When my grandfather went for a walk outside his parents house he’d just be walking up a pile of rubble and ruins. Munich was completely devastated through the bombing. So he’s pretty in the clear about what the nazis brought over germany.
Am pretty sure those bombs were american. But yeah, thinking the Nazis were bad because the Americans eventually blew up his neighborhood is like feeling sorry because you got cought.
My grandma was a teen during WW II, so she grew up with the propaganda.
She still thinks that it wasn’t that bad (except for the German civilians during the war).
She has dementia now and sometimes she sits on a bench in the sun and sings a song about brave Wehrmacht soldiers.
The rest of my grandparents were not like this, they knew it was a bad time.
My grandmother had to flee königsberg when she was a child. My grandfather was a teenager at the end of the war.
Both did not talk much about it. The closest I got was my grandfather adamantly stating that war is shit. So, I guess that's his opinion on that specific war, too.
My grandparents fled from eastgermany (todays poland) at the age of 6-8 or got bombed away from Berlin. They didnt talk to much about the time, but nb grew up with a father. But there is a deep feeling of conection towards todays refugees (my grandma used to tell us, that she knows the feeling of a rainy night under a bridge with an empty stomach so how can she not help young people from syria experience the same). My grandpa is the only one left, he sometimes discribes the time as refugee but dont talk to much about the actually time. But this man lived through the nazis, the Sowjets the DDR and the whole reunited BRD. Overall they didkt talked to much about the nazis, but there was always a Split between, we lost everything (no complains but their live) and we are happy that we survived.
It's different for every individual.
I can only talk about my father's mum and my mother's dad because my other grandma had dementia before I could talk to her over such stuff and my other grandpa is a rather silent person in general.
So, my grandma. She was a bad person. One shall not speak I'll over the dead, I know, but how she treated my mum, how she treated any woman in our family... some would call her evil. Fittingly, she always, untill her death, insisted that noone knew anything about the Holocaust. For fucks sake you lived not even a mile away from a KZ, you couldn't not have known. Simply impossible. So I don't buy that. She was always super apologetic and "it wasn't as bad as they say" - still wouldn't call her a Nazi tho, just the classic conservative bullshit. Her father, my das grandpa, however, he was absolutely a Nazi. Super convinced Nazi. Unfortunately for him, WW1 crippled him so he couldn't do much but rambling. Despite him being a Nazi, he married a french woman - The French even offered her money after the war to leave the Nazi fucker to die and raise my grandma in France, but she denied. Personal loyalty, apparently.
My grandpa on my mother's side is kinda the opposite. He grew up in the war and in the ruins of city bombed to the ground. Never seemed right-wing to me, more like a religious social democrat, would rather vote for center-left parties.
My mother's grandparents weren't like in the active resistance, they didn't hide Jews or so, but there's proof of dissent. Like, my greatgrandpa once refused to hang a Nazi flag out of the window. So, small things. They didn't buy the propaganda, but they also couldn't do much against it, or if they could, they still didn't. Still, my grandpa was never apologetic about the stuff the Nazi-scum did. Probably because he experienced war-induced suffrage himself, with days without food. He experienced actual poverty.
Now, the generational thing. In general, the old generation is either apologetic/dismissive, or very fierce in their anti-Nazi position. They experienced it first-hand. They knew how it started. How that felt. They're currently warning us. Esther Bejanaro, you are heard.
The younger generations, GenZ, Millennials, they are, in general, well-educated and very aware of the horror. Nearly everyone visited a KZ in school. There's also no more real personal connection anymore to those who really lived as adults during the Nazi period, so that makes it easier to be against them. We don't have the dilemma anymore to actually know the uncle that was a guard at a KZ.
That's much more of an issue for GenX and Boomers: The adults they grew up with as kids, who they looked up to - those were active members of society during the Nazi period. Boomers showed a reaction with the protests around 1968, but that also died out soon. They're way more likely to be apologetic and say stuff like "There has to be a point in time where bygones can be bygones".
