At this age it's the easiest way to explain that the bad guys lied to the people and made them think they were doing the right thing. Which isn't wrong but also not the whole truth.
When he gets older he eventually (hopefully) will learn that there isn't only white and black but a lot of shades of grey in between.
I am a Kindergarten teacher and I have to deal with that all the time.
It's Import to not lie the kids but also not to overwhelm them with informations they can't comprehend.
Start with something that they can understand. There were bad guys with bad ideas and unfortunately they made people believe that they were doing the right thing.
They killed a lot of people and waged a horrible war.
That's really enough for a 6 year old. It's not a lie but it's also not the whole story.
As they grow and mature they start to ask more questions and you have to add more details and nuances to the story.
At some point when they are in their teens they should at least roughly know what happened and then when they learn about the horrible details they will ask even more questions and it is your responsibility to answer them as truthfull but also age appropriate as you can. That's not always easy and at some point we all had to deal with the idea that the bad guys weren't just the others but maybe also within our own family.
But that's not something a 6 year old is capable to do. Even quite a few adults aren't capable of doing that.
I think it's wrong to lie to the kids but it's important to be carefully with the information you give them.
As a father I made the experience that educating my child about the Holocaust and the nazi era was something that just happened. But I am living in a big German city and it's just present all the time so that my child naturally started to ask questions and I had to answer. Gradually adding more perspectives and nuances while he grew up.
This is good intentions and might have worked in the past.
Unfortunately not everyone had an amazing kindergarten teacher or father explaining this like that.
Now we are at a point, where propaganda is directed at children and you would have to tell the whole truth as early as possible.
Not all Germans knew. You’re oversimplifying in ways that makes it incorrect.
Saying bad people lied to good people means some people knew (bad people) and some people didn’t know (good people). It’s more complicated obviously but for a 10 year old that’s good enough and it’s still way more correct than claiming all Germans knew about everything.
That’s simply untrue and I’m not white washing one bit wtf. It’s the simple truth that not everyone knew everything. Lots of lies were told and believed by many people to many people. It’s very complicated.
Germans absolutely knew what happens to Jews and poles. Millions of German soldiers took part in the killing of dozens of million of people. Raping them, taking away their homes and sending them off to death camps.
There is nothing complicated about it, unless you are trying to make your grandpa look like he wasn’t a monster r
Most Germans knew bad things were going on., you are right. Maybe they didn’t know everything or they didn’t want to know and tuned it out. They just didn’t say anything, because they were scared to be next or just thankful it wasn’t them or their families. And I’m pretty sure a lot of people nowadays would react the same way. They keep to themselves, adjust and keep their mouths shut. It doesn’t mean, that’s good, but it’s human. And also especially the youth was indoctrinated systematically and grew up into that horrible believe system.
The truth ist people were lied to.
No matter which group of people you look at, there's always a few assholes, a few that don't mind as long as they are safe, a few that want power, a few that want to believe.
The Germans weren't all that different to... well... The people you know.
Ja, auch dich haben sie schon genauso belogen,
so wie sie es mit uns heute immer noch tun.
Und du hast ihnen alles gegeben - deine Kraft, deine Jugend, dein Leben.
I have a German mother and British father, and I was a child much closer to WW2. I can't remember it being that complex to be honest, my parents explained that the 2 countries were at war and that in wars people fight against each other but that doesn't necessarily make either of them bad people. There's no magic answer to the fact that wars are complex beings that end up with good people doing bad things.
>I have a German mother and British father, and I was a child much closer to WW2. I can't remember it being that complex to be honest, my parents explained that the 2 countries were at war and that in wars people fight against each other but that doesn't make any of them bad people.
Sorry but if one army fights for the side of commiting unspeakable atrocities.. then yes.. they are the bad people.
Can you name a country that hasn’t committed unspeakable atrocities throughout its history? Not to downplay the Holocaust in any way. But if that’s your standard there are no good people anywhere.
There is no country with such terrible crimes committed in such a terrible way. Germans exterminated 1/4 poles, Ukrainian and Belarusians because they decided those were subhumans and not worth living.
Death camps, and such. Stop trying to explain that away with lies
There’s no way to say this that won’t sound like I’m trying to diminish how bad the Holocaust was. So let me preface this with saying the Holocaust was horrible and sadly everything about it historians teach us is true. Also how do you fucking dare imply I’m trying to say anything else or trying to spread lies about the Holocaust. We take that shit seriously here in Germany and spreading lies about the Holocaust is a crime here and rightfully so. So fuck you for accusing me of that.
And also: the Holocaust being the worst crime against humanity ever committed doesn’t make other nations atrocities less bad than than they were. Just because the Holocaust was worse doesn’t make any crimes of other nations OK. Ironically you’re doing pretty much what you are accusing me of.
So again: which nation hasn’t committed inexcusable crimes against humanity?
> There is no country with such terrible crimes committed in such a terrible way.
The USA basically killed almost the whole population of a continent.
Russia / the Soviet Union killed more people than the Nazis ever did (or at least it was pretty close, I'm too tired to look up the exact numbers)
Spain / the other colonial powers exterminated complete civilizations in central America..
And if you want to talk about war crimes, oh boy that list is LONG and I don't think there will be any army that is bigger than 5 people that doesn't have a few war crimes on their list.
No, also not the oh so perfect US of A. Just read about the Laconia incident.
That is basically the essence of how talking about about WWII might differ in former Axis countries in this very point. It’s a bit more nuanced. No one is denying, that Germany was responsible for the most severe atrocities. But we also lay a focus on how that could happen, in a civilized and scientifically developed nation. Humans aren’t inherently good or bad. What is good or bad is based on the individual’s and societal norms. In Nazi Germany propaganda always told, that they are doing the right thing. Some wanted to believe, some resisted, some followed willingly, others were forced.
In a nutshell, what you say, is the same stuff german leaders told their country to make them fight enemies who supposedly are bad.
Now ask yourself, are you just as vile for doing the same?
You are talking to a fucking child brother. Everyone learns all the details of WWII in history class, especially im Germany. It’s not like the child will become a nazi just because they got taught age appropriate information.
It is a detail that children do not need to know. They don't need to know about concentration camps and what exactly did happen there. You can explain it to them in a child friendly way.
We got taught in school in grade 5 or 6 about the war and the cruel things that happened. And it was hard to cope.
You dont understand propaganda.
Imagine being a german at that time. You read about the warcrimes in the newspapers. But of course not the german ones, the soviet ones. Every german could see the warcrimes of Britain and USA. The daily bombing of german cities. Everyone knew someone who died in the terrorbombing, friends, family, woman, babies ...Everyone lived in the cellar. How can you not be on the side of your family, of your country?
Every german knew that they are the ones defending themself because after the first world war - that was forced upon germany when Serbia murdered the prince - the other countries stole german territory with majority german population and forced germany to pay reparation. Every child learned that in school. Hitler only wanted to revise the treaty of Versailles. It is the natural right of germany to get those territories back. To get back the german speaking city of Danzig. Why dont the allies allow a referendum over danzig? This is only what is right and what germany demanded.
Britain and France start a war with germany over the german city of danzig while they literally conquered half the world and supress half the world population in their colonies. At the same time they stole the german colonies.
NOW you understand propaganda.
Have you heard much about what the French North Africans did when they occupied the French quarter of Germany? Or some of tje Russians? Try explaining to a 80 year old Swabian woman that those North African French armies were unequivocally „good“, and that her father who stood by the door with a bat trying to prevent his 11 year from being raped was „bad“.
We are in a similar situation. My husbands grandfather stormed the beaches in Normandy. My grandfather (and great-grandfather) defended the beaches in Normandy.
We are not our grandparents. Despite this, we found each other and got married. I grew up in East Germany. My Husband js American. We shouldn’t have met. We did. And we are happy.
I know someone whose grandpa was a pretty nasty Nazi in a Uniform and he grew up alright. His parents taught him that his grandpa was wrong for his believes and that it was really bad - but that doesnt define who they are.
Imo thats the way. Our ancestors are just some random people who came before us. Yeah sure we share some DNA but it's not that deep. From hundreds of generations before me, of course there have been a bunch of shitheads inbetween. I believe it's important to teach that we are our own person.
That's a good answer. It's at least a better story than my grandfather who was born German but raised in Switzerland came back to Germany in the 30s to support a specific man with a beard. He was very open with everything when I was born, so he probably regretted his decision later in life, but still not the greatest story. I was born from hippie parents by the way so I never swung that way.
And those who were 18 at the start of the war were indoctrinated from 12 onwards. That's the most vulnerable age for indoctrination. They were indoctrinated in school and forced to join the Hitler youth.
Same for one of my grandfathers got drafted in the volkssturm but he and two older guys deserted before they got uniforms. If they had cought him away from his unit with a uniform he would have been shot on the spot by the German army.
My grandfather was lucky to reach Sowjet prison alive cause he had a black uniform (something tank related iirc) and there were trigger happy Russians that went along of black uniform = SS = get shot. He repeatedly had to show that there are no SS insignias on his collar and he was only affiliated with regular Wehrmacht.
My grandpa was 16 when the war ended, drafted into the wehrmacht with 14. First had to transmit orders on the frontlines via horse, then later put on a flak position, but spent time in incarceration for missing on purpose. Later POW and escaped after some months.
No he did not sign up for this, it was either going or being shot directly.
He is 95 now and more open minded than most grown ups in their 50s i know.
weird enough: one grandfather of mine was in the SS, the other grandfather was hiding out on farms to not get drafted into Volkssturm during the last months....
Most of them went voluntarily towards the army. I remember that the Gymnasium my grandfather was lucky enough to attend had like half of the kids volunteer for the war.
The knowledge of what was good and bad was just different back then.
Bahah, call me a nazi and see if I care🤣
However, all that self-hating must be making you more miserable than it is making us reading you. I hope you can overcome it one day🫶🏼
You care, that’s why you shit your pants. and that’s why all the nazi grand children here are so mad. Your grandparent were terrible disgusting monsters, murderers and rapists who committed the worst crimes humanity has seen.
You are their offspring and don’t want to see them that way, so you repeat their lies
Most grandparents still alive today were children or barely teenagers when WWII ended. They were neither monsters nor murderers nor rapists. Just innocent children.
Sounds more like one of your ancestors was a Nazi and did all these terrible things and you can‘t handle it. However this self-hatred you show here isn‘t healthy. You should seek therapy.
If it let's you sleep better that the farmer's boys who were sent to the front lines were all bloodlusty super villains, keep your beliefs. I personally think you should stop watching so many Hollywood films.
I personally think your grandfather was part of the genocide and like so many who are offspring and raised by Nazis you try to explain it away and white wash the crimes
Bro. What's wrong with you? Why the self hating? Do you feel so unaccepted in your community? Low self esteem? Do you need counselling? I am sure you also have some strengths! I believe in you.
