Should Old Veterans Forgive Their Former Enemies?

Discussion in 'General' started by sapper, Jul 25, 2005.

  1. jamesicus

    jamesicus Senior Member

    (lionboxer @ Dec 16 2005, 07:53 PM) [post=43237]Have I missed something? What's happened to Sapper's postings?
    Lionboxer
    [/b]

    I believe he removed them himself .....

    (sapper @ Dec 16 2005, 09:40 AM) [post=43214]removed there is no meeting of minds with different generations.
    [/b]
     
  2. Vabadusjaiseseisvus

    Vabadusjaiseseisvus Junior Member

    Question! Should Old Veterans Forgive Their Former Enemies?

    Answer is no!

    Because one of them are still proud of the crimes that they have done!

    Even nowdays they have their parades!

    They still lie! They still belive that they mission was the right one! There is no compassions for those who suffer because of their actions.

    They even lie to their kids!
    Then there will be a new generation who will act the same way because they belive in their mission too!

    And the good goverment support it/them! It also do what ever it takes to purge their history/mission!

    No names! I hope MRmoderator wont close/remove it!
    Who want understand who dont!
    That is his mission!



    Other side dont behave that way!

    They also felt/feel sorry and have or at least try to appologise!
     
  3. Roxy

    Roxy Senior Member

    It appears that there are still some very bitter people out there. For my twoppence, I think that the world is a better place because some people did learn to forgive. However, lest we forget!

    Roxy

    Edited because the original post reads as a bit patronising, and that was not intended.

    I am of the opinion that it is up to the conscience of the individual veteran to determine whether or not he can forgive. I am not, in any way, entitled to influence that opinion. It does appear to me that some of those members contributing to this thread are still bitter: they obviously feel entitled to feel that way. Some people are able to forgive, others are not. That's life. However, I am still of the opinion that the world is a better place because some people have learned to forgive.

    Roxy
     
  4. Vabadusjaiseseisvus

    Vabadusjaiseseisvus Junior Member

    (Roxy @ Dec 18 2005, 08:37 PM) [post=43327]It appears that there are still some very bitter people ....
    Roxy
    [/b]

    There isn´t bitter people!

    But there is people who still suffer because of unjustice!

    That is the truth!
     
  5. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    As the French say: Oradour sur Glane: Souviens-Toi. Remember

    Oradour, a martyred village in the Limousin,put to the torch and its inhabitants butchered for no reason than an excess of power based on ideology.

    In Russia there were over 600 such villages put to the torch and its civilians murdered by the German invaders under the guise of being partisans or any other excuse that could be presented. When brought to task,the defence was always "higher orders".It would be interesting to hear Russian personal views of that era.

    The atrocities in Russia,the ill treatment of Russian POWs came about because of the Nazi regime's ideology. The SS and the extermination squads were well steeped in the ideology and were willing participants. However it has to be said that the Wehrmacht more often than not, were not the innocent bystanders that it is increasingly supposed.

    The North African campaign did not reveal atrocities on either side.The SS were not involved in this theatre of war and so could not add their "particular battlefield zeal". Hence the accepted meetings of Africa Korps and 8th Army Veterans.I have not heard of SS veterans being accepted by other veterans other than their own at their own reunions which were declared to be illegal by the post war German Government but still took place.
     
  6. Glider

    Glider Senior Member

    I agree with this statement from Roxy

    I am of the opinion that it is up to the conscience of the individual veteran to determine whether or not he can forgive. I am not, in any way, entitled to influence that opinion. It does appear to me that some of those members contributing to this thread are still bitter: they obviously feel entitled to feel that way. Some people are able to forgive, others are not. That's life. However, I am still of the opinion that the world is a better place because some people have learned to forgive.

    I can offer one example of how peoples experience effects their views. A family friend was a merchant seaman in WW2 and sunk off the coast of France. He and the others made it to shore which at the time was Vichy controlled where he was picked up and put in a POW camp. Here the treatment handed out was appalling with gratuitous violence and deliberate cruelty. It should be remembered that some of the seamen in the camp were in their 60's. When the Germans took over Vichy Territory they also took over the running of the camp, things improved dramatically and the older men repatriated under condition they didn't sail again. You ask him who the enemy was at a personal level, and you can guess the reply.

    Obviously this was a minority case, but it does reveal why it has to be to the individual to decide to forgive.
     
  7. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    I can offer one example of how peoples experience effects their views. A family friend was a merchant seaman in WW2 and sunk off the coast of France. He and the others made it to shore which at the time was Vichy controlled where he was picked up and put in a POW camp. Here the treatment handed out was appalling with gratuitous violence and deliberate cruelty. It should be remembered that some of the seamen in the camp were in their 60's. When the Germans took over Vichy Territory they also took over the running of the camp, things improved dramatically and the older men repatriated under condition they didn't sail again. You ask him who the enemy was at a personal level, and you can guess the reply.



