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Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

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Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#41

Post by SuoDuanDao »

gspr wrote: post #37
luckylion wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Anything that isn't praise and "we'll all be better off" is taboo, and it doesn't matter what party, what your other positions are, it's sacrilegious. It's not only immigration though, the same is true for e.g. European political integration. It's considered to be the only thing that keeps us from certain war, so any skepticism is understood as hyper nationalistic and willing to risk peace in Europe.

> Anything that isn't praise and "we'll all be better off" is taboo, and it doesn't matter what party, what your other positions are, it's sacrilegious. Are you sure that you're not mixing up that position being wrong with it being taboo ? It seems to have become very popular these days, especially among the alt right, to blame the ridicule and ignoring of their opinions on the "PC mainstream" having labelled them as…

Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this. What are the consequences of being wrong in public on this issue?

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#42

Post by selimthegrim »

weinzierl wrote: post #35

Just a little background from a German perspective: Weizsäcker here is not the physicist but Richard von Weizsäcker, his brother. Richard von Weizsäcker was President of Germany from mid 80s to mid 90s. The President of Germany is, simply put, like British Monarchy. In practice he has mostly a representative role. As a president Weizsäcker was well popular in Germany and neither was reclusive nor caused any scandals,…

Is being reclusive bad?

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#43

Post by gspr »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #41
gspr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that isn't praise and "we'll all be better off" is taboo, and it doesn't matter what party, what your other positions are, it's sacrilegious. Are you sure that you're not mixing up that position being wrong with it being taboo ? It seems to have become very popular these days, especially among the alt right, to blame the ridicule and ignoring of their opinions on the "PC mainstream" having labelled them as…

Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this. What are the consequences of being wrong in public on this issue?

> Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this. What are the consequences of being wrong in public on this issue?

Someone living in Germany would be better suited to answer this, but, from my limited experience: the same as being wrong on a bunch of other things. Your statements are not considered sacrilegious, they're merely considered wrong and not worth listening to. For good reason, in my opinion.

Nuanced debate, like how inequality is on the rise in Europe, how to deal with some eastern European countries failing to secure a free press, corruption, etc, is always welcomed. Blanket statements like in the comment I replied to, not so much.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#44

Post by cygx »

the_af wrote: post #34
zeveb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USSR ethnically cleansed Germany in response? What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German... In particular, postwar Poland basically moved west: the Soviet Union kept the 77.6 thousand square miles of Polish territory it had captured when both Germany and Russia partitioned it in 1939, while Poland was given 48.1 thousand miles of German territory. The Soviet-backed Polish government clea…

> Two wrongs do not make a right, and mass murder of innocent civilians is always wrong. Fully agreed. It's hard to see the two events as similar, though. The scale (and intent) alone is mind-boggingly different. The Germans intended to wipe out Slavs (and other undesirables), and you couldn't opt out of this by swallowing the party line or swearing allegiance to Germany (just as you couldn't opt out of being a Jew -…

Compare this with Germans under the Soviet sphere of influence. Puppets, maybe, but alive as long as they cooperated with the ruling ideology. There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land.

The USSR declared Germans in the annexed territories illegal residents. Going by Wikipedia, in 1947/48, officially, 102,125 Germans got shipped from East Prussia to the Soviet Zone, though only 99,481 arrived there (one reason for this was that food wasn't always provided on a journey that took 4-7 days by train). The GDR attributed this discrepancy to a 'calculation error'.

