Liam Posted February 15, 2004 Share Posted February 15, 2004 John: There is definitely guilt outside..Switzerland and Sweden helped the German War Effort some, more than Chamberlain or Stalin, I doubt.. Though I disagree with you. Those who signed the Pact gained something small. However, they signed it and willingly handed over their Minorities... Whether they were bullied or not there were nations who didn't bend over. The Czecks mobilized and prepared to fight. The Poles fought as well in the East. The Yugoslavs and Greeks did to a lesser degree and under different circumstances that may not count. The Fins had a bone to pick, and despite Mother Russia serving the Nazis was wrong. I blame them less than the Balkans who were infighting in many many Wars over their own Border, Ethnic disputes... As I remeber Romania, Bulgaria both got land for their part? Italy is odd, but lead by a bit of a enigmatic Leader doesn't shock me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerseyJohn Posted February 15, 2004 Share Posted February 15, 2004 Liam Of course -- I'm not about to attempt to say the Balkan nations were saintly. Their leaders were among the most backstabbing and coniving in Europe! Hungary and Bulgaria both wanted parts of Rumania and Yugoslavia. Greece wanted part of Turkey and Turkey wanted all of Greece; both of them wanted Cypress! Hungary and Poland both played a part in cooperating with Germany in the carving of Czechoslovakia. When the Holocaust ended, liberated victims of the camps returning to their homes in Hungary and Poland were usually murdered when they sought to claim their property! There are few innocents on this planet and I'm not trying to find any in the Carpathians. As for the course various nations choose, it's often dictated by factors so dizzyingly complex as to seem totally incomprehensible to people of another age and especially of another place. We've both studied things in detail and neither of us are naive. It's very hard for me to find rights and wrongs in any of it. Two of the most powerful nations were led by iron willed madmen who called all the shots. Two others were too long under the control of shortsighted weaklings and the fifth had spent years being driven away from the nations it wanted to line up with and virtually forced to side with the country it had originally seen itself as a bulwark against! It was a confused, insane age. An entire continent living in a lunatic asylum. All I'm saying is collective guilt is wrong. At fifty-four I look back and can't really see very much this country has done, for good or bad, that either myself or anyone I've ever known has had very much control over. I'd hate to be part of the collective guilt for our own misdeeds and can't point a finger at the common people in other countries. I keep reading things like, "They could smell the burning flesh for miles around, how can they claim they knew nothing of what was going on?" Well, just what exactly were those people in the surrounding villages supposed to do, walk around with picket signs demanding the removal of Hittler, Himmler and all the others? Right, they'd have been the next items rising in those chimneys. What's more, those townspeople couldn't even have moved to another area. They were stuck and later reviled and made to go to those camps, even young adolescents and old women, to drag the corpses with their own hands. Yeah, I understand generals such as Patton not wanting anyone to later say none of it had ever happened,* but wouldn't it have been greater justice to have the SS guards do the dragging? As I grow older I appreciate more and more that if the same kind of government took over in the United States the American people would have little more choice than to live under it, exactly as the Germans, Japanese, Italians, Russians, Iraqis and Iranians have all been forced to do in their turn. And a lot of us, so free with our thoughts, would probably be rounded up very quickly for political re-education, or worse. BTW, enjoyed very much your earlier posting about the circumstances that fell into place to allow your birth ... a lot of good things in there. ==* and despite all of that, within decades there were people all over the world denying it had ever happened! I stood beside an old lady in 1983 who had survived Buchenwald and had a tatoo'd number on her arm, and an insane racist told her to her face that she was a liar! --Where do you go and what do you do if someone like him, somehow, ends up calling the shots? Far fetched thoughts, but imagine what a typical person in 1913 would have told you if asked his opinion on what the rest of the century would look like. How many would have come up with either World War, the Holocaust, or the Gulags? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzeh Posted February 15, 2004 Share Posted February 15, 2004 Well then, if the Hungarians were involved in the holocaust, why did hitler have Horthy snatched and placed under house arrest? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerseyJohn Posted February 16, 2004 Share Posted February 16, 2004 Panzeh I have no idea who you're talking to or the time you're talking about. 1) Horthy wasn't involved in the Holocaust. 2) He was Hitler's willing assistant all through the war and as far back as Czechoslovakia. 3) Hitler had him toppled because he wanted to pull Hungary out of the war and presumably the Soviets would have been able to pass through the country. Also, Hungry had the last ounces of oil still available to Germany and Hitler, in his madness, was obsessed with the idea the there was still a sizable Jewish population living there and, as you said, Horthy would not go along with the Nazi insanity. 4) After removing Horthy Hungary was under German control and the Arrow Cross (I believe that was it's name, I may be wrong) emerged and they rounded up the Hungarian Jews, who feared them more than they feared the Gestapo. 5) After the war, Jews from the concentration camps returning to what had been their countries, were often killed by those who, in their absense, had taken over their homes! [ February 15, 2004, 07:37 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted February 16, 2004 Share Posted February 16, 2004 http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/albums/palbum/p01/a0081p2.html from the Simon Wiesenthal Files, back up what John said. The Hungarians were not any nicer than the Germans as far as I can tell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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