Ableton Forum

yes, no shit, please.

I completely opened things up for people to predictably only respond to the subtext, but I'm quite serious in wondering how history is taught in regards to that country clearly losing a war and on some level they did bring it upon themselves - they being their leaders.

most have their leadership replaced in one form or another after a war anyways. those that don't sure find a way to say "we won it. it did hurt, but we got them out of our country again", or so..

at least bush was talking about how they won the irak war.. yeah.. politics are great at such fake "we made it, we won it, we whatever".

oh i forgot. germany is right above me. well the days after the wars endet, they sort of "just forgot what happened". other than that, they till today have a mixture between shame of "how could we let this happen" and anger "we're a new generation, not at fault. stop blaming us"

davepermen wrote:i don't think much remember from experience how it felt back then..

the OP does say "never"... although the war of 1812 more or less petered out, wikipedia has the following ("Burning of Washington" in 1814)

The troops then turned north down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House.... Once inside, the soldiers found the dining hall set for a dinner for 40 people. After eating all the food, they took souvenirs (e.g., one of the president's hats) and then set the building on fire.

Stone gangsta: ate his dinner, stole his hats, then burnt his house down!!

davepermen wrote:oh i forgot. germany is right above me. well the days after the wars endet, they sort of "just forgot what happened". other than that, they till today have a mixture between shame of "how could we let this happen" and anger "we're a new generation, not at fault. stop blaming us"

Yeah, people seemed to miss the obvious real easily and just wanted to talk about wars of the past 20 years or wars that happened hundreds of years ago. I'd also be curious on how Japan has handled this.

I don't think current generations should be held accountable for things that happened 60+ years ago but just wanted to know how they are presented the facts, if at all.

Ironically the only reason people haven't definitively won a war in a long ass time is because soon after a weapon was invented that would leave no doubt it became bad form to completely crush your enemy.

where's the eye rolling, crying, face-palming and loling all at the same time emoticon ?

dum wrote:where's the eye rolling, crying, face-palming and loling all at the same time emoticon ?

I don't go trolling your political agenda war atrocity threads.

Just kidding. I do. And my responses are just as useless as yours so carry on.

beats me wrote:I completely opened things up for people to predictably only respond to the subtext, but I'm quite serious in wondering how history is taught in regards to that country clearly losing a war and on some level they did bring it upon themselves - they being their leaders.

It is interesting in Germany, definitely huge and complex subject. So let me say something about 2 aspects
The lost war complex never failed me. If you are Auslander you might be really treated like shit or worse in many parts of the country, facing some "uncomfortable" situations, shifting to heavy English accent make people behave ( I learnt German before coming here and as musician can rather easily pick up even dialects so normally dont have accent).
After so many years here I do it automatically in unknown surroundings, people, situations keep heavy "occupying force" accent. It might be fading phenomenon since most of the US, Brit and French occupying armies are gone, but still works. Unfortunately Germans have that issue of feeling better,superior etc,(well, they always know better-remember Timur, that chap was typisch Deutsch in that sense) it is really deep and sometimes you notice it even in nice, decent people, while in case of "not so nice" can be really disturbing, can turn ugly. The accent trick diffuses it instantly.

The other interesting story is of German women raped by Russians. I live in Germany for 10 years and have not heard about till recently, I mean never knew that the numbers were so high- estimated 2 to 3 millions. It was the film "Woman in Berlin" based on book "Anonyma" diary of German journalist , that brought my attention to the subject. Well made and interesting film was "silenced" in Germany, hard to see, find DVD, if not for interview with the actress that I accidentally watched on TV , wouldnt know about its existence. All that made me even more curious about the subject,so researched a bit, tried to talk to people. The book was released anonymously, and there was a lot of "traitor" (because she spoke what everybody knew but nobody would speak about) fuss about it, seems like lots of Germans hate the author for revealing the facts to the world. While the whole Nazi part of history was handled rather well by government , educational system, media etc and I would say 90% of Germans have healthy attitude to that past, they are not able to handle that massive humiliation of females/ whole nation by the Russians .