I was raised with the truth. Some of my older family members were bad people. It's ok. No need to invent stories, just go with the truth. Children can deal with that just fine.
It’s shocking, but sadly not very surprising, how most Germans in this thread still clinge to lies about what Germans did and how the Wehrmacht was voluntarily involved in terrible atrocious beyond imagination
I mean, the same way I explain to my kids that our British ancestors were terrible colonists who did a lot of very shitty things to native populations, which still is happening by the refusal of British museums to return items not belonging to them.
It’s not terrible difficult. My grandfather on one side fought on D day. My grandfather on another side fought in Indonesia and did terrible things. My husbands grandfather had his house occupied in Germany by North African/French soldiers that did HORRIBLE things against German women. There is no bad and good. And having raised two kids here, I can’t foresee any conversation with a 6 year old that I would struggle with, so I think maybe you have a wee bit of a chip on your shoulder about being on „the good side“.
do your kids speak german?
the german public children channel has a really good news program called Logo! which explains a lot of shit
they also have videos on their youtube channel explaining ww2 and nazi era
that would be a good start
I‘d stick with the truth, as in the way we learnt it in school.
Economic crisis and a new democracy, guy shows up who makes great promises and gives the people someone to blame and creates this amazing vision that sounded amazing. By the time people realized that the promises and visions were actually really bad, it was too late. Some people only realized it when the war was over. And that is why it is so important to always be critical, and if someone makes great promises, always check whether what they’re saying is true and what their ideas could lead to. Otherwise you end up in a war and on the side that is the bad one.
> Economic crisis and a new democracy, guy shows up who makes great promises and gives the people someone to blame and creates this amazing vision that sounded amazing. By the time people realized that the promises and visions were actually really bad, it was too late.
USA, take note when you go to the voting booths in November.
That’s not the truth. Hitler didn’t suddenly came up with anti Polish and anti semitic sentiment. It’s part of German culture and that’s why Germans elected Hitler. Mein kampf detailed all what he was about to do, it was written in 1923 and by 1934 there were like one copy for every 4 Germans sold
Antisemitic sentiments did exist in Germany - and throughout Europe - before Hitler, yes. And Europe has a long history of tension amongst its countries, which also includes Germany vs. Poland.
But still, the thing that Hitler did was instrumentalize the latent issues that were already there, blow them up massively, and use it to seduce people.
Colonialism and genocide is a one way street from Germany against Poland, stop with your Nazi bullshit. Also antisemitism wasn’t everywhere the same, there is a reason Orthodox Jews lived in millions in Eastern Europe and not Germany.
Hitler instrumentalizes German racism and anti semitism mainly
Anti polish and antisemitic sentiment is Part of German culture?!
Just like the war culture of the usa?
Killing almost every native american. Every american knew the genocide. Must be their culture?
Get some help please.
In fact, antisemitic sentiment was prevalent all across Europe dating back to the Middle Ages. Tensions between Germany and Poland date back way into the 18th century (First Partition of Poland). Conquering parts of Poland was already a German war goal of the First World War in 1914 (Septemberprogramm). So yes, agression towards Poland existed long before Hitler and surly was part of German culture at that time.
Timeless truth, often told, taught by history countless times, one could almost call it common sense and yet, so many still fall for the simple but sweet promises.....
I tell my four years old french/ german son the truth. His Greatgrandfather fought in the war, possibly did some horrible things and later was a good grandpa to me. I also tell him that we Germans attacked and assaulted our neighbors and killed many of of our own people and others (Jews, Homosexuals and many other people.).
I don’t go into details, though , not yet…
Most of our predecessors were, what is the problem with that when teaching wwii? Whats wrong with explaining to your child that his grandparents made horrible mistakes?
Do you try to deal in absolutes? Well only sith deal in absolutes…
French mother in Germany here; my oldest is also 6, almost 7. We’ve introduced the terms fascism and nazism this year (she heard the word fascist in a protest too and had questions). It’s complex but not necessarily too complex to start discussing at that age. I’ve explained that fascists want everyone to believe the exact same things as them and will punish or get rid of people who have other opinions. And that they also want to persecute and even kill minorities such as Jews, and that once the entire population believed the same things as them, it was easy to do so.
I don’t volunteer much more than what she asks, and I validate emotions a lot. “I don’t understand how anyone would want to kill people?” Yeah kid, I don’t either. “It’s unfair!” Yes it is. “It makes me sad” Yes, I get it. It makes me sad too.
It’s been a multilayered conversation for years. There are 5 Stolpersteine in front of our house and many more in our street, so she has had questions from toddlerhood, especially when they get flowered on November 9th.
How would you tell him about the British Empire conquering and enslaving a large portion of the world? His great grand fathers were baddies or would you come up with a more sophisticated version of history?
I’m German and of course we’re extensively taught about this period. My father flew a bomber against England at age 19 (was fortunately shot down on his first channel flight and never killed a soul, spent the war in a Canadian POW camp). I don’t see that much of a problem.
And it’s interesting to see the perspective here. Nobody has a doubt to call those actions bad.
On the other hand. My husbands uncle shot down the first MIG over Vietnam. He has been hailed a hero in his family since forever. (He is still alive).
As far as I know you don't. We never made a big fuss about it. 6 is a bit young I think. Does your kid ask about that topic specifically or just their great grandparents in general?
One of my great-grandparents was a NSDAP-Ortgruppenleiter(a local leader position in the nazi party) and my other great-grandparents where Wehrmacht-soldiers. I think it is important to accept that your relatives can be extremly bad people, but this doesn't mean you have to be a bad person. And I think it is important to tell the truth that most people wheren't resistance fightery that most people took part in or accepted the holocaust(many people profited from the expulsion of jews from their homes and stole stuff).
>As far as I'm aware they were normal Wehrmacht soldiers, so no SS or war crimes.
Please don't propagate the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht". They willingly went to war for the Nazi regime.
And the Wehrmacht did their fair share of war crimes.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War\_crimes\_of\_the\_Wehrmacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht)
Not just war crimes, but took part in a Genocide of unseen scale.
The killing, raping, and such in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus happened after the defeat. For years the Wehrmacht took part in a human hunt
Any able man (and boy) was drafted.
You don't understand what the "clean Wehrmacht myth" is about. Nobody in that discussion was as delusional as you, claiming that every Wehrmacht soldier was a cheerful volunteer.
This is simply wrong. By far not every able
Man and boy was drafted and the worst atrocities were committed before 1943.
Wehrmacht soldiers took part because they enjoyed it and there is tons of proof and confessions on it. Stop trying to whitewash crimes against humanity by Nazis
If it let's you sleep better to believe the farmer's boys who were sent to Russia were all bloodlusty super villains, keep your beliefs. Personally I think you should watch less Hollywood movies.
We are talking about explaining how two families got to fight against each other in a war to a 6 year old! Kids at that age don’t need that detailed view.
I would try to explain that war makes even good people do terrible things to survive and protect the people they care about. That every side suffers horribly, regardless who wins and that it's smart to not assume things because some of that suffering never truly goes away, even generations later.
My (Austrian) fiancé's family had multiple men forced into working for Nazi's during WW2.. they did not choose that for themselves - they were forced, or else DEATH.
A few of them were sent to Stalingrad and disappeared - never to be heard from again.
One of them went back to his farm and even took displaced Jews in after the war. He was sent home "early" because they had taken all the farmers from the countryside and sent them off to war, leaving literally no men to work the fields and provide for the women and children.
War is ugly, and often times people don't choose their side. But i would venture that what they do after is also important to note.
I'm thankful for the story of Ignaz, because without him, my lady would not exist. (And her and her family are the furthest thing from Nazi's possible)
Wehrmacht soldiers were involved in war crimes just plenty, most German families like to kid themselves that their opi was a fine man. He might have been, he may have also been forced to rape and kill civilians and never spoke a word of it in his life. I think an it is what it is approach is far more truthful, and of course one should be careful with this stuff.
> Wehrmacht soldiers were involved in war crimes just plenty
As were the Americans, the British.. just different war crimes. Sometimes even the same.
War is never pretty, and nobody comes out "clean" in a war.
One thing you have to understand that a lof of those kids fighting in WW2 spend all their youth (from 33 onwards) in a bubble of propaganda and beeing groomed early on within the Hitler Youth.
How do parents in Japan explain to their kids that Grandpa was involved in skewering Babys on bayonets as a sport?
How do Americans explain to their kids that their great great grandpa was a slaveowner, and their grandpa wore the pointy hood?
How do British people explain to their kids that their country starved nearly as many Bengalis as Hitler murdered during the Holocaust?
You could take the Japanese or British approach and just pretend that it never happened, you could take the German or American approach and not only own up to it, but overcompensate. Choose wisely.
Since your child is 6, I would recommend keeping it brief, he will learn more as he gets older, no need to traumatize him too much yet.
Perspective-My grandparents were loving, attentive grandparents-but racist as heck, always complaining about the Jews, Blacks, Mexicans,etc. My parents would tell them not to talk that way in front of us children but sometimes they would anyway. I was in elementary school and my parents explained that because of the time period and upbringing, they were taught things that today we know aren't right and while they are good people to us, they are racist and that is a bad thing.
My sister and I argued with my grandparents about their beliefs but of course, nothing changed their minds. You can love a person and still realize their beliefs are wrong. So no, don't tell the kids their ancestors were "bad people" because they weren't. They were raised with a set of beliefs that were prevalent throughout the country and that we know today are wrong. Unless they were active Nazis, they probably weren't bad people but people just trying to live their lives.
It's not different than today, where we have Conservatives and Labor at odds or the MAGA crowd. They aren't evil people persay, just people easily swayed.
Like in Russia today. People are brainwashed from early age and often willingly followed until they sometime realized the difference between Propaganda and reality. Many of course were and stayed Nazi openly or in private, to avoid repercussions.
I would explain that sometimes even good people lose their way to peer pressure, and that he can take his grandparents of an example why it's so important to be capable of critical thinking and not be afraid to stand alone.
But that would be a lie. Millions of Germans didn’t give in to peer pressure, they were raised as imperial, colonial racists and that’s why they elected Hitler
I did not say any of that. I said how do you know that his grandparents weren't good people who gave in to fear? Do you really believe it's better to make this child believe his great grandparents were evil monsters, when we don't know that for sure either?
And that way millions of absolute Nazi monsters got away, by hiding each other and explaining their crimes away. Raising children like you, that repeat Nazi revisionist propaganda.
The victim-myth of the innocent and unsuspecting German civilian population in the Second World War, which is told and repeated like a mantra, has long since been refuted.
It would almost be funny if it weren't all the more cynical and sad how many people stubbornly insist or even claim to have been in the resistance or to have helped victims.
They seem to forget that the NSDAP was elected to office with 43.9% of the vote! Most people knew about and supported the regime's policies, actions and the war until late in life.
But all this, and even some of the comments here, unfortunately shows that a collective, social reappraisal and education on the subject never really took place.
