Timeline for Does the German President Steinmeier's apology for WWII reflect the prevailing views of the people of Germany?
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| S May 1, 2022 at 16:17 | history | suggested | Sybille Peters | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 1, 2022 at 8:18 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 1, 2022 at 16:17 | |||||
| Feb 27, 2022 at 0:43 | comment | added | uUnwY | You rightly comment that these monuments are still maintained. But I don't think this is evidence for hero worship now. I think today they are more seen like tombstones remembering the dead and it's bit taboo to remove them. Even though they may have some militaristic statements that were still normal in the 1950s but wouldn't be written now, they are left on the monuments as they are historic, unless they have clear nazi symbolism in which case they were already destroyed long ago. | |
| Feb 27, 2022 at 0:30 | comment | added | uUnwY | It is important to note that these monuments were, as far as I can see, all erected in the few years immediately after the war, by communities who just lost loved ones and were still very much mentally based in military thinking. They're not really an indication of opinions today, or even just a generation later in the 1960s. In fact the website about the Damp monument is very critical of the attitude expressed on it. I don't think any such hero worship would be acceptable now, nor has been for long time. | |
| Feb 2, 2020 at 10:24 | vote | accept | Mitsuko | ||
| Nov 24, 2019 at 21:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPolitics/status/1198708019300839424 | ||
| Nov 18, 2019 at 3:05 | review | Close votes | |||
| Nov 18, 2019 at 3:51 | |||||
| Nov 15, 2019 at 15:12 | answer | added | Jesse Williams | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 15, 2019 at 3:25 | comment | added | cbeleites | Mitsuko, I added an answer that besides giving some more detailed numbers about the public opinion also tries to tackle the questions of what you see as inconsistent. We may have to agree to disagree - but I tried to put down the logics as I understand them. | |
| Nov 15, 2019 at 3:11 | answer | added | cbeleites | timeline score: 12 | |
| Nov 14, 2019 at 16:28 | comment | added | henning no longer feeds AI | Monuments like the one you are referring to are often defaced, which gives you a bit of an idea about public sentiment surrounding the issue. | |
| Nov 14, 2019 at 14:04 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @Mitsuko You are insulting my dad. You don't have one bit of a clue what he did and what he didn't do. And there are plenty of German women living in the east of the country who will feel deeply insulted when a Russian complains about women being raped. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 22:25 | comment | added | barbecue | @Mitsuko monuments like this are deliberately intended to be permanent. Retroactively editing them every time opinions change would be impossible. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 18:18 | answer | added | tim | timeline score: 9 | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 17:41 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @Gerrit : I just further edited my question to replace "you will easily find many monuments" by "you will find monuments." I guess it is more neutral and factual in this way. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 17:39 | history | edited | Mitsuko | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 13, 2019 at 17:02 | history | protected | Philipp♦ | ||
| Nov 13, 2019 at 16:30 | history | edited | Mitsuko | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:54 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @Gerrit : Even if those monuments were built before WWII and then were just "updated" by adding the WWII years and new soldier names, these monuments still portray German soldiers of WWII as heroes. Maintaining such monuments and apologizing to the victims of those soldiers at the same time seems inconsistent to me. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:45 | comment | added | cbeleites | @gerrit: I think that is also the case for link1 (which also has heroes, WWI in center) | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:42 | comment | added | gerrit | @Mitsuko Thanks for the additional links. I suspect those monuments predate WW II, and that the dates for WW II were added later. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:42 | comment | added | Patrick Trentin | @Mitsuko Thank you for the clarification. I believe it would be helpful to incorporate the gits of your mental process about this issue within the question. The claim that "Many German soldiers shared the ideology of the Führer and thus were like him" is quite interesting. If you have any chance and also have enough time, it would be helpful to include in your question some link pointing at the corresponding evidence about it. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:36 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @PatrickTrentin : After all, there are no graves or monuments of Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele, Göring, etc. Many German soldiers shared the ideology of their Führer and thus were like him. Just like him, they saw their objective in securing extra living space at the expense of other nations. They were aggressors, they committed a lot of war crimes, and they lost. I believe there is nothing they should be honored for, even despite their courage in battles. You know, bank robbers are courageous either. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:33 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @PatrickTrentin : I find it inconsistent to call German soldiers Helden (heroes) and at the same time apologize to their victims. I find it inconsistent even to maintain monuments listing names of German soldiers and at the same time apologize to their victims. Just imagine how a descendant of those who were murdered or raped by German soldiers will feel seeing such monuments. I personally know one Russian who felt deeply offended when he saw a German war memorial glorifying soldiers who had seen his ancestors as Untermenschen and had invaded to enslave them. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:29 | answer | added | Jay | timeline score: 7 | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:19 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @cbeleitessupportsMonica : >> The first example really sticks out of all those memorials I've seen. Where is it? << I just edited my question in order to answer this. The monument is in Damp, Kreis Rendsburg-Eckenförde. You can find the monument on this website: denk-mal-gegen-krieg.de/kriegerdenkmaeler/… . I also added two links to monuments that explicitly refer to German soldiers of WWII as Helden (heroes). | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:18 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @AaronF : Thanks a lot for the explanation. I have just edited the title by replacing "the views" by "the prevailing views" to address your point. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:14 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @Gerrit : >> Only one of your links (the first one) remotely glorifies the soldiers of WW II << Thanks a lot for pointing this out. I just edited my question to add two more links that show monuments glorifying the German soldiers of WWII (link6 and link7). In those monuments the German soldiers of WWII are explicitly referred to as Helden (heroes). | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 15:12 | history | edited | Mitsuko | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
