Post-war, the orthodoxy in German historiography was that Nazism was a crime committed by a small criminal group, that the German people were the victims of this crime, and that there was nothing specifically German about Nazism.
While functionalism emerged in left-wing historical thought in the 60s, whereby the wider population were held not merely victims but enthusiastic participants in Nazism, the orthodoxy sought to rehabilitate the Third Reich.
This culminated in the Bitburg incident in the mid-80s where Reagan and Kohl participated in a public ceremony to honour all the war dead including the SS buried there. Reagan’s justification was that the SS were just as much victims of the Nazi criminality as the European Jews, and that Germany must shed its war guilt.
You are distorting something that has an element of truth so much that you are losing contact with reality. Neither Reagan or Kohl ever claimed the SS were as much victims as the Jews were. You are guilty of creating fake history, and that is actually a crime in EU!!!
Sorry looked it up, he did say something pretty close to that. And I agree that is insane IMO.
But still a bad argument, first because it was 35 years after the fact, and West Germany did a lot to clean up their act for decades before that. Second because Reagan was an American, and does not reflect on what Germans did internally.
Bullshit, after the war it was revealed to the Germans in Western Germany how bad it was.
Post-war, the orthodoxy in German historiography was that Nazism was a crime committed by a small criminal group, that the German people were the victims of this crime, and that there was nothing specifically German about Nazism.
While functionalism emerged in left-wing historical thought in the 60s, whereby the wider population were held not merely victims but enthusiastic participants in Nazism, the orthodoxy sought to rehabilitate the Third Reich.
This culminated in the Bitburg incident in the mid-80s where Reagan and Kohl participated in a public ceremony to honour all the war dead including the SS buried there. Reagan’s justification was that the SS were just as much victims of the Nazi criminality as the European Jews, and that Germany must shed its war guilt.
So no bullshit at all.
You are distorting something that has an element of truth so much that you are losing contact with reality. Neither Reagan or Kohl ever claimed the SS were as much victims as the Jews were. You are guilty of creating fake history, and that is actually a crime in EU!!!Sorry looked it up, he did say something pretty close to that. And I agree that is insane IMO.
But still a bad argument, first because it was 35 years after the fact, and West Germany did a lot to clean up their act for decades before that. Second because Reagan was an American, and does not reflect on what Germans did internally.