But he will be aware of the sensibilities of his German hosts before the D-Day commemoration and by travelling to Dresden — a city destroyed by ferocious Allied bombing in February 1945 — Mr Obama will also acknowledge how Germany suffered during the Second World War.
In 2003, Anne Applebaum wrote an article on how the Germans now think of themselves as victims (if not the victims) of the Second World War, seriously. The centerpiece of the Kraut pity-patter is the bombing of Dresden. She notes that on a visit to Germany, there was not one, but two books on the best-seller list with this thesis. As she states in "Germans as Victims":
One of the authors used the word "crematoria" to describe the burning buildings, described the Allied bomber pilots as the equivalents of Nazi police units that murdered Jews and concluded by wondering whether Winston Churchill, who ordered the bombings, ought to have been condemned as a war criminal.
It is my guess that these things are related: It cannot be an accident that a wave of unusually virulent, even irrational anti-Americanism has peaked just as Germans have begun, for the first time since the war, to talk about their past in a new way. Germany is reassessing its place in Europe, its role in the world, its postwar subordination to the United States. Some of the recalcitrance we've seen in Germany during the past year has been genuine opposition to the war in Iraq and genuine dislike of President Bush and what he is thought to stand for. But some reflects a deeper change. Germans, or at least some of them, no longer want to apologize for the 20th century. Germans, or at least some of them, no longer want to accept the political leadership of the United States.
Just look at the bestseller lists for proof.
"Virulent, even irrational anti-Americanism," There's a band-wagon President Mountebank will happily climb aboard. It is not a coincidence that the Age of Obama is also the age of militant, self-righteous evil. In his latest column in Commentary, Mark Steyn reports on how Holocaust Memorial Day 2008 was observed in what had once been the civilized city of London:
On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people—Londoners and a few visitors —took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End ... Those few dozen London Jews considered themselves at ’ome. But they weren’t. Not any more. The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by “youths”—or to be slightly less evasive, in the current euphemism of Fleet Street, “Asian” youths. “If you go any further, you’ll die,” they shouted, in between the flying rubble.
As Steyn further reports, according to polls 62% of Germans “are sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews.”
Next week, President Mountebank will be groveling in Egypt. There is no mention in the press release (I can't call this a "news" story) on whether our president will also be visiting Israel. While the Zero has the time for his ongoing campaign of groveling, there just is not any time to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister. President Mountebank's chronic apologizing for America should be no surprise. This is because he is a tiermondist. From Dreams from My Father:
I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Frantz Fanon, eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.The typical response to this Portrait of the Future Messiah as Marxist Poseur is that he has since grown-up. I don't think so. His so-called values have not changed one iota. President Mountebank is obviously still alienated from American society and very, very angry. Meanwhile, the Jew-haters are uniting and marching. With President Mountebank, they have found an enabler. All they have to do is play the "neo-colonialism" victim card. As Mark Steyn noted, after Israel and Europe, we're next on the menu.
Crossposted at The Dougout
15 comments:
Grant Jones,
The truth of the matter is that the German's set themselves up for what happened by putting Hitler in charge of their country and giving him dictatorial power. Weather or not we went too far, in some instances during that war, does not change that fact. Plus who are they to argue that we were the badguys during WW2? While its true that some German's may have been genuinely innocent, and either opposed the Nazis or at least been very ignorant of most, if not all the evil their government was doing, it does not change the fact that their society was run by an evil man, and the world was made better and safer by the utter destruction of Nazi Germany. Even many Germans are now glad to have been defeated during WW2, knowing full well, what things might be like to day, had they actually been victorious.
Good article! Sorry to be so tangental. But the revisionism that is on my mind tonight is more of an erasure.
The Greeks inspired because they were competitive and into excellence. We need to recapture that spirt. This koombayah "social justice" achievement gap, special ed not gifted money, socialism is NOT IN LINE WITH OUR TRADITIONS!
Bring back western civ. Bring back the West.
Germany's actions were a crime because they went outside of the western tradition of individualism and individual conscience. But their competitiveness was not un-Western. It was quite Protestant.
We ourselves cannot forever apologize for our success in the world. We cannot keep apologizing to Muslims about our "crimes." We rocked the world out of the stone ages for crying out loud!!
Damien,
I really thought the claim of German innocence had been torn into mockery with the Nuremburg trials. They were victims like Jeffrey Dalmer. Save it for heaven or hell!
