Jewish anon whose family fled Germany loves you and seconds hard. I love German culture so much, and people find that surprising, but, aargh, they have done so much.
German!anon feels like her world just got a bit better =)
Seconding. (I actually wanted to request this for a long time, but I felt uncomfortable) Germany is in no sense perfect, but they at least try really hard. Visiting an ex-concentration camp after going through all this in school during 9th grade was quite traumatic D=
To be honest, I felt really uncomfortable requesting this, too. Right or not, Germany and WWII is still taboo in a way that pretty much no other country and war is, and saying that Germany's done anything right on the topic of WWII immediately raises hackles. To be honest, I think that may be part of the reason why people tend to view this aspect of the war accountability issue as "Why don't all nations apologize?" rather than "Why did Germany apologize?" Putting the emphasis on other nations not apologizing makes apologizing seem like the normal thing to do, when really, Germany's accepting of its accountability is extraordinary, and accepting that Germany is extraordinary in a good way in a WWII issue is a very difficult thing for a lot of people to do. Now, apologizing for past crimes should be normal, sure, but it isn't. And I think a lot of people forget than when looking at Germany and WWII.
God, I could talk about this forever. x.x I'll shut up now. I'm just glad I could make a request (and get a fill!) on a very serious topic that other people are interested in.
If you'd read my original post, you'd see that I acknowledged that Germany isn't perfect and that other nations have apologized for some things they've done.
But my original post is long and hard to read, so I'll say it again.
Is Germany perfect? No. Far from it.
But Germany has done more than the bare minimum, and that's a lot more than you can say about many other countries.
I read our prompt and it sound like, as another anon said, that you presented Germany as a righteous nation among assholes. And that's simply not true. Germany has apologised for some of its crimes during WWII and other countries have apologised for some of their crime all trough history. I don't see what's so extraordinary about that.
My first thought was that even simply not apologising is doing better than England - going by the history books I've read, we still seem proud of at least some of the shit we pulled. "Sure, it was the wrong thing to do, BUT IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME!"
(Headcanon is that the nation-tans have made all the apologies they need to make to each other, but can't do anything about the humans because they don't control their humans and can't reveal that they exist. Hopelessly optimistic about the show, yeah.)
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Re: Germany - WWII accountability
(Anonymous) 2012-02-03 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Germany - WWII accountability
(Anonymous) 2012-02-04 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)Seconding. (I actually wanted to request this for a long time, but I felt uncomfortable)
Germany is in no sense perfect, but they at least try really hard. Visiting an ex-concentration camp after going through all this in school during 9th grade was quite traumatic D=
OP
(Anonymous) 2012-02-17 05:39 am (UTC)(link)God, I could talk about this forever. x.x I'll shut up now. I'm just glad I could make a request (and get a fill!) on a very serious topic that other people are interested in.
Re: OP
(Anonymous) 2012-02-17 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)Re: OP
(Anonymous) 2012-02-18 08:24 pm (UTC)(link)But my original post is long and hard to read, so I'll say it again.
Is Germany perfect? No. Far from it.
But Germany has done more than the bare minimum, and that's a lot more than you can say about many other countries.
Re: OP
(Anonymous) 2012-02-18 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)Re: OP
(Anonymous) 2012-02-17 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)(Headcanon is that the nation-tans have made all the apologies they need to make to each other, but can't do anything about the humans because they don't control their humans and can't reveal that they exist. Hopelessly optimistic about the show, yeah.)