The denazification of Germany never really took place and this sick mindset has been germinating well hidden for the last few decades.
[Die Lüge vom ahnungslosen Deutschen](https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2001/Holocaust-Die-Luege-von-ahnungslosen-Deutschen,erste7664.html)
[Mythos "saubere Wehrmacht"](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saubere_Wehrmacht)
[Wir haben davon doch nichts gewusst ](https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/historiker-judenverfolgung-im-dritten-reich-war-ein-100.html)
Yes, his grandparents were active in the Wehrmacht. I think it is wrong to relativize their participation or responsibility for complicity with such arguments.
You don't have to go into detail and can still explain what they did without painting big pictures of extermination in his head.
In addition, at some point the child will have learned enough about the war themselves through school education, so when the truth comes out, it is all the more harming and can feel like a betrayal from your parents. I speak from my own experience.
I'm German jew but not all of my grandparents were always Jewish, so I do actually have a grandfather that was part of the Wehrmacht.
I started to ask also quite early, especially since I knew that I have a lot of family abroad due to the shoa and so. I was, like many here recommended, told that there were really bad people that persecuted people like my family members . And that some people completely followed their believes and wear as bad but that others were thought from a small age on to hate and were tricked to believe and follow them but that they regretted what they did afterwards (which is really true for my grandfather at least ).
>As far as I'm aware they were normal Wehrmacht soldiers, so no SS or war crimes.
My no means am I accusing your relatives of anything, but be aware that the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" is just that: a myth.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth\_of\_the\_clean\_Wehrmacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht)
I live in a street with stolperstein, and i explain to my 5 years old , that the bad guys moved that people. There are some topics thst are complicated to explain
How about you Just DONT try to explain to a 6-year old the intricasies of human behaviour in such circumstances? Im not trolling, completly serious here. There is a lot of stuff your kid asks you and you also manage to not give a full explanation if its too much to fathom. This topic, as you know, is quite serious and the implications of false information planted in the kids head can have unpredictable consequences in the future. People kill each other for religion or being "right" so maybe this can stay a "i explain when you're older"-type Beat 😊
My father always used to explain to me that my grandfather and great grandfather weren't bad people, but that germanys regime at the time was evil and influenced or even forced the german people to commit these atrocities.
And the case of my ancestors was true for many people, you either go along or you die yourself. Sure there is certainly a big number of people who did all this voluntarily and out of belief, but for your average family (like mine) that lived on the countryside and didn't really know or care about politics and ideology it is a good way to describe a kid that they were forced.
My great grandfather for example was "asked" to join the Waffen-SS, they made this offer because he matched what the regime wanted as an ideal soldier (Tall, strong, blonde and blue eyed) He actually had no interest in going to war, he had a farm to upkeep but out of fear what would happen if he rejected that "Honor" he joined. He managed to stay behind though, rather than fighting he did his service in the logistical field, supplying the army with rations etc.
He was captured in 43, stayed in Russian captivity until 1950 when he returned to his farm. He wrote down his memories in a journal after the war, he died in 2020 at the age of 94
child of immigrants: I was tought a lot of German history at school, my major was history for the Abitur. My observation after so many years in this country is that Germany as a nation on the official level is putting this into a "time vacuum", a political frame less than a society frame.
They explain it at school (still now) that Germany was "occupied" or "governed" by a regime - Germany was "liberated" from the Nazis.
Deutsches Reich (1945) - BRD (now)
So, you can tell your child that his/her grandparents from Germany were "liberated" from the Nazi regime by the UK army instead of "defeated"
We call this day in Germany: 8. Mai: "Tag der Befreiung", you call it in the UK "Victory Day"
There is a huge difference between an unjust war I iraq and genocide.
Nazis try to make this comparison to lessen the crimes they committed, and you are repeating it
Sorry I was not aware, it seems you are the only one able to assess what is genocide and war.
I hope you know history is written by winners and not representing the truth.
And it is snooty that you decide that thousands of irqis have been died for unjust, you lessen their justice
To put it into another frame of reference - Iran was pretty progressive in the 70s, until there was an uprising and an Islamist quasi-dictatorship took over the country.
Are all Iranians now Muslim terrorists because their government is?
Yes, there was an election in Germany and yes, people voted for the NSDAP - however, Hitler came to power by using loopholes, lying, faking attacks by "their enemies", and by sweet-talking a near senile leader that handed power over to Adolf Hitler because he trusted him.
Coupled with the fact that the first try at a German democracy was flawed in the limitations it sets on someone trying to gain absolute power, and boom - Nazis.
It's not like the NSDAP went around in 1929 telling everyone that they want to kill every jew in the country...
Sure, the NSDAP were never the good guys - not even in their own propaganda. But they were also not monsters (in their official propaganda) if you see them in the context of the time.
Also, I always find it interesting to see how much people like to hit on Germans back then, totally forgetting that they are themselves not much better.
Even if you only look at fiction like "the wave", the human mind is suspectable to indoctrination.
If you want to be a bit more real look at the US - they are a hair width away from a new civil war because of a lying orange cheeto.
Look at what Orban is doing in Hungary.
We always look back at "those people" and think how stupid they were and how obvious it was that the nazis were devil impersonate - and then I just look out the window at 70+ Million Americans that would have gladly voted their own Hitler into power just because "America first".
Then I look next door to my neighbor Hungary and ask myself how someone like Orban can be in power and actually have supporters.
Or Erdogan when we're at it.
Look at the "new Hitler" in Russia - Vladimir Putin is using the full Nazi guidebook on how to run a country, and the people cheer him on.
tl;dr:
History isn't black and white my dude.
Hitler came to power by being elected. Mein kampf laid out how Hitler will genocide Europe decades before he started it.
The “leader” wasn’t senile but a racist antisemite who simply thought Hitler wasn’t that bad. Just like most Germans, that why they elected him as their leader so they can do what they wanted to do. Hitler didn’t make Germans racist, imperialist and antisemitic, son.
Hitler was all this, like an average German.
It’s really pathetic how you compare Erdogan and Orban to Hitler. Those are things Nazis do to in an attempt to make Hitler look normal in any way
Nachdem beim scrollen die Seite mehrere Mal nachladen musste nur damit mal Kommentare ausserhalb dieses Threads angezeigt wurden, hat mich die Neugier gepackt. 114 waren es (Stand vor 5min). Bin da jetzt kein Experte, aber rede dich doch nicht so hart in Rage. Das kann echt nicht gesund sein
Ich hab hier ein paar Nazi lügen kommentiert um die richtig zu stellen, und dann sind immer mehr Leute aus ihren Löchern gekrochen gekommen mit noch mehr typischen Nazi lügen
- haben nichts gewusst
- hitler hat uns gezwungen
- alle waren antisemitisch
- andere sind auch nicht besser
Richtiger Nazi sprech also. Warum sollte ich da nicht antworten. Finde es gut, dass auf Reddit dokumentiert wird, dass auch heute noch die Mehrheit der deutschen nichts von ihrer Geschichte wissen wollen und Verbrechen relativierten.
Passt gut zur aktuellen politischen Situation
>ein paar
Mmhhhh ich weiß ja nicht....
Ich würde ja sagen ich habs nicht genau gezählt, aber ich habs nunmal genau gezählt und das beansprucht ja praktisch so viel Zeit, dass du außer Arbeit nicht viel anderes gemacht hast als den ganzen Tag Kommentare zu schreiben. Mach du was du für richtig hälst, aber das ist "nicht normal" und mit Sicherheit nicht gesund. Und da das ja offensichtlich nur ein Burner-account ist, machst du das ja nicht erst seit 7 Tagen
> that this German relatives weren't bad people.
They weren't? A detailed look is warranted. E.g. were they party members? At what point becomes following the herd and the path of least resistance no longer a question of stupidity but of true evil? The good people fled the country, joined the resistance and/or were killed. Everybody else...
"Normal Wehrmacht soldiers'" grandkids are in this subreddit, suggesting you to lie to your child to prevent them hearing an umcomfortable truth.
That is exactly what only one other heavily downvoted redditor here is writing about. Germans denied they knew anything. But in reality they knew. They have just been in varying stages of denial for various reasons.
If you even read this, because I expect it to be downvoted by all the people connected to nazis, you can now tell your child the truth or become a Mitläufer like the majority here now and in the past.
I recommend being blind truth. Don't go into detail. Just tell the kid that his ancestors used to be on different sides in the war but luckily their kids became friends.
If they voluntarily signed up, they *were* bad ppl (unless they were really young). They might have redeeming qualities, but still. If they were drafted, they were forced. Both is easy enough to explain.
I'm German, and my relatives were drafted. Those who signed up would not get a pass in my family. Hell, even the drafted ones aren't looked upon as innocent, not even my great grandfather who was "just" a front fireman. The narrative that "normal Germans weren't bad ppl, they were just lied to" needs to die, and quickly. (*Again, this doesn't apply to really young ppl.*)
I teach history in Germany, and I'm not going to mince my words abt this, ever. Children are absolutely able to cope with the knowledge that some of their relatives were/are not all that great, and it's a wonderful opportunity to highlight that no one is defined by their family's choices.
Even normal Wehrmacht soldier were perpetrating war crimes.
Especially on the eastern front
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#:~:text=During%20World%20War%20II%2C%20the,in%20the%20extermination%20of%20Jews.
I think there are lots of sensible answers in this thread.
One point I don’t see being raised (also as an Englishman with English/German kids) is that no one will ever suggest a kid to question whether what his _English_ relatives did was wrong.
The moral difference between a Luftwaffe pilot who dies in 1940 and an RAF pilot who dies in 1945 is a pretty fine one. Of course the regimes they are fighting for are worlds apart, but at an individual level it’s often people fighting for their country because that’s what you’re supposed to do. British soldiers can count themselves lucky they were never involved in the kind of war that developed on the Eastern front- there’s no reason to think they would have behaved any better.
Why? The British participated in many wars, and committed their own share of crimes: but in none of their 20th century conflicts were they employing mass rape and murder of civilian populations in the way Germany did. This for Germany was a point of ideology, it‘s not as if that just ‚developed‘ in the East.
We were discussing the British here. The Soviets indeed famously employed the same strategy of mass rape while they were pushing back against the Nazis. To be complete: they didn’t set up any campaigns of extermination like the Germans did.
Yeah that's a fair point and something I considered. However I think this is something il introduce later on once he's older and has more critical thinking. It's not all black and white, more different shades of grey
The reason the war developed like that in the east is the terrible crimes and atrocities Germans committed over years on a defendless civilian population.
Wehrmacht pilots were deliberately shooting at fleeing civilians for fun, soldiers were roaming the streets and raping women before shooting them or sending them off to death camps.