Irony - this is announced on the anniversary of VE day.
Culturist John,
I said that during WW2 some Germans may have been innocent. I didn't even attempt to approximate what percentage, which may have been very small. I will admit that the majority, perhaps the overwhelming majority were guilty to a significant degree. We of course couldn't prosecute every single German, so the exact percentage who where genuinely innocent of any of the evil associated with the Nazis, will never be known.
Culturist John,
However we know for a fact that not all Germans supported or even simply went along with the Nazis. After all, have you ever seen the movie Swing_Kids?
Culturist John,
I'm not denying either of those things. Of course both of the answer to both of your questions is yes. I'm guessing that you are not reading what I wrote very carefully. If you don't see what I'm getting at, please read what I wrote again, and read it more carefully this time. I said, "some Germans may have been innocent" I didn't say the Germans may have been innocent or the Germans were innocent or most Germans may have been innocent. The key word is "some," and their really is no point in us arguing over this, since I have a feeling that you actually agree with me more than you may realize. I would never say that the Germans should take pride in what they did during WW2. For one thing, the Holocaust was a terrible thing, and many of the German people at least were clearly guilty of helping the Nazis perpetrate it, if they weren't full fledged Nazis themselves, who supported the mass murder. I'm not denying that. So I don't see what we have to argue over. In fact calling the Holocaust a terrible thing is an understatement.
"some germans were innocent" but ALL Londoners were innocent during the blitz as were the people of Coventry which was detroyed by german bombers.
Bomber Harris - the man responsible for the bombing of Dresden said at the beginning of the war said "he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind"
Dresden deserved all that it got. remember, at that time the south of England was bombarded with the V2 the first ballistic missile, for which there was no defence. Give the Nazis maybe a few more months and they would have had no hesitation in sending nuclear weapons aboard those V2's
Check out the German historian debate, where some German historians tried to "normalize" the Holocaust:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historikerstreit
Ray Boyd,
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"some germans were innocent" but ALL Londoners were innocent during the blitz as were the people of Coventry which was destroyed by german bombers.
Bomber Harris - the man responsible for the bombing of Dresden said at the beginning of the war said "he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind"
Dresden deserved all that it got. remember, at that time the south of England was bombarded with the V2 the first ballistic missile, for which there was no defense. Give the Nazis maybe a few more months and they would have had no hesitation in sending nuclear weapons aboard those V2's
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I agree. Although I have to admit that I can't help but feel sorry for those few Germans who opposed the war and Nazism, but by the time of the war, they were pretty much irrelevant.
Great post! I'll post it at Roncesvalles in full.
The reason the Germans have not paid restitution to the Poles is because Poland was awarded
over one fourth of prewar Germany at the end of the War. It is hard to comprehend that at that time there existed someone smart enough to decide that one fourth of prewar Germany was
probably enough restitution. Today the value of these areas, now incorporated into Greater Poland, are in the trillions. At least four times the value of Eastern Poland which the Soviet Union decided it deserved. I will name again the major German cities now in Poland: Danzig
Stettin, Breslau and Posen. Besides these cities, there were the churches, museums and cultural properties, the highly developed infrastructure, factories, universities (Brahms composed his well-known 'Academic Overture' for the hundredth anniversary of Breslau University), schools, autobahns and various 'breadbaskets' upon which Germany as a whole depended.
It should be remembered that Poland has signed an international document attesting that it will
not seek further restitution. Like everything, however it could become an open question.
Yes, I am aware of the often quoted three partitions of Poland which took place in the
18th century. I can name the where, when and how it all came about. Probably it is no surprise that the Russians got the bear's share and the Germans came out short by comparison.
If there is anything the Poles are masters of it is claiming that such and such an area
was originally Polish due to the efforts of some Piast prince. Yes, there were a lot of Poles in West Prussia and even in Posen where Hindenburg was born. But I can also point out that before the War, Danzig and Breslau were ethnically and culturally nearly 100% German. The attempts by the Poles to prove beyond a doubt the 'polonicity' of these two cities has been first comical
and then painful. As there were Poles in West Prussia, the repressive Versailles Treaty which ended World War I resulted in a large number of Germans ending up in Poland. It was the
random murder and oppression of these Germans which ignited World War II. The Poles
stubbornly refused to negotiate this issue and the return of the German city of Danzig. Had they been more practical, the War could have well be avoided.