addressed various points raised in the comments below
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| Nov 13, 2019 at 14:53 | comment | added | Baldrickk | Something I've seen as a visitor to Germany on a number of occasions is a disconnect between Germans and Nazis. - The "Nazis" were responsible for WWII, not "Germany". It not a denial of what happened, but a separation of concepts - an axis soldier was fighting for his country as much as any allied soldier. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 12:55 | comment | added | cbeleites | The first example really sticks out of all those memorials I've seen. Where is it? (BTW, I'd translate heilig -> holy rather than divine - divine would be göttlich) Holy courage IMHO still isn't wording I'd use nor expect to see unless there are particular circumstances for those particular ones. I tried to google the sentence and interestingly, it seems to be a verse from a WWI poem: books.google.de/books?id=tHRnDQAAQBAJ&&pg=PA138 and that one at least to me reads much more mourning than hero worship. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 12:36 | comment | added | Patrick Trentin | I don't see how being respectful towards the effort of those who fought and lost on the German side may be seen as in contrast with the respect and the apology for the victims on the other side. It is not like most simple soldiers wouldn't have preferred living a peaceful and safe life within their own country rather than dying for the gambles of its leaders in a terrifying war. Could you clarify the reason why you (seemingly) see the two things as incompatible with one another in the question? | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 9:24 | comment | added | Tom W | What is not mentioned in the question or any of the answers as far as I can see is that this article is specific to the international relations of Germany and Poland. The apology was for the cruelty inflicted on Poland and the Polish people, well in excess of that to be expected from a war fought "honourably" between states. Asking whether a state should apologise for escalating to armed conflict is a different question to asking whether it should apologise for egregious crimes against humanity on a previously-unimagined scale. | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 8:30 | answer | added | knallfrosch | timeline score: 32 | |
| Nov 13, 2019 at 3:34 | comment | added | Ron Maupin | Regardless of the right or wrong of a war, the individual soldiers were doing their duty to their homeland (often conscripted), so it is right to honor their heroism. Think about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict. It was not up to the grunt in the trenches. Perhaps the conflict, and the way it may have been waged was controversial, but trying to hold the individual soldiers responsible for the conflict was wrong, and history is now reversing itself on that. | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 22:28 | comment | added | gerrit | Only one of your links (the first one) remotely glorifies the soldiers of WW II. I have never seen glorification of WW II Wehrmacht except from neonazis. Your claim that "you will easily find many monuments portraying the soldiers as heroes" is incorrect. | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 14:52 | comment | added | Aaron F | @Mitsuko the difference is that saying "the views of the people of Germany" can be understood or construed to mean "the views of all of the people of Germany", so it's often useful to qualify "people" with "all", "none", "some", "many", "majority", "minority" to make it clear and allow no room for ambiguity. Saying "the popular view" is a short way of saying "the view held by the majority of people", using the word "popular" as in "of the people", rather than "popular" as in "popularity" ...which, I suppose, could also easily be confusing! Stick with "majority of people" :-D | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 13:29 | comment | added | Mitsuko | Of course, I am only interested to learn about views shared by considerable portions of the German population, not all existing views. I expected answers like, "Most German people think X but a considerable portion of German people think Y." | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 13:25 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @AaronF : Oh, I am not a native English speaker and do not see any substantial difference between "the views of the people of Germany" and "the popular view of the German people." What is the difference? I was just curious as to what Germans think. My original intent was to ask this: if we take each existing view or feeling in Germany about WWII, with weights proportional to the number of Germans who share or agree with that particular view or feeling, how well will Steinmeier's words reflect the resulting big picture? So I am curious as to which views are there and how prevalent they are. | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 12:46 | comment | added | Aaron F | Instead of "the views of the people of Germany" did you mean to write "the popular view of the German people"? The two have different meanings. Reading your comments, now it seems quite likely you mean the latter. In which case, yes, your question is answerable, but I would re-word it if I were you, to avoid confusion. | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 12:11 | comment | added | Mitsuko | @AaronF : >> the question appears unanswerable because the "views of the people of Germany" can never be known << There may be evidence in the form of surveys, polls, articles in local newspapers, statements by low-rank politicians, teaching materials, etc. After all, Germans who currently live in Germany can post answers here to share their own observations and impressions about the views of their compatriots. | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 11:03 | comment | added | Aaron F | The question appears unanswerable because the "views of the people of Germany" can never be known. | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 10:15 | answer | added | eagle275 | timeline score: 11 | |
| Nov 12, 2019 at 4:57 | history | edited | Mitsuko | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 12, 2019 at 3:04 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Nov 12, 2019 at 2:10 | history | edited | JJJ♦ |
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| Nov 12, 2019 at 1:40 | review | Close votes | |||
| Nov 12, 2019 at 2:10 | |||||
| Nov 11, 2019 at 20:32 | answer | added | Arno | timeline score: 83 | |
| Nov 11, 2019 at 19:13 | answer | added | o.m. | timeline score: 18 | |
| Nov 11, 2019 at 18:52 | history | asked | Mitsuko | CC BY-SA 4.0 |