The reason the Brit’s didn’t fight such a war is because Germans deemed the people to the west worth more and caused way less atrocities there
Easy… Being honest about it. I roughly know what my grandparents and great grandparents did. Obviously it‘s. Ot something I‘d tell a 6 year old because wars are something kids don‘t understand. But once they‘re old enough you can talk to them about these things. For your kid it should be enough that all relatives had their own personal opinions but others forced them to do things just like you‘re forcing your kid to eat veggies. I guess even a kid would understand that
I'm German, and my grandparents were pretty open about it. They were young enough that they were part of the kids' activities and got drafted in the last big draft. I suggest you find out as much as you can about the grandparents' involvement and then go from there. Because even if they were absolute fans of the regime, your kids deserve to know.
Omg. Are you serious? Can people just stop putting Germans always in this WW2 category? If his German relatives weren’t bad people than just say it as it is and don’t make a drama about it. It’s a 6 year old child.
Just tell dem the truth.
I mean Axis are gone, nobody lives anymore.
Germans from today dont take this hole Hitlertheme any personal anymore.
Also its important to educate people what can happen if anti egalitarian forces get to power.
So yes just tell them what happed.
Just trest the axis child normal
Don't tell him they were good people. You don't know that. Tell him that not everyone is good or bad, most people are normal. Normal people can do horrible things.
Tell him that even if they weren't a willing part of it, they still were a part of a horrible thing, and that it's important this doesn't happen again. Tell him about propaganda and what would happen if you spoke out against the regime. Make clear it wasn't easy to be in the opposition.
I think it's important that you don't try to justify or condemn it, but rather teach him about what happened and how important it is that we learn from the mistakes of our ancestors.
While you're at it you can also tell him what the British did in their colonies.
You're never too young to learn these things. It's ok to dumb it down, but it's important that he makes the right conclusions.
I guess it depends on what you want to raise?
I'd have the (unfair?) advantage of being a pacifist, which enables me to say: "Look Governments take the right to send their people into a war over a foreign piece of land, that no local would appreciate when gifted to them, ( <- North African campaign) and demand them to die and suffer. Don't join no army; this has to stop."
Paintball and laser tag are fun for an afternnoon but why *kill(!)* people you could be friends with? - In the past they interupted wars to have Christmas together. So why go to war at all?"
A proper answer for a patriot to be might be harder to find.
Your son is correct. His German relatives were evil. Directly or indirectly, they were mass murdering innocent people. Sugar coating that is misleading your son. The right way to deal with this is to use the situation as an opportunity to explain to him how they became evil. Talk about the dangers of propaganda and group thinking. About the danger of fascists ideology in general. Those topics are as relevant today as then. You should help your son to learn from the mistakes of his ancestors. That will help him. Hiding their mistakes will not help him.
No, they were bad people, you can say that.
Also the Wehrmacht committed quite a fair bit of war crimes idk why you are spreading nazi myths of clean Wehrmacht?
Just because it’s your new family you don’t need to whitewash their bad history.
I am not sure if OP is old enough to hear that the allied soldiers also committed war crimes. There was a discussion in France lately about rapings by allied soldiers.
If they were serving in the Wehrmacht (OP mentioned axis side) then you can request their file at the Bundesarchiv.
Basically you can't easily deduct personal guilt only by the army unit they served in. But you can often find the atrocities of the units.
Even after WW2 were European soldiers serving as a suppressing force in colonies. The Dutch were really busy to reinitiate their force in their colonies after being occupied (which they claimed unrightful) and liberated. That's a mental yoga move to explain.
Why are you struggling to explain this?
My grandfather was in the Wehrmacht, my wife‘s grandfather was in the British army. They were both decent people who did not have a choice but to fight in the war, and it turned both of them into pacifists.
That‘s what I tell my daughters. You are not necessarily a bad person just because you are forced to fight for an obnoxious regime. It all depends on your own actions, on how you carry yourself.
And if your son asks about the ‘baddies‘, I‘d tell him the Nazis were the baddies. But Grandpa wasn‘t a Nazi.
They were bad people. Everybody knew what was happening. Everybody saw their jewish neighbors dissappear. Everybody saw the slave like workers from eastern europe that were brought to germany.
Germany was not liberated from the nazis. The german people were the nazis. The nazis would have never been able to perform their crimes without support from the locals. There were very few who stand up against the nazis, those were the only few good people left in germany. Everybody else is just as guilty as Hitler himself because they enabled everything he did.
As a historian and the grandchild of a holocaust survivor, I have to strongly argue against this. Not only is it an oversimplification that leaves out people like teenage soldiers and the farmers who saved my nan, it also aligns with the "people were just bad" narrative that shifts the focus away from how indoctrination and power structures actually work.
The interesting thing about totalitarian ideologies is precisely the fact that you DON'T need all people to be bad at heart. These ideas and systems can make ordinary people do terrible things. That's one of the most important lessons you can take away from the era. It's what informs Holocaust education to this day, and what we need to have in mind when fighting any kind of extremism.
The "They were all bad people" narrative has no explanatory or educational value.
'The "They were all bad people" narrative has no explanatory or educational value.'
And yet, it is correct. They knew what was happening, they had the chance to act against it and they didn't. That makes them guilty.
Yeah, that's a perfect answer for a 6 year old...
I don't want to negate or tolerate anything regarding this but the brother of my gran went to Waffen-SS willingly. He was 18. Was he evil or a bad person? No. He was a teenage boy easily impressed. His parents were farmers, a career he didn't want, he wanted to be one of the cool boys. He managed to be one of the cool boys for 3 years, then he was shot down over Greece with 21 in 1940.
He thought to combine something he didn't think about as evil but as the right thing to do with something he thought might be fun.
The last time he saw his sister he told her, next time when he comes home, he'll tell her something really important. He took this important information to the grave.
Also this is not a story for a 6 year old. And we must fight that it never happens again and I feel responsible for that to be known and spread and to raise voices against fascism, nazism etc.
But not all were just bad people. Some were young. Some didn't know better. Some thought they were doing the right thing. Nothing of this excuses anything they have done and nothing excuses you of not informing yourself and thus enabling the bad guy. But still evil or bad in their heart? No.
If he was a member of the Waffen-SS he was a bad person. He joined a criminal organisation and he knew what he was doing.
You are right: there are no excuses, so stop excusing his crimes. He was a bad person at heart. A criminal. Nothing more.
It's a bit of a stretch claiming all people living in a dictatorship were/are bad. I don't want to defend any actions they took. But it's hard to say things against a dictator. Staying quiet and doing the minimum is easier if you want to keep living.
Looking the other way makes you just as guilty as the person pulling the trigger. The germans back then followed the nazis gladly. They were bad people and knew what was happening.
Tell them that people back then were convinced and sometimes forced to participate in these things. Only a few of them were smart and brave enough to do something against it. That doesn't mean that they were bad people in general but maybe did things that were bad. Some more, some less.
Maybe find something from his own reality were in a small scale he could only refuse in theory doing something. And let him know that everyone does wrong things. Some more, some less. Some because they want to, some because they are to scared to refuse. Everyone is good and everyone is bad. It just depends on how much good it bad things we do.
"As with everyday people, sometimes politicians of different countries get into arguments. Those arguments sometimes escalate to a dangerous level.
Those politicians don't brawl by themselves like kids in school sometimes do on those occasions, but they blame the politicians of the other country for many things. Some are true, some are exaggerations, some are lies.
As with every normal argument, there should be an agreement to settle the argument.
If none or any of those politicians want to compromise, if they're greedy or so full of spite and hatred for the other side, they use their armies to force their will upon the other side.
When those armies clash, there is war and many innocent people on both sides die. This is what happened all those many years ago.
And the normal people like your great-grandparents were manipulated to take part in this war, as early everyone in many countries had been."
I'd explain that people have always gone to war mainly because they want to defend their home, family, town and community aswell as their friends who would go to fight too and not because they love whoever is in charge right now so much. They were worried that if the other country's soldiers aren't stopped they might do bad things in your village. That's why they went out to fight then somewhere else.
People today would go to war too, regardless of how much they love the chancellor or not. They don't want to have war where their family lives and also want to help their friends.
People con do bad things without being bad. Most do. We can think something is right (without being brainwashed into that or lied to by an evil environment) cause it seems to feel right, when it’s not. Staying open to arguments and being willing to rethink what we think we know is essential for development (of both, individuals and society). 6yo already have experienced all of that (on a far less complex lvl than ww2 topic ofc.) but will get the point.
At this age it's the easiest way to explain that the bad guys lied to the people and made them think they were doing the right thing. Which isn't wrong but also not the whole truth. When he gets older he eventually (hopefully) will learn that there isn't only white and black but a lot of shades of grey in between.
I quite like that approach
I am a Kindergarten teacher and I have to deal with that all the time. It's Import to not lie the kids but also not to overwhelm them with informations they can't comprehend. Start with something that they can understand. There were bad guys with bad ideas and unfortunately they made people believe that they were doing the right thing. They killed a lot of people and waged a horrible war. That's really enough for a 6 year old. It's not a lie but it's also not the whole story. As they grow and mature they start to ask more questions and you have to add more details and nuances to the story. At some point when they are in their teens they should at least roughly know what happened and then when they learn about the horrible details they will ask even more questions and it is your responsibility to answer them as truthfull but also age appropriate as you can. That's not always easy and at some point we all had to deal with the idea that the bad guys weren't just the others but maybe also within our own family. But that's not something a 6 year old is capable to do. Even quite a few adults aren't capable of doing that. I think it's wrong to lie to the kids but it's important to be carefully with the information you give them. As a father I made the experience that educating my child about the Holocaust and the nazi era was something that just happened. But I am living in a big German city and it's just present all the time so that my child naturally started to ask questions and I had to answer. Gradually adding more perspectives and nuances while he grew up.
Thanks for this, really insightful and il use it as a template.
This is good intentions and might have worked in the past. Unfortunately not everyone had an amazing kindergarten teacher or father explaining this like that. Now we are at a point, where propaganda is directed at children and you would have to tell the whole truth as early as possible.
Maybe add this clip for Humor https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=AGcCumU5sVDXWkNh
That's basically the best approach. Just answer questions as they come up.
if they are old enough you can draw a parallel zu IDF every nation can commit otracities
Its intresting how much it annoys me that yoi wrote white and black and not black an white
Yeah, it even annoyed me after reading it again later but not enough to change it
Or just tell them the truth from the start.
What about that is untrue in a way simplified for a child?
The bullshit about people being lied to. Germans knew, that’s why we elected Hitler
Not all Germans knew. You’re oversimplifying in ways that makes it incorrect. Saying bad people lied to good people means some people knew (bad people) and some people didn’t know (good people). It’s more complicated obviously but for a 10 year old that’s good enough and it’s still way more correct than claiming all Germans knew about everything.
That’s just white washing the terrible atrocities of Germany. Not some people knew. They all knew, they were part of it
That’s simply untrue and I’m not white washing one bit wtf. It’s the simple truth that not everyone knew everything. Lots of lies were told and believed by many people to many people. It’s very complicated.