Sorry how is it that America lost a war that isn't over yet? You can say America is losing the war but you can't say they've lost it until it's over.

That being said I don't think it'll ever be over really, a "war on terror" is an endless war.

rikhyray wrote: The other interesting story is of German women raped by Russians. I live in Germany for 10 years and have not heard about till recently, I mean never knew that the numbers were so high- estimated 2 to 3 millions. It was the film "Woman in Berlin" based on book "Anonyma" diary of German journalist , that brought my attention to the subject. Well made and interesting film was "silenced" in Germany, hard to see, find DVD, if not for interview with the actress that I accidentally watched on TV , wouldnt know about its existence. All that made me even more curious about the subject,so researched a bit, tried to talk to people. The book was released anonymously, and there was a lot of "traitor" (because she spoke what everybody knew but nobody would speak about) fuss about it, seems like lots of Germans hate the author for revealing the facts to the world. While the whole Nazi part of history was handled rather well by government , educational system, media etc and I would say 90% of Germans have healthy attitude to that past, they are not able to handle that massive humiliation of females/ whole nation by the Russians .

I think you're not putting it into historical/political perspective, in the sense that you're not looking at causality etc.
Don't think you can fully explain it of course, it's war, and people act like animals in those conditions, or that I can per say, but the reasons are tenfold why Russians would react very differently than the British or Americans etc. The nazis had a genocidal policy in Russia, Belarus and areas like that had whole villages of people killed, men, women, children. This was far different than their treatment of the French or allied POWs. For various political reasons, ( IMO because the western press doesn't like portraying Stalin's Russia as having anything near the Holocaust ), this is deemed irrelevant or at least nobody wants to make the connection to that, and the subsequent Russian soldiers treating Germans with so little respect, rape etc.

As for the original topic, it's irrelevant, most other countries on the planet have been occupied and lost wars, and it hasn't kept them from being war like.
War is primarily fought economically between first world nations, and that's IMO how the US will eventually lose superpower status, unless something drastic changes.

Johnisfaster wrote: That being said I don't think it'll ever be over really, a "war on terror" is an endless war.

because it creates terror?

3phase wrote:

Johnisfaster wrote: That being said I don't think it'll ever be over really, a "war on terror" is an endless war.

because it creates terror?

possibly, the reason a war on terror is an endless war is because war in general creates enemies. Even if you defeat everyone you set out to defeat there will simply be someone new who hates you for it (or for something new) and eventually will be a new enemy. And they will say "the war on terror has a new enemy" which we are already seeing said in the news even now. I have no doubt that in 20 years my children will be flipping the tv on to see who the new enemy in the war on terror is.

war to achieve peace is like fucking to achieve virginity.

Machinesworking wrote: I think you're not putting it into historical/political perspective, in the sense that you're not looking at causality etc.

No, not at all, I am very much aware of historical and political background. Since you have interest in the subject I say the movie is must see. I was really surprised by it, handling such a subject is though, really tough because it would be so easy to oversimplify like showing Russians as "wild beasts", or "them savage Nazis" easily slipping into simple black and white stereotypes. They were able to, as much as it could be done in a feature film, show positive, negative and all between of both sides. There is no sweetening or trivialising the brutality, yet showing the other side as well, not just the reasons behind Russian officers giving free go ( unlike Poles, French etc treated according to Geneva conventions, Russians were treated, butchered like non humans) but showing other "shocking" for the Germans aspects of the Russians- their humanity, abilities to feel, love,passion unknown in the German society of those days, or the fact that Russians would show more respect to educated German women that Germans do (sadly that didnt change much till today, recently EU comission of Justice and Rights officially critisised Germany for 23% difference in salaries).
Anyway the reason why I mentioned the film was the original question, how loser deal with lost war, an attempt to sweep it under the carpet, as it never happened. As I said the Nazi aspect of history was faced and dealt with rather effectively by Germans as individuals and society but that of lost war is somehow buried into subconscious, never really faced, confronted, as it does not exist, yet it does, and continues carried over generations. That is why the "accent" trick functions so well since it works/hits on the level of deeper social subconsciousness.

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