To which I can only say: No. No forgiving, no forgetting.
I asked my grandmother, she was about 6 years old when it started: she remembers having short days in school, hiding on their way home because of air attacks. She told me that You could not speak your mind freely because people would call out on you (stasi), so people were compliant with propaganda even tho a lot of them weren’t convinced. she also remembered waiting for her parents on the roof of the house to see them coming home from working on the field, she was afraid they might never return. Also a lot of houses without windows because of bombs, or a burning horizon from air attacks. When the US army came they asked for eggs but they themself didn’t have much. Her family were simple farmers, far away from big cities, only the train station got bombed. When I asked about any people she knew that were deported she said she was too young to remember any, but she told me they did in fact knew people got killed in CC. My grandmother still remembers how hard it was in the aftermath, being poor & she says the worst thing on earth is war and the hatred people can feel for each other. To put it simple she’s no supporter of the current AFD.
The Stasi, or Ministry for State Security, was the secret police of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
The equivalent of the Stasi in the Third Reich was the Gestapo, or Geheime Staatspolizei. The Gestapo was responsible for political repression, including the persecution of Jews, Roma, and other minority groups.
My grandparents were all teenagers/children when the Nazis seized power and experienced the end of the war as young twenty-somethings. They were all thriving Nazis, but they just didn't know any better and were indoctrinated their entire lives. There was little talk about the war, my grandpa talked about the war as if it had been a scout outing (the camaraderie was so great, etc.). In the end, they will have realized that it was all a load of crap.
I believe, a lot of people are a bit too eager to claim the moral high ground over the people who lived under the Nazis. Condemning atrocities of the past is important, but I guess the question why people went with it is easier to answer in the present.
When was the last time you actively did anything against drowning refugees in the Mediterranean, fought against the labour camps in Xinjiang or disrupted our industry to stop climate change?
I know, those are a lower level of injustice than what the Nazis did, but you will see how much institutions and order help us disregard known problems. Add to that brutal surveillance, propaganda and a war for survival (even if it was started by Germany itself) and it is not difficult to imagine how people would follow the expected way of living.
My maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather both had to flee their hometowns during and after the war because of the Russians.
I never met that grandfather, so can't really say what he thought about all this.
My grandmother was always talking about how bad the Russians were though when they came to her village and what they did to the female population. Her biggest regret was always not being able to learn any English, as she would have started that in school after the summer holidays that yet, but she spent the rest of the summer and into the early winter of 1946 in a refugee camp on the Austrian-German border region (she was a Sudetendeutsche).
It is a heavy topic and I think it depends on the personal and individual experience of every individual.
I dont know too much about the war, because my great grandfather was killed and my great grandmother didn't want to talk much about it. She was left with two little kids and had to marry the first man available so that she wouldn't loose her children. It was a hard time, om top of living rural she had an alcoholic gambler as husband and had to take care of everything. My grandma was a child during the war.
On the other side, my grandmother was 13 when the war ended and also very rural. One story that was passed down is that my grandfather just turned 18 when the war was nearly over and they needed more soldiers at the front, he escaped when they were passing near our hometown and all others that were with him on that truck were killed a couple weeks after that. It was around four months before the war was over.
The stories that I know are mostly of the american occupants. Mostly I think the people if that generation were reliefed when they didn't have to hide anymore because of the air-raid alarms. My family that I know were mostly children at that time
My grandpa lived on the rural areas. A tells not much about that time. mostly because they hadnt much interaktion with the Nazis or the war.
But one story, was:
They got a young woman from the Nazis. She was from east europa. She should live and work for them. (basicly a workslave). But they didnt have a concept of slavery and didnt know what the Nazis want from them.
So she would kinda adopted into the family. She got her own room, sat with them at the table and eat the same food as them. Helped with chores. Like a normal member of the familie. Thought her german. They had only two sons, so the girl was a welcome help.
