05-13-2011, 09:03 PM
rj lets be clear, I don't think you are sympathetic to Nazis in any way!! To me though it seems important to hold people accountable, as individuals.
I don't think anyone here nor anywhere can answer with certainty the question of how so many people came to lack conscience. We need to remember that it wasn't only Germans who aided the Nazis.
You could look at many things in Germany though:
*a psychologically damaged people following their WWI loss
*anti-semitism
*Complicity from the largest church organizations
*dire economic circumstances
*misguided national pride
*really bad leadership (understatement of the century)
etc....lots of things
We could have a similar discussion about the institution of slavery.
We can only look at what happened and try to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Of course there has been other genocide in the world since 1945 and sometimes it is stopped, other times not. The fact is we are humans who make mistakes and do wrong all over the spectrum, all the time. Most of our individual wrongs will be forgotten, but sometimes wrongs are so wrong that they walk into history called a "Holocaust."
I don't think anyone here nor anywhere can answer with certainty the question of how so many people came to lack conscience. We need to remember that it wasn't only Germans who aided the Nazis.
You could look at many things in Germany though:
*a psychologically damaged people following their WWI loss
*anti-semitism
*Complicity from the largest church organizations
*dire economic circumstances
*misguided national pride
*really bad leadership (understatement of the century)
etc....lots of things
We could have a similar discussion about the institution of slavery.
We can only look at what happened and try to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Of course there has been other genocide in the world since 1945 and sometimes it is stopped, other times not. The fact is we are humans who make mistakes and do wrong all over the spectrum, all the time. Most of our individual wrongs will be forgotten, but sometimes wrongs are so wrong that they walk into history called a "Holocaust."