Did Germans who supported Hitler express regret for having done this?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

"Man what was I thinking? We were caught up in madness, evil madness."

Or do they just deny having done so?

Or are they unapologetic and simply regret having lost?

Will the 40-50 percent of the country that supported shrub express regret for this, ever?

Will they shake their head in amazement that they ever mouthed an idiotic slogan like "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"?

[400Years]

1. from what I understand most of them just denied ever supporting him

[FreedomAngel82]

2. I remember seeing a documentary on

the History channel about Hitler once. They showed this woman who was about her seventies or eighties and she was saying how nobody in Germany knew what was going on because Hitler controled the media. :shrug: That's all I've personally heard. You could tell in her voice and her eyes that she was sorry for everything that happened and really regretted and wished they could change it.

[BushOut06]

4. Hitler kind of wormed his way into power, didn't he?

My history is somewhat hazy, maybe someone can help out here.

[bullwinkle428]

8. I think Hitler was actually legitimately elected to power at

one point, unlike some people we could name! :evilgrin:

[Gary173]

11. Maybe this will answer

your question. I think of the republican base and what their response will be to bush's destruction of the American way of life whenever I read this.



"The people were left to cope for themselves with their victors. Long deprived of their majority, they continued to be passive recipients of orders. Horrified by the flood of news and descriptions about the inhumanity and crimes of the Nazi regime, they closed their eyes and ears and protested their innocence to all who would listen. Germans, it seems, still failed to grasp Montgomery's dictum that a guilty nation not only has to be condemned, it has to realize its guilt."

www.gwu.edu/~edpol/manuscript/chap5-3.htm

[slackmaster]

3. Our German teacher in high school was a teenager girl during those days

She said Hitler was such a powerful speaker one could not help but cheer him, even if you were crying at the same time because you knew he was a monster.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. Well, I don't think * has THAT problem...

[justabob]

7. I've heard similar stories

Even some Jews believed in the bulk of Nazism (obviously not the anti-semitic part).

[Wilms]

6. I had a German roommate born25 years after the war.

She was INCONSOLABLE relative to the fact that her grandparents may have been party members.

This poor girl held herself responsible.

[foreverdem]

9. My dad was stationed in Germany during WW2

He said the majority of the people he met did not support Hitler or the war but were afraid to speak out. He felt sorry for many of them, he said some were practically starving because food was so scarce.

[meganmonkey]

10. Most of the Germans I know are too young to have

lived through it, or were young children at the time.

But I spent about 7 months in Germany and everyone I talked to about this recognized it as a terrible time in German history, and that there was much to be learned from the experience. The general consensus was to NEVER let something like this happen again.

[justabob]

12. How do you define support?

I think a lot of people who just tried to stay alive and "free" regret deeply never standing up for what was right.... including those who joined the party just to keep their jobs (bureaucrats/civil service). I doubt many true believers ever experienced anything close to regret, except regretting that they lost.

[slor]

14. Support for Hitler must include...

not speaking out. He was quite clear of his intentions, and those that did not speak out, must also share blame for what happened. Not unlike what we are seeing today, in our country.

[justabob]

17. I agree they share the blame

and agree that is what we are living with now. I still think many of those who 'kept their heads down' experienced regret and guilt vs the koolaid drinkers who I doubt experienced even one iota of guilt or regret.

[slor]

32. I am sure you are right...

for many, it was a way to survive, and therefore, it is easy to comply. That is why we are in one of the most dangerous times, in our country's history, and why we must stand up, and be ever vigilant.

[cynatnite]

13. Many of them won't talk about it at all...

My grandmother is one of them. She and the rest of her family that were alive during that time absolutely refused to discuss it.

When she came to the states with my father she destroyed most everything from her family that would indicate they had anything to do with what happened. She was involved with a Nazi officer who fathered her child.

Personally, I think she knew some of what was going on. I think far more Germans knew what was happening than what most claim.

[Boojatta]

15. Regarding records she couldn't destroy, does she say they are hoaxes?

"When she came to the states with my father she destroyed most everything from her family that would indicate they had anything to do with what happened."

[cynatnite]

19. She doesn't talk about it at all...

There is no bringing up the subject whatsoever. I think she knows the truth, but refuses to acknowledge it verbally. I do know she still has some things...not sure exactly what, but my sister and I will never see them until after she passes on.

[justabob]

18. There is an interesting book about what the 'ordinary Germans' knew

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany by an American historian and a German sociologist (Eric Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband). They did a massive survey of both ordinary germans and another of Jewish survivors. It was an interesting read if you want to know more about it. Their research showed a pretty mixed bag of what each group did or didn't know.