     
  8. Glider

    Glider Senior Member

    Harry
    No one is condoning what the Germans did against Jews, Other minorities, Special forces captured in uniform or the vast number of other examples of German behaviour.

    The question is Should old Veterans forgive their former Enemies?

    My belief and that of others, is that it is up to the Veteran and it is the experience of the Veteran that should decide the reply. It isn't up to those of us who were not there to decide for them.

    I give another example. My father was an RSM in the Medical corps, when the concentration camps were found he was one of the people sent to ease the situation. They needed more men and went to the nearest hospital to find experienced nurses. Five German nurses came reluctantly knowing that something bad had happened in the camp but not believing what they had been told. When they arrived they were truly shocked and insisted on working in the most dangerously infected parts of the camp. Over the next few week they all caught infections and died. These girls were replaced by other german nurses who wanted to work in the same area, when two of them died they were also replaced by their friends.

    Do you forgive the Germans or not. It isn't a black or white situation, it has to be up to the person involved, not us sitting at our PC's.
     
  9. Vabadusjaiseseisvus

    Vabadusjaiseseisvus Junior Member

     
  10. Vabadusjaiseseisvus

    Vabadusjaiseseisvus Junior Member

     
  11. Vabadusjaiseseisvus

    Vabadusjaiseseisvus Junior Member

     
  12. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    (Glider @ Dec 29 2005, 03:44 PM) [post=43731]Harry
    No one is condoning what the Germans did against Jews, Other minorities, Special forces captured in uniform or the vast number of other examples of German behaviour.

    The question is Should old Veterans forgive their former Enemies?

    My belief and that of others, is that it is up to the Veteran and it is the experience of the Veteran that should decide the reply. It isn't up to those of us who were not there to decide for them.

    I give another example. My father was an RSM in the Medical corps, when the concentration camps were found he was one of the people sent to ease the situation. They needed more men and went to the nearest hospital to find experienced nurses. Five German nurses came reluctantly knowing that something bad had happened in the camp but not believing what they had been told. When they arrived they were truly shocked and insisted on working in the most dangerously infected parts of the camp. Over the next few week they all caught infections and died. These girls were replaced by other german nurses who wanted to work in the same area, when two of them died they were also replaced by their friends.

    Do you forgive the Germans or not. It isn't a black or white situation, it has to be up to the person involved, not us sitting at our PC's.
    [/b]


    The forgiving by veterans of their former enemies has to be left to the individual but what I am referring to is examples where that forgiveness is hard to find.You will not find those who perpetrated the slaughter of civilians or POWs in the field wishing to meet anyone from the other side.These "glorious fighting units" said to be so proud of their ideology and battlefield honours, in the end discarded their uniforms and hoped to fade away, leaving their crimes behind.

    There are still those who experienced the excesses of the other side who cannot abide to hear German or Japanese spoken and many would not purchase the goods of the former enemies when trading was resumed in the 1950s.

    Regarding the awareness of the concentration system in Germany.Yes it is true that many Germans stated that they were not aware of the system but in the West it was the policy of the Allies when these camps were overrun that the local inhabitants received enforced tours of the camps for those people to witness what had been done in their name.Whether a concentration camp or extermination camp,anyone living locally must have been aware that these were no holiday camps,the stench must have been smelt throughout the area.(Places such as Belsen were next door to barrack based Wehrmacht units.) Since the extermination camps were sited outside Germany, I will concede that the general population would likely have been unaware of them other than leakage of information from those in the system.

    Sitting in front of a PC or not, the issue is that as veterans and I mean all those caught up in war and victims of war might have a different view had they suffered the enemy excesses.Memorials are still being erected and maintained throughout France against German atrocities.On the other side,in Poland,ethnic Germans are erecting memorials to the Wehrmacht much to the anger of the Poles.Bad memories will prevail until those who suffered or who are immediately connected with those who suffered,fade away.

    For us in the UK,had we fallen,then from captured German documentation we know that British males between 16 and 45 years old would have been rounded up and deported to Germany for forced labour.Our experience would then have been as those who suffered due to German occupation.
     
  13. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    What an interesting debate! Personally, I am of the opinion that the only people in a position to offer forgiveness are those that were victims of atrocities themselves. It is up to the individual conscience.