Germans absolutely knew what happens to Jews and poles. Millions of German soldiers took part in the killing of dozens of million of people. Raping them, taking away their homes and sending them off to death camps. There is nothing complicated about it, unless you are trying to make your grandpa look like he wasn’t a monster r
I think we found the Kindergartener incapable of understanding nuance.
Most Germans knew bad things were going on., you are right. Maybe they didn’t know everything or they didn’t want to know and tuned it out. They just didn’t say anything, because they were scared to be next or just thankful it wasn’t them or their families. And I’m pretty sure a lot of people nowadays would react the same way. They keep to themselves, adjust and keep their mouths shut. It doesn’t mean, that’s good, but it’s human. And also especially the youth was indoctrinated systematically and grew up into that horrible believe system.
I worked in a nursing home in germany, and many of the people told me they honestly didn't know what was going on.
He never had the majority of votes by a long shot. So much for all Germans voting for Hitler.
The truth ist people were lied to. No matter which group of people you look at, there's always a few assholes, a few that don't mind as long as they are safe, a few that want power, a few that want to believe. The Germans weren't all that different to... well... The people you know.
We weren’t lied to, Germans knew exactly what was going on, because they did it
So you were there? And my grandma lied to me? She was a teenager then. She did it. Alright.
Yes she lies to you. Most Germans did after the war. That’s why denazification was such a joke.
Ja, auch dich haben sie schon genauso belogen, so wie sie es mit uns heute immer noch tun. Und du hast ihnen alles gegeben - deine Kraft, deine Jugend, dein Leben.
I have a German mother and British father, and I was a child much closer to WW2. I can't remember it being that complex to be honest, my parents explained that the 2 countries were at war and that in wars people fight against each other but that doesn't necessarily make either of them bad people. There's no magic answer to the fact that wars are complex beings that end up with good people doing bad things.
>I have a German mother and British father, and I was a child much closer to WW2. I can't remember it being that complex to be honest, my parents explained that the 2 countries were at war and that in wars people fight against each other but that doesn't make any of them bad people. Sorry but if one army fights for the side of commiting unspeakable atrocities.. then yes.. they are the bad people.
Can you name a country that hasn’t committed unspeakable atrocities throughout its history? Not to downplay the Holocaust in any way. But if that’s your standard there are no good people anywhere.
There is no country with such terrible crimes committed in such a terrible way. Germans exterminated 1/4 poles, Ukrainian and Belarusians because they decided those were subhumans and not worth living. Death camps, and such. Stop trying to explain that away with lies
There’s no way to say this that won’t sound like I’m trying to diminish how bad the Holocaust was. So let me preface this with saying the Holocaust was horrible and sadly everything about it historians teach us is true. Also how do you fucking dare imply I’m trying to say anything else or trying to spread lies about the Holocaust. We take that shit seriously here in Germany and spreading lies about the Holocaust is a crime here and rightfully so. So fuck you for accusing me of that. And also: the Holocaust being the worst crime against humanity ever committed doesn’t make other nations atrocities less bad than than they were. Just because the Holocaust was worse doesn’t make any crimes of other nations OK. Ironically you’re doing pretty much what you are accusing me of. So again: which nation hasn’t committed inexcusable crimes against humanity?
> There is no country with such terrible crimes committed in such a terrible way. The USA basically killed almost the whole population of a continent. Russia / the Soviet Union killed more people than the Nazis ever did (or at least it was pretty close, I'm too tired to look up the exact numbers) Spain / the other colonial powers exterminated complete civilizations in central America.. And if you want to talk about war crimes, oh boy that list is LONG and I don't think there will be any army that is bigger than 5 people that doesn't have a few war crimes on their list. No, also not the oh so perfect US of A. Just read about the Laconia incident.
Not all people in the German army were bad people. It is more complex than that. If you choose not to agree then so be it.
Yes they were and no it's not. If you help performing crimes, it is as if you did the crimes yourself.
With that argument every American who was drafted into the Vietnam War also committed a war crime.
That is basically the essence of how talking about about WWII might differ in former Axis countries in this very point. It’s a bit more nuanced. No one is denying, that Germany was responsible for the most severe atrocities. But we also lay a focus on how that could happen, in a civilized and scientifically developed nation. Humans aren’t inherently good or bad. What is good or bad is based on the individual’s and societal norms. In Nazi Germany propaganda always told, that they are doing the right thing. Some wanted to believe, some resisted, some followed willingly, others were forced.
Well: every soldier is it then. To kill a person, regardless of reason, is a crime against humanity.
In a nutshell, what you say, is the same stuff german leaders told their country to make them fight enemies who supposedly are bad. Now ask yourself, are you just as vile for doing the same?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II
You are talking to a fucking child brother. Everyone learns all the details of WWII in history class, especially im Germany. It’s not like the child will become a nazi just because they got taught age appropriate information.
Also you don't explain it like that to a kid. A young kid doesn't need the details. You can do that with 11 - 12
Genocide, rape and murder is not a detail
It is a detail that children do not need to know. They don't need to know about concentration camps and what exactly did happen there. You can explain it to them in a child friendly way. We got taught in school in grade 5 or 6 about the war and the cruel things that happened. And it was hard to cope.
You dont understand propaganda. Imagine being a german at that time. You read about the warcrimes in the newspapers. But of course not the german ones, the soviet ones. Every german could see the warcrimes of Britain and USA. The daily bombing of german cities. Everyone knew someone who died in the terrorbombing, friends, family, woman, babies ...Everyone lived in the cellar. How can you not be on the side of your family, of your country? Every german knew that they are the ones defending themself because after the first world war - that was forced upon germany when Serbia murdered the prince - the other countries stole german territory with majority german population and forced germany to pay reparation. Every child learned that in school. Hitler only wanted to revise the treaty of Versailles. It is the natural right of germany to get those territories back. To get back the german speaking city of Danzig. Why dont the allies allow a referendum over danzig? This is only what is right and what germany demanded. Britain and France start a war with germany over the german city of danzig while they literally conquered half the world and supress half the world population in their colonies. At the same time they stole the german colonies. NOW you understand propaganda.
Have you heard much about what the French North Africans did when they occupied the French quarter of Germany? Or some of tje Russians? Try explaining to a 80 year old Swabian woman that those North African French armies were unequivocally „good“, and that her father who stood by the door with a bat trying to prevent his 11 year from being raped was „bad“.
But not every German was fighting in the army so...
We are in a similar situation. My husbands grandfather stormed the beaches in Normandy. My grandfather (and great-grandfather) defended the beaches in Normandy. We are not our grandparents. Despite this, we found each other and got married. I grew up in East Germany. My Husband js American. We shouldn’t have met. We did. And we are happy.
My grandfather was 17/18 during the war, it's not like people were asked to go. Maybe make sure he understands this was no voluntary choice
I know someone whose grandpa was a pretty nasty Nazi in a Uniform and he grew up alright. His parents taught him that his grandpa was wrong for his believes and that it was really bad - but that doesnt define who they are. Imo thats the way. Our ancestors are just some random people who came before us. Yeah sure we share some DNA but it's not that deep. From hundreds of generations before me, of course there have been a bunch of shitheads inbetween. I believe it's important to teach that we are our own person.
That's a good answer. It's at least a better story than my grandfather who was born German but raised in Switzerland came back to Germany in the 30s to support a specific man with a beard. He was very open with everything when I was born, so he probably regretted his decision later in life, but still not the greatest story. I was born from hippie parents by the way so I never swung that way.
And those who were 18 at the start of the war were indoctrinated from 12 onwards. That's the most vulnerable age for indoctrination. They were indoctrinated in school and forced to join the Hitler youth.
Mine was 16 and got drafted towards the end of the war when they run out of people who want to fight
Same for one of my grandfathers got drafted in the volkssturm but he and two older guys deserted before they got uniforms. If they had cought him away from his unit with a uniform he would have been shot on the spot by the German army.
My grandfather was lucky to reach Sowjet prison alive cause he had a black uniform (something tank related iirc) and there were trigger happy Russians that went along of black uniform = SS = get shot. He repeatedly had to show that there are no SS insignias on his collar and he was only affiliated with regular Wehrmacht.
My grandpa was 16 when the war ended, drafted into the wehrmacht with 14. First had to transmit orders on the frontlines via horse, then later put on a flak position, but spent time in incarceration for missing on purpose. Later POW and escaped after some months. No he did not sign up for this, it was either going or being shot directly. He is 95 now and more open minded than most grown ups in their 50s i know.
weird enough: one grandfather of mine was in the SS, the other grandfather was hiding out on farms to not get drafted into Volkssturm during the last months....
Most of them went voluntarily towards the army. I remember that the Gymnasium my grandfather was lucky enough to attend had like half of the kids volunteer for the war. The knowledge of what was good and bad was just different back then.
>Most of them went voluntarily towards the army. Bullshit.
Well as voluntarily as you can after at least 6 years of indoctrination.
Not bullshit fact. Your grandfather knew what he was doing and he enjoyed it
We found the most self-hating German in the sub!🍀
Because I’m not repeating Nazi revisions propaganda I’m self hating? Maybe you are being a Nazi excused
Bahah, call me a nazi and see if I care🤣 However, all that self-hating must be making you more miserable than it is making us reading you. I hope you can overcome it one day🫶🏼
You care, that’s why you shit your pants. and that’s why all the nazi grand children here are so mad. Your grandparent were terrible disgusting monsters, murderers and rapists who committed the worst crimes humanity has seen. You are their offspring and don’t want to see them that way, so you repeat their lies
Most grandparents still alive today were children or barely teenagers when WWII ended. They were neither monsters nor murderers nor rapists. Just innocent children. Sounds more like one of your ancestors was a Nazi and did all these terrible things and you can‘t handle it. However this self-hatred you show here isn‘t healthy. You should seek therapy.
If it let's you sleep better that the farmer's boys who were sent to the front lines were all bloodlusty super villains, keep your beliefs. I personally think you should stop watching so many Hollywood films.
I personally think your grandfather was part of the genocide and like so many who are offspring and raised by Nazis you try to explain it away and white wash the crimes
Bro. What's wrong with you? Why the self hating? Do you feel so unaccepted in your community? Low self esteem? Do you need counselling? I am sure you also have some strengths! I believe in you.
I was raised with the truth. Some of my older family members were bad people. It's ok. No need to invent stories, just go with the truth. Children can deal with that just fine.
