The confessions of Hitler’s secretary
Last night I watched “Blind Spot,” a filmed interview with Traudl Junge, who was Hitler’s secretary during his last year and final days.
It’s a remarkable document, although a very simple one: Ms. Junge, aged eighty or so at the time of the interview, talks into the camera with no interruption in what appears to be three different sessions (marked by changes of outfit and the slight passage of time).
That’s all. But it’s quite a bit. The young and relatively apolitical Junge was selected for her job almost by chance—and the fact that she scored high in a typing test—but ended up being a witness to a very dark history. She describes her isolation from information other than Nazi propaganda, the growing desolation of the people in the bunker, and her own increasing numbness in the bizarre and grisly atmosphere.
Junge is quite composed and even dignified; the only time she breaks down at all is when she describes the Goebbels children (see this). She says that it is mostly since the 1960s, and then increasingly as time went on, that she has come to deeply reflect on her own guilt, and to be shocked at her failure to question what she saw and her hero-worship of a Hitler who seemed avuncular to her (she had been raised without a father).
Because I am particularly concerned with how people come to question previous assumptions and ultimately to change their minds, especially about politics, the part of Junge’s narrative that interested me most came during the war’s immediate aftermath. She had been given a cyanide pill in the bunker at her request, and had considered ending her own life because she had heard stories of what would happen at the hands of the Allies post-war: like something out of Hieronymous Bosch, she said. The men would be castrated, the women raped, and Germany would be returned to a very primitive technological existence by the vengeful victors.
But she took her chances and escaped, and although she was imprisoned (for a fairly short time, it turned out) by first the Russians and then the Americans, she encountered a world of Care packages and was well-treated by good people, especially the Americans, and saw Germany (she escaped to the West) become a free country. Junge observes that it was the beginning of her discovery that what she had been told by Hitler, “was all a lie.” In fact, she learned that the premise for the war itself was a big lie, and spent the rest of her life trying to come to terms with how she could have believed in, gotten caught up with, denied the warning signs of, and participated in such a grievous set of lies that perpetrated so much evil in the world.
Traudl Junge died not long after the film was made. She is reported to have said shortly before her death, “Now that I’ve let go of my story, I can let go of my life.”
also check out “Downfall”. It’s in German with English subtitles. Brilliant portrayal and performance, an utterly chilling depiction of Hitler’s last days.
With I should mention, follows the point of view of Hitler’s secretary.
because she had heard stories of what would happen at the hands of the Allies post-war: like something out of Hieronymous Bosch, she said. The men would be castrated, the women raped, and Germany would be returned to a very primitive technological existence by the vengeful victors.
It depended on which ally you ended up with. if you were with any of them BUT the Russians, things pretty much went ok.If you got caught by the Russians/Soviets, things were a very very very different story. the trick is that there is little distinction between both. that is, by saying allies, you lump them all together. so unless you know the history, who got to germany first, and that germans thought of the opposition as allies (including Russia), you might miss the VERY BIG distinction.
The scenes and things make bosh tele tubby land!
The Soviet Union did not recognize Imperial Russia’s signing of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) as binding, and refused to recognize them until 1955. This created a situation in which war crimes by Soviet armed forces could be eventually rationalized. By the same token Soviet refusal to recognize the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) also gave Nazi Germany the rationale for inhuman treatment of captured Soviet military personnel
but in horrors there is such a thing as “worse than”, which doesnt diminish the comparative!!!!
During World War II, a series of mass executions were committed by the Soviet NKVD against prisoners in Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union as the Red Army withdrew after the German invasion in 1941
NKVD Internal Troops were engaged alongside Red Army forces in combat, and NKVD units were used for rear area security, including as blocking units.
since they didnt have people who loved their country and the ideology, you had to have nkvd (actually GRU) behind the forces. that way, if they turned around, tried to flee, etc… they ran into their own forces who would cut them down by machine gun.
ultimately this is how you get a liberal do nothing to fight to the death. either he wins against the enemy, or he dies by his own sides hand. its pragmatic
After the final repulse of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Soviet troops entered Germany, Romania, and Hungary in late 1944. Red Army soldiers were by then aware of the German Nazi war crimes, and often executed surrendering or captured German soldiers, in retaliation. There were numerous accounts of war crimes by Soviet armed forces – plunder, the murder of civilians, and rape. In both Soviet and current Russian history books on the “Great Patriotic War” these war crimes are rarely mentioned
they scrub history. right now they are rewriting the history of the man who flew a plane yesterday.
he wanted health care, was against the gov, etc. but he must be tea party..
[as i said, as the nuts get nuttier, they will assocaite their own nuts to the opposition!!!! and so the opposition will be seen as this crazy pool of people in which you need police and maybe military to stop them. while the truth is that not one tea party person has to do anything! the left liberal moon bats will do that as they wake up to how they have been betrayed and their lack of self control and their desperation maks them do what seals the deal for all]
In Poland, Nazi atrocities ended by late 1944, but they were replaced by Soviet oppression with the advance of Soviet forces. Soviet soldiers often engaged in plunder, rape, and other crimes against the Poles, causing the population to fear and hate the Soviet regime.[30][31][32][33
ya think?
Polish sources claim that there are cases of mass rapes in Polish cities taken by the Red Army. In Kraké³w, Soviet entry into the city was accompanied by mass rapes of Polish women and girls, as well as the plunder of private property by Soviet soldiers. According to these sources, this behavior reached such a scale that even Polish communists installed by the Soviet Union were preparing a letter of protest to Joseph Stalin himself, while church masses were held in expectation of a Soviet withdrawal.[34].
it wasnt the americans they feared, or the british (despite the fiact that south america is being taught, and i swear it, that the british hunted down pregnant spanish women, gutted them, and threw the babies ripped from the womb into the trees to hang there! if you beleive that, wont you really hate them in a way that is irreconsilable? now what if you dont know its a lie?)
Mass rape of German women by Soviet Red Army
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_rape_of_German_women_by_Soviet_Red_Army
she knew what would happen… yet she wanted to live more than she wanted to die.
