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Originally Posted by Don Clipper Spirit
Learn some history before you make such disturbing comments. (I don't mean that in a rude or offensive way!) My family has German roots and I know the stories of that period from first hand. For comparissing: just the victims of the Wilhem Gustloff are three time the victims of 9/11. More than two thirds of them were civilian... That was just one ship with refugees, I am not talking about all the villages which were raped and murdered when the Russians "liberated" the German people.
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Another example of revisionist thinking. I have an extensive library of WWII literature, from German, British, American, French and Russian authors. These are very interesting works, many taken from documentation and living witnesses. I'm an avid reader of history, and consider myself very well informed. I find that many Europeans don't want to think about the Bad Old Days, and choose to gloss the whole issue over. The Germans (and I don't mean all of them, only those who followed Hitler's vision of a thousand-year Reich) committed many, many atrocities on not just the Russians, but gypsies, homosexuals, mentally and physically handicapped, the insane, Catholics, Jews, and anyone else who didn't fall in the Aryan Perfection, including those in the Underground within Germany itself. The Russians were enraged by the burned and shattered villages, towns and cities that the Germans swept through. Leningrad was virtually annihilated, as was Stalingrad. I don't condone the hideous retribution the Russians exacted on the German civilians, but you can see the point. Holland was only lightly touched by German occupation forces, but it's civilians lived in fear of the Gestapo, like all the other occupied nations. It wasn't until the Allies forced the Germans from Holland that the real damage to the country occurred. By the way, I have German heritage in my family, and I love the German people...I also have family from Holland, and love them too. They are the friendliest folks, when you don't talk politics, anyway.