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A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

theatlantic.com

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Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#61

Post by DoreenMichele »

jsiepkes wrote: post #59
DoreenMichele wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that's completely socially unacceptable to say: The real thing that put Hitler in power to begin with was the horrendous war reparations Germany was saddled with from WW1 because it was "last man standing" on the losing side. You get called a Nazi sympathizer and things like that for trying to provide that context, but to my mind that is the real reason they said "Never again" and instituted global protecti…

> The real thing that put Hitler in power to begin with was the horrendous war reparations Germany was saddled with from WW1 because it was "last man standing" on the losing side. I live in the Netherlands and I remember being thought that in school as one of the reasons of Hitlers rise to power. The Dutch wikipage [1] of the Versailles treaty also reflects this in a section called "consequences of the treaty" (De ge…

Thank you. The English translation of that section ends with:

On October 3, 2010 were the last debt repaid by the Germans.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#62

Post by flosim »

jsiepkes wrote: post #59
DoreenMichele wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that's completely socially unacceptable to say: The real thing that put Hitler in power to begin with was the horrendous war reparations Germany was saddled with from WW1 because it was "last man standing" on the losing side. You get called a Nazi sympathizer and things like that for trying to provide that context, but to my mind that is the real reason they said "Never again" and instituted global protecti…

> The real thing that put Hitler in power to begin with was the horrendous war reparations Germany was saddled with from WW1 because it was "last man standing" on the losing side. I live in the Netherlands and I remember being thought that in school as one of the reasons of Hitlers rise to power. The Dutch wikipage [1] of the Versailles treaty also reflects this in a section called "consequences of the treaty" (De ge…

I was also taught in French schools that the Versailles "diktat" was a good reason why Hitler rose to power.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#63

Post by watwut »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #39
stordoff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real thing that put Hitler in power to begin with was the horrendous war reparations Germany was saddled with from WW1 because it was "last man standing" on the losing side I'm not sure why this is socially unacceptable - I thought it was widely accepted that Hitler rode the economic woes into office, and used them to blame the Jews (amongst others). Now, if you start using that to justify what the Nazi party d…

My mother is German. She once said to me something like "Hitler was doing good things for the country -- until he went nuts." I brought that up on a forum. It isn't justification for Nazi atrocities. It is insight into how the people on the ground suffering hardship saw him in his early years. He was perceived to be a good leader doing good things for the people, at least at first. But, hey, my previous comment is al…

Hitler followed the same politics beginning to end. His failed putch was a preview of how he treated enemies once he got into power.

Also, economic only explanation ignores how much militarized Germany was, how much lost itself was impossible to stomach to them leading to "Jews stab us in back" myth.

There is whole lot more.to it then just suffering economy. Hitler support was not.among poorest either, it was among artisans, owners of small businesses and such.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#64

Post by watwut »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #49
mikeash wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a massive difference between saying that the treatment of Germany after WWI set the stage for Hitler, and saying that Hitler did good things for Germany until he went nuts. The former will find wide agreement, while the latter is just apology for Nazis, who were evil from the start, and just took a while to really ramp it up.

No, it is not apology for Nazis. FYI: My initial comment was well into the negatives for a time. A lot of people simply cannot look objectively at anything related to WW2. They know how it ultimately turned out, so they basically ret-con it as "they were pure evil from the start." The problem is such mental models foster convenient explanations and justifications, not solutions for making sure such things don't happe…

Nazi were violent from the start. If you read any detailed history book about what Nazi actually did and how they came to power pretty from around when Hitler joined, you find them being violent and hateful.

They were not only violent group around, that is absolutely true. But they were pretty bad even if you ignore Holocaust itself.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#65

Post by fellellor »

iamshs wrote: post #50
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In particular Gandhi promoted the caste system and disagreed with those who said it should be eliminated.

Gandhi promoted caste apartheid and actively went on a hunger strike to prevent 'lower castes'/'untouchables' from getting representation in Parliament. This event was whitewashed in our school books as Gandhi did it to prevent English from breaking Hindu unity as not anyone reduce Gandhi's bargaining power. Gandhi also suppressed India's linguistic diversity and promoted Indians to have only one language. Here again…

That is just plain bullshit. He called them harijans which from today's cultural standpoint looks patronizing, but he had nothing but altruistic intentions for them and wanted the caste system gone.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#66

Post by zaphirplane »

Sag0Sag0 wrote: post #46
tomohawk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1943 - the British were in engaged in a multifront war against Germany, Italy, and Japan with their very survival in doubt. Then, Japan cut off a major food supply to Bengal. Blaming this all on Churchill is a bit much.

Correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't there more then enough food, he just wanted to send it over to England?

Yeah that kind of thing never happens now, just ask puerto rico, Haiti, ethiopia, Rowenda

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#67

Post by mikeash »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #49
mikeash wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a massive difference between saying that the treatment of Germany after WWI set the stage for Hitler, and saying that Hitler did good things for Germany until he went nuts. The former will find wide agreement, while the latter is just apology for Nazis, who were evil from the start, and just took a while to really ramp it up.

No, it is not apology for Nazis. FYI: My initial comment was well into the negatives for a time. A lot of people simply cannot look objectively at anything related to WW2. They know how it ultimately turned out, so they basically ret-con it as "they were pure evil from the start." The problem is such mental models foster convenient explanations and justifications, not solutions for making sure such things don't happe…

How is “Hitler was doing good things for the country” not apology for Nazis? It’s not even subtle!

Nazis being evil from the start isn’t a retcon. Just look at their internal party purges, or how the Enabling Act got passed.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#68

Post by mikeash »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #55
mannykannot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a rather awkward question about when one thinks Hitler went nuts. To think the early years of the Nazi regime were acceptable requires overlooking the thuggery they used to get power in the first place, the brutal (and not secret) things they were doing to 'undesirables' already, and what Hitler had revealed of himself in 'Mein Kampf'. On the other hand, I agree that no nation or ethnic group can assume itsel…

My mother was a young child in Germany during WW2. I imagine she had no firsthand sophisticated understanding of politics at the time and was essentially repeating opinions of adults she knew. But she was also remarking on one of the programs that provided servants to families. I don't recall the details. She could remember her family benefiting in some way from such a program. Regardless of all those details, German…

“As a small child, it seemed like Hitler did good things for Germany until he went nuts” would be a perfectly reasonable thing to say. They way you put it makes it sound like she never looked at what happened later and came to an adult understanding of the situation.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#69

Post by DoreenMichele »

mikeash wrote: post #68
DoreenMichele wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother was a young child in Germany during WW2. I imagine she had no firsthand sophisticated understanding of politics at the time and was essentially repeating opinions of adults she knew. But she was also remarking on one of the programs that provided servants to families. I don't recall the details. She could remember her family benefiting in some way from such a program. Regardless of all those details, German…

“As a small child, it seemed like Hitler did good things for Germany until he went nuts” would be a perfectly reasonable thing to say. They way you put it makes it sound like she never looked at what happened later and came to an adult understanding of the situation.

Yeah, let's not put my mother on trial here. She's not participating in this discussion. She's not here to defend herself from such nastiness.

I was a minor when the discussion occurred. That no doubt influenced the wording.

It was a private conversation at home between mother and daughter. She had zero reason to think she needed to defend the remark as if it were a PhD thesis or testimony in a war crimes trial.

Re: A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother

#70

Post by maxxxxx »

philwelch wrote: post #60
maxxxxx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"his failings are not as important as his heroism" We should be willing to see both sides of people like him and accept them both. A lot of people have the tendency once they think someone did something great in one area to deny that person's flaws in other areas. So yes, Churchill did well in WW2 but he did very stupid things in WW1 costing lot of soldiers their lives and was a complete racist.

There was no shortage of British politicians and cabinet members who were unapologetic imperialists or who were responsible for fatal blunders. There was a shortage of men who had the foresight to understand the Nazi threat and the power and will to oppose it. Churchill is unexceptional in his evil but extremely exceptional in his heroism. Much of the horror at Churchill, in isolation, is completely normal and justif…

"So yeah, true, let’s acknowledge the awful things about Churchill. But let’s not over exaggerate them or use them to draw a moral equivalency with Adolf fucking Hitler."

Exactly. Let's see him as a flawed person who sometimes was very wrong and sometimes very right. For current and past leaders this means we should carefully evaluate what they do and say instead of blindly following them only because they did something good in the past.

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