How is WWII remembered in your country?

[Tovarish 0]

In Cuba, WWII is not taught much, except perhaps for the Russian point of view. (and the bombing of Hiroshima - don't believe I heard of Nagasaki - some of that has likely changed since I was in grade school) However, out of my own interest, as a kid I did read at least two books that dealt with the Western Allies. I'm fortunate enough to still have those two books:

Dam Busters:

Dirty Dozen:

The foreign war that was most mentioned was the Vietnam war, and I remember that emotionally, I equated the USAF roundel to the Nazi swastika.

Since I also have Russian grandparents who lived through the war (and my grandfather fought and was wounded) - from their point of view it's the most horrific - and proudest moment in history. For them it was the most desperate kind of war, and all out war for survival against long odds.

Quote[/b] ](I was never sure when Canada joined in, they didn't really talk about it, and don't blame me!

The minute Britain did.

[DracoPaladore 0]

In both wars, Canada was into them as soon as they started.

We were, afterall, still part of the commonwealth.

[Tovarish 0]

In both wars, Canada was into them as soon as they started.

We were, afterall, still part of the commonwealth.

well....technically....we still are, but you don't see us mucking about in Iraq

[harley 3 1185 0]

Back in 1939 the Dominion of Canada (and the Sovereign Colony of Newfoundland), NZ, the Union of South Africa and the Commonwealth of Australia, the Empire of India and so on, were all self-governing, but theoretically their Parliaments could be dissolved by the Chief representative of the Crown in case of "constitutional crisis", and laws could still be altered by the British Parliament under the Statute of Westminister.  All the "Dominions" (self-governing colonies) bar India chose to go to war in 1939, whilst the knighted gentry of India (Sir Rajeem Singh and Lord Darjeeling for example) would probably have taken India to war anyway if the Viceroy hadn't pre-empted them and declared war on Germany hours after Chamberlain had.

Of course, instead of Empire all is now Commonwealth. It is interesting to note however that until 1981 Britain could still have legally changed Canada's laws

[gandalf the white 0]

In my country the national railroad guys remember WO2 in a very funny way... black posters with orange text:

"In 40-45 the jews departed from here, who is next?"

under that: "don't people ever get smarter?"

as a "warning" for the increasing friction between muslims/dutchies/etc. pretty straight to the point, me likes!

[brgnorway 0]

Quote[/b] ]Early in the war there were some pro-German tendencies, but that ended with the occupation of Norway and Denmark. After Norwegian Jewish refugees started fleeing to Sweden stories of atrocities started to emerge. Not long after we started actively covertly helping the allies.

Bullshit - or maybe that is exactly what you would like to believe!

Sweden had individuals who did a lot like Raoul Wallenberg but that was hardly part of the politics of the swedish government. The last years research make the swedish's authoroties efforts look even grimmer. Apart from that you should perhaps learn the difference between "not long after" and change of politics after the "turn of the tide" for the germans on the east front. After that you made a difference but don't forget that there exists quite a lot of mixed feelings towards the swedish "help" during the war.

Apart from that I would say Jinef's version is the best one I've seen in a long time!

Edit:

Now, the norwegian people themselves like to remember how they fought the german occupants. Rather conveniently they forget the fact that the "boys in the woods" as they were called only counted a few thousand people in total and that many if not most people didn't give a shit about the deported jews. All they cared about was the occupation itself and many many thousands of norwegians did what they could to make a buck or two out of the situation. Infact, when the process of trials started in the post-war period they had to leave out most of the cases simply because they involved almost a quarter of the population.

It's ironic that when the battleship "Blücher" sailed into the Oslofjord the commander at Oscarsborg fort didn't know if he opened fire on an english or a german ship. All he cared about was that it was a foreign warship.

Norwegian pupils are not taught the above version. It is pensum on universitylevel!

[denoir 0]

Bullshit - or maybe that is exactly what you would like to believe!

Sweden had individuals who did a lot like Raoul Wallenberg but that was hardly part of the politics of the swedish government. The last years research make the swedish's authoroties efforts look even grimmer. Apart from that you should perhaps learn the difference between "not long after" and change of politics after the "turn of the tide" for the germans on the east front.