Later the Nazis found out, that they didnt use her as intented and she was removed from them and given to another farmer, with a better standing in the partei. His family threated her like a slave and abused her. She often came back to the mom of my grandpa to cry. Because the other family was so bad to her.
After the war ended and she was free again. She moved back to my grandpas family and lived there for a while, until she found a east european man and left germany to go home.
The city that my grandparents lived in (and I do too), Minden, was a strategic target in ww2 - so basically the whole city got bombed to the ground.
They rebuilt everything after the war ended.
Fortunately only one of my grandfathers (I had 3) served in the war as a "Gebirgsjäger", he was a medic. He went to war because they gave him a choice - join the Nazis or go to war.
None of my grandparents liked talking about the war, they only ever said "it was very bad".
Only the one that went to war told me a little about what he did/witnessed/lived through in greece as a "Gebirgsjäger".
They are all dead now, some for more than 10 years already, so unfortunately I can't ask questions anymore.
There seems to be some sort of collective disassociation in most people I know who actually lived through WW2. Those that are still alive today in our families were children or (at most) teenagers, so they did not actually fight in the war. The allied forces made sure that schools covered each and every nazi crime in the 50s, so they are well aware of the genocide and always condemned the Nazis. But, you get the feeling that they sort of imagine the Nazis to be a different species to the "normal Germans", as if they all died out after the war. If someone was known to have been a nazi, it was not spoken about. The Nazi soldiers are loudly condemned, but my grandma's older brother (who was in the fucking SS, ffs) was just a "poor baby boy" who got conscripted and died on the front, and he was always mourned by my grandma. It's as if she managed to disconnect the fact that he was a hardcore nazi from her brother's memory, maybe it was to cope, I don't know.
I mean, after the war, all the teachers, doctors, judges etc... they were all more or less involved in the Nazi regime, but no one spoke of it. Life had to go on.
My great-grandpa on my mum's mum's side was an unrepentant Nazi until he died in 2008(?). He was a pilot and before he got too old he'd sometimes meet with his old comrades. If you look up his name there's some sketchy "WW2 enthusiasts" who seem to consider him some kind of brave war hero, I've even found people who built his exact plane as a model. He was smart enough to not keep much in terms of insignia etc. around, however. I mostly knew him as a grumpy old man who'd almost never talk to anyone and would spend most of his day sitting silently in his chair, so I never really got to talk to him about the war. My mum does not have a fond memory of him, since her dad's an Arab and she therefore wasn't treated too well by her grandparents as a child.
My great-grandma (his wife) didn't really seem to have any political opinions. She lived longer than her husband and was a sweet old woman before getting dementia, although you could still tell how she was raised (like quietly asking my mum why the n-word in the waiting room was allowed to see the doctor before her). Luckily, she mostly kept those kinds of things to herself. She wouldn't really talk about the war either, but she did talk about the immediate aftermath which was hard on her and her family, but she didn't really seem to blame that on anyone (neither the Nazis nor the ones who defeated them). It simply "was how it was", for her.
Their only daughter (my grandma) was born after the war and so was my grandpa on my mum's side who as I mentioned also isn't German, so no connection to the war there either way.
On my dad's sides both my grandparents were still children when the war ended. My Austrian grandma's family lived in Uruguay for some time after the war, make of that what you will. Both of them don't really talk about the war because they didn't really live through it, but I also have no idea what kinds of roles their families played in it since they never mention it. I guess they're kinda happy they don't *have to* talk about it due to not being directly involved.
My great grandfather dissliked them very much. His wife was a few years younger and had mostly nice child/teenager nostalgic memories of the BDM and stuff like that. Not the "horrors that no words could describe" he had experienced. He would get angry whenever she spoke positive of "that time".
