You'll burst and still you're hungry

[matrixmann]

Introduction of a memorial day for the German displaced persons in Germany in 2015 - June 20th.

70 years of war being over - and all the government has to offer still is rejecting the defeat by laying emphasis on that Germans were driven out of nowadays' Poland after a lost war?

Comments

[animaltime.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I thought Germany had a very repentant attitude toward WW2. This sounds like the opposite.

[matrixmann]

On the outside they always try to make you think like this. But, if you look behind the curtain - news like this about the relationship of the government, especially the CDU party, and the organizations for the German displaced persons in WWII you mostly don't even hear about here either. The only thing you perhaps might catch is when they had one of their meetings. But what's happened there, who spoke there - nothing.
If you believe other sources than official TV, you get to know why.
High politicians, including Merkel herself, still give those organizations moral backup, support and hope for one day fulfilling their claims.
Once somebody told me and I went reading and found what he was talking about: There are even parts in the CDU party (Merkel's party) which still do not recognize or doubt the Oder-Neisse line. Until the Two Plus Four Agreement Western German politicians (I guess a lot from the CDU) didn't recognize this border. Through the treaty all things were finally set in this matter, but still until today there remain some who have their doubts on the rightfullness of that.
The thing that they base this attitude on is the Potsdam Agreement.
As far as I could get it, the handling over of occupied areas (occupied by the three states that won the war) was differently "understood" - the United States later said the agreement was only "a sketch", it was nothing final for them, while Stalin took the agreement as final and made the convoys roll. It is important to note that the US claimed this after the whole displacement of the Germans already took place.
So to say, those who still doubt the Oder-Neisse line follow this position that the United States came up with. (In fact some say here the United States didn't have any problem what's been going on in the Third Reich, those things which happened to the Jews and stuff; they only started to have a problem with them since German submarines appeared before their coasts and tried to control their trade routes and shot their trading ships.)

Being a German, hearing that, you start to take those claims for "overtaking more responsibility in military actions" from the German President, the German chancelor, the German defense minister and the rest of those high politicians very differently as their original meaning supposedly was.

[animaltime.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I don't know enough about WW2 history to understand the politics of the Oder-Neisse line or the Two Plus Four Agreement...

Also, you have to take into consideration the possibility that many Germans living in the East probably didn't align themselves with Hitler or the Third Reich.

[matrixmann]

Even if you live in Central Europe, you'll discover you only know a little peak of the iceberg. You notice that now on gathering information about the Ukraine war.
You notice that mainly the evens in Central Europe and what Germany (directly) did are known, but there's very little information about what happened in Southern Europe and in Eastern Europe.
Research already started on this because some realized this one-sided focus, but it will take time until they know as much as what they know about the events in Poland (maybe they will never get to know).

These terms are used to make you know exactly where it originates from. Even in German you have trouble finding information about that, so I wouldn't expect English sources to report anything about it.
It took a bit of time finding the international pendant names, as in German they won't be useful to you...

The fact that this kind of information survived at all, about West Germany still clinging to what they lost in WWII, probably can be reduced to that East Germany received a completely different government.
Russia treated the cleansing from Reich executors (in positions) differently than the US-influenced West Germany, as they suffered great losses through what Hitler and his friends had done.
As it was mentioned, the US didn't have a great opposition to what the Third Reich had been doing, it only enraged them as they started to attack and sabotage their own means, so they didn't have big reasons to remove the basic mind-set which people in positions had in this time. They removed the acute cases which couldn't be denied and which they could fetch, otherwise they cooperated with them (examples: building up of the German secret service BND, Klaus Barbie).
In this position, Russia was different and any new state that was founded with their help they took care that no-one of these old elite may come to power again. So they (Russia and the following states) had any reason to release information that the Western coalition liked to be dropped underneath the table. (Sure there also was exaggerated information.)

[animaltime.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that the United States didn't enter the war for humanitarian reasons.

Honestly, it's embarrassing, but I don't know enough about the history of the war to hold up my end of a conversation about it :( I think Americans have a very different perspective because we weren't involved in the way that Europeans were (the war was fought on YOUR ground, not ours).

[matrixmann]

I return that. For that there's not much known about the Pacific war, which the US-ian point of view may know more about. (Including like the wars for Korea and such.)

[animaltime.livejournal.com]

American high school students get a very cursory review of the history of the World Wars and I don't even think that the parts of WWII that were fought on American soil (Pearl Harbor, for example) are studied or taught in any great depth. It's a shame, of course.

[matrixmann]

You will wonder. History lesson in Europe also covers WWII very superficially, if your teacher talks about it at all. It depends very much on if you have time and if your teacher finds it important that you know about the on-goings. (Documentaries also don't help much either as they're the same as that, hand-picked documentaries will go into the depth that I went - plus, they show them too often that you only want to switch the TV off.)

The meaning was: Different cultural circle, different information. If you try to go in-depth of that topic, you're going to find more information on the Pacific war in the US as they were the main party who lead the counter-offensive in that area, so that is more of an interest and meaning for them.

[animaltime.livejournal.com]

True!