Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

It's more than that. There's an entire trend of depicting the common rank and file as just general nationalist Germans following orders and defending their country. The North Africa campaign gets hit with this narrative of "chivalrous warfare" a lot. Not entirely coincidental that Rommel was heavily involved in that one.

I'm guessing that's because one enters into a sort of narrative paradox in which one needs to tackle a rather serious event with all its spectrum of morality but at the same time everyone on the other side, even the rank and file behave no better than orcs so there's no reason to actually delve deeper because what you see is what you get from them.

This whole "Clean Wehrmacht" and "We didn't know" myths seem like attempts to avoid feeling complete guilt over their roles in the Holocaust by throwing the ruling party under the bus.

The Allies also had a vested interest in rehabilitating a lot of German military officers in particular after the war purely because they were already preparing for the next one and wanted some dedicated anti-communists to build up a new German army.

Case in point: One of the people put in charge of building up the Bundeswehr was Erich von Manstein, a convicted war criminal.

And regarding the "We didn't know" myth - in a lot of cases shame was arguably the biggest factor. People would rather pretend they didn't know anything at all then face questions of why they didn't step up to stop the atrocities from happening.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Aug 18th 2022 at 8:58:20 PM

That most rank and file probably didn't have an actual choice in the matter should be a bigger factor than denying reality and claiming they didn't know better.

The thing is, we now have rules that deliberately state which is the limit in which you can use the Just Following Orders defense and when it is just deflecting from responsibility. If you need good germans -for instance- then just make them explicit defectors or rebels against the Nazi government.

"Now" being the keyword there.

It's not like a work can't lean to that message without having to mention that it's actually both the moral and lawful thing mind you. I think you can actually make a very mature take on WWII that ends up saying "yes, even with all the nuances you can invoke, the moral thing was to take a stand against the nazis".

If you want an example, you can actually look at the opening and closing narration of Gertraud Junge in Downfall, who explicitly says that she tried to assuage her guilt on the matter of working with the Nazis by thinking there was no other way, but when she learned that there had been a younger german woman who died fighting against the Nazis, she couldn't deflect the shame of not standing up and doing the moral thing anymore.

It's actually why it's so galling, personally speaking, how the group that often gets the most attention in media are Stauffenberg and his co-plotters - when most of them had been dedicated loyalists to Hitler up to the point where Operation Barbarossa was clearly going belly-up.

There were a lot of brave people who tried to stop or at least sabotage the Nazis and many of them actually had higher ideals instead of blatant opportunism.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Aug 19th 2022 at 9:19:51 PM

I mean "not wanting to die" is a good reason as any. I'm willing to bet most Germans who rebelled against the Nazis had already lost everything else at that point.

Yeah, but for all allied condemnation of Nazi atrocities, they were not exactly comfortable with depicting defectors and traitors as heroes. Especially just after the war. Not to mention it was the Germans who had used military units made of collaborators by the end of the war, not the allies. So the depiction of German defectors is relegated to spy fiction, and even there is not really as commonplace as for example communist defectors during the Cold War.

While that is true, you can’t deny another person can call that out as cowardice.

"That most rank and file probably didn't have an actual choice in the matter should be a bigger factor than denying reality and claiming they didn't know better. "

Also many of them were already brought to the fold so to speak, which bring us to the next point

"The thing is, we now have rules that deliberately state which is the limit in which you can use the Just Following Orders defense and when it is just deflecting from responsibility. If you need good germans -for instance- then just make them explicit defectors or rebels against the Nazi government. "

Is that while this is true, many state today still have ways to ensure the cooperation of soldiers even in awfull shit, guantamo still happen and none of the perpetrator saw justice and in a kinda complete circle moment Israel have ensure damn well IDF can do whatever they want except speak against the goverment. Which make doubt how much the "good soldier who is against the goverment" really hold up in reallity.

"The Allies also had a vested interest in rehabilitating a lot of German military officers in particular after the war purely because they were already preparing for the next one and wanted some dedicated anti-communists to build up a new German army. "

And to be fair is not also like the Allies didnt mind facist as long they got something they wanted, the nazi scientist for example or what is probably even worst, the goddamn 781 unit, their pardoning is probably one of the blackest point of the Allies and one were they deserve every bit of shit here.

And they'd be stupid to do so. Not wanting to fucking die is simply survival, nothing more.

It goes into cowardice territory when it means standing by and letting other innocent people die. Or worse, abetting it.

For example, I'd have no problem calling someone who is willing to push down children while trying to get to the exit to avoid a fire a Dirty Coward. Same with a captain who abandons ship first long before the passengers have gotten to safety.

Edited by M84 on Aug 19th 2022 at 4:04:00 PM

I think it's very easy for people to say they'd do the right thing, or fight even if it meant their lives. If we're very lucky, we won't come to a situation where those are the only choices. A lot of people did do the right thing, and a lot of those people ended up dead.

Which is not to say that everyone who made it through Nazi Germany should be blanket pardoned of whatever they did just for the reason that they did it to survive, especially if it entailed leaving others to die or giving them up.

Edited by RedSavant on Aug 19th 2022 at 1:14:31 AM

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" as they say.

As I said, "Not wanting to die" isn't a good enough reason to push down other people as you make your way to the exit.

I will said also "just war" or how to wage war depend often about the type of war.

For example I will said state on state war are.....let call it "sexy" for fictional stand point and ukraine vs russia is the best example: is classic david vs goliath that is helped by the heroism of ukraine and russian doing the war bingo. Is easy to create memes, songs and stuff that give you and idea of how war can be necesary.

Contrast with....let said your typical latin american conflict between the goverment and whatever faction that arise to fight it, which end in a forever war were civilian are killed by both factions, big use of dirty tactics by everyone involds and it just kinda drag on and on and on over and over without the state really colapsing but never returing to normal, a lot of people dies, plenty of war crime that never get nowhere and you see why latin american often have some dim view of war. You cant hardly fine heroism there.

Would that include allied bombings of German civilians though? or the later US bombings of Korean civilians it inspired?

Edited by Gaiazun on Aug 19th 2022 at 2:57:12 AM

What are you talking about? Why is that addressed to me?

I also feel like we're getting pretty far off-topic here, though I admittedly contributed.

@M84: I agree that lines do have to be drawn when the survival of the people in your reach are at stake. I was more referring to people just trying to get through the day and keep their own families alive.

Edited by Rynnec on Aug 19th 2022 at 6:27:03 AM

This is reminding me of how For All Mankind (the Apple+ TV show, not the documentary) handled Werner von Braun. One of the earlier divergences between their timeline and ours is that von Braun was brought before the Senate and directly questioned about what exactly it was that he did in Nazi Germany. He was complicit in the concentration camps and used them for labour. He tries to protest that he wasn't told exactly what was happening, but he's not an idiot, he could easily have put together what was going on.

And the stuff brought up is true of him in our timeline, which is why he was held up as a hero for much of the Cold War and then...very quietly stopped getting attention and focus as more people twigged to how much he knew.

No offense but you should have started from there. It's one thing to say "I don't want to die because I have people depending on me coming back home" and another very different is plain out saying "I don't want to die".