As I'm sure a lot of you know, I have a big interest in World War II. I enjoy reading about it, I enjoy learning what I can of what happened during that period in time. And since my WW2 buddy on Y! has gone Missing In Action, I thought I'd try it here. You can have a mature and Intelligent dicussion about this topic since I took a college course about World War II, more focusing on The Holocaust and what led up to it. The course was laid out like a timeline starting with the Weimar Republic and ending with Liberation and Holocaust Denial. Then it ended with Nuremburg and Eichmann's trial. I do have some Guidelines for this thread which I think you might find helpful: Guidelines: 1. Keep discussion intelligent. Back up your claims with research. Don't just say things like: 'Hitler was a ******.' or 'The Jews deserved it.' Put thought into your posts and if possible, cite where you got the information. 1a. When citing information, put the link to the website where you got your information or the title and author of the book. 1b. Don't just copy and paste. Please put the information in your own words. You can quote some parts of it but don't copy and past entire websites and claim it as your own idea. That's called plagiarism and I will not tolerate it. 2. Don't spam in this topic please. This is a potentially heavy topic for some people who had relatives in the war so please don't spam. 2a. Keep your posts considerate. A heavy subject like this requires you to use tact when replying. You don't know what will upset/offend someone. 3. Given the sites rating of E10+, we will have to take that into consideration. I realize that the Nazis were no angels but we don't want to scare the children. I want to inform the younger generations so something like this doesn't occur again. 4. Spam will be deleted. Offensive racist remarks will not be tolerated and deleted and the user will receive a warning. ~ from Repliku 4a. Goes the same for offensive/racist images. Also, I was thinking about what topics can and cannot be discussed here. As you can see the possibilities for the subject vast outweigh the closed topics. Topics open for Discussion: Battles Officials Examples: Hitler Heydrich Patton Himmler Eisenhour RommelPropaganda Psychology of the Nazis How the Nazi Party began/Reasons for WW2 War Machines The survival of the Jewish culture General Holocaust General Holocaust denial The role of the German people Liberators Nazis who saved Jews. Ghettos Pearl Harbor Conspiracy Theories Nueremburg Trials/Eichmann's trial WW2 in popular culture Examples: -Schindler's List -Night -Diary of Anne Frank -Saving Private Ryanbranches of the German military -SS -Wehrmacht/General Military -Lufftwaffe/Air Force -Bundesmarine/Navy -Hitlerjugend/Hitler YouthWhy the Allies waited so long? Nazis and the Occult The Master Race/Aryanism Topics closed for Discussion: The brutality of the Concentration Camps Detailed descriptions of the brutality of the Nazis Neo-Nazis
We're going to read The Diary of Anne Frank in english class this year. Some one actually asked the teacher who wrote it. It saddened me beyond relief how anyone had not known that it was Anne's real diary. I, too, have a fascination with WW2. My grandfather fought in it. But I'm only in my second year of high school (and have history next semester), so I"m not extremely educated on it. I haven't read The Diary of Anne Frank yet, only because I keep on forgetting to look for it in the library.
Dude! Schindler's list was an awesome movie. It really captures the mood of life in enterment camps and shows people how sad it was. Every sophmore was watching this in our school auditorium. The way ppl just gasp...man, u no it's a moving story when stuff like that happens. But stuff like Pearl Harbor and battles on the Pacific are also pretty interesting topics to get into. It's just kinda shameful how a lot of people puts the spotlight MAINLY on Hitler and the Nazis while paying less attention towards the Japanese and the battles in Asia and the Pacifics. =/ BTW, Fox, wat does panzer mean. I forgot. :stupid: *leaves*
We never really made it to WW2 in history courses as I recall. It was usually because the year ended before we could. Which really blew for me since I wanted to know more. I've only read half of Anne Frank myself. The belief that Anne Frank did not write is not new by any means. It's dismissed by Holocaust deniers as propaganda and Anne Frank never existed. It isn't a bad book to read by any means. Anne Frank had a wonderful sense of detail and imagery so you can picture the people and places she described. Schindler's List is also a novel which is just as entertaining as the movie. The book lets you see more into the personalities of the characters and some things were changed for the movie. My Tolerance and Inhumanity professor used to teach a similar class at one of the local high schools. He used to show the move after school for whoever wanted to see it. He said they'd be sitting in silence after the movie finished. It's just that powerful a film. It is in my opinion that people focus so much on the Nazis because there's something...identifiable with them in us. I myself can claim Germanic history and perhaps it is the fear of a repeat that we focus so much on them. We can't help but see some of ourselves in them. I'm a blue eyed, blonde haired female of Germanic descent and when I see pictures of Germans from that time...well they look kind of similar to myself. Panzer is a style of tank used in WW2. It literally translated to 'Panther'. Field Commander Erwin Rommel commanded the Panzers in North Africa and in Europe.