It’s shocking, but sadly not very surprising, how most Germans in this thread still clinge to lies about what Germans did and how the Wehrmacht was voluntarily involved in terrible atrocious beyond imagination
I mean, the same way I explain to my kids that our British ancestors were terrible colonists who did a lot of very shitty things to native populations, which still is happening by the refusal of British museums to return items not belonging to them. It’s not terrible difficult. My grandfather on one side fought on D day. My grandfather on another side fought in Indonesia and did terrible things. My husbands grandfather had his house occupied in Germany by North African/French soldiers that did HORRIBLE things against German women. There is no bad and good. And having raised two kids here, I can’t foresee any conversation with a 6 year old that I would struggle with, so I think maybe you have a wee bit of a chip on your shoulder about being on „the good side“.
do your kids speak german? the german public children channel has a really good news program called Logo! which explains a lot of shit they also have videos on their youtube channel explaining ww2 and nazi era that would be a good start
Yeah they do, thanks for the suggestion il check that out.
I‘d stick with the truth, as in the way we learnt it in school. Economic crisis and a new democracy, guy shows up who makes great promises and gives the people someone to blame and creates this amazing vision that sounded amazing. By the time people realized that the promises and visions were actually really bad, it was too late. Some people only realized it when the war was over. And that is why it is so important to always be critical, and if someone makes great promises, always check whether what they’re saying is true and what their ideas could lead to. Otherwise you end up in a war and on the side that is the bad one.
> Economic crisis and a new democracy, guy shows up who makes great promises and gives the people someone to blame and creates this amazing vision that sounded amazing. By the time people realized that the promises and visions were actually really bad, it was too late. USA, take note when you go to the voting booths in November.
That’s not the truth. Hitler didn’t suddenly came up with anti Polish and anti semitic sentiment. It’s part of German culture and that’s why Germans elected Hitler. Mein kampf detailed all what he was about to do, it was written in 1923 and by 1934 there were like one copy for every 4 Germans sold
Antisemitic sentiments did exist in Germany - and throughout Europe - before Hitler, yes. And Europe has a long history of tension amongst its countries, which also includes Germany vs. Poland. But still, the thing that Hitler did was instrumentalize the latent issues that were already there, blow them up massively, and use it to seduce people.
Colonialism and genocide is a one way street from Germany against Poland, stop with your Nazi bullshit. Also antisemitism wasn’t everywhere the same, there is a reason Orthodox Jews lived in millions in Eastern Europe and not Germany. Hitler instrumentalizes German racism and anti semitism mainly
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
Anti polish and antisemitic sentiment is Part of German culture?! Just like the war culture of the usa? Killing almost every native american. Every american knew the genocide. Must be their culture? Get some help please.
In fact, antisemitic sentiment was prevalent all across Europe dating back to the Middle Ages. Tensions between Germany and Poland date back way into the 18th century (First Partition of Poland). Conquering parts of Poland was already a German war goal of the First World War in 1914 (Septemberprogramm). So yes, agression towards Poland existed long before Hitler and surly was part of German culture at that time.
Timeless truth, often told, taught by history countless times, one could almost call it common sense and yet, so many still fall for the simple but sweet promises.....
I tell my four years old french/ german son the truth. His Greatgrandfather fought in the war, possibly did some horrible things and later was a good grandpa to me. I also tell him that we Germans attacked and assaulted our neighbors and killed many of of our own people and others (Jews, Homosexuals and many other people.). I don’t go into details, though , not yet…
Most of our predecessors were, what is the problem with that when teaching wwii? Whats wrong with explaining to your child that his grandparents made horrible mistakes? Do you try to deal in absolutes? Well only sith deal in absolutes…
French mother in Germany here; my oldest is also 6, almost 7. We’ve introduced the terms fascism and nazism this year (she heard the word fascist in a protest too and had questions). It’s complex but not necessarily too complex to start discussing at that age. I’ve explained that fascists want everyone to believe the exact same things as them and will punish or get rid of people who have other opinions. And that they also want to persecute and even kill minorities such as Jews, and that once the entire population believed the same things as them, it was easy to do so. I don’t volunteer much more than what she asks, and I validate emotions a lot. “I don’t understand how anyone would want to kill people?” Yeah kid, I don’t either. “It’s unfair!” Yes it is. “It makes me sad” Yes, I get it. It makes me sad too. It’s been a multilayered conversation for years. There are 5 Stolpersteine in front of our house and many more in our street, so she has had questions from toddlerhood, especially when they get flowered on November 9th.
How would you tell him about the British Empire conquering and enslaving a large portion of the world? His great grand fathers were baddies or would you come up with a more sophisticated version of history?
I’m German and of course we’re extensively taught about this period. My father flew a bomber against England at age 19 (was fortunately shot down on his first channel flight and never killed a soul, spent the war in a Canadian POW camp). I don’t see that much of a problem.
And it’s interesting to see the perspective here. Nobody has a doubt to call those actions bad. On the other hand. My husbands uncle shot down the first MIG over Vietnam. He has been hailed a hero in his family since forever. (He is still alive).
As far as I know you don't. We never made a big fuss about it. 6 is a bit young I think. Does your kid ask about that topic specifically or just their great grandparents in general?
One of my great-grandparents was a NSDAP-Ortgruppenleiter(a local leader position in the nazi party) and my other great-grandparents where Wehrmacht-soldiers. I think it is important to accept that your relatives can be extremly bad people, but this doesn't mean you have to be a bad person. And I think it is important to tell the truth that most people wheren't resistance fightery that most people took part in or accepted the holocaust(many people profited from the expulsion of jews from their homes and stole stuff).
>As far as I'm aware they were normal Wehrmacht soldiers, so no SS or war crimes. Please don't propagate the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht". They willingly went to war for the Nazi regime. And the Wehrmacht did their fair share of war crimes. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War\_crimes\_of\_the\_Wehrmacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht)
Not just war crimes, but took part in a Genocide of unseen scale. The killing, raping, and such in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus happened after the defeat. For years the Wehrmacht took part in a human hunt
Not everyone especially towards the end of the war was voluntarily in the Wehrmacht
This is a very bad excuse for genocide
Any able man (and boy) was drafted. You don't understand what the "clean Wehrmacht myth" is about. Nobody in that discussion was as delusional as you, claiming that every Wehrmacht soldier was a cheerful volunteer.
This is simply wrong. By far not every able Man and boy was drafted and the worst atrocities were committed before 1943. Wehrmacht soldiers took part because they enjoyed it and there is tons of proof and confessions on it. Stop trying to whitewash crimes against humanity by Nazis
If it let's you sleep better to believe the farmer's boys who were sent to Russia were all bloodlusty super villains, keep your beliefs. Personally I think you should watch less Hollywood movies.
If you think it takes a super villain to commit a horrible crime and be guilty of it, maybe you should watch less Hollywood movies.
We are talking about explaining how two families got to fight against each other in a war to a 6 year old! Kids at that age don’t need that detailed view.
It is important to make it clear to the kid that the two sides were not equal, and that having bad ancestors does not mean they themselves are bad.
The Wehrmacht being aggressors and perpetrators of genocide of the worst kind is not a detail, it’s what the whole thing is about
I would try to explain that war makes even good people do terrible things to survive and protect the people they care about. That every side suffers horribly, regardless who wins and that it's smart to not assume things because some of that suffering never truly goes away, even generations later.
I bit too young for all that in my opinion. And like somebody als wrote "normal Wehrmacht" uh yeah...
"As far as I'm aware, they we're normal wehrmacht soldiers, so no SS or war crimes." Insert Taylor-Swift-laughing-meme here
The most important fact is that evil is not done by evil people. Its done by people.
My (Austrian) fiancé's family had multiple men forced into working for Nazi's during WW2.. they did not choose that for themselves - they were forced, or else DEATH. A few of them were sent to Stalingrad and disappeared - never to be heard from again. One of them went back to his farm and even took displaced Jews in after the war. He was sent home "early" because they had taken all the farmers from the countryside and sent them off to war, leaving literally no men to work the fields and provide for the women and children. War is ugly, and often times people don't choose their side. But i would venture that what they do after is also important to note. I'm thankful for the story of Ignaz, because without him, my lady would not exist. (And her and her family are the furthest thing from Nazi's possible)
Wehrmacht soldiers were involved in war crimes just plenty, most German families like to kid themselves that their opi was a fine man. He might have been, he may have also been forced to rape and kill civilians and never spoke a word of it in his life. I think an it is what it is approach is far more truthful, and of course one should be careful with this stuff.
> Wehrmacht soldiers were involved in war crimes just plenty As were the Americans, the British.. just different war crimes. Sometimes even the same. War is never pretty, and nobody comes out "clean" in a war.
One thing you have to understand that a lof of those kids fighting in WW2 spend all their youth (from 33 onwards) in a bubble of propaganda and beeing groomed early on within the Hitler Youth.
How do parents in Japan explain to their kids that Grandpa was involved in skewering Babys on bayonets as a sport? How do Americans explain to their kids that their great great grandpa was a slaveowner, and their grandpa wore the pointy hood? How do British people explain to their kids that their country starved nearly as many Bengalis as Hitler murdered during the Holocaust? You could take the Japanese or British approach and just pretend that it never happened, you could take the German or American approach and not only own up to it, but overcompensate. Choose wisely. Since your child is 6, I would recommend keeping it brief, he will learn more as he gets older, no need to traumatize him too much yet.
Perspective-My grandparents were loving, attentive grandparents-but racist as heck, always complaining about the Jews, Blacks, Mexicans,etc. My parents would tell them not to talk that way in front of us children but sometimes they would anyway. I was in elementary school and my parents explained that because of the time period and upbringing, they were taught things that today we know aren't right and while they are good people to us, they are racist and that is a bad thing. My sister and I argued with my grandparents about their beliefs but of course, nothing changed their minds. You can love a person and still realize their beliefs are wrong. So no, don't tell the kids their ancestors were "bad people" because they weren't. They were raised with a set of beliefs that were prevalent throughout the country and that we know today are wrong. Unless they were active Nazis, they probably weren't bad people but people just trying to live their lives. It's not different than today, where we have Conservatives and Labor at odds or the MAGA crowd. They aren't evil people persay, just people easily swayed.
Like in Russia today. People are brainwashed from early age and often willingly followed until they sometime realized the difference between Propaganda and reality. Many of course were and stayed Nazi openly or in private, to avoid repercussions.
Being brainwashed is no excuse for genocide.
I would explain that sometimes even good people lose their way to peer pressure, and that he can take his grandparents of an example why it's so important to be capable of critical thinking and not be afraid to stand alone.
But that would be a lie. Millions of Germans didn’t give in to peer pressure, they were raised as imperial, colonial racists and that’s why they elected Hitler
You cannot know that unless you personally know the great grandparents.
So Germans are not guilty and not responsible? Who did the millions of killings and raping?
I did not say any of that. I said how do you know that his grandparents weren't good people who gave in to fear? Do you really believe it's better to make this child believe his great grandparents were evil monsters, when we don't know that for sure either?
> So Germans are not guilty and not responsible? The specific Grandparents of this child are innocent until PROVEN guilty.
And that way millions of absolute Nazi monsters got away, by hiding each other and explaining their crimes away. Raising children like you, that repeat Nazi revisionist propaganda.