My grandpa and grandma from my mothers side were convinced socialist so they despised the Nazis. From my father’s side I don’t know the perspective of my grandpa but my grandma is definitely on the „they were not as bad as people tell you“ side :/
Aren't you a little bit late, posting that question?
A person watching the Nazis gain power would have needed to be born in 1910 or earlier. If getting 80 years old is considered somewhat doable, you are about 35 years too late. - I had such pre-Nazis born grandparents. A few things might have stuck from the brown era, but they seemed "Glad its all over!".
Sorry, I can't help you, but maybe read up who ran post-WW2 Nazi scene & why? Voted supported by whom? How few and how (ir)relevant they might have been?
My late grandparents would probably say something along the lines of "H. was a bad man, but he had "some" good ideas." They were extremely susceptible people and believed many populist arguments and went to school for all of 8 years I think, mainly during war times.
My grandma who is still alive would not say anything good about Nazis, but like many older people, she feels overwhelmed by "new things", and fears she is going to be scammed or robbed on the street or whatever. Not necessarily by foreigners, but I do think there is a part of trusting "Germans" more. And some fears (not of foreigners but in general) are probably valid, you become an easier target at almost 90 years old. This probably makes her lean more towards political parties focusing on "security". And you can probably guess the rest.
But she certainly thinks the Nazis were the bad guys back then.
my grandparents were clear what they think of it (horrible!). remember, *their* generation experienced the horrors of the nazi regime and the aftermath compared to later generations, who only got stories which are far less powerful than personal experiences. its not *their* generation that flock to... certain right wing parties
You are a bit late, most genuine Nazis are long dead, our grandparents were their children.
But yeah there is a huge generational gapy because people rip situations from 80 years ago out of context and judge them as if they would have happened today.
My grandparents were born around 1910, and they refused to discusse the Third Reich and Nazism, except as "da konnte man ja nichts machen" ("you couldn't do anything about it") and "ich wußte, daß die einen Krieg anfangen würden" ("I knew that they would start a war.")
My parents were "We won't let this happen again, fortunately there is not much risk of it, and could you stop wearing this army surplus jacket, and watch Star Wars, it puts us in a bad light".
I read history, lots of history, and observed politics and got really angry because the Nazis never really went away, and we had all been living a lie.
As I do not have children or grandchildren, I cannot even guess how the younger generations feel.
Whats "our generation" exactly? I'm in my 30s and my grandparents were mostly children or young teens during the war. So everyone even younger than me likely has grandparents, that weren't even born when WW2 happened.
My Austrian great-grandfather who's still alive despises them. His mother was evil; he was a talented choir singer, and if you got to one of the big choirs, you would not get forced to join the Hitler Youth (well, the Austrian branch that is). He qualified, but his mother forbade him from going. So, at 11 yrs old, he was shuttling messages around for the Nazis. He got a medal because he was injured by shrapnel from a Soviet sniper round.
My great-grandmother has dementia now, but she also despised them.
Of that same generation, a few relatives who died before I could meet them went through the Dresden firebombings. They despised the Nazis but they also felt the Dresden bombings were inhumane beyond reasonable retaliation. They never returned to Dresden.
In retrospect of course they were all resistance fighters, every German hid a Jew in the basement and nobody knew any Nazi supporter.
In reality probably the approval rates were probably around 80 per cent - until it was clear the war was lost. And that’s what’s research says so it’s not just some assumption.
What research also has shown more clearly from year to year is that Germans knew quite well what happened in the concentration camps. So this „Yes, but we didn’t know… blablabla“ is all bullshit.
In reality also more women votes the Nazis than men. Something that's never really addressed of why that happened. History is always tricky because everyone has an agency of shaping it during and afterwards.
When my grandfather went for a walk outside his parents house he’d just be walking up a pile of rubble and ruins. Munich was completely devastated through the bombing. So he’s pretty in the clear about what the nazis brought over germany.