There's also the issue of German orphans that were left behind (which are known as 'Wolskinder'). The lucky ones got adopted (eg by Lithuanian farmers), changed their names, and pretended not to be German. The unlucky ones were exploited as cheap labour, starved or got killed. His criticism of the treatment of German civilians was one of the things that got Solzhenitsyn arrested.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#45

Post by Koshkin »

ihm wrote: post #24

I couldn’t read the whole thing, but as a Jew whose relatives and culture was murdered by the Germans, I found it did not adequately address the reality that many Germans knew about the camps (to say nothing of the progroms and humiliations that preceded them) and that the people who perpetrated the Holocaust were in large part incorporated unreformed into German society after the war. The speech reads > Yet with eve…

Trivia: A part of the guard at Nuremberg trials in 1946 was staffed with the former Waffen-SS personnel.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#46

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

kazen44 wrote: post #38
burger_moon wrote: post #25

Since we're on the topic of Germany WWII. I read a couple books about Treblinka over the weekend. The atrocities that happened there were sickening. To read about what these people were forced to do there in this death camp is painful. The Germans and Ukrainians who did these horrific acts of murder and torture were unaffected by it, as told by two authors who survived. It leaves me with more questions than answers.…

i don't know where you are from, but the education about the holocaust i received was especially memorable because it went through great detail explaining how the holocaust was different from the millenia of bloodshed and genocide that happened before. (European history is drowned in blood and suppresion sadly). The holocaust is especially horrifying because it turned killing into an abstract process that made apathy…

> "The holocaust was possible because step by step, the dehumanization and abstraction of the process resulted in people being able to be apathetic to it."

Abstraction of the process is not required nor is a process of dehumanization if it's already culturally ingrained. It is rarely spoken of but the Japanese occupation of Asia immediately preceding and during WWII caused nearly triple the deaths of the Holocaust (the vast majority being civilian) with as much or greater brutality in many cases and was not neatly confined to camps but widespread across all of Japan's occupied territories.

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#47

Post by [deleted] »

untog wrote: post #27
realradicalwash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be sure that the passage is not misinterpreted (not saying you do, OP): This was not said to excuse the Germans from the responsibility of facing their history. I can personally be not guilty and yet, by being part of a society that builds on a troubled past, bear the responsibilities that come with that past (responsibility to do better, reparations, making amends, and alike). And in this spirit, Weizaecker…

> This point can imv be applied to many historical failings and their long lasting legacies. Feels particularly resonant at this point in the United States. I've heard the argument before that slavery was abolished long ago, so it's time to move on. Unfortunately to the contrary: the effects are still with us. That doesn't mean us white folks have to assume personal guilt as if we held slaves ourselves, but we should…

[deleted]

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#48

Post by [deleted] »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #41
gspr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that isn't praise and "we'll all be better off" is taboo, and it doesn't matter what party, what your other positions are, it's sacrilegious. Are you sure that you're not mixing up that position being wrong with it being taboo ? It seems to have become very popular these days, especially among the alt right, to blame the ridicule and ignoring of their opinions on the "PC mainstream" having labelled them as…

Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this. What are the consequences of being wrong in public on this issue?

[deleted]

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#49

Post by SuoDuanDao »

gspr wrote: post #43
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this. What are the consequences of being wrong in public on this issue?

> Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this. What are the consequences of being wrong in public on this issue? Someone living in Germany would be better suited to answer this, but, from my limited experience: the same as being wrong on a bunch of other things. Your statements are not considered sacrilegious, they're merely considered wrong and not worth listening to. For good reason, in my opinion. Nuanced debate, lik…

thank you for clarifying. Is it fair to say that it is a faux pas to be hyperbolic around charged issues in public?

Re: Weizsäcker's speech on 40th anniversary of WW2's end (1985)

#50

Post by barking »

notkaiho wrote: post #39
weinzierl wrote: post #35

Just a little background from a German perspective: Weizsäcker here is not the physicist but Richard von Weizsäcker, his brother. Richard von Weizsäcker was President of Germany from mid 80s to mid 90s. The President of Germany is, simply put, like British Monarchy. In practice he has mostly a representative role. As a president Weizsäcker was well popular in Germany and neither was reclusive nor caused any scandals,…

Except unlike the British Monarchy, one is not born into the position and cannot expect to gain the position purely by blood. The position itself may be largely ceremonial, but the holder of the post is recognised as an elder statesperson in their own right for their career prior to the presidency.

You can still get duffers in such jobs as often a candidate is put forward who's agreeable all parties and as such can be the lowest common denominator who won't rock the boat.
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