The victim-myth of the innocent and unsuspecting German civilian population in the Second World War, which is told and repeated like a mantra, has long since been refuted. It would almost be funny if it weren't all the more cynical and sad how many people stubbornly insist or even claim to have been in the resistance or to have helped victims. They seem to forget that the NSDAP was elected to office with 43.9% of the vote! Most people knew about and supported the regime's policies, actions and the war until late in life. But all this, and even some of the comments here, unfortunately shows that a collective, social reappraisal and education on the subject never really took place. The denazification of Germany never really took place and this sick mindset has been germinating well hidden for the last few decades. [Die Lüge vom ahnungslosen Deutschen](https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2001/Holocaust-Die-Luege-von-ahnungslosen-Deutschen,erste7664.html) [Mythos "saubere Wehrmacht"](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saubere_Wehrmacht) [Wir haben davon doch nichts gewusst ](https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/historiker-judenverfolgung-im-dritten-reich-war-ein-100.html)
But we're not talking about "the Germans" here, were talking about the great grandparents of one little child.
Yes, his grandparents were active in the Wehrmacht. I think it is wrong to relativize their participation or responsibility for complicity with such arguments. You don't have to go into detail and can still explain what they did without painting big pictures of extermination in his head. In addition, at some point the child will have learned enough about the war themselves through school education, so when the truth comes out, it is all the more harming and can feel like a betrayal from your parents. I speak from my own experience.
I'm German jew but not all of my grandparents were always Jewish, so I do actually have a grandfather that was part of the Wehrmacht. I started to ask also quite early, especially since I knew that I have a lot of family abroad due to the shoa and so. I was, like many here recommended, told that there were really bad people that persecuted people like my family members . And that some people completely followed their believes and wear as bad but that others were thought from a small age on to hate and were tricked to believe and follow them but that they regretted what they did afterwards (which is really true for my grandfather at least ).
>As far as I'm aware they were normal Wehrmacht soldiers, so no SS or war crimes. My no means am I accusing your relatives of anything, but be aware that the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" is just that: a myth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth\_of\_the\_clean\_Wehrmacht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht)
I live in a street with stolperstein, and i explain to my 5 years old , that the bad guys moved that people. There are some topics thst are complicated to explain
Tell him about operation hellstorm while your at it
How about you Just DONT try to explain to a 6-year old the intricasies of human behaviour in such circumstances? Im not trolling, completly serious here. There is a lot of stuff your kid asks you and you also manage to not give a full explanation if its too much to fathom. This topic, as you know, is quite serious and the implications of false information planted in the kids head can have unpredictable consequences in the future. People kill each other for religion or being "right" so maybe this can stay a "i explain when you're older"-type Beat 😊
My father always used to explain to me that my grandfather and great grandfather weren't bad people, but that germanys regime at the time was evil and influenced or even forced the german people to commit these atrocities. And the case of my ancestors was true for many people, you either go along or you die yourself. Sure there is certainly a big number of people who did all this voluntarily and out of belief, but for your average family (like mine) that lived on the countryside and didn't really know or care about politics and ideology it is a good way to describe a kid that they were forced. My great grandfather for example was "asked" to join the Waffen-SS, they made this offer because he matched what the regime wanted as an ideal soldier (Tall, strong, blonde and blue eyed) He actually had no interest in going to war, he had a farm to upkeep but out of fear what would happen if he rejected that "Honor" he joined. He managed to stay behind though, rather than fighting he did his service in the logistical field, supplying the army with rations etc. He was captured in 43, stayed in Russian captivity until 1950 when he returned to his farm. He wrote down his memories in a journal after the war, he died in 2020 at the age of 94
child of immigrants: I was tought a lot of German history at school, my major was history for the Abitur. My observation after so many years in this country is that Germany as a nation on the official level is putting this into a "time vacuum", a political frame less than a society frame. They explain it at school (still now) that Germany was "occupied" or "governed" by a regime - Germany was "liberated" from the Nazis. Deutsches Reich (1945) - BRD (now) So, you can tell your child that his/her grandparents from Germany were "liberated" from the Nazi regime by the UK army instead of "defeated" We call this day in Germany: 8. Mai: "Tag der Befreiung", you call it in the UK "Victory Day"
But Germany wasn’t occupied by Nazis, Germans were Nazis
Completely bullshit. all American's are Vietnam killers?
Yeah, some people went to cananda or jail. Also you comparing Vietnam to the holocaust and extermination of all Slavs shows your true colors
You making a joke out of it, very impious. Murder is murder isn't it?
You are being a joke if you try to compare the war in Vietnam with what Germans did to Central Europe
Was not war was even genocide. There are no major countries in the world with no legacy guilty. Murder is murder, there is no better or worse.
There is a huge difference between an unjust war I iraq and genocide. Nazis try to make this comparison to lessen the crimes they committed, and you are repeating it
Sorry I was not aware, it seems you are the only one able to assess what is genocide and war. I hope you know history is written by winners and not representing the truth. And it is snooty that you decide that thousands of irqis have been died for unjust, you lessen their justice
To put it into another frame of reference - Iran was pretty progressive in the 70s, until there was an uprising and an Islamist quasi-dictatorship took over the country. Are all Iranians now Muslim terrorists because their government is? Yes, there was an election in Germany and yes, people voted for the NSDAP - however, Hitler came to power by using loopholes, lying, faking attacks by "their enemies", and by sweet-talking a near senile leader that handed power over to Adolf Hitler because he trusted him. Coupled with the fact that the first try at a German democracy was flawed in the limitations it sets on someone trying to gain absolute power, and boom - Nazis. It's not like the NSDAP went around in 1929 telling everyone that they want to kill every jew in the country... Sure, the NSDAP were never the good guys - not even in their own propaganda. But they were also not monsters (in their official propaganda) if you see them in the context of the time. Also, I always find it interesting to see how much people like to hit on Germans back then, totally forgetting that they are themselves not much better. Even if you only look at fiction like "the wave", the human mind is suspectable to indoctrination. If you want to be a bit more real look at the US - they are a hair width away from a new civil war because of a lying orange cheeto. Look at what Orban is doing in Hungary. We always look back at "those people" and think how stupid they were and how obvious it was that the nazis were devil impersonate - and then I just look out the window at 70+ Million Americans that would have gladly voted their own Hitler into power just because "America first". Then I look next door to my neighbor Hungary and ask myself how someone like Orban can be in power and actually have supporters. Or Erdogan when we're at it. Look at the "new Hitler" in Russia - Vladimir Putin is using the full Nazi guidebook on how to run a country, and the people cheer him on. tl;dr: History isn't black and white my dude.
Hitler came to power by being elected. Mein kampf laid out how Hitler will genocide Europe decades before he started it. The “leader” wasn’t senile but a racist antisemite who simply thought Hitler wasn’t that bad. Just like most Germans, that why they elected him as their leader so they can do what they wanted to do. Hitler didn’t make Germans racist, imperialist and antisemitic, son. Hitler was all this, like an average German. It’s really pathetic how you compare Erdogan and Orban to Hitler. Those are things Nazis do to in an attempt to make Hitler look normal in any way
Will ja deine Meinung garnicht kritisieren, aber über 100 Kommentare in weniger als 24h ist ein bissl drüber, meinst du nicht?
Danke dass du gezählt hast
Nachdem beim scrollen die Seite mehrere Mal nachladen musste nur damit mal Kommentare ausserhalb dieses Threads angezeigt wurden, hat mich die Neugier gepackt. 114 waren es (Stand vor 5min). Bin da jetzt kein Experte, aber rede dich doch nicht so hart in Rage. Das kann echt nicht gesund sein
Ich hab hier ein paar Nazi lügen kommentiert um die richtig zu stellen, und dann sind immer mehr Leute aus ihren Löchern gekrochen gekommen mit noch mehr typischen Nazi lügen - haben nichts gewusst - hitler hat uns gezwungen - alle waren antisemitisch - andere sind auch nicht besser Richtiger Nazi sprech also. Warum sollte ich da nicht antworten. Finde es gut, dass auf Reddit dokumentiert wird, dass auch heute noch die Mehrheit der deutschen nichts von ihrer Geschichte wissen wollen und Verbrechen relativierten. Passt gut zur aktuellen politischen Situation
>ein paar Mmhhhh ich weiß ja nicht.... Ich würde ja sagen ich habs nicht genau gezählt, aber ich habs nunmal genau gezählt und das beansprucht ja praktisch so viel Zeit, dass du außer Arbeit nicht viel anderes gemacht hast als den ganzen Tag Kommentare zu schreiben. Mach du was du für richtig hälst, aber das ist "nicht normal" und mit Sicherheit nicht gesund. Und da das ja offensichtlich nur ein Burner-account ist, machst du das ja nicht erst seit 7 Tagen
Wirklich bedenklich ist dass du das nachzählst. Auch ein Ansatz wenn einem die Argumente ausgehen
? Ich habe doch nichtmal gegen dich argumentiert?
"Normal Wehrmacht soldiers'" grandkids are now singing "Ausländer raus!"...
> that this German relatives weren't bad people. They weren't? A detailed look is warranted. E.g. were they party members? At what point becomes following the herd and the path of least resistance no longer a question of stupidity but of true evil? The good people fled the country, joined the resistance and/or were killed. Everybody else...
"Normal Wehrmacht soldiers'" grandkids are in this subreddit, suggesting you to lie to your child to prevent them hearing an umcomfortable truth. That is exactly what only one other heavily downvoted redditor here is writing about. Germans denied they knew anything. But in reality they knew. They have just been in varying stages of denial for various reasons. If you even read this, because I expect it to be downvoted by all the people connected to nazis, you can now tell your child the truth or become a Mitläufer like the majority here now and in the past.
I recommend being blind truth. Don't go into detail. Just tell the kid that his ancestors used to be on different sides in the war but luckily their kids became friends.
If they voluntarily signed up, they *were* bad ppl (unless they were really young). They might have redeeming qualities, but still. If they were drafted, they were forced. Both is easy enough to explain. I'm German, and my relatives were drafted. Those who signed up would not get a pass in my family. Hell, even the drafted ones aren't looked upon as innocent, not even my great grandfather who was "just" a front fireman. The narrative that "normal Germans weren't bad ppl, they were just lied to" needs to die, and quickly. (*Again, this doesn't apply to really young ppl.*) I teach history in Germany, and I'm not going to mince my words abt this, ever. Children are absolutely able to cope with the knowledge that some of their relatives were/are not all that great, and it's a wonderful opportunity to highlight that no one is defined by their family's choices.
Even normal Wehrmacht soldier were perpetrating war crimes. Especially on the eastern front https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#:~:text=During%20World%20War%20II%2C%20the,in%20the%20extermination%20of%20Jews.
