible to overlook even if you want to try not to think about it. At some point in the future that may not be the case, but for the non-specialist interested in general history it will probably be true for many years to come.

Feicht, #107: "I had read before that some linguists consider the German lands to not be united by one language, but rather speakers of various related but disparate languages."

Yes, Bavarians and Austrians can understand each other well, same with Alemannic people and Swiss. But the difference of their dialect to Low German is about as big as to Dutch. I (as someone with a sound knowledge of Low German) can actually understand a speaker of Dutch better than a speaker of Bavarian (not the watered down Munich variant, but the true Bohemian Forest type of dialect).
So it definitely wasn't the language that united us in the first place, although there have moves towards a standard language since the 16th century.

If I recall, one of the first steps in that direction was the Protestant Reformation, when Luther had the Bible printed in the kind of German that the majority of people were most likely to understand.

This is really interesting. I had no idea there was this much variety in the language of those who call themselves Germans (how do you refer to your nation in German -- is it Deutschland? Do people from Deutschland call themselves Deutschlanders and does that cover everyone from Berlin to Dusseldorf from Hamburg to Munich? What term do you use to refer to all those people? Why do Hollanders call themselves Dutch? Is Dutch a corruption of Deutsch? Do the Dutch consider themselves a Germanic people?

When I was in Munich in 1966 I would have been just as well off speaking Italian as German. Nearly everyone I interacted with was Italian.

Hmm.. my mother's family was Austrian and my high school German teacher was Austrian. Maybe that's why Berlin accents always sound odd to me.

Why do Hollanders call themselves Dutch? Is Dutch a corruption of Deutsch? Do the Dutch consider themselves a Germanic people?

a) This is a misunderstanding. In the Netherlands we don't refer to ourselves as "Dutch" - unless we're using the English language. We might call ourselves "Nederlanders" (Netherlanders) or "Hollanders" (if we happen to be from that part of the Netherlands).
b) "Dutch" ("Diets" in archaic Dutch, but that word went out of use centuries ago) and "Deutsch" are very likely to share a common etymology but neither can properly be called a corruption of the other.
c) Yes, the Dutch are a Germanic people - in the same sense that, for example, the Danes are. Of course many things have happened since our early beginnings as such.

GeneG,

Germans (in Germany) refer to themselves as "Deutsche(r)". Oftentimes though, the regional identity is much stronger than the national, especially in the south. If you go to Munich now, you are so much more likely to see a Bavarian flag than a German national one, that well.... I lost count of the latter, but I saw exactly 2 of the former :-)

There is also a bit of animosity amongst the regions as well, just like in America in a way; some joking, some not. If you believed everything my friends in the north say, the southerners are about as close to Neanderthals as any humans have been in the last 20k years :-D

Message edited by its author, Oct 22, 2009, 5:35pm.

Is there a big history that treats the origins of the various European nation states. Say from Julius Caesar's day to Bismark? I've read bits and pieces of the story, but not from 30,000 feet.

As Ambrose Bierce says, war is God's way of teaching geography to American's. If it wasn't central to a war or two, I'm afraid I don't know much about it. The area around the Black Sea is mostly terra incognita to me. I couldn't find Sevastapol on a map without the name being on a map. Had America fought the Crimean War rather than the British, I rather expect finding Sevastapol would be no problem.

I love maps!

Hmm... good question on the "big history". Most of the ones I've read weren't very good. There's A Mighty Fortress by Steve Ozment, but he gets some facts so wrong that I wonder how he managed to tie his shoes this morning. There are a few other ones like Geary's Myth of Nations but I haven't read them cover to cover so I can't give a fair assessment.

>119 If you go to Munich now, you are so much more likely to see a Bavarian flag

...even more so if you'd been foolish enough to go there a couple of weeks ago!

I wouldn't have dared! :-)

Or this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/...

Huge celebration at the Brandenburg Gate today, live on TV, and Michail Gorbachev is being interviewed right now.

15,000 Wall Bricks have been painted by people from all over the world and are going to be toppled in a symbolic domino effect tonight (http://www.goethe.de/ges/prj/mar/enindex...).

Message edited by its author, Nov 9, 2009, 3:12pm.

West of the Wall with footage of the wall going up. You'd think people who have to wall their own people in would think maybe they were doing something wrong.

Ignore the Big Hurt unless you just like it.

Some people today are thinking about Ronald Reagan. But the Wall always makes me think of the Sex Pistols "Holiday in the Sun."

Scorpions' "Wind of Change" and Helloween's "Eagle Fly Free" for me :-D

The fall of that wall was something I never believed I would live to see, and here it is 20 years later!

What blows my mind is there are kids now who have no idea what it was all about. Granted it came down when I was still pretty young but I definitely remember what a big deal it was... and then the next few years being crazy with the rest of the dictatorships collapsing. But there are kids in my classes who were born in the 90s!