I read a book called "Night" and it's about a boy's life as a jew in a nazi camp. He wrote his story of being there and the horrors he had seen. When I read it, I was shocked of what they did. I don't want to explain all of it but if you want, just ask away. I just don't want to go too far into it.
During ww2, there were concentration camps in southern utah for japanese immigrants and families following the bombing of pearl harbor. Random fact for the day,
Schindler's List really was a powerful movie. It just blew me away and I was particularly especially fond of the ending where some of the people who were actually still alive came out with the actors of themselves and put stones on Schindler's real grave. That was very emotionally moving to me and I have to say this is one of the few movies I have actually had tears from because it was so real. It was probably this movie that was the biggest reason why I decided to research into WW II so much. I had studied into it before but not with the fervor and intrigue that came from watching that movie so Spielberg did a great job of making me spend after that 100s of hours reading material of all sorts from notable historians. The weapons and planes etc are interesting to me, but I think the more interesting things to me are that the human nature played such a great role and well, it was a severe peek into what can happen in a fascist movement. Japan and Germany were both swept up in their own types of fascism and had Japan instead of attacking the U.S. chosen to go on and attack Russia from the other side while Germany was hitting them from going East..well things might have been different due to the U.S.'s desire at the time to remain neutral and aloof. The nature of people though was obnoxious at the time and some people try to even to this day say things that are extremely racist. They actually called the removal of the Nazi minds 'de-nazification' of' the people of Germany. Also, there is still a law that building a positive image of Hitler and the Waffen SS and the activities of the Holocaust as a positive thing in Germany and some other Nordic countries is illegal to this day. So the main thing I examined a lot of really was how Nazi behavior gripped the Germans and why a vast majority were swept up in this behavior and movement that today people can look back on with bitter contempt. Only by understanding how it happened do I feel we can make sure such a thing never happens again. Has it happened before? Yes, definitely it has. People have been swept up in movements of racism, hatred of governmental systems and religions, misunderstandings, and a feeling of utter righteousness in what they were doing despite the fact people would have to die to make goals happen. So, I do hope we get to discuss some of these matters and what we feel helped motivate such a movement in the first place. Just the very design of the Waffen SS and SA with Hitler's rise to power is very moving and the scenario prior to that of an impoverished nation having to pay out war reparations and losing face from WW I were mainly what set the stage. Anywhoo I'll stop rambling since I could go on a while but it does seem people are interested in talking about it, so it's a great thing to do as long as we can all keep our heads about it.
There has been strong evidence to say that Hitler was a complete fraud. I saw this on a documentary.When Hitler failed to obtain a place in the art collage, he walked the streets of the cultured district which the rich art students walked as if to say I'm in the art collage because he was too ashamed to admit to people he failed to get the place at an art collage.He got a flat with a room mate and one day when the were passing a building a striper was there and hitler took him away from there and gave his room mate a lecture about stripers and people like them being bad and in the guys diary it says "After this me and Adolf had a good time...".This suggested that hitler was gay but he put them into concentration camps and killed them if they couldnt work.It also says that when he was poor he sold paintings for someone and nearly all of the people he sold paintings to were jews.No one would talk to him really but the jews and then he throws them in places like aushvites and al those places.The truth about hitler is that he's nothing short of a fraud,a coward and a sellout.
I'd like to know the name of this documentary as well. Some of this is just theory, like the part with Hitler being gay. We know he had a girlfriend in Eva Braun and they were married in the Fuhrer bunker the day before they both committed suicide. Hitler being gay is most likely Allied Propaganda in the same way of the supermarket tabloids. The reasoning behind putting homosexuals in the camps was that they deviated from the norms and didn't contribute toward the Aryan race any since they weren't producing children. Such as in the Lebensborn experiment of Himmler's in which Aryan SS soldiers would essentially produce as many children with Dutch women as they could. Children born out of wedlock were encouraged so long as they were Aryan children. Some of these children don't know who they're parents are because they'd be raised in German families whilst their father would go back to service and their mother would have more children. And Hitler tried twice to get into the Vienna Art Institute. He was a good artist but wasn't quite to the standards of Vienna. So he used to go to art galleries and say that Jews had painted the art and so German artists were the norm. Nazis looted Dutch art galleries and brought them back to Berlin. You hear that the Germans kept some Jews as servants. Hitler had a Jewish psychic that made predictions. Amon Goeth employed Jewish Musicians at his villa in Plazlow so long as they pleased him. Goeth also employed a maid by the name of Helen Hirsch, and the Schindler's List movie shows their relationship quite well. But it is conflicting in my research about weather of not Amon ever fell in love with Helen of if it's just Hollywood exageration. The novel says that he only wished to keep her from camp life, Schindler says, perhaps to ease Helen's mind: 'He won't let you wear the star because he doesn't want the world to know it's a Jew she's enjoying.' In the book, Amon get arrested and Schindler puts Helen's and her sister's name on his list. In the movie, Schindler wins Helen in a card game. But however the method, Helen did survive until the filming of Schindler's List in 1993. Amon was hanged in the 1950s on the site of Plazlow after being found in a mental institution.