[edited for length by n-n]
She wrote an autobiography too, which was facinating. I can’t recall the name of it now, as it was a couple of years ago since I stumbled across it in the local public library.
I recall that the staff “pool” of young girls who lived in the Hitler compound, many of whom were friendly with Eva Braun and were her peers – were kept completely and totally in the dark – not only about such things as the existence of the camps – but about the war in general. I think that near the end, the idea that they were actually losing the war and were going to lose, came as a real shock to them.
disparate impact is a variation on the theme (as there are many as there is words you can link to mean close to the same, and so be made into a false distinction)
definitions.uslegal.com/d/disparate-impact/
Disparate impact is a legal phrase used in employment law to describe when a facially neutral practice that has an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class. Examples of practices that may be claimed to have a disparate impact include written tests, height and weight requirements, educational requirements, and subjective procedures, such as interviews.
The plaintiff must prove that the challenged practice or selection device has a substantial adverse impact on a protected group. Typically, this proof is offered through statistical comparisons, which may be challenged by the defendant. It is a defense if the defendant shows the practice is job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity. However, the plaintiff may still prevail by showing that the employer has refused to adopt an alternative employment practice which would satisfy the employer’s legitimate interests without having a disparate impact on a protected class
its a fancy way of bringing in the idea to law that unequal representation for equal outcomes.
if you want to read about such things tied back to the era in question, then look up the terms by diffrent labels of that time.
thats the point of using many names of the same thing… it becomes hard for us in our minds to see that theya re the same, and so rather than one huge monolithic thing striving towards the same goals from different fronts. we beleive we see a motley crew of various groups all vying for what we think are different things.
but we dont add up the end goals, and we dont check what they wrote and are following. so we miss people like alinsky who tell them to do these thigns. have women take over womens groups, have black men take over religious/community, etc..
when you look at it in reverse the premise you have in your head dont make sense.
that is, how could you homogenize a movement that pretends to promise everything to everyone?
you break it down and talk to them separately, dialouge to consensus over the otehr groups, and they dont compare notes.
they are too busy defending the only thing that seems to have meaning, and taht theya re free to persue and get an atta boy for.
I watched the ‘Blind Spot’ interview a few years ago. I rented it after seeing the German film ‘Downfall,’ which uses various testimonies, including Traudl Junge’s, to depict the last few weeks of Hitler’s life. If I remember correctly, there were excerpts from the Traudl Junge/Blind Spot interview included in the DVD ‘extras.’ (Downfall is also a very good film for those who haven’t seen it.)
Now you mention it, there was something quirky about how/why she was chosen for the job, though I can’t remember what it was now. That it took Junge around twenty years to re-analyse and re-assemble her experience didn’t surprise me; she was very young, and would have witnessed the rise of the Nazis during formative years. You can’t help where you were born. Perspectives and conditioning
I wonder if in 80 years hence the true believers in Socialism will also have their confessionals about what a utter lie and failure it is. Doubtful, considering how it’s infested the popular culture but one can always hope.
Artfldgr: you may note that I wrote that Junge was captured and imprisoned both by the Russians and the Americans. She was actually treated better than she expected by both, but especially by the Americans.
However, it is common knowledge that the Russians committed the sort of atrocities that you mention, despite the fact that Junge herself was lucky enough to not experience them herself. She even mentions in the interview that, during her time with the Russians, soldiers told her of the things the Germans had done to their families, and she realized that the Russians were at least partly motivated by taking vengeance for those acts of the Germans (which, in her protected spot, she had never been made aware of until then).
betsybounds 17th 9.32pm
”Necessity vs. choice.”
Precisely. Necessary to have a stimulus package; a choice to go to war.
Ooops. Wrong thread. Will re-post.
She even mentions in the interview that, during her time with the Russians, soldiers told her of the things the Germans had done to their families..
Yet, these facts, it seems, are known only within former Soviet Union, and so called “Russian atrocities” are given much wider circulation, in Europe and in US.
I say: they deserved more then they got. All of them, collectively.
I’m struck by the juxtaposition of the two posts about the regrets of two young people for misconduct: Junge, on the one hand, who needed a lifetime to come to terms with her participation as a young woman in one of the great evils of history, and Tiger Woods on the other, who learned more swiftly and perhaps less sincerely to regret his commission of a far smaller, more personal wrong. In the case of Woods, who didn’t have as much harm to grapple with, I wonder how much of his regret is truly about his conduct, and how much he merely regrets what he lost in getting caught. In the case of Junge, even though the guilt must have been much greater, the self-searching seems to have been correspondingly more honest and profound.
Mrs Whatsit: the situations are so different that the only similarity is soul-searching about guilt.
Tiger Woods’s transgressions were personal, individual, direct, and obvious. He was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, and knew he was going against his own value system. It may not be easy for him to change his behavior, but it’s relatively easy for him (as a non-sociopath) to realize his guilt.
Ms. Junge was a member of a society that committed great wrongs in her name. She was apolitical, relatively unaware, and came to her position as Hitler’s secretary not through her own plans but through a series of chance events. She was never even a member of the Nazi Party. She knew him as a leader of her country (and, to her at least, a kindly man), and her information was tightly controlled. Nevertheless, she feels in retrospect that she should have tried to find out more, should have made some judgments, and bears some guilt for not noticing and for looking the other way while others did evil in her name. A much more difficult thing to come to terms with, all in all.
I wonder if in 80 years hence the true believers in Socialism will also have their confessionals about what a utter lie and failure it is. Doubtful, considering how it’s infested the popular culture but one can always hope.
they already have..
you just have to read some of the links i put up and the books i refer to.