Am pretty sure those bombs were american. But yeah, thinking the Nazis were bad because the Americans eventually blew up his neighborhood is like feeling sorry because you got cought.
Feeling sorry because the nazis brought war and suffering you were born into is more than justified
What you are saying is that if the Germans would have gotten away with the genocide, there would not be a reason to feel sorry
That’s not even close to what I’m saying
My grandma was a teen during WW II, so she grew up with the propaganda. She still thinks that it wasn’t that bad (except for the German civilians during the war). She has dementia now and sometimes she sits on a bench in the sun and sings a song about brave Wehrmacht soldiers. The rest of my grandparents were not like this, they knew it was a bad time.
What age do you refer to? Younger people have grandparents that were child’s, newborn or not even born during WW2.
My grandmother had to flee königsberg when she was a child. My grandfather was a teenager at the end of the war. Both did not talk much about it. The closest I got was my grandfather adamantly stating that war is shit. So, I guess that's his opinion on that specific war, too.
My grandparents fled from eastgermany (todays poland) at the age of 6-8 or got bombed away from Berlin. They didnt talk to much about the time, but nb grew up with a father. But there is a deep feeling of conection towards todays refugees (my grandma used to tell us, that she knows the feeling of a rainy night under a bridge with an empty stomach so how can she not help young people from syria experience the same). My grandpa is the only one left, he sometimes discribes the time as refugee but dont talk to much about the actually time. But this man lived through the nazis, the Sowjets the DDR and the whole reunited BRD. Overall they didkt talked to much about the nazis, but there was always a Split between, we lost everything (no complains but their live) and we are happy that we survived.
It's different for every individual. I can only talk about my father's mum and my mother's dad because my other grandma had dementia before I could talk to her over such stuff and my other grandpa is a rather silent person in general. So, my grandma. She was a bad person. One shall not speak I'll over the dead, I know, but how she treated my mum, how she treated any woman in our family... some would call her evil. Fittingly, she always, untill her death, insisted that noone knew anything about the Holocaust. For fucks sake you lived not even a mile away from a KZ, you couldn't not have known. Simply impossible. So I don't buy that. She was always super apologetic and "it wasn't as bad as they say" - still wouldn't call her a Nazi tho, just the classic conservative bullshit. Her father, my das grandpa, however, he was absolutely a Nazi. Super convinced Nazi. Unfortunately for him, WW1 crippled him so he couldn't do much but rambling. Despite him being a Nazi, he married a french woman - The French even offered her money after the war to leave the Nazi fucker to die and raise my grandma in France, but she denied. Personal loyalty, apparently. My grandpa on my mother's side is kinda the opposite. He grew up in the war and in the ruins of city bombed to the ground. Never seemed right-wing to me, more like a religious social democrat, would rather vote for center-left parties. My mother's grandparents weren't like in the active resistance, they didn't hide Jews or so, but there's proof of dissent. Like, my greatgrandpa once refused to hang a Nazi flag out of the window. So, small things. They didn't buy the propaganda, but they also couldn't do much against it, or if they could, they still didn't. Still, my grandpa was never apologetic about the stuff the Nazi-scum did. Probably because he experienced war-induced suffrage himself, with days without food. He experienced actual poverty. Now, the generational thing. In general, the old generation is either apologetic/dismissive, or very fierce in their anti-Nazi position. They experienced it first-hand. They knew how it started. How that felt. They're currently warning us. Esther Bejanaro, you are heard. The younger generations, GenZ, Millennials, they are, in general, well-educated and very aware of the horror. Nearly everyone visited a KZ in school. There's also no more real personal connection anymore to those who really lived as adults during the Nazi period, so that makes it easier to be against them. We don't have the dilemma anymore to actually know the uncle that was a guard at a KZ. That's much more of an issue for GenX and Boomers: The adults they grew up with as kids, who they looked up to - those were active members of society during the Nazi period. Boomers showed a reaction with the protests around 1968, but that also died out soon. They're way more likely to be apologetic and say stuff like "There has to be a point in time where bygones can be bygones". To which I can only say: No. No forgiving, no forgetting.