I believe that the claims Hitler may be gay were propaganda as were some of the claims that the Nazis galore were all into the occult. There were high members in the SS into it but the vast majority of the SS were not, nor was really Hitler a strong believer. In fact, Hitler killed off a person that did an occult ritual on him that he was 'linked' to, which if he strongly believed, he surely would not have done so. I doubt Hitler was gay because he did have a steady relationship with Eva Braun and he also sent known gays to the concentration camps, considering them as worthless, regardless of their position in the government, and genetically inferior as he did Jews and Gypsies etc. They were not going to help in the Aryan race goals he had set in mind and at the time, being gay was considered a sort of disease or mental derangement. Keeping in mind that also those who were mentally and/or physically ******ed and handicapped were also killed. Gays were viewed on their level as just not being productive to reproduction etc and in the way so they were cleaned out. Hitler did 'lie' during his time in office of course, and also exaggerated quite a few things when it came to the Jews. He set up a lot of propaganda pertaining to them and it was not very hard to do because the area already had a mistrust of Jewish people. His other goal was to deal with stamping out communism, which he loathed. Dissecting Hitler can be a fascinating endeavor but although he was deceiving and he used much of his brains to maneuver himself into the position of power he would achieve, I could hardly call him a fraud more than I can any dictator that rises to power. There's something that enables that person to have the charisma to do so and the environment has to merit the need for such. Germany was a hurting nation and he was a former soldier and at the time of his bid for power, the Germans were still angry and suffering over the loss in WWI which was largely blamed on the Jews in the government at the time. There was contempt as people did not feel they would have lost the war had there not been negotiations that forced the soldiers home early. He used this to help fuel his campaign and weaken the German higher government of the time. Yes, Hitler failed to get into the Vienna Art Institute because his artwork was considered sub par by their standards. However, I am wondering how this makes him a fraud too. I would have thought more that would be picked on concerning Hitler is the fact he was thrown in prison for some of his radical maneuverings. However, the man clearly was a thinker, where he lacked in some other areas and he used his brain. He was all about strategy and to get the votes, he actually went out and campaigned through towns and cities that had largely lost communication with one another due to the horrible situations and economic loss of the time. This was one of the main reasons he won votes because he would tell one city what it wanted to hear and go onto the next saying to them what they wished to hear. He was deceptive, yes, but he also had his goals set early on and came up with a strategy. Being committed, he drew in others to his goals and also hanging out with the right people certainly aided his endeavors. He was elevated and built up, yes. The whole German culture became a field ground for all sorts of propaganda, but I cannot label him a fraud as we can look back and see what he condoned and some of these things were pretty laid out even as early as he came out with Mein Kompf. Some of the Germans were larger than life, to include Hitler, but this is what happens when fanaticism and zealotry take hold of a people. Dismissing the lies and getting to know the 'real' people as we can is a difficult prospect to do because of the lies and exaggerations told by the German media as well as the Allied media. Hitler's beginnings certainly did not show where he was going to end up as he did seem somewhat to be a failure at quite a few things, but I don't think to this day we should discount that he was intelligent, fanatic himself, and sucked in a whole nation that was desperate to get back on its feet after the WWI reparations that sent them into poverty. It's for this reason I can't call him a fraud. He in the end was an answer, albeit a bad one, to the problems Germany faced. It is also to be noted that after WWII is when the war reparations act was repealed and altered because losing countries simply in desperation may just turn into another sort of Nazi Germany scenario.
I wasn't clear why Hitler killed Jews. WHY DID HE? He had no good reason to do so. If he didn't there wouldn't be such a thing as WW II. God knows what went wrong in Hitler's mind.