[cynatnite]

20. I've read 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' and it's a good read...

He made a very compelling case for the fact that more Germans knew what was going on than what was acknowledged.

I'll put that one on my list.

[Niche]

16. This is a great question...

Have been reading much about this... it crept in slowly, they voted on "small reforms" etc.... questionable what they did and did not know... the press was false, the government was slowly taken over....

Sounds familiar. I do think that there are enough people in this country to see the truth. Although, once the courts are stacked we are doomed...

The people of this country all have blood on their hands... even if we oppose this administration...

Sad times.

[Broke In Jersey]

21. The German depression was far far worse than ours

Hitler started the war machine over there and all of a sudden there were jobs, men could feed their starving families, and they weren't ashamed to be Germans anymore.

We have no concept of the suffering the German people went through in the 20's & 30's. I believe most relized how messed up hitler was but far too late for it to matter - unless you wanted a one-way ticket to a camp never to be heard of again.

[foreverdem]

23. The people were starving during the war

My father told me he could not believe the poverty and lack of food for the general population.

[CornField]

30. True -- before the debt of WWI came to rest on German shoulders,

about four marks made up a dollar. Within a few short years, the exchange rate was 1,000,000,000 marks for a dollar. Groceries cost billions. It was during that climate that Hitler made his first (unsuccessful) move to take over the government.

[calico1]

22. To be fair to the German people at the time

most average Germans did not know the extent of everything that was going on. I remember when the miniseries "Holocaust" came out. They eventually televised it in Germany and all these years later some wives and children realized that their husband/father was in the SS. I also recall reading once that in the history books the holocaust was kind of glanced over. So even years afterwards a lot of people did not know the full extent of everything the Nazis did.

[cynatnite]

24. They don't want others thinking they had anything to do with it...

even though they really didn't, but by association (being German) many considered them just as guilty.

My father was a teenager when he came to the states and the level of antipathy was fairly intense. He rarely spoke because of his German accent. He and his mother went to a movie theater that showed some newsreel concerning the war crimes trials. This was in the fifties, I believe, but he remembered the audience booing, hissing and calling Germans names for what happened. It was so bad they left the theater.

Also, look at how sensitive the German government is towards this. The Nazi party has been outlawed among other things. They are, IMO, going a little overboard in trying to make sure this never happens again.

More knew about it than they will ever admit. I believe that with all my heart.

[Broke In Jersey]

26. While in Germany, I spoke with college students from East Berlin...

They were shocked that there was this thing called the holocaust as well as a ton of other things they read from West German history books.

[Kingshakabobo]

25. "Slouching toward Kristallnact" ..This has been poster on DU several

times in the last weeks. Just in case anyone missed it, here it is again....


http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/20/12819/467/

[KittyWampus]

27. Those I"ve Spoken With Didn't Believe It At First. Just Like Americans

can't fathom Bush LIHOP.

[calico1]

29. There are so many similarities aren't they?

The things Rove and others do is so reminiscent of nazi propaganda. I really believe that one day they will find a lot of nazi material in Rove's possessions. I feel certain he has studied Goebbels and fashioned much of the current GOP propaganda on his methods.

[CornField]

28. Nazi propaganda ran deep

There were moving displays of "The Eternal Jew" and children were taught in schools that Jewish people were dangerous and trying to prevent them their God-granted heritage of the Aryan Nation. At the camps (one of which my father helped liberate) the prisoners were no longer seen as human -- every bit of humanity was removed from them. They were referred to only by number, if they were referred to at all. Any Nazi who was seen showing any consideration for a prisoner was either ousted or shot on sight.

Each of us have our own varied ideals of what is right and wrong. We often speak of doing the "right thing," but we don't always agree on what the right thing is. I believe this also held true in Nazi Germany. Many had believed they were doing the "right thing" for their country by helping exterminate the Jews. As surely as some of us would feel justified in shooting and killing someone who broke into our home with the intent of harm to our families, some of the Nazi soldiers felt the same (especially the young ones who had been raised in the Third Riech).

If you read some of the first-hand accounts, you'll undoubtedly find the stories of those who witnessed the mass killings. The Jewish people would be brought to a site with a mass grave by two or three soldiers. Entire families would be taken to the site, forced to walk upon the dead bodies of those who had been there before, then ordered to lie down with the other bodies (a few not completely dead yet) before one of the soldiers would shoot them in the head. Men, women, children and infants... there was no mercy. As for the prisoners, there was no will left for escape. Each account shows the people going willing to their own demise, carrying children too young to walk.

I doubt many cared one way or the other what happened to the Jews or the non-Nazis they rounded up and slaughtered. They did so for the betterment of the state. They did so for expansion and enhancement of the Nazi cause.