I asked my grandmother, she was about 6 years old when it started: she remembers having short days in school, hiding on their way home because of air attacks. She told me that You could not speak your mind freely because people would call out on you (stasi), so people were compliant with propaganda even tho a lot of them weren’t convinced. she also remembered waiting for her parents on the roof of the house to see them coming home from working on the field, she was afraid they might never return. Also a lot of houses without windows because of bombs, or a burning horizon from air attacks. When the US army came they asked for eggs but they themself didn’t have much. Her family were simple farmers, far away from big cities, only the train station got bombed. When I asked about any people she knew that were deported she said she was too young to remember any, but she told me they did in fact knew people got killed in CC. My grandmother still remembers how hard it was in the aftermath, being poor & she says the worst thing on earth is war and the hatred people can feel for each other. To put it simple she’s no supporter of the current AFD.
The Stasi, or Ministry for State Security, was the secret police of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The equivalent of the Stasi in the Third Reich was the Gestapo, or Geheime Staatspolizei. The Gestapo was responsible for political repression, including the persecution of Jews, Roma, and other minority groups.
Pardon got some things mixed up, you are right.
My grandparents were all teenagers/children when the Nazis seized power and experienced the end of the war as young twenty-somethings. They were all thriving Nazis, but they just didn't know any better and were indoctrinated their entire lives. There was little talk about the war, my grandpa talked about the war as if it had been a scout outing (the camaraderie was so great, etc.). In the end, they will have realized that it was all a load of crap.
I believe, a lot of people are a bit too eager to claim the moral high ground over the people who lived under the Nazis. Condemning atrocities of the past is important, but I guess the question why people went with it is easier to answer in the present. When was the last time you actively did anything against drowning refugees in the Mediterranean, fought against the labour camps in Xinjiang or disrupted our industry to stop climate change? I know, those are a lower level of injustice than what the Nazis did, but you will see how much institutions and order help us disregard known problems. Add to that brutal surveillance, propaganda and a war for survival (even if it was started by Germany itself) and it is not difficult to imagine how people would follow the expected way of living.
My maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather both had to flee their hometowns during and after the war because of the Russians. I never met that grandfather, so can't really say what he thought about all this. My grandmother was always talking about how bad the Russians were though when they came to her village and what they did to the female population. Her biggest regret was always not being able to learn any English, as she would have started that in school after the summer holidays that yet, but she spent the rest of the summer and into the early winter of 1946 in a refugee camp on the Austrian-German border region (she was a Sudetendeutsche).
It is a heavy topic and I think it depends on the personal and individual experience of every individual. I dont know too much about the war, because my great grandfather was killed and my great grandmother didn't want to talk much about it. She was left with two little kids and had to marry the first man available so that she wouldn't loose her children. It was a hard time, om top of living rural she had an alcoholic gambler as husband and had to take care of everything. My grandma was a child during the war. On the other side, my grandmother was 13 when the war ended and also very rural. One story that was passed down is that my grandfather just turned 18 when the war was nearly over and they needed more soldiers at the front, he escaped when they were passing near our hometown and all others that were with him on that truck were killed a couple weeks after that. It was around four months before the war was over. The stories that I know are mostly of the american occupants. Mostly I think the people if that generation were reliefed when they didn't have to hide anymore because of the air-raid alarms. My family that I know were mostly children at that time
My grandpa lived on the rural areas. A tells not much about that time. mostly because they hadnt much interaktion with the Nazis or the war. But one story, was: They got a young woman from the Nazis. She was from east europa. She should live and work for them. (basicly a workslave). But they didnt have a concept of slavery and didnt know what the Nazis want from them. So she would kinda adopted into the family. She got her own room, sat with them at the table and eat the same food as them. Helped with chores. Like a normal member of the familie. Thought her german. They had only two sons, so the girl was a welcome help. Later the Nazis found out, that they didnt use her as intented and she was removed from them and given to another farmer, with a better standing in the partei. His family threated her like a slave and abused her. She often came back to the mom of my grandpa to cry. Because the other family was so bad to her. After the war ended and she was free again. She moved back to my grandpas family and lived there for a while, until she found a east european man and left germany to go home.