"Not long after" means February-march 1942 when the government had an emergency session with parliament behind closed doors and decided to actively provide help to the allies while not provoking Germany. By 1943 Sweden flat out refused German transports to Norway and the iron ore supply was cut off. This was of course since by that time an invasion of Sweden was unlikely.

On three separate occasions there were German preparations for an invasion of Sweden, April 1940, June '41 and February '42.

Quote[/b] ]After that you made a difference but don't forget that there exists quite a lot of mixed feelings towards the Swedish "help" during the war.

I think that the results speak for themselves. Norway, Denmark et al were sending Jews and others to Auschwitz while Sweden was saving them. Militarily Sweden would have not made any difference had it not been neutral. It would have been invaded and occupied and the Germans would have gotten their transports and iron ore anyway. Instead Sweden became a safe haven for those fleeing Nazi persecution.

[chops 111]

Quote[/b] ]An innocuous map of the Asia Pacific hangs in a corner of the new Yasukuni War Museum in Tokyo, delineating Japan's aggressive colonial ambitions in the "War of Greater East Asia". On it runs a thin red line that starts from Hawaii and cuts through the Pacific, encircling Australia.

The line confirms that the Imperial Japanese Army under Emperor Hirohito had us firmly in its sights. But that is about the only reference a visitor will find in the museum to Australia or the fact that the two countries were ever at war.

No reference here to the brutalities of Changi, the Sandakan-Ranau death march, or the horrors of the Burma Railway - where thousands of Allied troops were abused and beaten to death - no mention even of Australia's first defeat of Japanese forces at Milne Bay. Kakoda, it seems, never happened.

Japan's military historians have not always been so myopic about Australia. Five years ago one of the museum's exhibits asserted that Australians so greatly admired Japan's fighting forces that full military funerals were bestowed on submariners blown up in Sydney Harbour. The suggestion was that even in war Japanese were respected and honoured by their enemies.

It was a fanciful, grotesque distortion of history that has been abandoned by the curators of the new museum built adjacent to the notorious Yasukuni shrine, where the souls of Japan's war dead - including a number of category-A war criminals - are brazenly commemorated.

It is six years since I last visited the elegant Shinto shrine in the heart of Tokyo, and the museum is now rehoused in a blandly stylish building. A calm surrounds this shrine to decades of unmitigated violence and killing. Amid the oppressive humidity squadrons of cicadas drown out sounds of the city. A group of elderly women pray for the souls of dead relatives; souls that according to Shinto never pass on to another world, but linger constantly, seeking peace and appeasement.

Nearby the final words of a 20-year-old kamikaze pilot are on display. "I am fated to die, I attack America because I am Japanese, I love being Japanese," he wrote in a final letter to his mother. It is a revered plaque that symbolises the values celebrated in the spiritual heart of a nation that refuses to let go a malign past.

Little had changed since my last visit. On display was a kaiten human torpedo, the innocently named "cherry blossom bomb" - a one-trip flying rocket piloted by suicide bombers - and an ancient Zero fighter.

Apart from the impressive display of military hardware it was readily apparent that the curator's capacity for self-reflection remains alarmingly stunted. The spin, outright lies and gross distortion about the wars Japan has fought, especially World War II, remain pristinely intact in these Orwellian chambers. A stroll through exhibits reveals Japanese officialdom still clings to a self-serving, distorted view of history that is not only offensive to China and North and South Korea, but mocks the half-hearted apologies various Japanese prime ministers, including the recently re-elected Junichiro Koizumi, have offered for the nation's wartime aggression.

In a recent candid moment, Koizumi said he would seek China's understanding for his regular pilgrimages to Yasukuni. That seems a rather fanciful - not to mention naive - ambition. China sustained the most casualties at the hands of Japan, with more than 10 million killed.

Korea lost more than 200,000 people. All up, an estimated 60,000 Allied soldiers (including 18,000 Australians), civilians and POWs were killed by Japanese forces. Japan, the aggressor and invader, suffered 3.1 million deaths - a third of which were non-combatant fatalities.

