Hitler to lose German citizenship?

[Gotthard Heinrici]

You should see the exhibitions that they have to the Resistance in Berlin. Its as if they are shouting "Look at us" there were good people here too!! Its a bit unsettling.

[lancesergeant]

Perhaps she thinks it would serve a cathartic purpose. By severing this tie - she maybe thinks she is soothing some regional conscience. Flogging a dead horse springs to mind - look I'm hitting it. Obviously someone with too much time on their hands.

[Kiwiwriter]

It's a gesture by some folks in Germany who want to say, "We are not your grandfather's Germany. We will not again become your grandfather's Germany."

Gotta remember that 70 years later, Germany is still seen as the bad guys. That's not fair to folks born in 1978.

An example: when the "Goodfellas" of book and movie did the Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport in 1978, they made off with $26 million in cash and negotiable securities in about an hour. Nobody injured. It was the biggest heist in US history, and it wasn't really solved...Jimmy "The Gent" Conway basically whacked everybody else in the heist so he didn't have to pay out their share of the money.

My point here is that this heist was treated by the media and the cops not as a major robbery, but as Christmas-time entertainment, because the only victim was the German national airline, and that was a country for whom New York's many ethnicities (Jewish, Polish, Russian, black, Italian, Irish, even Latino) had very little sympathy. A lot of people (including me and my teenage pals) had the take of "They deserved it."

But that wasn't right or fair. The money was cash US troops and tourists exchanged in Germany and Europe for local currency for their many purchases, and the guys who did this heist were armed, ready to kill, and did indeed have a track record of bloody murder -- of enemies, victims, and each other.

I agree with Sgt. Kilrain in "The Killer Angels" when he says, "I want to be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved."

So I see the legislator's point, agree that the bill doesn't do much realistic good, but I see it as a positive that does no harm. The Germans are cognizant of their history, trying to move away from it, and forge a more humane identity for the 21st century. And good luck to them, say I.

Because the alternative is too bitter to contemplate.

[von Poop]

I think it does do harm.
I approve of a certain amount of historical 'revisionism' as long as it's based on fact, or new information, and generally constructs a better or more accurate (however possible that is ) picture of what went before.

This , to me, just makes the participants look stupid. I'm sure they believe their intentions are good but devotion to such a meaningless gesture so long after the event only worsens any perception I may have of them and causes another layer of controversial scar tissue to flower over the old wounds.

Live with your countries past and get on with it I say, otherwise meaningless anxiety is given more significance than it deserves and every long-established state would be constantly wringing it's hands, looking backwards, and apologising.
Most importantly; People can only really be exiled while they're alive...

Cheers,
Adam.

[Za Rodinu]

Then why do Brits still burn Guy Fawkes effigies 400 years after the event?

[von Poop]

More than that! This year I attended Lewes Bonfire madness where effigies of Bishops, Popes, Fawkes, Bush, Blair, Al Zarqawi... you name it, weren't just burnt, they were blown up! but that's Tradition, mocking old enemies from without and within and most importantly having a damned good party, not modernist political attempts to disown too late after the fact.

Now if they had begun burning huge effigies of Hitler in 1946 they'd have a fine heritage on their hands.