Bella Dodd school of darkness is one… she was head of the Communist Party USA, and was head of the Teachers Union..
what your referring to is what happens when your older and when you start getting information and start really understanding what your a part of.
its at that crucial point you either change sides and turn against that which you were formally attached to, or you accept it, and with more zeal persue the thing to its end.
so there is literally tons of literature of people from the inside who when they figured out stuff, changed sides and like me, attempted to warn people each in their own way.
of course no one goes to read the links i put up. so its frustrating to hear tons of questions and people musing there are no answers or waht not, and its all there laid out.
i laid out the progressive end desire by the man who plannned it in steps for FDR… and the book was written by a man named Flynn. want to have a survey of whether anyone really got it.
(a few called me funny, then complained the length again, and then complained that my tiny excerpt was not as exact enough to count. except for they didn’t read that, the rest of the book, and so are asking me to do two mutually exclusive things at once… then going HA! when i cant do it (they cant either though),
how do i give them the all the ky parts of a 100 year history AND keep it short, AND not leave big holes in it for them to make the effort irrelevent out of hand.
its reallhy not hard to understand what happened!!!
after all, just imagine people like me in germany, who went around telling the truth about herr hitler and herr stalin.
and you can imagine that as i did that, there was a cadre of people who say… your daft man, he wont do that!!! oh, thats impossible we wont let them!!! his book, you refer to that crappy book and we are to take taht and those refernces seriously?
THE process being applied to me and others who are trying to get people to read and learn, IS the process as it was in germany.
American exceptionalim does not stem from the fact that americans are special people different from all others in the world. they may skew more towards independence and risk, as that is a requirement to leave your home, family, friends, and so forth.
american exceptionalism stems from the constitution, that not only attracts the more individual (which then attracts their attackers), but that it lets loose the individual with no purpose than their own.
this is the biggest difference…
but when that difference goes away as far as operative principals, we are no different than any one else in the world, mostly because we are made up of everyone else in the world.
you cant get the people off of step one. because once that is settles they have some uncomfortable decisions to make and like most they will avoid that till they cant avoid it.
this is why lenin dispared as the prols never rose up to help him, or to make things happen the way their prophet marx told them it was going to. (so much for prophet).
well, once that was knwn by history, and more than once, that becomes a principal of operation.
that lenin succeeded precisely because everyone locks upa nd refuses to accept what they see and then move on to stage two.
learning about what you now see.
that is, when i put something up, they wont see it because they dont want to learn it. their ignorance is their bliss. but if they did see it, they would want to learn…
but alas…
today, education has to be easy, fun, entertaining.
what a wonderful way to instill in people a preventative bar to being able to actually understand the tracts and make a real choice.
it reduces the public to a pep rally squad for their team. often a team that works against them, hates them, and screws them in their lives.
if you cant read the federalist papers, flynns book, hyack, jefferson, misis, and all that very rational, very wordy and very complicated refutations of communism and socialism, fabianism, etc…
dawkins is popular because by writing his book as if there was no past commentary, his audience finds him acceptable. he is entertaining, reflects what tehy think they know, and seems to crush the arguments, as they dont realize he left out the opponents to his debate.
where would a modern athiest with the attention span of a lightning bolt find a summary of Gonzaga?
i will bet 100 that 75% (without google) wouldnt know who Gonzaga is!!!!!!!!!!!
and if i said his whole name, the number would improve but not all the way. Aloysius Gonzaga… more commonly referred to as Saint Aloysius.
the point is that by dumbing everyone down using progressive education, in a society that has a progressive tax, and with people who dont know waht progressive means.
is an interesting situation to be in
and ya want to know the SADDEST part?
that all the books i recommend are FREE
that is the only thing stopping us and preventing us, is the will.
by the way, thats why they will win. they dont have to wade through ambiguity to have will. their will gave them something to join.
so while we are all sitting aroudn debating whether to learn anythnig or jnot (which is what we really are debating!), they are actually way past that and have been workign on things for 100 years..
here is some awesome reading….
but not if your not smarter than a 10th grader.
THE BASTIAT COLLECTION 2 volumes
Bella Dodd – School of Darkness (one of those books you wondered whether they existed)
THE BETRAYAL OF THE AMERICAN RIGHT MURRAY N. ROTHBARD
Capital and Interest a critical history of economical theory.
Collectivist economic planning, by F A hayek
THE COMMON SENSE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
by PHILIP H. WICKSTEED, MA 2 volumes
The Conquest of Poverty by HENRY HAZLITT
i could literally put over 100 titles to read…
from alternative stories to anne frank
(ruta u, dear god i wanted to live)
histories in interviews with people who were part of things like hitlers secretary.. or hilmar von campe (Nazi Jugend)
the point being is how can any one hope to understand whats going on today in complete ignorance of all that has passed before?
if your enemy focuses on history so much should you ignore history? i say no, a majority here says yes.
if your enemy told you to do something, should yoi do it? i say no, a majority here says yes.
and most of the time they dont know they are saying yes. as the yes is a second level implication of the primary question.
i said this is a process. and the process like any other has terms, methods, premisis etcetera.
if someone is standing in front of you promising to make things better, they are attempting to get permission for a secondary implication, by asking what seems like an innocuous trifle.
so rather be smart like we used to be, and tell them we dont need their charity, their help, their power to do things for us.
no, instead we say yes.
not knowing that subconciously we also said yes to the secondary implication!!!!!!!!!!
want me to solve the problem with your friend
yes, please help me with the issue
BANG!!! friend drops dead
your problem is solved said stalin
and you say, but i didnt want him dead he is my friend. and he says, you wanted the problem solved, you didnt debate HOW to solve it, you left that up to me when i offered. no?
of course no one will read this much and so they dont realize that someone is trying to teach them the game in detail.
sad thing is that they are still trying to decide if there even is a game.
imagine competing against such.
in this corner, we have those who know, who are a part, and that part makes them sure… so they play the game with zeal and real..
in this corner, we have those who think sitting in the ring is to have a ring side seat. who dont know they are to box, who havent even put there gloves on.
what do you think happens when the bell goes ding!
history
Yet, these facts, it seems, are known only within former Soviet Union, and so called “Russian atrocities” are given much wider circulation, in Europe and in US.
