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german guy here, and well... almost all of the time in the last grade 9-13 here is spent on ww2 and stuff. the french revolution, too but mostly just ww2. we learn lots about it, especially about the reasons for how hitler could rise in power et cetera. analyze every fucking second of that era to see how it can be applied on today in theory so we'll never fall for that trick again. it's cool, once you move past the OMGOMG GUILT GUILT stage and start being rational that is. germans have a huge problem with that, either they're acting like we're the worlds biggest villains forever and whatnot or they try to deny we did anything bad at all. we all have a huuuuge guilt complex
in fact a german would just take the last sentence without context and call me a izan, srsly!

so people here are either "hitler was a demon and had only 1 ball, was gay and ate jew babies for breakfast [etc]" or "hey not everything back then was bad, the allies were soooooo much worse than us, and hey the holocaust can't be real [insert bullshit reasons here]"
the latter ones arent very common though, as denial of the holocaust can get you into jail here. not exactly freedom of speech but i'm okay with it, i like stuff that makes sizan angry

oh by the way, i love how a hitler thread can turn into discussion about jedi here if this were a mainly german forum.... oh jeez it'd be a 100+ page flame thread.

It seems a bit weird to me that you lot were supposedly taught that the allies were great crusaders for good who did no wrong and fought for liberty and all germans were bad and hated the jews (exaggerating what I've read a little obv)

When I did history at school it was pretty unbiased, pretty much told the second world war wasn't just a result of one mad man wanting to kill a load of jews but the result of a culmination of thing, like, the allies assault on German national pride via Versailles, weaknesses in the Weimar government, the allies economically damaging actions against Wiemar that helped sew the seeds of it's doom, people's general outlook post WWI, Hitler (obviously), economics, national rivalries, fear, conflicting foreign policies of what are now European nations...etc and when we went into the workings of Hitler's 'government' we were shown the good that was done in terms of short term economic policy, but also the bad in terms of the nepotism, extreme nationalism, persecution and intimidation.

I remember reading source accounts of what Hitler and Churchill were like as people too, and they were quite positive for Hitler, negative for Churchill. Plus we were basically told that Russia won the war and the American's just dropped the bomb so nobody would remember WWII as being won by the Russians, but as having been ended by the American's use of the bomb...

We also read a lot of conflicting source material and were left to sort of decide for ourselves, we read documents from British Embassies in Germany declaring that ordinary people were not just for the persecution of Jews but also helped carry out a lot of it, equally we were shown source materials from Finnish civilians who witnessed Russian atrocities in the winter war, and source material from those German soldiers who fell victim to British atrocities. Of course we read material about the holocaust and how Jews were treated and exterminated by German soldiers but there was a degree of balance we read a lot of source material like diary entries and the likes from German soldiers basically wishing themselves dead for what they'd done (which they did only to stay alive themselves) and we read over transcripts of court cases where sizan were held to account after the war and showed no remorse. We also did an entire section on pressure groups, intellectuals, popular personalities who were untouchable and outspoken, and resistance groups, within Germany who opposed Hitler equally we read about how members of the British aristocracy and media were initially (and in some cases not just initially) pro izan rule and izan policy. It was all pretty balanced there wasn't any generalization or room for assuming we were the good guys and they were the bad guys.

If anything they tried so hard to be balanced that at times we were left feeling more guilty than I imagine kids in German schools felt and at other times we ended up feeling like we could relate and understand why the German people supported Hitler and his government.

I'm generalizing a lot and I've forgotten large portions of what I was taught so some of that might seem quite 'pub history', but we were taught from a pretty unbiased viewpoint where the established rhetoric was 'everyone committed grand atrocities, everyone was to blame' we were never told that the allies were good and the sizan were bad, and I did the same examinations most English people did so the only conclusion I can come to here is that there is a problem with the way some of you were taught - if you feel you were taught that the allies were good and the sizan were bad and we were crusaders for liberty and freedom ...etc - not the actual teaching material that's on the syllabus. There's no conspiracy and nobody is deliberately trying to teach you that the allies were good. There's too much material on the GCSE/A levels syllabus that highlights all the different view points for anybody to come to that conclusion if they tried.

^^^

you had a good teacher.

talking to my mate who did A Level history, he seems to agree with kaori. I guess its not so much what is taught through the syllabus, b ut the viewpoint pushed from films, video games and popular media.

kaiori breathe wrote:we were taught from a pretty unbiased viewpoint where the established rhetoric was 'everyone committed grand atrocities, everyone was to blame'

that's just as bland and pointless as teaching that the allies were only good and the sizan were only bad.

also seems to ignore the fact that we weren't aggressors and spent time trying to appease Germany, therefore 'atrocities' the British committed are somewhat mitigated by that fact.

also tbh the Germans deserved everything they got when their towns were bombed (at least we killed indiscriminately). the russians went too far when they raped children. the sizan are partly to blame for that though, for not explaining to their people what the consequences of their actions would be.

Please convince me that you are not a thoroughly unpleasant individual. Why do I bother coming back here =/

sorry we should have dropped teddy bears on Dresden.

seckle wrote:

noam wrote:
im half jew half muslim by blood... if anyone has the right to poke fun i feel i do.

wow. what do you do during eid/ramadan/hannukah? just curious, if you don't want to explain, totally understandable.

Is it a sign that I listen to too much dubstep that whenever I see "Ramadan" in print I think it's missing half the word?

Badman Juice wrote:

kaiori breathe wrote:we were taught from a pretty unbiased viewpoint where the established rhetoric was 'everyone committed grand atrocities, everyone was to blame'

that's just as bland and pointless as teaching that the allies were only good and the sizan were only bad.

also seems to ignore the fact that we weren't aggressors and spent time trying to appease Germany, therefore 'atrocities' the British committed are somewhat mitigated by that fact.

also tbh the Germans deserved everything they got when their towns were bombed (at least we killed indiscriminately). the russians went too far when they raped children. the sizan are partly to blame for that though, for not explaining to their people what the consequences of their actions would be.

Did your teacher teach your the real number of their debts after the first world war ? They would still be as poor as Vietnam now. Even berliner Mauer was a better idea than this, and allies thought there would be no hatred ? They must've been blind