German Ignorance

[Muad'Dib]

I was watching Frontline last night and it dealt with a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust and was traveling through Germany talking to Germans about the subject and such. As he talked to a group of high-schoolers, he asked them about how they should be educated on the subject (Holocaust). This German b***h said, "What about Vietnam, the Americans did as many bad things as the Germans did."

Really, you f*****g c**t.

I don't remember seeing American soldiers digging trenches and filling them with dead Vietnamese after they were executed by the thousands. I didn't see American soldiers stripping nake Vietnamese, stuffing them in small chambers, filling it with poison gas, and then send the bodies to huge ovens to be cremated by the millions. I didn't see any Vietnamese being starved to death and walking around like human skeletons. But we did see Germans do that.

So America's involvement in Vietnam is comparable to what the Germans did in WW2. Whow!!!! So this is what they're being taught today.

My only reply to that is this:

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

[Pekka]

So? The news worth of Frontline seems to be .. shockumentary type of value. You ask a teenager these things, what do you expect? Especially when it was most likely some kind of activist green party/left wing idiot. They see the US as the biggest destroyer because it's cool and you are enlightened if you believe it. IT's just mantra they have to repeat.

I don't consider this a bit concerning. I think they know the facts very well. She just wanted to stick it to the Americans or something, being the matress for some bearded hippie activist.

I mean this is the type of genius level of teenagers who also believe McDonalds is the reason for every other bad thing, and eating there will mean some poor Cambodian kid has to die.

No wars are comparable.

But as for Vietnam, I wouldn't paint it as the greatest action ever either. It's unpopular in many places, but none of the less of course it never compares to Germans and WWII. To suggest it is ridicolous.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history doomed to repeat it.

[DAVOUT]

If you are a veteran from Vietnam, you could have explained to them how the American soldiers behave well compared to the Germans, rather than insulting their teachers.

The quote about lessons of history is not addressed to high-schoolers : they are received by those who make the decisions resulting in dramatic consequences.

[Dry]

I think you are ignorant of Germans.
Knowing the Germs as I know them, they are probably the most aware people in Europe of what their (grand-)parents did.
When I was in Germany, I remember no week without a TV program on the topic.
My guess is that this Frontline searched hard to find some illiterate, MTV-watcher German girl with those feelings (probably from former East-Germany, in fact).

Judging a country by the words of one teenager citizen

Should we do the same with US of A?

[Pekka]

Dry is right. Germans know so much about it, maybe this idiot teenager was an exception but Germans in general are experts on the issue and by no means do they try to reduce the action of evil done.

[Bereta_Eder]

maybe an american shouldn't be the one to ask that question to germans maybe that was the problem

[MrFun]

Re: German Ignorance

Originally posted by Muad'Dib
I was watching Frontline last night and it dealt with a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust and was traveling through Germany talking to Germans about the subject and such. As he talked to a group of high-schoolers, he asked them about how they should be educated on the subject (Holocaust). This German b***h said, "What about Vietnam, the Americans did as many bad things as the Germans did."

Really, you f*****g c**t.

I don't remember seeing American soldiers digging trenches and filling them with dead Vietnamese after they were executed by the thousands. I didn't see American soldiers stripping nake Vietnamese, stuffing them in small chambers, filling it with poison gas, and then send the bodies to huge ovens to be cremated by the millions. I didn't see any Vietnamese being starved to death and walking around like human skeletons. But we did see Germans do that.

So America's involvement in Vietnam is comparable to what the Germans did in WW2. Whow!!!! So this is what they're being taught today.

My only reply to that is this:

The more reasonable and knowledgeable Germans have done a far better job in grappling with their darker periods of their country's history, than many Americans have in confronting our own country's darker periods.

[Muad'Dib]

If you watched the program like I did, I believe the 3rd generation is starting to get pissed off by their Grandparents & parents guilt trip.
The Holocaust survivor talked to a 3rd gen author (I forget his name), who wrote a book Nobody Asked Us. My impression, Dry, is that all this stuff is starting to become white noise to the 3rd geners. Hence the b***h's views I mentioned earlier.

[Pekka]

yeah but is that a surprise? Should they take a guilt trip, they had nothing to do with it? They already know the facts and they are still the country of nazis and getting reminded about it every other day. The message loses its power amongst youth like this very effectively.

[DaShi]

Was this person a mod on a gaming forum by any chance?

[Locutus]

Yes, because napalming 4 million civilians is a very civilized thing to do

Obviously it's not even on the same level as the Holocaust, but you said she was a high-schooler? 15-16 maybe? Can we really expect her to know the difference? If she was a well-educated grown-up maybe... and as others have said, Germans are very well educated in this respect.

Either way, the Holocaust was the darkest hour in the history of mankind and Vietnam or any other war doesn't compare, there's no doubt about that. But that doesn't mean make every other war the epithomy of all that is good and right. The Americans did commit horrors in Vietnams, just because the Holocaust was worse doesn't make that any less true. Americans ought to be ashamed of what their countrymen did in Vietnam, just as the Germans should be ashamed of WWII, and as the Vietnamese should for their countrymen (and as such pretty much every nation has something to be ashamed of -- I feel I'm more a citizen of the world or Europe than of the Netherlands, but I feel deeply, deeply, deeply ashamed of how my fellow countrymen stood by and did nothing -- and in a way even assisted -- the Serbs during the massacre of Screbrenica, for one thing).

But in reality the only thing many Americans are ashamed of with regard to Vietnam is the fact that they lost

When Americans talk about the causualties of that war, they always talk about the 59,000 Americans that died, but I rarely catch anyone talking about the 3-4 million Vietnamese civilian casualties. I also find it extremely disturbing how Americans in Vietnam are usually depicted as heroes and the good guys. The line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" is generally regarded as a great movie line (even voted best line in the history of cinema according to one poll) and frequently paraphrased in all sorts of context as a heroic thing to say -- how differently would we react if someone would say "I love the smell of Zyklon B in the morning"...

The Germans generally deal with the horrors of their ancestors in a very mature and responsible way, it's an integral part of their education. That is much more than what can be said of the Americans -- that's one point where that kid isn't completely wrong...

[Bereta_Eder]

Don't forget about the american sponsoring of dictatorships and of course Iraq.

[dannubis]

well said locutus

but to be honest, i can tell you the reaction to your paraphrazing : you would drop dead...

[C0ckney]

as if we could with you around paik...

[child of Thor]

Yeah! Damn yanks If they hadn't taken so long to get involved we could have stopped many of those concentration camp deaths before they happened

History is full of dirty laundry