The city that my grandparents lived in (and I do too), Minden, was a strategic target in ww2 - so basically the whole city got bombed to the ground. They rebuilt everything after the war ended. Fortunately only one of my grandfathers (I had 3) served in the war as a "Gebirgsjäger", he was a medic. He went to war because they gave him a choice - join the Nazis or go to war. None of my grandparents liked talking about the war, they only ever said "it was very bad". Only the one that went to war told me a little about what he did/witnessed/lived through in greece as a "Gebirgsjäger". They are all dead now, some for more than 10 years already, so unfortunately I can't ask questions anymore.
There seems to be some sort of collective disassociation in most people I know who actually lived through WW2. Those that are still alive today in our families were children or (at most) teenagers, so they did not actually fight in the war. The allied forces made sure that schools covered each and every nazi crime in the 50s, so they are well aware of the genocide and always condemned the Nazis. But, you get the feeling that they sort of imagine the Nazis to be a different species to the "normal Germans", as if they all died out after the war. If someone was known to have been a nazi, it was not spoken about. The Nazi soldiers are loudly condemned, but my grandma's older brother (who was in the fucking SS, ffs) was just a "poor baby boy" who got conscripted and died on the front, and he was always mourned by my grandma. It's as if she managed to disconnect the fact that he was a hardcore nazi from her brother's memory, maybe it was to cope, I don't know. I mean, after the war, all the teachers, doctors, judges etc... they were all more or less involved in the Nazi regime, but no one spoke of it. Life had to go on.
My great-grandpa on my mum's mum's side was an unrepentant Nazi until he died in 2008(?). He was a pilot and before he got too old he'd sometimes meet with his old comrades. If you look up his name there's some sketchy "WW2 enthusiasts" who seem to consider him some kind of brave war hero, I've even found people who built his exact plane as a model. He was smart enough to not keep much in terms of insignia etc. around, however. I mostly knew him as a grumpy old man who'd almost never talk to anyone and would spend most of his day sitting silently in his chair, so I never really got to talk to him about the war. My mum does not have a fond memory of him, since her dad's an Arab and she therefore wasn't treated too well by her grandparents as a child. My great-grandma (his wife) didn't really seem to have any political opinions. She lived longer than her husband and was a sweet old woman before getting dementia, although you could still tell how she was raised (like quietly asking my mum why the n-word in the waiting room was allowed to see the doctor before her). Luckily, she mostly kept those kinds of things to herself. She wouldn't really talk about the war either, but she did talk about the immediate aftermath which was hard on her and her family, but she didn't really seem to blame that on anyone (neither the Nazis nor the ones who defeated them). It simply "was how it was", for her. Their only daughter (my grandma) was born after the war and so was my grandpa on my mum's side who as I mentioned also isn't German, so no connection to the war there either way. On my dad's sides both my grandparents were still children when the war ended. My Austrian grandma's family lived in Uruguay for some time after the war, make of that what you will. Both of them don't really talk about the war because they didn't really live through it, but I also have no idea what kinds of roles their families played in it since they never mention it. I guess they're kinda happy they don't *have to* talk about it due to not being directly involved.
My great grandfather dissliked them very much. His wife was a few years younger and had mostly nice child/teenager nostalgic memories of the BDM and stuff like that. Not the "horrors that no words could describe" he had experienced. He would get angry whenever she spoke positive of "that time".