A visitor to the museum is told that Japan's undeclared attack on Pearl Harbor was inevitable because of US aggression; the Nanking massacre - a murderous rampage by Japanese soldiers that claimed up to 300,000 lives - is classified as an "incident" that involved few deaths because the Chinese people understood the rules of occupation.

Elsewhere, nationalist Chinese who fought invading Japanese soldiers are dismissed as terrorists. The not-so-subliminal message is that Japan's aggression was no different to that of the western colonial powers of France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

While all this amounts to astonishing official denial of history, nothing is more surprising than the absence of Emperor Hirohito from many of the warmongering events in which he was involved from the 1930s onwards. Erased from exhibits that link him to notorious events, he suddenly appears at the surrender as a peacemaker, an honourable figure who saved Japanese lives after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even in death Hirohito avoids all moral and political responsibility for his actions.

Yasukuni Shrine (the name means "peaceful country") was built in 1869 on the orders of Emperor Meiji. Dedicated to those who died fighting for Japan, the shrine became swamped in controversy during the 1970s when the presiding priests secretly incorporated some 1000 war criminals - 14 of them class-A war criminals, including the wartime prime minister General Hideki Tojo - into the lists of the commemorated.

Despite international outrage, Japan's political elite, including the overwhelming majority of post-war prime ministers, regularly visit the shrine around New Year for services - claiming, paradoxically, that they are praying for peace and the souls of dead relatives.

But the shrine and adjacent museum represent a belligerent, odious view of history that is rejected outside Japan, and which contrasts embarrassingly with the position adopted with success by post-war governments in Germany. German leaders, including Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, have issued repeated unqualified apologies for the war and the Holocaust, paid massive compensation and condemned Nazi war crimes.

No such clarity has ever been projected by Japan's Liberal Democratic Party governments, and it remains inconceivable that a German leader would visit Israel to explain why he regularly attends a shrine that commemorates Nazi war criminals.

Japan's record of contrition is deeply flawed. The apologies that have been given (the first was made to a group of Australian MPs in Canberra by the then-Japanese prime minister Nobusuke Kishi in the late 1950s) have never got much beyond expressing remorse and regret for wartime aggression - fuzzy words when compared with the explicit detailed apologies of German leaders.

Although the nation has been generous with foreign aid, Japan has refused to pay compensation to the countries invaded and occupied, and it has been particularly parsimonious in compensating women forced into prostitution by the Imperial Army. Japanese schoolbooks still carry sanitised accounts of the war despite court rulings ordering authorities to drop censorship. Efforts of the elderly history professor Saburo Ienaga to have history portrayed accurately have largely been ignored despite his successful court battles.

So why does Japan's ruling establishment cling so defiantly to such a distorted view of history? While opinion polls in Japan show that younger generations remain largely ignorant about the nation's wartime past, it is clear that many people, when told about the treatment of POWs and the rape of Nanking, are shocked and embarrassed.

At the end of World War II, influential groups of Japanese intellectuals wanted Hirohito tried for war crimes, but were turned down by the US-installed ruler, General Douglas MacArthur. He freed close to 900 war criminals before they were brought to trial.

It is an exaggeration to say the views expressed and the symbolism of Yasukuni are endorsed by all Japanese. In fact MacArthur's haste to stabilise Japan after the war left not only Hirohito in power, but bureaucrats who had faithfully served the wartime government remained entrenched in influential positions. They may have felt "remorse and regret" about the past, but believed their actions had never been bad enough to warrant punishment.

Ruling conservative politicians often say that they are required to attend the annual pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine because they need the support of the powerful Association of Shinto Shrines, the Bereaved Families League and veterans groups that deliver votes, and money, into campaign slush funds. They point out that attempts to legalise state support for the shrine and the museum have failed. That may be true, but it hardly justifies the distorted view of history perpetuated and the values celebrated.

North Asia is rapidly changing, and tolerance of Japan's myopia is diminishing. China, destined to become the world's second-biggest economy, displacing Japan in the near future, is becoming less tolerant of the displays of patriotism at Yasukuni.

History also suggests that blood feuds endure unless addressed. While the keepers of Japan's official war history might be able to expunge from the record all trace of Australia's involvement in war, the emerging confident and economically powerful China presents a vastly different problem for Japan's lawmakers and the nation's popular Prime Minister, who thinks past atrocities can be explained away over a tea ceremony.