I stand in awe of M. Gorbachev, the man who managed/monitored the going down of the Sovjet Empire. What a job he had!
How fine a speech Angela Merkel had, last night. She is for Europe what Obama is for America.
And all those Germans, celebrating in pouring rain.
(In interviews Gorbachev told this weekend that Thatcher and Mitterand in 1989 where very much against the going down of the wall and the re-union of Germany)

Message edited by its author, Nov 10, 2009, 3:04am.

A lot of people remembering the War or having grown up in fear of Germany didn't want a united Germany, at the time. For a long time 'German' and 'Holocaust' was synonymous. Of course prejudiced. But to say anything else would be a lie, to beautify the past.
A lot of people was also afraid the reuniting would come at a high price for West Germany, what with the state of the East German economy and infra structure...

(I do not deign comment on the Merkel issue, not to mention judging a politician based on skin colour and not the policies promoted.)

Frankly I still don't see why it would have been so bad if Germany had remained split up. Sure, the wall going down was a great moment, but it would have been just as great if it had normalized relations between two neighbouring countries. Ah well, maybe that's just me being a paranoid native of a small neighbour country.

> 132 Busifer
1. I wasn’t saying something about “a lot of people”, but about something Gorbachev told about some mighty “colleague’s” in the West, he had to reckon with. Of course you are right about “a lot of people”.

2. How come you think I am judging Obama on skin colour and not on policies promoted? I deign to refer you to “the eye of te beholder”.

> 133 Matt
But would the population of the former East-Germany have been better off without the reunion?

> 135 marieke

I'm really not sure about that. On the one hand, where other former "east-block" countries could adapt gradually and gained access to NATO and European Union after all, former East-Germany was forced to upgrade to western standards almost overnight. That did cause a lot of hardship. On the other hand reforms would have been necessary anyway, and because of unification former East Germany could benefit from EU membership from that very start.

#134 - ;-) I'm not saying YOU judge him by that but I have a very strong impression most people do, especially in countries like Sweden were most people actually would think Democrat policies reactionary (in our terms 'right wing') if they looked beyond the label...

And I know it was I, not you, who said 'a lot of people'.

Not to speak of the enormous sums of money the former West Germany poured in.
But I’m not sure too. There is the Ossie - Wessie business. Also, former East Germans I spoke during holidays were very critical. I remember a family not happy at all with the looming threat of unemployment (they still had jobs). And, on a walk in the Cretan hills a very ambitious but melancholic young woman who felt trapped in a capitalistic rat race (I tried to “sell” her my own solution, which is a mixture of “enough is enough” and finding yourself a handsome niche in the system which you can do easily enough, living in a big city, but she was far too ambitious for that.)

I would like to hear some Germans about this.

> 137 Busifer
What amazes me most in Obama and gives me high hopes, is his restraint. He is not one for the cheap, fast successes, instead he invests. And it is far to early to judge him, as many seemed to do recently in America.
I do hope so strongly for the Americans that they will have a decent health care system, that one needn’t go bankrupt when serious disease strikes, which is a completely undignified business for the “land of the free”.

Still I think Gorbachev had the hardest job of all, being Chief during a Crumbling Process. Great man!

Edit: Revolution 1989: the Fall of the Soviet Empire by Victor Sebestyen seems the book to read.

Message edited by its author, Nov 10, 2009, 7:19am.

Unfortunately Marieke, I'm afraid you might be a little too optimistic about the healthcare reform here in the United States ;-) But this is a thread on Germany so that's all I'll say about that right now :-)

As for the idea of keeping Germany two separate countries, I don't know. I understand the idea, but I think as much as anything it was about symbolism. The German people had been carved up by "outsider" superpowers, and they felt it was time to choose their own destiny together instead of having their realities dictated by the mutually antagonistic puppeteers of the US and USSR.

An interesting point was made about some of the easterners not necessarily welcoming the process of "capitalismization" or whatever, and I can somewhat corroborate this. A couple of years ago I was talking to a guy from the east and (keep in mind, I'm on the extreme left wing here in America) I asked him about the whole "fall of communism" and everything. In my mind the "fall" always had more to do with dictatorship than any kind of economic system, and I've said for years that there have never actually been any communist countries on the planet, but rather a series of dictatorships that duped their people into believing they were in order to garner support. When I told the guy my theory, I was kind of surprised to hear him agree. He said that the economics weren't the problem, the police state was, and that the two need not go hand-in-hand. It was interesting to hear a sort of nostalgia in a way, because he almosmt made it sound like the "big brother" aspect was something you could get used to since you always had a job; maybe you couldn't get a big screen tv, but do you really need one? All told, it was definitely an interesting perspective.

Some of us can remember the entire history of the Wall, from before its construction to its end.

Germany cannot have been a united country for very much longer than it was a "country" to begin with, prior to the wall going up. It was just divided differently.

It seems to me to make more sense for Germany to be united than not, given the opportunity. Forms of governance, money, markets, and all the things that go into making a modern society were already in existence in the west and just needed to be expanded to the east. I'm sure this caused dislocations and problems, but nothing like what it would have been without unification.

We need GirlfromIpanema in this discussion. I would be particularly interested in what someone from the east thinks about how it all turned out.

