Britain is Doomed

[Guest lazyphil]

kamui being a german and with your track record on genocide you have trouble saying what many think. europe is overwhelmed with immigrants (i KNOW parts of england are, you have english kids going to school where 30 different languages are spoken). i understand that, its a tricky subject. but it is as it is make no mistake and if euro govs dont get over dealing with it instead of worrying about being accused of being facists we will see an unpleasent far right surge.

[spirit_of_town_hall]

The worst genocide IMO was committed by the Russians during world war two. Remember the victors in war write the history.

 

Its time Germany shrugged off any guilt over the second world war IMO.

 

The Russians did far far worse. In fact they had German POWS in camps well in to the 60's, 20 years after the war ended.

 

In the areas which the Russians went in to every German woman between 10 and 80 were raped, in fact the Russian General gave them express permisson to do this.

 

The year following the war the allies gave orders to give the Germans a starvation ration and hundreds of thousands died.

 

The Nuremburg trials were a disgrace, indeed a lot of American and British officials at the time said so, but they were overruled by the Russians, indeed a lot of the judges were recently naturalised Americans, jews who had fled Germany.

 

They were not really fair trials, witnesses for the defence couldnt be found or were not allowed to give evidence.

 

Even now in Israel, its big big business to get generous pensions out of the Germans, indeed there are lots of lawyers in Israel and New York whose only specialisation is getting cash off the Germans.

 

The Germans are still giving the Israelis submarines, money, weapons etc etc...

 

Its seems more like a good money spinner for Israel than anything else now.

 

I think it is so unfair that Germans are still beaten with this awful stick when there are hardly any living survivors of whatever happened sill here.

 

After all it was the British who first devised concentration/labour camps, many Boers died during the British/Boer war, women and children were interned by the British to "persuade" the boers to surrender.

 

STH

[Flashermac]

Some ex-Nazis were tried at Nuremberg for the crime of deporting about a million Poles from the former "Polish corridor" which had a mixed population German /Polish. They were convicted of a war crime. But the Allied victors allowed Stalin to redraw the eastern border of Germany, ignoring 700 years of history and forcibly expelling its population to be replaced by Poles. They also allowed Benes to expell 3.5 million "Sudeten Germans" from their homes of at least 700 years with all of their property confiscated by the Czechs. In all about 15 million Germans were expelled from their homelands in Central Europe.

 

Still, that's different. It's only the losers who commit war crimes. We see that even today. Double standards are alive and well.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

p.s. One of my profs had been a US Army observer at the Nuremberg trials. He was a lawyer and did not speak well of them.

 

 

[kamui]

For Germany the Nazi regime is still a sensible issue and I am fine with this. Until now it has prevented Germany from doing really stupid things like sending Germany military to Iraq.

 

It might be possible that we sometimes pay too much for victims of the Nazis and WWII, but IMHO that's better than paying not enough.

 

The result of the German so called "Wiedergutmachung" reparations (?) is that today we are in very friendly terms with our neighbours (except the British tabloid press and the Polish nationalists).

For to see how not to deal with WWII atrocities just have look at Japan. The Japanese political elite still denies the extend of their war crimes (Nanjing massacre, mass killings of Okinawan inhabitants and therefor it is still hated by common people in South Korea and China.

 

 

PS: The problem of German overpayment is solving itself anyway, since the WWII generation is fading away.

 

PS/PS: the Nuremberg trials might have been flawed, but it was very important to bring facts like the concentration camps to German and international public. Without the trials German society would be still struggling with the facts like in Japan, which would have caused severe rifts in our political and cultural landscape.

[spirit_of_town_hall]

Very true, in time though hopefully a fuller picture will come to light. Any historian who questions the orthodox view of WW2 ends up losing their job.

 

STH

[Flashermac]

Japan was very fortunate in that FDR had finally kicked the bucket. Stalin actually admitted killing millions of people to FDR and the idiot just laughed it off. FDR insisted he could handle "Uncle Joe" -- yeah, by giving Stalin everything he wanted! Look at the photos of FDR at Yalta and Potsdam. He was clearly a dying man and in no condition to be making major decisions about the future of Europe.

 

Truman was quite different, though very green when he inherited the presidency. He stood up more to Stalin and even tried (unsuccessfully) to save Stettin and part of Schlesien for Germany. By the time Japan surrendered, Truman had recognised Stalin for the murderous thug that he was. FDR would surely have let the Soviets occupy Hokkaido, since he had already promised them Karafuto (Southern Sakhalin) and the Chishima (Kurile) Islands. (FDR was great at giving away other people's territory. This was the same "liberal Democrat" who ordered the arrest of all American of Japanese ancestry and also had the nations of Central American round up their Japanese ancestry citizens and send them to US "relocation camps". Really a nice guy!)

 

 

MacArthur also realised a strong Japan was needed to counter the Soviets in the east. Thus the Japanese suffered no division, a very short occupation, only token war crime trials and the emperor (who had known what was going on and hadn't opposed it) was declared innocent and kept on the throne. The right wing nationalists thus stayed in the open and still have a lot of influence on how the war is viewed.

 

 

 

 

[kamui]

The right wing nationalists thus stayed in the open and still have a lot of influence on how the war is viewed.

 

This is quite an understatement. The Japanese right wing nationalists are part of the goverment since WWII. Alternative views on Japanese history are openly supressed by conservative elite, for example books and movies about the Nanjing Massacre which is called 'Nanjing Incident' in Japan. Currently they are rewriting the school books in favor of the Japanese army during WWII.

[chuckwoww]

This is quite an understatement. The Japanese right wing nationalists are part of the goverment since WWII. Alternative views on Japanese history are openly supressed by conservative elite, for example books and movies about the Nanjing Massacre which is called 'Nanjing Incident' in Japan. Currently they are rewriting the school books in favor of the Japanese army during WWII.

 

I don't think many people in Europe and America are concerned about the Nanjing Massacre. It's seen as a distant Asian event. The Nazi Holocaust gets all the attention.

 

[Flashermac]

I suppose you know about the Zaibatsu - the big businesses that virtually ran Japan before the war. They kept on running it after the war and still do!

 

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/zaibatsu.htm