Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewolf
Well, I guess that is because lots of british always are bringing up other's dark spots. Most folks I know do not like to be lectured by people that have their own issues.
I mean, look at it this way. From a continental perspecitve, in general the british ran the largest conquest in history all over the world, they invented the concentration camps, they have a history of putting down resistance to their empirial ambitions in sometimes brutal ways and specifically in regards to WW2, they allied with the Russians, who were at least as agressive as the germans, they've had no problems with reducing all german cities above 100.000 citiziens to rubble and a lot of even smaller towns and villages (sometimes for the single reason that and old rugged road ran through them which made them "strategic important".) and put their inhabitants to the cruelest of deaths. And after the war there is the Rheinwiesen issues and the lack of support for german resistance goups.
If you were living on the continent and constantly, I mean constantly had to listen to rather one sided blames, you'd be quite miffed as well, eventually. Germany, after all, is not the only country that falls victim to british self rightousness. It's not about having a go at the british, a people I personally and many many others have a lot of respect for, it's just about being fed up by the enduring and in your face hypocrisis, really.
If the UK was celebrating the victory like the Russians, for example, as matter of national survival and eventual victory, nobody would complain. But it's always in connection with a certain morale highground and contempt for others that simply is out of place, especially in a Europe that is marked by ever greater cooperation instead of national quarrels.
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they have a history of putting down resistance to their empirial ambitions in sometimes brutal ways
Just like Germany, then.
I sometimes wonder how much Germans (and many other peoples) are actually aware of their own countries Imperial and Colonial activities. Germany had many colonial interests around the world (including African and the Pacific colonies, and the only reason they were not more extensive is that they had effectively been left behind in the race to plunder other countries natural resources. Something which Kaiser Wilhelm II himself actually lamented, stating that "Germany has begun her colonial enterprise very late, and was, therefore, at the disadvantage of finding all the desirable places already occupied." Hmmmm.
What is now modern day Namibia was a former German Colony (with a greater landmass than Germany itself), and also the setting for the first (German perpetrated) Genocide of the 20th Century. Rebellions by the Namaqua and Herero tribes were ruthlessly and violently quashed, resulting in some 120,000 deaths. There are also allegations that desert wells were systematically poisoned by the German colonial army.
So, the fact that Germany was a little 'late to the party' is the reason we are not now talking more about its colonialism, they 'missed the boat' as it were.
There are many shameful and abhorrent episodes of British colonialism, slavery in particular (and which I personally was educated about as a child at school) but the point being is that Britain was hardly 'alone' in this vile enterprise, they were just ahead of the game.
I do not blame modern day young Germans for perhaps feeling that they are being unfairly vilified ('the son cannot be held guilty for the sins of the father'), but this 'other countries did it too' moral relativism is a little off the mark.
The British Empire
never had a systematic, centralised, organised bureaucracy and infrastructure dedicated to and formed with the
sole and express purpose of murdering each and every race on Earth different to them, or all other groups who did not conform to some perverse 'ideal'. All of them. Each and every one. Man, woman and child.
That is the key difference.
More on 'concentration camps' later maybe, I'm off to the pub lol. Have fun peeps.
Err, maybe not. Was this thread ever on topic? LOL. Waaaaaay OT.
Cheers.