Russell Skelton was Japan correspondent for The Age from 1995-99

A lot to read there I know. I'm an Australian living in Japan. I have a close German friend and have discussed WWII with many Germans who can explain the details of an amazing number of incidents and events. In Japan people are mostly entirely ingnorant to WWII as a whole. I have to say that it REALLY fu%ks me off how some can be quite openly racist towards foreigners and at the same time have absolutely no idea whatsoever that the country and race they are convinced are so superior was responsible for unspeakable acts of barbarity.

I have been to Yasukuni Shrine. I went to the museum there and it is a fucking disgrace. The Rape of Nanking is mentioned and described as a liberation, the final sentence reads "...the Chinese were soundly defeated, suffering heavy casualties. INside the city, residents were once again able to live their lives in peace." Imagine the liberation of Poland being vaunted in Berlin.

MacCarthy refered to the Japanese as "...a nation of 12 year old children."

[EiZei 0]

I have been to Yasukuni Shrine. I went to the museum there and it is a fucking disgrace. The Rape of Nanking is mentioned and described as a liberation, the final sentence reads "...the Chinese were soundly defeated, suffering heavy casualties. INside the city, residents were once again able to live their lives in peace."  Imagine the liberation of Poland being vaunted in Berlin.

MacCarthy refered to the Japanese as "...a nation of 12 year old children."

If I am not mistaken the shrine is a privately run organization that receives no goverment funding and is quite controversial in Japan as well. And of course there's the "death nullifies any evildoings" thingie in Japan..

Still, I cant believe their PMs actually visit there still.

[brgnorway 0]

Quote[/b] ]

"Not long after" means February-march 1942 when the government had an emergency session with parliament behind closed doors and decided to actively provide help to the allies while not provoking Germany. By 1943 Sweden flat out refused German transports to Norway and the iron ore supply was cut off. This was of course since by that time an invasion of Sweden was unlikely.

This is only one example How Swden helped and played a signigicant role in Germany's effort to conquer the Murmansk area!

Quote[/b] ]

I think that the results speak for themselves. Norway, Denmark et al were sending Jews and others to Auschwitz while Sweden was saving them.

Norway certainly did what they could to send the norwegian jews to the "final solution" , but to claim Denmark did the same is an outright lie! Most of the jews that escaped to Sweden came from Denmark and it was a combined effort between swedes and danes. Don't forget the role played by the danish King and his people!

Secondly, while I'm sure it's tough balancing on a knife's edge there are numerous examples of norwegians wanted by the german authoroties caught by the swedish border patrols and sent back to the certain death. This is something that changed when the germans luck reversed after Stalingrad!

My maternal grandfather on the other hand was very gratefull for the swedish "white busses" who got him out of concentration camp and back to safety.

[kavoven 4]

I think my view could be quiet interesting:

I'm german and actually I hate this whole WW2 and Nazi topic. Why? Not because I don't want to know about the past, but for one special reason:

Since I am in the third class, I'm confrontated with WW 2 and Nazi-Deutschland nearly all the time. It doesn't matter if the subjects is called, German, History, Philosophie, English, French, Art... I hear it all the time. I'm now in the twelth grade, and I think I red actually two books in school, which were about something else. If we have german-lessons, the teachers want that we compare things with the Nazi-time. And in history we have nearly 3/4 of the year about the time 1930-1945.

Damn, I know what damn **** (sorry) my relatives did in the past, and I think (nearly) all the other Germans know as well. But we still get blown up with stories of the Nazi-time.

If you want to win an award in Germany, just write a book about a man who is suppresed by the Nazis. Really great authors did this, not because they wanted to win anything, but to tell the people about the time. Their stil is just amazing(Sigfried Lenz for example), but I can't read the topic anymore.

Another thing that is getting on my nervs:

If someone says something against someone who is jewish, although it's really not about his religion or anything, everybody starts screaming Nazi. I think there is no other country in the world right now, where you find so few potential for something close to antisemetism or anti-foreigners. But you're blamed for you comment right on. Well, perhaps this is good, so nobody will even start thinking this way again.

