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I've never gotten off too much on the nobility of WW2. One must consider what led up to it. One should ask themselves why an important member of the German leadership would fly to Britain early in the war.
I refer to Rudolf Hess. I wonder what was rejected that might have saved millions of lives. The man's unjust, lifetime imprisonment adds to the suspicions.
But I agree that Hess got off lightly.
No. He was in a British prison by 1941, after parachuting into England for unofficial peace talks, long before Auschwitz opened.
He was a political functionary, and tried to end the war.
From Wiki:
[ 28 October 2007: Message edited by: Jingles ]
[ 28 October 2007: Message edited by: RosaL ]
I should also have known, though, because Rudolph Hoess didn't get a life sentence - he was sentenced to death and was hanged in front of Auschwitz.
Apologies, bliter. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 28 October 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Thank you Jingles. I assumed that the Hess name was universally known - certainly by those who post here.
With the frequent, lightning reaction I'm just glad that I wasn't banned and that I'm able to reply.
Do you think Hess's sentence was unjust?
As for Hess's sentence - I just read the Wikipedia article on him since I only knew his name and that he was the guy who spent the rest of his life as the only prisoner in an entire jail. I remember hearing about it when I was a kid, because he died when I was a teenager, but I didn't remember many details about him except that he was one of Hitler's inner circle.
According to the Wikipedia article, many people felt that his sentence was inhumane. I don't know what I think, frankly. He apparently tried to broker peace, and it sounds like it's pretty well undisputed that the guy was insane. And apparently he was mistreated by the guards and possibly murdered in the jail.
And yet...he was Hitler's deputy and was one of the inner circle who planned and carried out the Holocaust.
My answer is - I don't know whether it was unjust, but I probably won't be losing any sleep over it.
[ 28 October 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Holy crap.
The white poppy sounds like a good idea. OR there's the old "for every woman raped in every war" button in the shape of a poppy.
[ 28 October 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]
I almost asked, "To whom is your question addressed?"
I'd already referred to my perceived injustice toward Hess. I feel no differently.
I'll not deny the brilliance of Winston Churchill but think he was very possessive of the war.
Ernst von Weizsacker was sentenced during the trials, and he was one of the Oster conspirators whose warnings to Downing Street were ignored in 1938. There were Germans in the Wehrmacht waiting for the order to assassinate Hitler. One of them described Hitler as "evil incarnate" and that there was still time to kill him before it was too late. Chamberlain referred to them as "anti-Nazis" who weren't to be trusted.
My mother's family endured war rationings, the night raids and old Churchill's ramblings over the radio. My grandfather Albert, himself a coal miner then, didn't think very much of Winston Churchill since the coal miner's strike of the mid 1920's. Churchill suggested that the army be brought in and wobbling miners dealt with by machine guns. Churchill and Franco had certain things in common.
If you read my post you'll see that I think the poppy is a symbol of death. It's certainly been co-opted as a military symbol. But now the poppy issue has become, as Spector alluded to, an annual event where certain progressives get to jump up and down and talk about "semiotics" and "memetics". An interesting tactic to gain support for one's movement, no?
Does not wearing a poppy count as activism?
First you press me for a reply to a question not asked. Then you produce this deliberately offensive post:
That's really offensive. Lots of people, including Winston Churchill, felt the sentence was unjust. So did his prosecutor. Doesn't make them Nazi sympathizers. It's not a black and white issue in this particular case. Please don't make thses sorts of comments about other babblers.
[ 29 October 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Every year in elementary school everyone would gather for Rememberance Day and listen to a presentation from a WWII vet. The emphasis was always on "never again", and the veteran would speak about the horrors of war, seeing friends killed, etc. So to me, the red poppy and Rememberance Day always had an anti-war message to it. I'm still not sure if I had ascribed a meaning to the red poppy that it never had, or if the meaning has been perverted over time. I guess I have some more reading to do before I make up my mind.
The problem I have with "support our troops" is the context in which (neo-)conservatives place it. When they say "support our troops", they usually mean at the same time "stop questioning our war".
Using our emotional attachment to our soldiers to send more soldiers to die in unjust wars. Perverse.
I completely understand people supporting and remembering the War Dead, I had grandfathers who were overseas, grandfathers, and a family friend who was part of the Belgian resistance (virtually unknown outside of Belgium), of course there were both of my grandmothers who took factory jobs during the war to 'help the cause'.
I also understand the desire to stop the war mongering that goes on, and the blanket "support the troops' 'remember our fallen' and 'shut up and stop questioning the fact that we need to go to war all the time'.
