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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI Loved My Grandmother. But She Was a Nazi.
This really resonates in the tRump era. When you read the entire article some of it sounds like today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/opinion/i-loved-my-grandmother-but-she-was-a-nazi.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
My grandparents were Nazis. It took me until recently to be able to say or write this. I used to think of and refer to them as ordinary Germans, as if that was a distinct and morally neutral category. But like many ordinary Germans, they were members of the Nazi Party they joined in 1937, before it was mandatory.
My grandmother, who lived to be almost 100, was not, as I knew her, xenophobic or anti-Semitic; she did not seem temperamentally suited to hate. Understanding why and how this woman I knew and loved was swept up in a movement that became synonymous with evil has been, for me, a lifelong question.
She and my grandfather grew up in a working-class suburb of industrial Dortmund, where unemployment was rife; it had been occupied by the French after World War I. They joined the Nazi Party to be youth leaders in an agricultural education program called the Landjahr, or year on the land, in which teenagers got agricultural training. My grandmother always maintained that she had joined the Nazis as an idealist drawn to the vision of rebuilding Germany, returning to a simpler time and, perversely, promoting equality.
In the Landjahr, sons and daughters of factory workers would live and work side by side with sons and daughters of aristocrats and wealthy industrialists. She liked the idea of returning to traditional German life, away from the confusing push and pull of a global economy. Through research, I understand the Landjahr program was part of Hitlers larger Blut und Boden (blood and soil) vision of making Germany a racially pure, agrarian society. The racially pure part was not something my grandmother ever mentioned.
We didnt know was a kind of mantra for her on the long walks we took when I visited her at the farm she lived on, not far from where she grew up. But didnt you hear what Hitler was saying? I would ask, grappling with the moral paradox of a loving grandmother who had been a Nazi.
My grandmother would shrug and answer something like, He said a lot of things I didnt listen to all of them. Didnt she see Jews being rounded up and taken away, or at a minimum, harassed by the police? No, she maintained, not in the countryside where she lived. And anyway, she was focused on her own problems, on making ends meet and, once the war began, protecting her children.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,611 posts)She was trying to make her way the best she could in a tumultuous time of upheaval and stress.
I suspect she was a Nazi only in the most superficial of ways: trying to fit in and make a success of her life and of her family.
Snackshack
(2,541 posts)It really is not that difficult to understand.
greytdemocrat
(3,299 posts)She certainly didn't sound like any kind
of Nazi monster.
Pacifist Patriot
(24,653 posts)Gabi Hayes
(28,795 posts)gee....does that sound familiar?
or what?
this is how Hitler made germany great again............
eppur_se_muova
(36,261 posts)mitch96
(13,895 posts)A lovely strong willed person. Growing up in the early 50's she would sometimes talk about living in Hitlers Germany but not often. A city girl from Aachen, near where Belgium Germany and the Netherlands meet. All the kids were Hitler youth. She said it was like everybody was in the same "club". You were suspect if you were not in "the club". She married a GI at 16 and made it to America. She would always say she was very lucky in her life being liberated by the Americans. . Old habits die hard and you could hear the indoctrination sometimes when she would say things like "he's a good Jew".. I was 5 or 6 so I did not get it until later.. Ironic most of her kids friends were Jewish..
She is still alive and in her late 90's but her mind is kinda gone. I'd love to ask her a bunch of questions...
m
Cattledog
(5,914 posts)"My grandmother heard what she wanted from a leader who promised simple answers to complicated questions. She chose not to hear and see the monstrous sum those answers added up to."
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)... probable while there's no excuse today ... NONE
mitch96
(13,895 posts)Reminds me of the stories affluent Berlin Jews told in the late 20's early 30's.. Didn't think it would effect them... oops!
m
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)NAZI PARTY TWELVE YEARS after Hitler's "Mein Kampf" was available.
"First published in 1925, Mein Kampf shows Hitler's personal grievances and his ambitions for creating a New Order.
Historian Ian Kershaw points out that [b ]several passages in Mein Kampf are undeniably of a genocidal nature.[10] Hitler wrote "the nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated",[11] and he suggested that, "If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain."[12]
The racial laws to which Hitler referred resonate directly with his ideas in Mein Kampf. In his first edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that the destruction of the weak and sick is far more humane than their protection. Apart from this allusion to humane treatment, Hitler saw a purpose in destroying "the weak" in order to provide the proper space and purity for the "strong".
~~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf#Contents
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FEH. I'm sure there's all kinds of stories. "I voted for Trump, but I didn't think MY terrific, kind, hard-working, dog-loving, illegal-immigrant husband would face deportation!"
I don't cut slack for any card-carrying Nazis, not even little old Grannies just tryin' to farm the Lebensraum.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)....usually without any attempt to understand the warnings (plural) represented by the Nazi horror.
One of those warnings is the way that dictators (The Nazis are only one example) may use the idealism of youth to attain and consolidate power. Those dictators frequently turn, first, upon the people who helped put them in power; I think the grandmother in this story was lucky enough to live far enough from the centers of power, not to attract the attention of Hitler's henchmen.
tblue37
(65,340 posts)He said a lot of things I didnt listen to all of them. . . . And anyway, she was focused on her own problems, on making ends meet and, once the war began, protecting her children.