I hope you don't get my wrong, but I really really do not want to hear much more about this time. So the answer to this question:

As someone who still visits school, I'm remebered of it all the time

Edit:

Ah, and to add something:

If you want to watch something about WW2 on TV, just turn ARD or ZDF on (first and second TV programs in Germany), they love to bring "reviews" of it in the late night...

[Ares1978 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Specifically, I'd like to know things like: how is the subject taught in schools? How is it treated in entertainment media like books, movies, and video games? What is society's general feelings towards the subject (guilt-wise, pride-wise, etc)? What are your personal views on the subject? And perhaps the most touchy: what are the views of people you know (grandparents, etc) who were alive during that period? What do they think about their former enemy nations?

I'd say it's taught in a rather neutral way. They don't go for the "evil jew-killing nazis" vs. "freedom loving" allies but instead opt for a more technical way to describe the whole thing. Of course our history lessons are more oriented towards the eastern front since it had much more relevance to the finnish history.

And as for the attitudes id say russians still get a lot of antipathy especially from older people. They took some territory back then. Germans (who were sort-of-but-not-really allied with us after winter war) are not viewed as negatively as in lot of other countries despite the fact we had to fight them in the end (northern finlanders probably have a bit more negative view on them as they burned villages while retreating).

You summed it up pretty well, but I think I'll add some things I've noticed as well in the attitudes of the population. These are just my own observations:

Since WWII is from the Finnish point of view actually 3 wars  (the Winter War, the Continuation War, the Lapland War) with 3 different reasons behind them, attitudes not exactly a simple matter. Most feel that Germany more or less saved our country by helping when very few others did. None of the allies were exactly jumping at the chance to sell equipment that were going to be used against one of their own. Many also hold a grudge against the nazis for selling us out in the beginning of the war. For us, Germany was a de facto ally, but the nazis were just an unavoidable evil we didn't want anything to do with.

Some of the veterans are grateful that Sweden helped by selling equipment and providing volunteers, while others think they should have done more, because the Soviet Union could have been a threat to them too if Finland had been conquered and occupied. But I understand why they didn't want to commit to the war. Estonian volunteers are sadly often forgotten completely. The US and the UK are somewhat resented by veterans because they supplied our enemy with equipment (tanks, planes, firearms etc.). Some might think it's twisted, but Germany wasn't a threat until near the end of the war, and even then only because of the Soviet Union's demands. Our enemy was the Soviet Union, and nobody else.

The thing about the war that we are most ashamed of is that we sent about 70000 children out of the country, essentially on their own, away from the war, to live with strange (as in "not familiar") families across Scandinavia. People thought they were doing them a favor by getting them as far away from the bombings as possible, but it was in many ways a mistake. Sure, they didn't die, not that they necessarily would have, but many of them were scarred for life.

[shinRaiden 0]

Quote[/b] ]

...

At the end of World War II, influential groups of Japanese intellectuals wanted Hirohito tried for war crimes, but were turned down by the US-installed ruler, General Douglas MacArthur. He freed close to 900 war criminals before they were brought to trial.

It is an exaggeration to say the views expressed and the symbolism of Yasukuni are endorsed by all Japanese. In fact MacArthur's haste to stabilise Japan after the war left not only Hirohito in power, but bureaucrats who had faithfully served the wartime government remained entrenched in influential positions. They may have felt "remorse and regret" about the past, but believed their actions had never been bad enough to warrant punishment.

Ruling conservative politicians often say that they are required to attend the annual pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine because they need the support of the powerful Association of Shinto Shrines, the Bereaved Families League and veterans groups that deliver votes, and money, into campaign slush funds. They point out that attempts to legalise state support for the shrine and the museum have failed. That may be true, but it hardly justifies the distorted view of history perpetuated and the values celebrated.

North Asia is rapidly changing, and tolerance of Japan's myopia is diminishing. China, destined to become the world's second-biggest economy, displacing Japan in the near future, is becoming less tolerant of the displays of patriotism at Yasukuni.