Even in this "good" war, as it is called (There are no good wars!), the little person pays with his life and property instead of the majority of the party 'Bonzen'. The grandmother in East Prussia who was gang raped and nailed to the barn door in East Prussia, the women and children who
suffered a horrible death in the icy waters of the Baltic when the refugee ship with 9,000 aboard was arbitrarily sunk by a Soviet submarine captain, (He later for the Order of Lenin for his heroic action.) and finally the old German farmer who was beaten to death in one of the Polish revived
concentration camps in Silesia all paid the ultimate prices for being seen as Nazis and not Germans
I do recognize what was done to the Poles and others. I abhor and condemn the crimes committed against them no less than those committed against the Germans. But I am drawn to try and point out that the Germans should not be (even after 65 years) painted with the
wide brush of 'NAZI and their sufferings and victimization should not be dismissed with the
erroneous, but unforunately oft repeated statement, 'THEY DESERVED IT.!'
RUDOLPH
When I was in France last summer, I saw lots of memorials to the Jews killed in WWII. I asked my friend, a native Brit, how that could have happened??
She said that two things were happening: 1) people were threatened that if they protested or interfered, their children would be taken away; and / or 2) they were too quick to believe the Nazi lies about the "work camps" to which the Jews were ostensibly taken.
OK - today we have the left vilifying people like Palin, the Miss California USA, Joe the Plumber and others. Jews are being blamed for the economic meltdown. Christians are being castigated for believing in God and questioning evolution (or at least the questionable conclusions drawn from Darwin's theory), Israel is branded as a "genocidal" and "racist" country (????) and Islam is praised and "respected."
So how is the US in 2009 that different from Germany in the pre-
wwII era?
I am starting to have some sympathy for the regular German citizen. No matter how many tea parties I attend, no matter how much I contribute to the ACLJ or Act for America, no matter how many impassioned letters I write to my US and state reps, or how many phone calls I make, no matter how many friends I talk to, it just keeps getting worse.
The left and its "multiculti agenda" dominates the national media, the annihilationists have captured the public imagination, Israel is in mortal danger and traditional American values are "extremist."
In my heart I used to condemn the German populace for allowing the Nazis to do what they did. But now, geeze, I feel like I need to apologize to them.
If they started carting people off tomorrow to death camps in the US, honestly, who the hell would we know???? The MSM would not report it.
NRO and its ilk would probably not believe it. Only the Alex Jones' of the world (and I have only heard about him, have not listened to him) would report it, and it would be dismissed.
So, I now believe that the "regular joe"
German, who had even less access to information and expression than we do, cannot be blamed, anymore than we can.
I am willing to be corrected by anyone out there. But I see NO ONE with any political or moral authority who is willing or able to resist this totalitarian government with any success.
Even the creditors in the Chrysler bankruptcy, who have the law and decades of judicial decisions on their side, have given up the fight (from the WSJ this morning).
And, as a commenter said on another thread, you know what happens when you give in to bullies.
This "soft" tyranny is going to get "hard" pretty quickly, I fear.
Ro
And when millions die, will it be our fault for not "speaking up" enough? Or will any evidence of our "speaking up" be sent down the leftists memory hole?
Ro
If you were like 8 yrs old in 1940 you were innocent.
DANIEL GOLDGHAGEN should be sitting in Obama's bathroom, all you need to read the letter from the avg german sergeant complaining about his soldiers and enforcing discipline while pillaging the jews.
Germans WERE NOT VICTIMS
He should then read Deb Lipstadt's book and consider his words.
Barack Obama is going to cause calamity in foreign affairs leaving problems even LARGER than Jimmy Carter, who merely left us Iran among other stupendous historical paths (such as Afghanistan).
Consider today what the world would be like if a shah-like leader was in Iran.
If the USSR would never have been bold enuf to invade Afghanistan?
What else will Obama's enforced progressive dialectic of history require him to do?
Will he be telling us that excessive memory of the Holocaust and the influence it exerted is now causing human rights to be damaged?
Will he tell us that we must do extraordinary thing to overcome the evils of United Fruit?
Will he apologize to Cornwallis?
Kaiser Wilhelm?
Apologize to Yuri Andropov for making it impossible for that leader to spend his resources on his own people and thus victimizing them in our ill advised quest for super power-dom?
Is there ANY RIGHT AND WRONG in the world of progressives (besides the original sin of the USA..PROPERTY)?
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