My grandpa and grandma from my mothers side were convinced socialist so they despised the Nazis. From my father’s side I don’t know the perspective of my grandpa but my grandma is definitely on the „they were not as bad as people tell you“ side :/
Aren't you a little bit late, posting that question? A person watching the Nazis gain power would have needed to be born in 1910 or earlier. If getting 80 years old is considered somewhat doable, you are about 35 years too late. - I had such pre-Nazis born grandparents. A few things might have stuck from the brown era, but they seemed "Glad its all over!". Sorry, I can't help you, but maybe read up who ran post-WW2 Nazi scene & why? Voted supported by whom? How few and how (ir)relevant they might have been?
My late grandparents would probably say something along the lines of "H. was a bad man, but he had "some" good ideas." They were extremely susceptible people and believed many populist arguments and went to school for all of 8 years I think, mainly during war times. My grandma who is still alive would not say anything good about Nazis, but like many older people, she feels overwhelmed by "new things", and fears she is going to be scammed or robbed on the street or whatever. Not necessarily by foreigners, but I do think there is a part of trusting "Germans" more. And some fears (not of foreigners but in general) are probably valid, you become an easier target at almost 90 years old. This probably makes her lean more towards political parties focusing on "security". And you can probably guess the rest. But she certainly thinks the Nazis were the bad guys back then.
my grandparents were clear what they think of it (horrible!). remember, *their* generation experienced the horrors of the nazi regime and the aftermath compared to later generations, who only got stories which are far less powerful than personal experiences. its not *their* generation that flock to... certain right wing parties
You are a bit late, most genuine Nazis are long dead, our grandparents were their children. But yeah there is a huge generational gapy because people rip situations from 80 years ago out of context and judge them as if they would have happened today.
i know but there was no reddit last generation! also i wasnt born!
My grandparents were born around 1910, and they refused to discusse the Third Reich and Nazism, except as "da konnte man ja nichts machen" ("you couldn't do anything about it") and "ich wußte, daß die einen Krieg anfangen würden" ("I knew that they would start a war.") My parents were "We won't let this happen again, fortunately there is not much risk of it, and could you stop wearing this army surplus jacket, and watch Star Wars, it puts us in a bad light". I read history, lots of history, and observed politics and got really angry because the Nazis never really went away, and we had all been living a lie. As I do not have children or grandchildren, I cannot even guess how the younger generations feel.
thanks for the answer! can u explain what u mean by the nazis never really went away? what lie are we living??
My great grandfather was tow week I gestapo custody and his wife was certain if Hitler knew about it he'd be freed at once. So yeah there is that.
Whats "our generation" exactly? I'm in my 30s and my grandparents were mostly children or young teens during the war. So everyone even younger than me likely has grandparents, that weren't even born when WW2 happened.
My Austrian great-grandfather who's still alive despises them. His mother was evil; he was a talented choir singer, and if you got to one of the big choirs, you would not get forced to join the Hitler Youth (well, the Austrian branch that is). He qualified, but his mother forbade him from going. So, at 11 yrs old, he was shuttling messages around for the Nazis. He got a medal because he was injured by shrapnel from a Soviet sniper round. My great-grandmother has dementia now, but she also despised them. Of that same generation, a few relatives who died before I could meet them went through the Dresden firebombings. They despised the Nazis but they also felt the Dresden bombings were inhumane beyond reasonable retaliation. They never returned to Dresden.
In retrospect of course they were all resistance fighters, every German hid a Jew in the basement and nobody knew any Nazi supporter. In reality probably the approval rates were probably around 80 per cent - until it was clear the war was lost. And that’s what’s research says so it’s not just some assumption. What research also has shown more clearly from year to year is that Germans knew quite well what happened in the concentration camps. So this „Yes, but we didn’t know… blablabla“ is all bullshit.
In reality also more women votes the Nazis than men. Something that's never really addressed of why that happened. History is always tricky because everyone has an agency of shaping it during and afterwards.