Article 4: Germans and history
Misconception: All of German history was inevitably leading up to the Hitler and the Nazis.
Arguments:
-German people should not have been stereotyped and stigmatized after the war. Many Germans refused to support for Hitler and secretly aided the Jews during the Holocaust.
- The racial fanaticism that Hitler and the Nazi party stood for was not a representation of German history up to that point in time, nor is it a representation of German culture today.
- To claim that all of German history can be defined during Hitler's 12-year regime, and to claim that the German people were willing accomplices to the Holocaust, is an unjust misrepresentation of the facts.
"Germans are an old people...but the history of a dozen years has cast a long shadow over the thousands of years of their existence as a people" (171).
"Each generation and each individual bears the heavy burden of guilt for what they did - but not for what others did in other places and other times" (200).
Arguments:
-German people should not have been stereotyped and stigmatized after the war. Many Germans refused to support for Hitler and secretly aided the Jews during the Holocaust.
- The racial fanaticism that Hitler and the Nazi party stood for was not a representation of German history up to that point in time, nor is it a representation of German culture today.
- To claim that all of German history can be defined during Hitler's 12-year regime, and to claim that the German people were willing accomplices to the Holocaust, is an unjust misrepresentation of the facts.
"Germans are an old people...but the history of a dozen years has cast a long shadow over the thousands of years of their existence as a people" (171).
"Each generation and each individual bears the heavy burden of guilt for what they did - but not for what others did in other places and other times" (200).
This cartoon illustrates the blame placed on German children for the sins of their grandparents generation before. It is wrong for children to feel guilty for a crime that they had nothing to do with themselves. "Johnny" is simply attending school, yet his education on the Holocaust is pointing fingers at him for crimes committed 75 years in the past.