The Undiscovered Dead

[cronus]

Well, quite often folks bury bodies to hide crimes. Was thinking it seemed really easy for Isis to walk in and take over northern Iraq. Maybe someone with a gnu been in earlier and killed all the Iraqis that way who might have defended the place, and hid the bodies? Can't think who?

http://www.whiterosesociety.org/WRS_pamphets_first.html

[Blind groper]

I think the description of the German people as spineless and gutless during WWII is unfair and inaccurate. I think they were simply human, and in error, as peoples everywhere are human, and make mistakes.

Look at the American people who voted George W. Bush back into power after committing them to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Were the Americans who voted that way gutless? Mistaken definitely. But we are all mistaken from time to time.

We are all also a product of our culture. Americans today are a product of a world view in which they see themselves as paramount. The British did the same during the days of empire. That is the reason, for example, why when I am arguing with Seth, he ignores examples from outside the USA. He considers those examples unimportant because they are unAmerican. He is in error, as many Americans are in error.

So were the Germans in WWII. Not gutless. Just mistaken.

[Hermit]

I think the description of the German people as spineless and gutless during WWII is unfair and inaccurate.

Not just during WWII. In the last elections before Hitler became Germany's dictator via the Enabling Law in March 1933, neither he (presidential elections, March 1932) nor his party, the NSDAP (German federal elections in July 1932) got anywhere near the majority vote. The results were 36.8 and 37.3% of the vote respectively. Prior to that there were hundreds of street battles in which dozens of participants were killed. Hitler's militia, the SA, was just more ruthless and better trained and organised, and particularly efficient at assassinating leading opponents of fascism. Another major reason why the fascists won despite their failure to ever gain majority support was that the opposition was spread over five divided parties that ranged from conservatives through democrats and socialists to the communist end of the political and social spectrum.

As for the pamphlet linked to in the opening post, it might also be useful to realise that it was written by Germans for Germans in 1942. The authors belonged to "The White Rose Society", and most of them were devout Christians. That is why they ignored the non-denominational resistance, and they were obviously much taken by committed Christians leaders at large not participating in the resistance. Factual truth was never the objective. An emotional appeal for Germans to be real, freedom loving Germans like Schiller and Goethe, was.

While distributing the remains of a suitcase full of copies of their sixth pamphlet from the rooftop of a Munich University building, two White Rose members were seen, recognised and eventually arrested. Eventually 19 of its members were executed after a series of show trials between 1943 and 1944. Dozens more escaped detection or there was insufficient evidence for their implication.



Hans Scholl (left), the founder of the White Rose Society, and two other leaders of the group, the one in the middle being his sister, Sophie.

[cronus]

Lets a lot of folks off the hook. Like it or not, many people miscalculate on purpose. Well, maybe the guy in the doorway out there doesn't but he's still got his bottle of bootleg gin.

[Hermit]

Lets a lot of folks off the hook.

That's pretty much par for the course. As far as I can tell, not a single person for the 23,000 massacred and buried by the soviets in the Katyn forest was ever even charged, let alone convicted of a crime, and the only conviction following the Mỹ Lai massacre of between 350 and 500 civilians by the US army was a lowly lieutenant who finished up with three years under house arrest.