completely untrue tatyana!!! i did put up both sides info. it was edited to one side. however the differences isnt in what, its in degree. both had camps, one killed 12 million…the other 20+ million. yes… you kill 20 million, and yes their families are going to have more stories. kill less and there will be less stories. sad thing is that most russians dont have the valid history of their early days, and there is no way for them to, as everything has been pissed on!! they dont know what to select to read. they read zinns a peoples history, and they get only a variation of russian views boiled for consumption of americans
what you dont get tatyana, is that those that do read and read in detail, do know the details. they know that after the war, stalin continued to use the camps that hitler built and that he now had. FDR signed some over to him. we know that the origins of their state organs vs other states is so different as to focus and lack of morals, that it in itself is much the cause of the pain!
the other sad thing is that the russians think this is unfair… maybe it is. but that didnt stop them from delivering to us the same internal hatreds across race, gender and so forth. whose basis is the same unfair basis you and i would agree on…which is that those alive today, had nothing to do with that then. but you feel guilty anyway… what did you have to do with stalins stuff? NOTHING. even if your father was a member and went to latvia to stay in a hotel and do some work. what does anyone alive today have to do with american slavery of the past? my family immigrated in the 1900s and became citizens in my teens. what did they ahve to do with any of that?
the russians applied that guilt in the west to tie us up in one set of balls. and they also delivered it to their people!!! that way, they would prevent a real history that they are NOT RESPONSIBLE for from becoming whole and known and the real people and ideas pay their dues for such acts. so you are taught to feel unfair that the west focuses on people who did do things… and did them in a higher mass volume. the starving of 10 million people in one winter really makes hitler an inefficient bumbling second to hitler (and lenin and mao).
why are you guilty? even if you were stalins daughter, i would not hold you responsible. in fact, people in a totalitarian regime are much LESS responsible than in other kinds of state. only fools and ignorant idiots with an idea to get something would try to actually hold the people of russia to the crimes of leaders that they would have gotten rid of if they could have (even to today). dont worry tatyana… being honest does not mean being ignorant, or guilty, or that we are not smart enough to winnow through the facts and come to a rational well thought conclusion.
dont think of us and most men the way the politburo, fdr, obama and others see us… in fact thats the whole point!!!!!!!!!!! that those who are not part of that machine, really dont think that way!!! i know lots of russian friends. we have good times when we can.. we have come to a wonderful understanding. we dont have to be defensive about histories we were not a part of, and together, we can be sorry, and we can understand and we can even feel together for the loses on both sides due to a few.
maybe you dont read me… but if you do… over time i hope you notice that NO ONE escapes my history and their own actions. germans DID do a whole lot of bad to the russians. does that justify doing things back to them? no… but since they were done, and done more, and more extreme and for longer. there is no high ground in this… both are sitting in holes… one deeper than the other…
think of it that way… the lesser of two evils is not more good… he is just less evil… which is not the same thing!!!if evil is a negative, the hole that stalin and mao are in, is deeper than hitler. but ALL of them are in a whole, and they ahve a way to go before they are on flat ground and at best neutral. the relative view implies that by doing less evil you can be good… and thats what russia taught, as that would then make it easy to be good by hiding evil till it was less than another. to us people who see it more in absolutes not relative to each other. they are in a hole, and someone should cover them over.
“of course no one goes to read the links i put up. so its frustrating to hear tons of questions and people musing there are no answers or waht not, and its all there laid out. ”
I always assumed there were reformed Leftists out there, since there are plenty here reading this blog. My question was really about the Clintonistas and Obamanites out there who expel their narratives until they pass out. So far ten years out there hasn’t been a significant defection from anyone in the Clinton circle and I doubt there ever will be.
However, it is common knowledge that the Russians committed the sort of atrocities that you mention, despite the fact that Junge herself was lucky enough to not experience them herself. She even mentions in the interview that, during her time with the Russians, soldiers told her of the things the Germans had done to their families
then you didnt read that i put up stuff that the germans did too.. i never ever said they didnt., and no i really dont actually focus on just russians. though given their goals, their methods,what their LEADERSHIP is willing to do, even to their own people to get to those ends. they pop up a lot. but never ever is my argument along the lines of.. so many africans in jail, so all of them must be bad.
yeah there may be a lot of bad ones.. but there are a lot of bad ones in other groups and races, and however you want to break it down. some more some less. but all of that bad, has NOTHING to say about a person in those groups who is NOT bad. in russia the VAST majority are good earthy people.
i will be glad to be the first to say it.
i will say that in korea, china, cuba, cambodia… the vast majority are good people… just want to tinker along in their lives, live good, have famillies and enjoy each other.
thats the basis i start with.
so to talk about history, is to talk about the few who do, not the masses who dont. to mention the evils of russia, is not to deny the evils of germany, or even america. they did what they did, and they will pay for it through historical reference… not restitution, not money, not slavery, not anyting really. there is nothign that Putin could do to make it ok, to make it better for my family… but there is everything that the russians as a people can do to make it better for everyone, including themselves, and the same is true of america, and everyother place.
it soungs so hoaky as the secular have abused the terms and took their sacredness away.do not think that i have it out for all russians. we joke, they joke, we cry together. looking at it any other wy, would not allow that. it would be to attemp to get one thing at the cost of another. to get peace at the cost of truth…to get fairness at the cost of lessons..to get sympathy at the cost of respect.
no… its all out on the table..
no making stalin less so he is more equal with hitler and SEEM more good by being less evil.. no making tatyana guilty and holding her or the people responsible for such…
all honest, open, and truthful. and then an amazing thing happens. where there was discord, suddenly there is harmony..where once there was confusion, there is honesty…where there were lies, comes the truth..where there was competition, there is peace as things are finally laid to rest…where there was fear, there is hope and solidarity
sorry… but i truly believe that such games are harmful, that nothing is served by playing games of hiding facts, balancing history, reparations, and all that bs.
let the dead stay dead. we have enough trouble with the living
[edited for length by n-n]
Artfldgr: once again, I’m not sure you saw the points I was attempting to make. There were two:
(1) Junge had personal experience with both Russians and Americans after the war, and her experience with both was relatively good.