I've got a poppy now, but I'm torn every time I wear it. I know I'm being politicized and I hate that, but I also really want the discussion that's happening here (and happens every year) about it. It helps to bring it back to the original message of remembering the suffering of millions of people throughout the world and how they suffered during the war, and how we should be remembering the millions of people who are suffering right now because of war.
As for the 'never again' tag, it seems to be that has slowely been shifting from a 'never a war like that again' to a 'never a jewish holocaust again'. Of course both are correct, but the latter seems to spring to mind now instead of the former.
Far more, orders of magnitude more, civilians die in wars than soldiers. But they don't count on remembrance day, because organizations like the Legion want exclusive ownership of it, using the symbology of the day as a means of self-promotion. Likewise, they act as the mullahs of historical correctiveness, challenging anyone or any organization which dare question veterans' claims of nobility for their actions during wartime.
And governments aren't interested in civilian victims of wars they start, because it kinda puts their actions and motives in question.
And Hess was his right-hand man.
If a life sentence in prison is not justified against Hess, then the jails of the world should be emptied at once.
What a ridiculous assertion suggesting that historical atrocities and government brutality are the result of "mental illness".
Does that mean that all the citizens and the elite of Germany who supported fascism were "mentally ill" what about the support for fascism throughout the rest of the world, what about the support of state sanctioned violence today. What about the history of western Colonialism? Is this all a matter of "mental illness."
Somehow I guess that entire generation just wasn't as smart or as moral as that of today. How else could they have failed to appreciated how wrong they were to take the red poppy as an emblem of remembrance for all the sons, daughters, husbands and wives who died or were maimed for what they believed was a worthy cause.
Then again, from some posts you'd almost have to assume that past generations must have had no education in history, morals and ethics at all, as if it wasn't until 1980 or so that books were invented!
Thank heavens a few have been born today that are wise enough to show how so many were wrong...
(That last sentence was an example of irony, for those that didn't get it. Irony has been around for quite a few years as well...)
[ 29 October 2007: Message edited by: Wild Bill ]
Bill, how right you are.
It's ridiculous to apply today's values to the past. Lincoln for example has lately been portrayed as someone who championed the equality of African Americans. In actuality he was, by today's standards, a complete racist.
That kind of argument would preclude criticism of witch-burning, religious persecution, persecution of homosexuals, racial segregation, a belief that women belong in the home and girls aren't good at math - well, I could go on and on...
In any case, there was a minority who held views like mine even then. I can supply some examples, if you like.
[ 29 October 2007: Message edited by: RosaL ]
[ 29 October 2007: Message edited by: RosaL ]
In the middle of a discussion about the appropriateness of Hess's life sentence, Caissa observed that Hess was "probably" mentally ill. I took that as an assertion of a factor to be taken into account in assessing the sentence. I certainly did not take it as an attempt to advance a theory that Nazism was all just the product of mental illness.
In my view, Caissa's assertion in no way diminishes Hess's moral responsibility for war crimes (I don't even know if that was Caissa's intent). Nor does the fact that Hitler "probably" suffered from mental illness diminish his responsibility. Though it is probably an argumentum ad Hitlerum, that was my point; Hess was no less guilty than Hitler.
[ 29 October 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]
An overload of hyperbole there. Hitler did not, early in the war, fly into enemy territory and place himself in great danger of being shot.
For a double moral standard, consider the treatment of Dr. Werner Von Braun who has, no doubt, had considerable assistance cleaning up his biography:
excerpt:
While it is important to historicize cultural symbols under critique (and it should be "remembered" that World War I was hardly without its contemporary critics) and equally important to trace its historical and contextual evolution (again, very few Canadians and almost no non-Jewish Canadians even knew about the holocaust before 1944, so such noble motivation holds little truck) it is equally important, as M. Spector has surely done, to demonstrate that the poppy of today is emphatically not the poppy of 1918. It is an utterly new creature, and those who push it today claiming it is a symbol of nostalgic honour and bravery (untainted by charges of imperialism and self-interest as it would have been at all points in its lifetime) are not only doing a disservice to its historical legacy, but are wilfully abusing whatever moral worth the symbol still possesses.
Condemning the poppy has nothing to do with judging the immorality or naivety of past generations, but rather concerns righteous criticism of state propaganda for the purposes of war--something no progressive should support. Those who claim that wearing a poppy now does not contribute to the violent jingoism and false emotion that fuels current imperialist and colonialist warfare are emptying a symbol meant for peace of its ethos and shanghaiing it for murder, rape and bloodshed.
[ 29 October 2007: Message edited by: Catchfire ]