The German people had been carved up by "outsider" superpowers, and they felt it was time to choose their own destiny together instead of having their realities dictated by the mutually antagonistic puppeteers of the US and USSR.

Wasn't it the USSR by itself that dictated that the country be divided? My understanding of that period is that the Western powers would have left Germany as one country after the occupation ended. I do know that the US was never in favor of the iron curtain.

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent."

A few things my daughter who was a soldier stationed in Nuremberg remembers When Reagan made his "Tear down that wall speech, everyone thought it was funny." After the borders were open, travel on the Autobahn was dificult because the cars made in The East kept breaking down & tying up traffic.
When we had visited in Germany in 1988, we took the Eurail to Vienna. In our compartment were 2 elderly ladies from the East who had finally been allowed to visit their sister in the West. They didn't speak English, our German was limited, but they told us that in the East the expression "Gruss Gott" was not allowed. When they heard it in Nuremberg, it made them cry. They had a bottle of Schnapps with them & passed it back & forth. With the Schnaps, our understanding improved. We toasted each other with "Gruss Gott" all the way. They thought it was funny when we expressed our dislike of Reagen. To them he was"Cowboy" that was as close as we came to discussing politics.

Geneg:
You called? ;-)

Well, I don't think that there was a real chance of keeping two states in 1990. Economically the GDR had been on the downturn from the mid-70s on, so the economy would have bled even more in a free market situation. Socially, some would have welcomed a two-state solution, but how can you keep this state alive, when people continue to leave the country, because there is no work, or there are better wages elsewhere.

Even today, wages in the east are much lower than in the west. When job-hunting I got a specific statistic for my line of work, which said that my old city (in the East) is at 70% of the average income for my field, my current location is at around 100%, and places like Frankfurt or Munich are at about 125%. Add to that the fact that many people haven't seen a substantial rise in up to 10 years (net gain in wages period 1998-2008: minus 0.8% for all of Germany, compared to +28% for the UK, e.g.). Prices did rise of course. So there is still a movement of young people from the east to the west (2 Million since 1990, out of a population of 16 Mio in the east).

Geneg: "Germany cannot have been a united country for very much longer than it was a "country" to begin with, prior to the wall going up. It was just divided differently."

Well, the Kaiserreich was established in 1871 and Germany existed as a united state until 1949 (when the two German states were founded). Travelling between the two states was relatively easy until 1961. Also, politically, the push towards unity had been there since the early 1800s at least. Psychologically/culturally, the people will probably have felt as members of the same ethnic group much longer.

BarkingMatt:"Ah well, maybe that's just me being a paranoid native of a small neighbour country."

Hey, you should give us the benefit of the doubt. We haven't overrun you in the last 20 years, have we? (Well, except every summer during school holidays, but then your folks migrate wholesale to Germany in summer, too! ;-D )

Off to make a sandwich or two, haven't had supper yet (be back to comment some more).

Message edited by its author, Nov 10, 2009, 3:44pm.

Hey, you should give us the benefit of the doubt. We haven't overrun you in the last 20 years, have we? (Well, except every summer during school holidays, but then your folks migrate wholesale to Germany in summer, too! ;-D )

I can't argue with that. Just mocking myself - should have put in a smiley face.

p.s.: enjoy your meal

Message edited by its author, Nov 10, 2009, 4:38pm.

Geneg: "I would be particularly interested in what someone from the east thinks about how it all turned out."
Well, even though I lived in the East for ten years, I am not an Ossi (a Wossi at best :-) ). But all in all, I did not have the impression that my workmates and friends felt bad about how it turned out. There is the odd pang of Ostalgie (Eastalgy), but that's the same with people who emigrated to a faraway country and cannot go back. Today, most emigrants can always come back to the old country --but not if it lives in the past.
My workmates are the ones who are "winners", of course (well paid job). But even those who really had to change tack were content. One of my colleagues was a young career officer in the East German army, but lost his job like many eastern soldiers --only a core corps was integrated into the Bundeswehr. He studied economy and became a sucessful PR man. Many of the 40+ generations had to totally change their life at least once (in the West that wasn't the rule in the 80s, I am one of the few in my age group that actually moved far for a new job and that changed careers --most of my class at school are still living and working nearby).

Ipanema, have you heard of a town called, "Kirschburg?" Forgive me if the spelling is off. It's been a few decades since I met a young lady who grew up there. It's in the West, and there is a U.S. military base nearby.

"Kirchberg" maybe? If so, there must be at least a dozen of those! Any idea of more specific geography?

Unfortunately not. I saw some photos, though. Looked like very old but solid buildings, and the street was winding, I think, and narrow. It was a beautiful picture, and I thought to myself she must have missed seeing it almost as much as she would have missed her family. Her husband was stationed at the base when they met.

Never heard before about the reverse wall-jumpers...
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2...

Ah. Well unfortunately Walf, there are countless places in Germany that meet that exact description! :-D

And thanks for that article Marieke, I had never heard of that phenomenon either. Though I'm more surprised at how few were killed in the process!