(2) I was not saying anything about Russian atrocities vs. German ones in some sort of attempt at comparison. I was merely quoting Junge about her personal experience, and then at the same time attempting to say that the fact that Russians committed atrocities in connection with WWII is actually a relatively well-known fact, not a hidden and secret one (I believe you had said it was not generally that well-known).
That’s not to say that there aren’t some people who are quite ignorant of history, both in general and selectively.
Tatyana Says:
“Yet, these facts, it seems, are known only within former Soviet Union, and so called “Russian atrocities” are given much wider circulation, in Europe and in US.”
I don’t agree. I think most Americans are well aware of the German’s transgressions but not really well aware of the Russians (our allies).
This bunch on this forum are not an average group of Americans. You’ve got conservatives who are critical of the USSR and some others who are refugees, or children of them, from socialist countries.
Hong Says:
“So far ten years out there hasn’t been a significant defection from anyone in the Clinton circle and I doubt there ever will be.”
There are no big events, like the USSR invading Hungary in 56, to shake their faith.
The stimulus is a flop, Obama claims to be nonpartisan and the republicans have no ideas, et cetera… if they take over healthcare they’ll blame it not working on conservatives not spending enought (ah la the NHS)… these are little events and they have good enough excuses to paper over them. They also have lifestyle issues (republicans are haters blaw blaw balw)… its a new thing in the mix that will make it harder to make people change.
Thomass Says:
“Tatyana Says”
PS
I remember reading an article on a related topic awhile back. It was that Americans were somewhat stunned when reading British portrayals of WWII because they often portrayed the German army as being professional / not prone to war crimes.
So, I think the meme that the Germans behaved badly during WWII runs deep here. I was even a bit stunned reading the article as I’d never seen the Germans portrayed as following the rules until I read it. Their behavior was the usual justification for our firebombing their cities…
Thomass – you can count me among refugees from USSR; I’m well aware of Stalin’s policies, communism, Eastern Bloc, Baltic and Western Ukraine etc etc etc.
However, this issue is not with ideology or politics, this runs to the core of human nature: if someone burned your village, stole everything he could from you and bombed your country, you tend to think raping his women and taking BACK the stolen goods is justifiable.
As to American attitude: justification for firebombing German cities and support of Soviet people was probably that during the War; unfortunately, it must have changed during Cold War and later on. This opinion of Russians as plundering raping bastards committing despicable crimes out of the blue I’ve met in US often enough. Americans tend to conflate peoples with State Ideology. This attitude is especially unpleasant, I should say, from people who haven’t had soldiers invading their land, murdering their civilians and burning their cities fro – what – 200 years?
Compare:
But she took her chances and escaped, and although she was imprisoned (for a fairly short time, it turned out) by first the Russians and then the Americans, she encountered a world of Care packages and was well-treated by good people, especially the Americans, and saw Germany (she escaped to the West) become a free country. Junge observes that it was the beginning of her discovery that what she had been told by Hitler, “was all a lie.”
and contrast:
Ackerman seems to be making a strategic rather than a moral argument against torture. His assertion is that, if both Americans and Pakistanis refrain from torturing Baradar, there is a good chance that it will result in the Taliban seeing the light and changing their goals. This argument not only ignores a host of important questions…
That’s right, for 200 years. And if we aren’t careful, we won’t be able to make sure it doesn’t happen for another 200 years.
And the way it is happening now is from within.
Slower, but still happening none the less. Rust and fire are both oxidation. The speed is a bit different.
Hong
sorry.. i didnt realize you had a more focused look in your post.
my history of them and such is more cloudy. they are here and now, and every whiplash bs on top of truth is what we get.
i didnt like reagan when i was a kid..
later when i found out a lot more history, and stuff got ironed out more, i then like him much more.
but never like or trust a politician completely.
they are like fire…
and a fire untended often is the problem.
[edited for length by n-n]
Smily: are you really trying to make a comparison between Junge—an apolitical, non-idealogical, and naive young woman whose biggest crime was failure to ferret out what the Nazis were doing in concentration camps, and her act of taking dictation from Hitler—and deeply ideologically committed (in the religious as well as the political sense) Islamicist ideologues who adopt terrorism as a way of life? You think both are equally amenable to being impressed by Care packages and American niceness?
A mind is often a difficult thing to change. But some minds are a lot more ripe for it than others.
I have deleted a number of comments connected with an altercation here, in accord with my previously-stated policy.
Long ago I read “The Last Battle” by Cornelius Ryan. Shocking.
Soviet front line troops were fairly decent, rear echelon troops were barbarians. The few German communists quickly learned that their politics would not buy them mercy from the invaders.
Smily,
There is a huge difference between hearing the truth after a defeat when the Nazi propaganda machine is gone and the still very active propaganda and recruitment machine of the jihadis. Please try to remember the Mohammed cartoons and flushed Koran riots. Even in Germany, our efforts after the tsunami were not reported because the people wanted to believe those aircraft carriers were militaristic and imperialistic. If people want to hate you they will manufacture reasons and our gentle treatment of murderers will not change their minds.
Tatyana Says:
“Americans tend to conflate peoples with State Ideology”
During the cold war, in my opinion, it was usually leftists claiming conservatives did that (the irony, of course, that many of us conservatives were related to these people’s we supposedly hated)…
I think socialism did destroy civil society in some places but that’s another subject.
Also, I think the current war on terror is a different animal than the cold war. I would agree that Muslims, in general, are getting painted with a broad brush (in bad way) this time. Anyway, it probably helped during the cold war that so many Russians and Eastern Europeans were involved with the conservative side in the west….
…she has come to deeply reflect on her own guilt, and to be shocked at her failure to question what she saw and her hero-worship of a Hitler who seemed avuncular to her (she had been raised without a father).
I have come to consider people who pay attention to this stuff at this point in time are engaging in auto erotic fantasies: we are are at the obvious onset of a new socialist Reich and nothing is being done to stop it; those who see it are called kooks and madmen.