History also suggests that blood feuds endure unless addressed. While the keepers of Japan's official war history might be able to expunge from the record all trace of Australia's involvement in war, the emerging confident and economically powerful China presents a vastly different problem for Japan's lawmakers and the nation's popular Prime Minister, who thinks past atrocities can be explained away over a tea ceremony.

Russell Skelton was Japan correspondent for The Age from 1995-99

A lot to read there I know. I'm an Australian living in Japan. I have a close German friend and have discussed WWII with many Germans who can explain the details of an amazing number of incidents and events. In Japan people are mostly entirely ingnorant to WWII as a whole. I have to say that it REALLY fu%ks me off how some can be quite openly racist towards foreigners and at the same time have absolutely no idea whatsoever that the country and race they are convinced are so superior was responsible for unspeakable acts of barbarity.

I have been to Yasukuni Shrine. I went to the museum there and it is a fucking disgrace. The Rape of Nanking is mentioned and described as a liberation, the final sentence reads "...the Chinese were soundly defeated, suffering heavy casualties. INside the city, residents were once again able to live their lives in peace." Imagine the liberation of Poland being vaunted in Berlin.

MacCarthy refered to the Japanese as "...a nation of 12 year old children."

Well in comparison the Soviets demanded - as part of letting the Iron Curtain rust away - that the Soviet 'Liberation' memorials in Berlin be maintained in perpetuity. Not one of their brightest moves imho.

Of course the critics will complain, heck look at all the complaints coming back at the US. The DPRK yells and screams about the Korean occupation, while Japan yells about the kidnappings, and neither admits to their own faults. In China, Beijing was condoning the institutionalized 'riots' at the Japanese embassies and consulates. That's bar-room politics, hardly a plausable domestic outrage. Not really any different than the institutionalized and wobblie-backed anti-war protests here.

There are however some additional factors to consider. East Asian governments launch the definition of corruption and beauracracy into a whole new orbit. This especially relates to Church-State incest, which is still very rampant today in at least Japan. The millenia-old traditions continue today, with the latest variant being various charismatic individuals cherry-picking dogmas and cranking out "Holistic World Peace NGO's" which if you read the fine print are actually fully active religions, that then set up political parties and political action front groups in rigged puppet organizations. Coalitions of these groups comprise the half the backbone of Asian politics, with the other half being the semi-nationalized institutions and companies and conglomerates.

This goes back to the last escalation of the religious subversion of the Japanese government, which took place in WW2. There's a real fine line in Church-State relationships that's very dicey waters to navigate. While religious organizations can be a powerful and positive influence for social policy and provide social welfare organizational roles, actual integration into governmental operations always leads to abuses. Like in other places, many religious structures in Japan became signifcant cultural treasures for which there was argueablely a state interest in supporting historical and cultural preservation. Compounding that was the general dogma of the Emperor being of divine lineage, forcing the issue of religious integration into governmental operations despite the democratization reforms under Emperor Meiji.

What happened then was there was a concerted effort by the warmongers to incite the populace into a nationalistic frenzy through the shrines that happened to be dedicated to the Emperor. Support of these being a state interest, many of the other shrines switched patronage to jump on the pork barrel bandwagon, similar to some of the Shinto to Buddhism bloody purges done centuries prior. Don't forget folks, that Buddhism was promulgated throughout Japan by the sword in a great crusade, despite what the peaceniks would have you believe. The effect of this was to gut the operating religious orders - Shinto and Buddhist - of most who were not interested in pork chasing. When that collapsed in the occupation, many shrines and temples that were otherwise operating fine prior to the war collapsed as the shams that they had become by abandoning their faiths. This left a spiritual void that various charismatic individuals in the 60's through 80's attempted to take advantage of and leverage via political parties and peace action groups.

The messy problem compounding all this is that private opinions generally are not massed into public sentiment. It's ironic how everyone will privately complain about what a train wreck the public educational system is, but publicly it's "We harmoniously love the glorious people's progress". I could get away with saying my mind when I was in Japan, because that is a social liberty allowed foriegners that is 'untouchable' for natives. Add to that the homogonized nature of the culture, and the lack of foreign exposure. I've made extensive trips outside the US to Europe, the Middle East, and to Japan, resided outside the US for sometime, and visited over 75% of the US States, and I still consider myself to be somewhat of a naive introvert. What then about my Japanese friends that have not traveled outside of a few dozen km of where their grandparents were born and raised?