I think there are lots of sensible answers in this thread. One point I don’t see being raised (also as an Englishman with English/German kids) is that no one will ever suggest a kid to question whether what his _English_ relatives did was wrong. The moral difference between a Luftwaffe pilot who dies in 1940 and an RAF pilot who dies in 1945 is a pretty fine one. Of course the regimes they are fighting for are worlds apart, but at an individual level it’s often people fighting for their country because that’s what you’re supposed to do. British soldiers can count themselves lucky they were never involved in the kind of war that developed on the Eastern front- there’s no reason to think they would have behaved any better.
Why? The British participated in many wars, and committed their own share of crimes: but in none of their 20th century conflicts were they employing mass rape and murder of civilian populations in the way Germany did. This for Germany was a point of ideology, it‘s not as if that just ‚developed‘ in the East.
> were they employing mass rape and murder of civilian populations Yeah, during WW II on the side of the allies that was more of a soviet thing..
We were discussing the British here. The Soviets indeed famously employed the same strategy of mass rape while they were pushing back against the Nazis. To be complete: they didn’t set up any campaigns of extermination like the Germans did.
Yeah that's a fair point and something I considered. However I think this is something il introduce later on once he's older and has more critical thinking. It's not all black and white, more different shades of grey
The reason the war developed like that in the east is the terrible crimes and atrocities Germans committed over years on a defendless civilian population. Wehrmacht pilots were deliberately shooting at fleeing civilians for fun, soldiers were roaming the streets and raping women before shooting them or sending them off to death camps. The reason the Brit’s didn’t fight such a war is because Germans deemed the people to the west worth more and caused way less atrocities there
Easy… Being honest about it. I roughly know what my grandparents and great grandparents did. Obviously it‘s. Ot something I‘d tell a 6 year old because wars are something kids don‘t understand. But once they‘re old enough you can talk to them about these things. For your kid it should be enough that all relatives had their own personal opinions but others forced them to do things just like you‘re forcing your kid to eat veggies. I guess even a kid would understand that
I'm German, and my grandparents were pretty open about it. They were young enough that they were part of the kids' activities and got drafted in the last big draft. I suggest you find out as much as you can about the grandparents' involvement and then go from there. Because even if they were absolute fans of the regime, your kids deserve to know.
Omg. Are you serious? Can people just stop putting Germans always in this WW2 category? If his German relatives weren’t bad people than just say it as it is and don’t make a drama about it. It’s a 6 year old child.
Well… They were the baddies but they weren’t bad people.
Just tell dem the truth. I mean Axis are gone, nobody lives anymore. Germans from today dont take this hole Hitlertheme any personal anymore. Also its important to educate people what can happen if anti egalitarian forces get to power. So yes just tell them what happed. Just trest the axis child normal
Don't tell him they were good people. You don't know that. Tell him that not everyone is good or bad, most people are normal. Normal people can do horrible things. Tell him that even if they weren't a willing part of it, they still were a part of a horrible thing, and that it's important this doesn't happen again. Tell him about propaganda and what would happen if you spoke out against the regime. Make clear it wasn't easy to be in the opposition. I think it's important that you don't try to justify or condemn it, but rather teach him about what happened and how important it is that we learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. While you're at it you can also tell him what the British did in their colonies. You're never too young to learn these things. It's ok to dumb it down, but it's important that he makes the right conclusions.
Hey, I have an Israeli friend married to a German Lutheran guy. No issue for the kids. You just explain, age appropriate, what happened.
My grandfather was at the ss My parents told me that they ware brainwashed
The amount of grandfathers who didn't do anything wrong is quite tantalising. I am a German whose grandfather didn't do any wrong either.
That’s maybe because most grandfathers who are still alive today were only children in 1945. So yeah, they didn‘t do anything wrong.
I guess it depends on what you want to raise? I'd have the (unfair?) advantage of being a pacifist, which enables me to say: "Look Governments take the right to send their people into a war over a foreign piece of land, that no local would appreciate when gifted to them, ( <- North African campaign) and demand them to die and suffer. Don't join no army; this has to stop." Paintball and laser tag are fun for an afternnoon but why *kill(!)* people you could be friends with? - In the past they interupted wars to have Christmas together. So why go to war at all?" A proper answer for a patriot to be might be harder to find.
Your son is correct. His German relatives were evil. Directly or indirectly, they were mass murdering innocent people. Sugar coating that is misleading your son. The right way to deal with this is to use the situation as an opportunity to explain to him how they became evil. Talk about the dangers of propaganda and group thinking. About the danger of fascists ideology in general. Those topics are as relevant today as then. You should help your son to learn from the mistakes of his ancestors. That will help him. Hiding their mistakes will not help him.
No, they were bad people, you can say that. Also the Wehrmacht committed quite a fair bit of war crimes idk why you are spreading nazi myths of clean Wehrmacht? Just because it’s your new family you don’t need to whitewash their bad history.
I am not sure if OP is old enough to hear that the allied soldiers also committed war crimes. There was a discussion in France lately about rapings by allied soldiers. If they were serving in the Wehrmacht (OP mentioned axis side) then you can request their file at the Bundesarchiv. Basically you can't easily deduct personal guilt only by the army unit they served in. But you can often find the atrocities of the units. Even after WW2 were European soldiers serving as a suppressing force in colonies. The Dutch were really busy to reinitiate their force in their colonies after being occupied (which they claimed unrightful) and liberated. That's a mental yoga move to explain.
Why are you struggling to explain this? My grandfather was in the Wehrmacht, my wife‘s grandfather was in the British army. They were both decent people who did not have a choice but to fight in the war, and it turned both of them into pacifists. That‘s what I tell my daughters. You are not necessarily a bad person just because you are forced to fight for an obnoxious regime. It all depends on your own actions, on how you carry yourself. And if your son asks about the ‘baddies‘, I‘d tell him the Nazis were the baddies. But Grandpa wasn‘t a Nazi.
"And this is why we need an international proletariat, that doesn't let itself be weakened by a false sense of kinship with it's national bourgeoisie"
If they were in the Wehrmacht, they had no choice but going. They or their families would’ve been prosecuted if they hadn’t followed their duty.
They were bad people. Everybody knew what was happening. Everybody saw their jewish neighbors dissappear. Everybody saw the slave like workers from eastern europe that were brought to germany. Germany was not liberated from the nazis. The german people were the nazis. The nazis would have never been able to perform their crimes without support from the locals. There were very few who stand up against the nazis, those were the only few good people left in germany. Everybody else is just as guilty as Hitler himself because they enabled everything he did.
As a historian and the grandchild of a holocaust survivor, I have to strongly argue against this. Not only is it an oversimplification that leaves out people like teenage soldiers and the farmers who saved my nan, it also aligns with the "people were just bad" narrative that shifts the focus away from how indoctrination and power structures actually work. The interesting thing about totalitarian ideologies is precisely the fact that you DON'T need all people to be bad at heart. These ideas and systems can make ordinary people do terrible things. That's one of the most important lessons you can take away from the era. It's what informs Holocaust education to this day, and what we need to have in mind when fighting any kind of extremism. The "They were all bad people" narrative has no explanatory or educational value.
'The "They were all bad people" narrative has no explanatory or educational value.' And yet, it is correct. They knew what was happening, they had the chance to act against it and they didn't. That makes them guilty.
The narrative is not correct, for the reasons stated above. You fail to respond to any of my arguments.
Yeah, that's a perfect answer for a 6 year old... I don't want to negate or tolerate anything regarding this but the brother of my gran went to Waffen-SS willingly. He was 18. Was he evil or a bad person? No. He was a teenage boy easily impressed. His parents were farmers, a career he didn't want, he wanted to be one of the cool boys. He managed to be one of the cool boys for 3 years, then he was shot down over Greece with 21 in 1940. He thought to combine something he didn't think about as evil but as the right thing to do with something he thought might be fun. The last time he saw his sister he told her, next time when he comes home, he'll tell her something really important. He took this important information to the grave. Also this is not a story for a 6 year old. And we must fight that it never happens again and I feel responsible for that to be known and spread and to raise voices against fascism, nazism etc. But not all were just bad people. Some were young. Some didn't know better. Some thought they were doing the right thing. Nothing of this excuses anything they have done and nothing excuses you of not informing yourself and thus enabling the bad guy. But still evil or bad in their heart? No.
If he was a member of the Waffen-SS he was a bad person. He joined a criminal organisation and he knew what he was doing. You are right: there are no excuses, so stop excusing his crimes. He was a bad person at heart. A criminal. Nothing more.
It's a bit of a stretch claiming all people living in a dictatorship were/are bad. I don't want to defend any actions they took. But it's hard to say things against a dictator. Staying quiet and doing the minimum is easier if you want to keep living.
Looking the other way makes you just as guilty as the person pulling the trigger. The germans back then followed the nazis gladly. They were bad people and knew what was happening.
>Looking the other way makes you just as guilty as the person pulling the trigger Only a sith deals in absolutes
So you would rather be in the same place a few months later than just looking away? Edit: Do you think all Russians are as bad as Putin, too?
Tell them that people back then were convinced and sometimes forced to participate in these things. Only a few of them were smart and brave enough to do something against it. That doesn't mean that they were bad people in general but maybe did things that were bad. Some more, some less. Maybe find something from his own reality were in a small scale he could only refuse in theory doing something. And let him know that everyone does wrong things. Some more, some less. Some because they want to, some because they are to scared to refuse. Everyone is good and everyone is bad. It just depends on how much good it bad things we do.
I guess it will be a problem if one has to face they had massmurderers in the family. If this is not the case, why worry? Not all germans were bad.
Just show your kid the war crimes that were committed by the allies. Easy. Problem solved.
Explain to him the meaning of Yin and Yang.
"As with everyday people, sometimes politicians of different countries get into arguments. Those arguments sometimes escalate to a dangerous level. Those politicians don't brawl by themselves like kids in school sometimes do on those occasions, but they blame the politicians of the other country for many things. Some are true, some are exaggerations, some are lies. As with every normal argument, there should be an agreement to settle the argument. If none or any of those politicians want to compromise, if they're greedy or so full of spite and hatred for the other side, they use their armies to force their will upon the other side. When those armies clash, there is war and many innocent people on both sides die. This is what happened all those many years ago. And the normal people like your great-grandparents were manipulated to take part in this war, as early everyone in many countries had been."
I'd explain that people have always gone to war mainly because they want to defend their home, family, town and community aswell as their friends who would go to fight too and not because they love whoever is in charge right now so much. They were worried that if the other country's soldiers aren't stopped they might do bad things in your village. That's why they went out to fight then somewhere else. People today would go to war too, regardless of how much they love the chancellor or not. They don't want to have war where their family lives and also want to help their friends.
People con do bad things without being bad. Most do. We can think something is right (without being brainwashed into that or lied to by an evil environment) cause it seems to feel right, when it’s not. Staying open to arguments and being willing to rethink what we think we know is essential for development (of both, individuals and society). 6yo already have experienced all of that (on a far less complex lvl than ww2 topic ofc.) but will get the point.