Thomass:
During the cold war, in my opinion, it was usually leftists claiming conservatives did that…
that’s what I thought, too – before coming to US as a refugee.
As soon as my English was good enough to understand casual conversation and make semi-understandable replies, I had encountered all sorts of astonishing opinions.
First of all, of course, I was absolutely astonished by the reverence the leftie Americans had for communists (for instance, when I applied to FIT I gave my Russian university diploma for evaluation, to receive college credits for classes already passed. FIT admissions accepted my Scientific Communism and course of Marxism-Leninism, which were mandatory part of the curriculum – as Elective History courses – but they did not accept my manual drafting (4-year engineering drafting course, plus 3 years of work as technical draftsman and designer! But I digress.)
Sadly, another unpleasant discovery was that a lot of people who believe themselves to be conservatives, have a very strange view about post-Soviets, or of the role of Red Army in the War. There was a thread, f.e., on Rachel Lucas blog (sometime around Victory Day, May 9th, I think), where I was stunned to find all kinds of distortions, some are downright lies, on this very topic. And they were calling ME ignorant!
Well, altogether, it’s part of a wider observation I wrote about here. Long, yes, my apologies for that. At least I made an effort to stay close to English grammar!
Americans have long been amazed at how seemingly otherwise normal people became will accomplices in the Nazi death machine. Now we have the madness that is Obama worsjip, and it should all be clear to us. But no.
Sorry, Thomass, posted too soon.
About expectation towards Muslims : theirs is not a State Ideology, but common religion, and that lies deeper than ideology that might be changed or learned or rejected. It’s their way of life.
Muslims, collectively in my eyes, have have forfeited the right for presumption of innocence. Either by direct participation, or by sending money, or by supporting their “cause” by other means, they are in a state of wide-front war with the West – and I don’t think the comparison with Soviets is fare.
Neo,
My sweetie and I discussed some of the information here – she’s a history type of person and we can get into history much easier than current events as current events are fed to her by abccbsnbccnn.
I enjoy these kinds of posts a lot.
Tatyana Says:
“Muslims, collectively in my eyes, have have forfeited the right for presumption of innocence.”
Sure, just a vistor from the USSR needed extra screening… but along the same lines, the odds of an individual being up to no good are also about the same.
Tatyana, this is shocking and morally indefensible. History is full of bad things, of villains and victims. We can’t punish all the villains or comfort the victims. Perhaps we should not spend too much time feeling sympathy for the victims who bear the consequences of their government’s bad policy and evil actions. But to assign collective responsibility based on birth as a kind of Blood Guilt and to endorse group punishment takes us places we should never wish to go; which is to endorse ethnic cleansing, of which mass rape is one tactic.
Thomass, I’m afraid you last comment went over my head.
Oblio: it’s not your place to lecture me on morality of my views on Germans. You should first live in a country that was destroyed by them, have relatives slaughtered in ghettos of Belorussia, and others – dying in evacuation trains. You should live through the history my motherland lived through – and maybe, then your words will mean something for me. Maybe. Otherwise, keep your shock and indignation for things you actually know something about. German occupation of SU is not among these things.
Whats the name again of those experiments where peer pressure alone kept people from speaking out about obvious wrongdoing and injustices?
I feel like we’re living though one of those experiments, probably pretty much how most Gemans must have felt, and Obama could announce a govt takeover of all privately owned Daycare and half the people wouldn’t bat an eye and reflexively go on the defensive.
Strange times really doesn’t fully describe whats going on in America right now.
An estimated 1.8-3.0 million Germans died during “The Trek” — the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Eastern European countries after World War II.
A Slovak friend of mine wasn’t alive then but heard the stories and relates them with a grim, vengeful smile.
The Germans have paid a collective price for Nazi Germany. Whether it was too high or not high enough is not something I would want to judge. However it is something I can understand.
About 10-15 years ago I saw a multipart documentary about WWII on the Eastern front. I don’t recall the title; just that it was hosted by Henry Kissinger. Both the Nazis and the Soviets practiced scorched-earth tactics in the areas in which they operated. They leveled whole villages, slaughtered the inhabitants, and conscripted the survivors for forced labor.
I guess it’s about what you would expect in a war between two totalitarian, collectivist systems in which the individual counted for nothing.
This is off-topic, but I should mention that the blogger NanoSecondInvestments is very sick and is apparently dying. He is the proprietor of Conservative Talk. You can see the relevant thread here.
I don’t know how many people here have read that site, but I’ve linked them once or twice and Neo said they had a good discussion going on over there.
Conservative Talk was formed by members of the old Powerline Forum, after the Powerline administrators abruptly shut down the forum. Several months later, when the same fate befell the old Gulf Coast Pundits site, Nano and CT provided temporary shelter while we regrouped and launched our new site, Grouchy Conservative Pundits.
Tatyana, you may listen to what I have to say or not, as you please. I am writing for the consideration of the whole community of readers who come here.
Perhaps there are people who hate whole groups–Germans, Muslims, whites, blacks, Israelis, Serbs, Kossovars, Armenians, Turks, Republicans, Tutsis, whatever–who don’t consider their hatred to be justified, but that is hard to imagine and far from my experience. It is common in our time for people to justify their actions and claims today by the intensity of their feelings about undoubted historical wrongs. It is a kind of arrogant antinomianism that has been cultivated and encouraged among the young and politically-oriented by grievance-mongers. This habit of treating individuals primarily according to their membership among your class, ethnic, religious, race, or political enemies must be toxic. That such group hatred is apparently rooted in human nature–based on its pervasiveness across histories and cultures–cannot make it morally defensible without undermining the idea of morality itself.
So, hate on, Tatyana, if you like. No one can stop you. It may be that we all end up living with you in a Hobbesian dystopia where ideas of morality are quaint anachronisms, and the the only thing that matters is whether your group survives and can avenge itself on its enemies. I hope not, and I hope that the vast majority of readers here are working against that kind of world coming into being.