I've talked about this at length with a Japanese friend who's lived here for about a decade. We noted about how it's not a big deal if Japanese people come to the US for a couple week vacation, but coming for a school semester amount of time runs a dangerous risk of 'tainting' them, and any longer than that it's nigh impossible for them to 're-enter' traditional Japanese society. They can act the part, but the introduction of foriegn ideas and experiences so profoundly impacts them that it's not uncommon for them to be detached from society to some extent for the remainder of their lives. Those that do 're-enter' society by and large do well only because they have learned how to mask their aquired 'foriegnness'.

The cowboy American me would say that what they need is some serious rocking of their cultural boat, and maybe some public mayhem or other random crap to loosen things up. On the other hand, there's an entire 'lost' generation that's growing up exposed to foriegn ideas and goods. The disconnect between them and prior generations may finally allow them the freedom to standup and make a new direction for their society as they come of age. Whether they assume their grandparents debts, or whether they should be obligated to, is a whole seperate debate that is not unique to just them.

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

I think that the results speak for themselves. Norway, Denmark et al were sending Jews and others to Auschwitz while Sweden was saving them. Militarily Sweden would have not made any difference had it not been neutral. It would have been invaded and occupied and the Germans would have gotten their transports and iron ore anyway. Instead Sweden became a safe haven for those fleeing Nazi persecution.

Actually, that is a lie.

The danish police with cooperation with sweden sent jews to sweden, where they were no longer in danger. This went on, until the danish police forces were sent to concentrations camps in germany. After this, the danish population and king took over this job

[Ares1978 0]

The danish police with cooperation with sweden sent jews to sweden, where they were no longer in danger. This went on, until the danish police forces were sent to concentrations camps in germany. After this, the danish population and king took over this job

Off topic, but I remember seeing some documentary about Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and wasn't there also a nazi commander who helped/allowed jews to get out of the country (Denmark)? The logic being that sending them away was one way to get rid of them? Of course, I could be wrong.

[Tigershark_BAS 0]

As Napoleon once said:

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

As controversial as the Japanese PM's visits to the Yasukune shrine are I do believe they have the right to honor their war dead as much as we do.

The victor in war is always given the opportunity to rewrite the history books as they see it. In this modern day their has been much speculation on such topics as:

1. Did the US really need to nuke Japan when the regime was in it's dying throws.

2. There is some evidence to suggest that the US manipulated Japan to the point it felt threatened and then attacked Pearl Harbour.

I'm not justifying these acts at all and some of these are just postulation but I guess the point is, whoever wins dictates the rules and history but I don't think that doesn't mean the losers can't remember things in their own way.

However, this is a fine line. None of would want the losers to remember the ideals that caused the war in the first place but they all made sacrifices as well.

I think I'm rambling now...it is Monday morning

[mattxr 9]

lol tigershark...

well from what i learnt in my history lessons (UK) was all just about WW1 Trench Warfare i would of liked to fully learn about WW2 but we just did a couple of tasks about it so not much there.. But we did loads on the WW1 subject .

[Daddl 10]

The history lessons I enjoyed in Germany during the 80s and early 90s didn't cover much of the warfare itself (i.e. battles, troop movements, etc. - apart from the cause and effect of major events like Dunkirk, Stalingrad, Normandy and the retreat on the Eastern Front) but instead concentrated on the events leading up to WW1 and WW2 (especially the Weimar Republic, the great depression and it effects for Germany, the Versaille treaty and also the russian revolution) and the politics and economics during that time (for example the unholy pact between Hitler and Stalin, etc.). Of course the holocaust was covered in much detail, but I never had the impression it dominated the lectures. A main emphasis was put on how WW2 laid the base for postwar politics & conflics (i.e. Jalta and Potsdam conferences, the shift of polish territory to the west, etc.).

Of course lessons always depend on the specific teachers and what kind of education level you follow, too (and I think I was really lucky there having had great teachers in that subject). Also since the time I participated in history lessons things might have changed a bit (although I doubt that).