@alamein:
I would tend to agree with you about humanity- not being much different than animals- and would reply that in truth we try too hard to deny that we are little more than animals. … the more we try to make ourselves out to be more than that, the less we’ll understand about ourselves.
So you should be an opponent of cloning and genetic engineering then, right? 'cause in the long run it will elad to something like in that movie the name i just forgot… about the natural born guy wanting to be become an astronaut, the name of the movie was made up only by the letters of the DNA bases…
ask your grandparents how they felt about the red army as it approached germany. those people we not out to win a war- they wanted revenge. they killed everything they could, and raped and pilliaged what they wanted. germans that couldn’t flee to the west (and surrender to us) killed themselves rather than be subjected to the russians.
They were not out for revenge after the two german states were set up. We are talking of different times here.
And sure they raped and pillaged and were out for revenge. We drove them to that. You have to pay the price fopr what you do…. (sounds like one more of the lessosn the US has to learn: to accept its responsibility for its deeds)
two quick examples-
one- they talk about a town were the people actually went down to the river and drowned their children and themselves. one of the survivors painfully recalled all the bloated bodies. - how determined do you have to be to drown yourself?
and the second was how the german soldiers who were captured were briefly interrogated - then had their throats cut! and the guy doing this bragged about it!
To be determined ebough to drown yourself you need a good propaganda machine, plus some rumors….
Another story: My late latin teacher told a story from teh end of the war: He was actually happy that his village was taken by the russians (It was in the middle, close to were russians and americans met). He said that the Russians (probably they had had their revenge then and were “sated”) could understand the suffering of the people much more and did not use the bit of preserved food in glasses that the people had etc as urinals and worse as the american soldiers did.
guderian himself was “very fortunate” to be staying in a hostel near the us lines when the war ended.
Well, Paulus had a good reception by the russians after giving up in Stalingrad. Generals usually had a much better time that the average soldier.
WHY then when germany re-united in 88, was the east so screwed up. why the sudden rise in inflation and unemployment. and as I remember many in the west didn’t want to absorb the east’s debt. they feared that they were in such bad shape it would bankrupt the country.
NOW those in the east had no such qualms about the west. they packed everything they could into those cheap little cars and headed west baby.
Germany was reunited in 1990, the wall came down in 1989. The
“sudden rise in inflation and unemployment” did take some time, first it was a boost to the german economy, with all the savings of the eastern people being invested (Sounds like Keynes does work, although he is not hip at the moment). That decoupled germany from the rest of the world economy going down at that time, only to be captured later twice so to say…
The biggest problem was the chancelor who prefered not to see some of the obvious problems that would arise (which did bring the victroy in the election, as his opponent pointed out that it would become expensive and everyone would have to pay his share, just as it happened). So, the “many” that feared the east was to weak … were social democrats… commies, as you would say… while the right wing christian democrats (the ones who should “know” about economics) lead germany into the crisis that showed up later, but as a result of the reunification.