We are disturbingly far down the road already, and a major indicator is how widespread National Socialism is. It is arguably the most successful political ideology of the 20th century in terms of assuring its own spread and reproduction. For that, we in large part have the Soviet Union to thank.
Oblio, if you’re not answering me, than please stop addressing me in your provincial-lawyer’ high-horse pompous diatribes.
Yes, you have a lot to thank people of Soviet Union for – even if you don’t. But the dead don’t care for your thanks. They didn’t die for you, even if you benefited from their death and sacrifice.
Claes’ Ashes Beat Against My Heart.
*rickl,
you practicing that same moral relativism that conservatives often accuse the progressives of: you’re equaling aggressor and those that defended and revenged themselves IN RETALIATION.
Once again: it has nothing to do with totalitarianism, socialism, with ideology of any sort, even if the authorities on both sides made every effort to own it.
It has to do with ancient right for for life, land and freedom.
Thomass – I’m glad you can read Oblio and rickl’s comments here; these are good examples of what I talked about before.
Tatyana, I have answered you, and you have responded not with a defense of the indefensible, which is not surprising, but with common abuse. You don’t seem to be able to distinguish between the people of the Soviet Union and their political masters. That’s ironic, because this is the thing for which, in your linked post above (10.44 pm), you castigated Americans as ignorant.
The Great Patriotic War suffering of the Russians, Ukranians, and other people’s of the Soviet Union was terrible indeed. It is a pity for them that they were ruled by a regime that began the war as co-belligerents with the Nazis.
s/b “peoples” not “people’s”
Tatyana:
I do realize that the Germans invaded Russia first, and I understand that the Russians were looking for revenge when the war shifted in their favor. I honestly can’t say that I would have done any different if I had been in their shoes, and I hope I never have to find out.
I can see a parallel between the Germans’ bombing of British cities early in the war and the far more lethal and destructive bombing of German cities that the British and Americans undertook later on.
But I also think that my remark about the clash of two totalitarian systems was relevant.
I’ve worked with a Russian who lived in America for 10 years.
It is clear that he was a good man. Generous to a fault. He’d give you the shirt off his back, his lunch and go hungry.
I see what everybody is saying here.
All I can say is that when it comes to individuals – we have to treat everyone with compassion – but that doesn’t mean we stop profiling to keep airline security high.
Being of Italian and Polish descent and learning of what the Japanese did to the Filipino people from my ex-wife’s family – I am extremely sad about what human beings were capable of doing to others.
But moving forward – we are faced with tough choices – but the choices come down to how to keep our own country and people safe.
You don’t seem to be able to distinguish between the people of the Soviet Union and their political masters
Who? Me?
That’s brilliant – to repeat my own thought but direct it at me as accusation. With absolutely no basis whatsoever. No, really, if I needed a lawyer with excellent words-twisting ability, I’d hire you, Oblio.
No, you didn’t answer me: you just used my name for moralizing diatribes you have no right to give – and you said it yourself :”I am writing for the consideration of the whole community of readers who come here.” You used my name as nominal pretext for your speeches, just like (yes, I repeat myself) a small lawyers are taught to behave in the courtroom – inserting “Your Honor”, every once and again, into their stream of oratory rhetoric to formally comply with procedural requirements.
There is nothing else I can say to you except what I said already; you seem to think you added some sort of new argument that needed my reaction? You didn’t. But – fine, I’ll indulge you.
Germans (and their Allies, but those were easier to deal with, or bribe, or run from) did not discriminate among guilty and innocent. Or, rather, they did discriminate, but onlu within the frame of their beloved World Order template: Jews (collectively) are at the bottom of the “value to Reich” pyramid, gypsies – on the next step, Slavs – next; German homosexuals – a bit higher, mentally sick and retarded – yet higher, etc etc, with a purebred Arian-Bavarian drunkard bum presiding over the whole thing. They differentiated between the Jews only temporary, as means for squeezing last drops of use for themselves before sending us all – collectively -to the ovens, be it use of Jewish doctors, or scientists, or the use of pleasing Nazi conc-camp officers with a string orchestra for a few months: the end was the same.
On every rung of that ladder the scenario was similar;: collective mass murder.
The country of Germany committed collective slaughter. They benefited for these crimes collectively, from the heads of state to the last housfrau. A few days ago I read a translation from interviews of a German nurse who worked at the sanatorium for Army officers stations in Ukraine; one of her charges took her to a warehouse to select a present for herself – the were shelves and shelves of merchandise, accurately labeled and stored: clothes, by size and purpose, furniture, tools, even children toys. Washed of blood. These things were waiting to be send to Germany under auspices of some “charity organization”, for free distribution. Horrifies, she immediately sent letters to her mother and sisters with instruction to never accept anything from those charities. But who could say if the piece of butter that Germans smeared on their toast in the morning didn’t come from Ukrainian cows, shipped in endless echelons to the West? That their washing machines, coffee grinders or iceboxes were not manufactured by slave labor?
Germany was collectively guilty. Magda Goebbels (per links in Neo’s original post – thank you, that was excellent and touching writing, Neo!) had the right idea: they forfeited their right to be treated as people, collectively – because they forgot how to treat other people as people, collectively.
I could write a lot more, but I trust this time you got my drift.
*rickl,
here’s another documentary you might want to watch, presenting a bit more balanced view on the events of WWII.
Tatyana, you need to go back and read what I said more carefully. My post at 10.17 addresses the government of the Soviet Union. Your reply at 10.29 treats my statement as a criticism of the people of the Soviet Union: otherwise, why bother to get snippy?
I am asserting the ideas of Blood Guilt and collective punishment need moral justification. I know of no such justification, and you certainly haven’t provided any. Absent that, you have no way to defend a calculus of who deserves punishment or to defend the statement that they deserved “more.” Put it this way: at what point is the punishment no longer justified, as personal involvement becomes more and more attenuated and as time passes?