    As someone who was born long after the end of WW2, I cannot look at the post-war generations of Germans and Japanese, etc, in the same light as I look at their forebears; the latter bare the burden of complicity with an evil regieme, not their children and grandchildren. Also, whilst Hitler and his Nazi cohorts were responsible for creating the evil that led to so much barbarity, I think it wise to remember that it was individuals that pulled the trigger, torched houses packed full of women and children, etc, not a faceless monolith! Indoctrinated they may have been, and refusal to carry out orders could lead to summary execution for themselves, granted. But there are - or there should be - ubiquitous standards of human behaviour which, even in wartime, should remain ingrained in the soul. Those standards, unwritten and unanalysed, were the bedrock of the Nuremberg Trials, and anyone who failed to observe them deserves - in my opinion - the harshest punishment.

    At the end of the day, it is the perpetrators of evil who must reflect upon their actions and reconcile it to themselves, and even if they can forgive themselves, there is a higher court to which they must eventualy account...
     
  14. Glider

    Glider Senior Member

    Well said Adam.
     
  15. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    Thank you, Glider.

    When I was just 17, I struck an acquaintance with a former Battle of Britain Hurricane pilot (Innes Westmacott, of 56 Squadron). I remember him telling me how - as much as he was now pro- European (this was around 1980) - he felt Germans of his generation, and polite as he always was to them, were always sullied by their associations with Nazism.

    I remember thinking even then how different life must have been back then, and how much harder it must be for someone directly affected by the war to accept the Common Market (as then was) and the free trade of German and Japanese goods throughout Europe. He had been shot down twice, once over England and once over Malta - on the latter occasion sustaining severe burns.

    Did he forgive? Who truly knows? But who could sit in Judgement if he did not?
     
  16. mattgibbs

    mattgibbs Senior Member

    "Judgement" such as it may be will depend on whether the individual believes in a faith and or follows a religious practice, as none of us down here has the right to judge.
     
  17. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Should Old Veterans Forgive Their Former Enemies?....
    That would surely be entirely up to the old veterans.....
     
  18. Wise1

    Wise1 There We Are Then

    What an interesting debate! Personally, I am of the opinion that the only people in a position to offer forgiveness are those that were victims of atrocities themselves. It is up to the individual conscience.

    As someone who was born long after the end of WW2, I cannot look at the post-war generations of Germans and Japanese, etc, in the same light as I look at their forebears; the latter bare the burden of complicity with an evil regieme, not their children and grandchildren. Also, whilst Hitler and his Nazi cohorts were responsible for creating the evil that led to so much barbarity, I think it wise to remember that it was individuals that pulled the trigger, torched houses packed full of women and children, etc, not a faceless monolith! Indoctrinated they may have been, and refusal to carry out orders could lead to summary execution for themselves, granted. But there are - or there should be - ubiquitous standards of human behaviour which, even in wartime, should remain ingrained in the soul. Those standards, unwritten and unanalysed, were the bedrock of the Nuremberg Trials, and anyone who failed to observe them deserves - in my opinion - the harshest punishment.

    At the end of the day, it is the perpetrators of evil who must reflect upon their actions and reconcile it to themselves, and even if they can forgive themselves, there is a higher court to which they must eventualy account...

    Well said.
     
  19. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    I'm a 26 yro female. How can I say if veterans should forgive? If i had been alive at the time and living in an occupied country i would never forgive for what had been done to me and mine, but I wasn't so how can I?
    Many individual german soldiers/sailors/airmen were fighting because they had to. Not because they were Nazis with political agendas or just sheer hatred. Many were like our own boys. But there is always bad blood in any group or organisation, and as far as I am concerned they should be hunted down and shot, even now. But that is my opinion, not that of a veteran.
    My father, when he was in the Household Cavalry, visited Belsen with the regiment in the early 70's. Apart from the horror of the knowledge of what had happened there, he always said the most disturbing aspect was the fact there were no animals and no birdsong. I think that says a lot.
    Should veterans forgive? Depends what they saw and who they are forgiving.
    :(
     
  20. Blackblue

    Blackblue Senior Member

    Unfortunately some things will always remain in the conscience of those whose relatives (and their friends) served during WW2. I am in no way a bigot, however my personal feelings about 'forgiving' have been influenced by the environment I was raised in and those persons I had contact with along the way. Hearing first hand accounts of atrocities is earth shattering. When meeting a Japanese today my first thoughts are still usually of the atrocities committed by their forebears. I was not there to see it happen, however I cannot accept the murder and systematic abuse of human rights perpetrated during the war, and the circumstances/people that allowed this to occur. This has been exacerbated by a failure to adequately acknowledge that such atrocities happened at all. It is a sad indictment on the Japanese people.

    Is it fair to hold the descendants of the perpetrators accountable? Probably not....however greater knowledge and acceptance of the facts in Japan may lead the way to redemption.

    http://www.ww2australia.gov.au/japadvance/paritSulong.html

    http://www.nesa.org.uk/html/malayan_massacre.htm

    Rgds

    Tim
     

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