I'd like to think that those who did the Nazi bidding woke up in cold sweats for the rest of their days, tormented by the magnitude of what had been accomplished at their own hands. Unfortunately, I doubt that was the case. Anyone who can take human skin and make a lamp shade, bookcover or head cap (all things my father saw when he entered the concentration camp in Germany), probably has little trouble sleeping at night.

[Hubert Flottz]

31. No...the true believers never admitted they were wrong.

Read what most of the X-Nazis said in their trials. The normal everyday German people, that I spoke with about Nazis, in the early seventies, either wouldn't talk about it, or they didn't EVER bad mouth Hitler. The ones who you could tell were ashamed, mostly wouldn't talk about the "war years" period.

I was out riding in a car with three other GIs about 9:00 pm. one fine spring night, near Fulda Germany, when the car we were in broke down on a dark country road, near a small village that probably housed 500 people. We got out and checked under the hood and soon found that the reason the car had quit, was that it wasn't getting any fire to the spark plugs. I popped off the distributor cap and found that the rotor button had jumped off the shaft and had scratched the inside of the cap causing the firing problem. I replaced the rotor on the distributor shaft and put the cap back on and the car wouldn't start.

My three friends and I walked the quarter mile or so, toward the lights of the village and found nobody out in the semi-dark cobble-stone streets. As we walked around and looked the place over, we heard loud voices and what sounded like many people chatting, inside a big single story building that looked like it was probably the town hall. I walked up to the door with my friends and pushed open the front door. Inside I couldn't believe what I saw! Nazi flags were hanging all around the large well lit room and there must have been about a hundred fifty men, sitting in rows of chairs and standing around the perimeter of the room. The folks in that room looked as surprised to see group of bewildered GIs at the front door, as we were surprised to see their meeting and their Nazi flags and buntings on display around the room. About a half dozen big gooney types met us just inside the door and kind of shoved us back outside the door into the street. One of the German gents spoke good English, so we explained to him, that we were looking for a phone to call the post for a wrecker, or for a pencil to try and fix the scratch on the distributor cap.

The guy got us a pencil from inside and we went back to the car and I filled the scratch in with the graphite from the pencil lead and believe it or not, the car fired right up and we were soon gladly on our way. We told the brass back at the post about walking in on the Nazi meeting and they didn't even act surprised. They told us that the best thing we could do was to forget about it. This night I'm talking about, happened in the spring of 1971, about 26 years after WW II was over.

[Solon]

33. Good timing! I just watched a special on Oskar Shindler on History...

International. In case anyone HASN'T seen the Speilberg Movie about him, a little background. Here was a guy of German Decent, who grew up in Czechslovakia, that got away with damn near anything short of murder with his parents growing up. He grew up to be a businessman, just like dad, and a philanderer, just like dad. At first he seemed to be an amoral opportunist, joining the Nazi party and buying a factory that was siezed by Germany from the Jewish owner for a steep discount(10 grand US$). He seemed to be like anyother business man of the time, profiting from the suffering of the Jews, who were nothing more than cheap slave labor to many. However, there was a difference, due to his charm and intelligence, he was able to get away with almost anything short of murder, just like as a child, but this time with the Nazi party. He knew his Jewish workers by name, treated them with respect, and ultimately tried, and eventually succeeded in protecting them from the Nazi Holocaust. He saw many of the atrocities, and while partying with the Nazi elite on one hand, he defied them on the factory floor. He sung the praises of Hitler to survive, but couldn't follow through with those praises in action, and for that he is now considered a hero.

He ran an ammunition factory that didn't produce a single shell that could fire and he was able to live to see the Nazi's end. He made millions off the Nazi regime and the cheap Jewish labor, and ended up spending every Deutchmark to save his workers from the concentration camps. After the war, with the Russians knocking on the door of his factory in Poland, his workers helped smuggle him to the British/American line, where he surrendered with no repercussions. This was a man that by any other measure would be considered immoral, mostly due to his being unfaithful to his wife, having many mistresses in his life, and even leaving her in Argentina after the war. Yet none of those actions measure up to what the Nazi Party did during its time in power, nor is his defiance no small thing. He is now buried in Israel, having over 5 thousand Holocaust survivors and their decendants attend his funeral, people who simply wouldn't have lived had he not acted as he did. Heroism comes in many forms, this is but one, others in Germany also did the same thing, many paid with their lives, whether it was the Swing kids who rebelled through music, or the various German families that helped smuggle Jews out of the country to safety. Many of them were either forced to the front lines of the war to die, or sent to the Camps themselves. Others survived, but we must never forget the sacrifice of those who defy evil when they see it, they are the heroes.