Posts by BenWilson
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But for all that, who knows what any of us would've done if we were in such a position. It's very hard to pass judgement
This is the crux of the matter. I don't think willful ignorance is anything to be proud of. It's a cowardly response to the world. But it's not the same as participation or even approval.
Anyway, I don't mean to suggest the German people who lived through the war shouldn't be held responsible for what they allowed to happen.
Well I'm inclined to forgive my father-in-law, at least. He was, after all, a child, and he suffered a great deal already, before he ever left Germany. To be followed by taunts and ridicule about being a Nazi for his entire life is not a good thing.
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There is voluminous evidence that the Jews of Europe knew their fate long before they were selected to be shipped so I'm always very uncomfortable with the claim that the civilians en-mass had no knowledge
I'm not. But the question of willful ignorance does arise. The Jews did want to know what was happening, so I'm sure they made a lot more effort to find out, and were a lot more informed about Jewish affairs than the average civilian. The disappearance of most of their family would not be unnoticed, and their chances of coming into contact with 'underground' sources, like foreign agents, would be considerably higher, on account of their fairly obvious forced-alignment against the Nazis.
Germans, on the other hand, might be inclined to trust the official sources a lot longer, and speaking openly amongst themselves about anything that was against the propaganda would probably have been a terrifying prospect, in a society where children were being encouraged to rat out their parents, informers were everywhere, and the consequences were extremely harsh. It's not a climate that fosters people knowing the truth about anything.
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How complicit someone was probably depended on where they were posted and in what branch of the military they served.
I'd say it's more about what they themselves actually personally did. For sure, there were more atrocities in some theaters, but that's never any indication that any particular person there was doing anything more than trying to fight in the war and stay alive.
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Matthew, I'm clearly not saying that the casualty totals will be in the same ball park. But the way in which information comes out after this kind of disaster could be very similar. Population has got nothing to do with that. It could take days for the counts to settle, and they could leap dramatically as each new discover of some wrecked settlement is made.
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Well Ross, some estuaries rush water out pretty fast most of the time, so I'm guessing that's what they mean by 'local knowledge of the local topography'. You could be forgiven upon seeing water draining from the basin enclosed by the Motorway/Rosebank Rd/Gt North Rd, to think it was abnormal for sea water to be moving so fast, but it does that every day at half-tide.
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Ross, I'm still noting that a lot of smaller more isolated spots are basically not returning much information. That was a huge part of the earlier unaccounted casualties in 2004 - isolated villages which were pretty much wiped clean out, leaving so few survivors that no one could even be sure how many had been there in the first place.
Carol, White Island would be extremely concerning, being so close. All the warning systems in the world can't help if time between earthquake and tsunami is only a few minutes. I think this is what happened in Samoa - it's not like people were unaware of the danger, it's just that it happened so damned fast. That's why general public knowledge of what rapidly receding water means is a good idea.
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well AFTER it was clear there was no serious risk here and the impact in Samoa had become widely reported.
I give you that a lot of people don't much care about foreign disasters, rating them less interesting than local weather conditions. A tsunami is certainly a very interesting thing, something most of us don't get to see even once in our lives. I've wanted to see one since I was a small child, after seeing a Japanese children's film about one. It was a cartoon, and the depiction of the wave was fanciful, but it looked incredible, and extremely important. Not something that you would want to miss.
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I have a lot of German friends here in Bali (there is a very large German community) and we've talked of this. My understanding from what i've heard is that many of that generation went to their graves rather unrepentant, or in some denial.
I'm about to spend a week with the German father-in-law, who is coming to see his new grandson. I'm rather nervous - last time he came he had clearly been hanging out with a lot of old Germans (he recently divorced my mother-in-law and shacked up with a German lady), and came loaded with reading that I could only describe as bizarre apologist conspiracy theories.
I had been warned by the family that he was peddling this tripe so I avoided all his attempts to discuss it, but he became more and more insistent, mistaking my tolerance/reticence as agreement. Finally he cornered me on the last day and told me I didn't have an open mind, and I gave him my mind (in a way that I thought was fair and diplomatic) leaving him in tears of rage and denial. It was very unpleasant.
Apparently he was not always this way. It seems as if a lifetime of being picked on for being German has driven him to this strange irrational defensive corner, and only now that he has electively killed any need to be polite to his (mostly French-Australian) family, his long festering suppressed beliefs are coming out, and they're quite nasty to behold.
That's why, to a certain extent, I have sympathy for this post. I don't think rubbing people's face in crimes that they had no part in (he was a small child during the war) themselves serves any purpose other than to strengthen their prejudices and alienate them. It's actually a pretty nasty thing to do, to demonize people, and it is no surprise when they figure they might as well join the demons if they're going to be assumed to be demons anyway.
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the leading points of discussion still centred around ZOMG I WONDER WHAT THE SURF AT GIZZY WILL BE LIKE?
And I really don't believe that as a whole we are that self-centred and shallow.
I don't either, and I wonder why you formed that impression. Most of the leading points of discussion I've seen have been "how bad is it in Samoa and the other islands", and "how bad could it be in NZ?". Where were these "leading points of discussion"? I've been pleasantly surprised by how switched on the leading papers, TV news and radios have been about actually trying to help, connecting people with concern for their relatives to officials, giving useful advice, linking to charity efforts, and keeping us up to date as the tragedy unfolds.
There's always going to be tasteless jokes, sure. But being concerned about what's actually going to happen here is not outrageous, and taking an interest in an approaching tsunami is pretty natural, especially if you have a lot to do with the beach, as a large proportion of NZers do.
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Wait, if he hadn't told an untruth about where he lived, by any reasonable definition, then he wouldn't be distracted.
All the same, I'd rather he wasn't distracted. Unless he gets sacked and replaced, of course, then someone can get on with the quite important job of being the Finance Minister instead of the Minister of trying not to look like a greedy politician.
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