Furthermore, I assert that subjective feelings of anger and desire for retribution are an inadequate basis for advocating ethnic cleansing, no matter how understandable these feelings might be.
I am not sure that I can think of any moral basis for ethnic cleansing, including mass rape and mass population transfers. Lest we forget, the Soviet Union had a record of dealing with dissident populations through forced migration long before Germany invaded. What if it turns out that the raping and pillaging started when the Red Army reached Poland? I dimly remember that from Max Hastings’ recent book about the last year of the war. I’ll look around for the citation.
Here’s another story about what was going on at the time:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1382565/Red-Army-troops-raped-even-Russian-women-as-they-freed-them-from-camps.html
War is hell, to quote Sherman. Terrible things happen, and often to people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We might pity the children of Dresden who burned in their Shrove Tuesday costumes, or the Japanese dissidents who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We can look back at those deaths with regret, but apology helps no one. We can’t, at this remove, untangle all the rights and wrongs of things done, or instigated, or caused, or not done. But I think it something terrible to wish today that the horror had been greater than it was.
Tatyana, you might be listening or not: you said at the beginning that it not my place to tell you anything. I say it is the place of each of us to speak out if we consider a statement to be over the line and contrary to the best interest of this community. People can agree or disagree, and ultimately Neo will make a call.
Anyone interested in reading a fine memoir of a Red Terror survivor is invited to acquire: “Into the Whirlwind”, by Eugenia Ginsburg. She was in the Party, sucked into the maelstrom in 1937 and spent nearly 20-years in NKVD prisons and the Gulag.
I recently read of a tiny, micro-event in the vast horrors of Stalin’s reign that chilled me, for reasons I can’t explain, even more than his far more vast crimes. It is recounted in Martin Amis’s wonderful little book,”Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million”. During the winter of ’37-38 a slave ship of 15,000 prisoners, destined for the Arctic Gulag of Kolyma, was isolated by the river it was traveling freezing sooner than expected. The NKVD sealed the ship–with all slaves aboard to die slowly in complete darkness–and left it in the the frozen river. Until Spring. How’s that for a bleak horror of indescribable Aloneness and Cruelty?
My dad arrived in Quebec City Canada as a German POW expecting to be shot. The POW gauleiters had told the boys that they were being shipped to Canada to be killed and buried in the endless forests. Dad was a devoted Nazi, Hitler youth and all that, 21 years old and dumber’n a post.
On the wharf in Quebec the guards split the boys into 8 man groups, over their resistance, they being convinced the split was to make it easier to kill them.
Then the guards summoned 2 men from each group “to bring lunch”. Impossible! Two men could not possibly be required for such a trivial task. These bastard, mongrel, Jewish troops from an impoverished and helpless Canada clearly intend to shoot the boys two at a time. More resistance, followed by beatings and forced selection of two men, dragged away.
The boys return, using all of their strength to carry a 5 gallon pail of wieners and beans. They eat it, puking repeatedly from being unused to large amounts of food. The surplus is thrown into the St. Lawrence river.
These large amounts of food are repeated 3 times daily, and more. The camp kitchens there and all over Canada are always open. Canada gives more to POWs than Germany can give to the wealthy.
The truth gradually penetrates. Gauleiters quit, or are beaten or killed.
I’ve intentionally used ‘men’ and ‘boys’ interchangeably.
In his later years Dad used to watch Hitler documentaries, especially Hitler’s speeches in German, muttering that Hitler was visibly insane, obviously crazy, what possessed me, what possessed us, shamed forever, did we trick ourselves? Were we that stupid? What?
Dad met Hitler in ’35 or ’36 when Hitler visited dad’s Technical College in Bremen. He shook dad’s hand.
My dad was one of the most intelligent and successful people I know.
Nobody is immune from the big lie.
After the horrors Red Army soldiers seen in Russian and Ukrainian territories liberated from Nazi occupation, they have very good reasons to think that all Germans were subhuman species. To their credit, most of them did not. I do not deny that a lot of terrible injustice were commited to German civilians, but, except pillage, this was not a government policy and usually involved a small fraction of deranged individuals, and front troops Army officers tried, with different rate of success, to stop this practice. I heard of this from my Dad, who in 1945 liberated Vienna and 6 month after V-day quartered in Pomerania. He was a battalion commander and had orders to maintain discipline and prevent his subordinates from atrocites against civilians. In Fillipines Japan soldiers do everything to be taken prisoners by American troops: if they were captured by local people, they faced grim death. Such brutal retaliation was inavoidable after aggression, if agressors behaved especially unhumanly, as Germans certainly did. And Germans under Soviet occupation got much less of it than they expected and than can be realistically expected, considered circumstances.
German POWs were building houses in Moscow until 1953. When their columns were marching from work along Moscow streets, some womens came and give them food. It was hungry time in Russia these years, food shortages were everyday experience. Husbands and brothers of these women perished in war, but they still felt pity for these enemy soldiers.
Fred Z:
I worked with a German national in the oilfields in Latin America. (I say “national” because as the son of a mining engineer based in Peru, the only time he spent in Germany was to go to university.) His uncle was interned as an enemy alien in the US during WW2. I forget the precise phrase his uncle used, but suffice it to say that his uncle was impressed with the benign treatment he received in the camps.
Oblio, I think we should drop the subject: we are talking pass each other.
Tatyana, I understand your feelings on this topic. We have done all the good we can. I am happy to drop the topic.
“Nobody is immune from the big lie.”
Not so, there is a level of culpability when the magnitude of the crime is that large and pervasive, and which is undeniable; but what can, maybe, be said is that nobody is immune from an overpowering fear of the consequences of trying to take an ethical stand against such brutality; thus the acquiescence in it…
Many years ago my MA thesis was on the Einsatzgruppen. The most widely known single slaughter was at Babi Yar outside Kiev. Nearly 34-thousand Jews in 2-days. Late in Gorbachev’s reign, the forests near there were explored for Soviet ‘Enemies of the People’ already resting there at the time of Babi Yar. The figure I recall was 500-thousand. My God.