Argentinian ski resort revealed as Nazi hideout

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David Goldsmith I do not think that Ott was making excuses for the Nazis. Far from it.
But as Lachigo hints with "Lots of things happened in WW2 and worse has happened since. Time to move on" , the "actors" of those times have all nearly died.
Once they will be all dead, a possible way to punish them, those who human Justice has not been able to reach- be it for political links, for sheer cunning on their part or whatever- IMHO, so many years after the facts, is to forget about them, to erase their names from our collective memory, or to damn their names forever and ever, but then we have a problem with their offspring, they're not guitly of their fathers and mothers acts, right? At the same time we should never, ever forget about the milllions of victims and the millions of soldiers who fought to stop the madness.
This is a difficult, almost impossilbe, thing to do, for we cannot remember the latter without the former... I have no sureproof solution, alas.
Also, to say "never again" is not a solution, because we all know that it will happen again, performed by one human tribe against another, "homo homini lupus".
History is cyclical, and I am always amazed at how the circle never fails to come a full round in due time. History is there to be studied to allow us to avoid the same mistakes again and again, and yet we always fail to do so.

A snowHead

Von Braun, I recollect from a visit to a V1 rocket site in Northern France, was instrumental in the developement of the V2 at Peenemunde. He "surrendered" to the Americans at the end of the war, because of their investment into rocket technology and his fear of the Russians (like most Germans in that respect at the time). I think his name was changed to Brown and he became a senior figure at NASA during the Jupiter and Saturn rocket programmes.

From what I remember, the regimes at the rocket sites in Europe inflicted terrible conditions on the POWs who died supplying much of the labour. In my view, many Germans at the time quite conveniently altered their mindsets to overlook/justify much of what was going on around them. Collective liability is how I see it for many.

BTW Ott, the Russians were estimated to have shot up to 500,000 of their own army in WWII for a good deal less in most cases than disobeying orders, and I dare say the Germans were not much better, so up to a point you make a good one.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Were the soviets during WWII a Democracy?
No, they were considered "good guys" only because they were fighting on the right side.
But the soviet dictatorship was as brutal as the nazi-fascist ones.
They killed and exterminated and subjugated East Europe...Poland was shifted westward, in 1939 Soviets and Nazis were "allied" of sort, and splitted Poland, let's not forget. After the war, the part that Germany had annexed was given back to Poland but not the part that the Soviet swallowed in 1939, which was substituted by a piece of eastern Germany. Let's not forget that parts of today's Slowenia and Croatia are made up of pieces of Italy, taken from Italy at the end of WWII, and that the Italians who used to live there had to flee or be subjected to ethnic cleansing, ever heard of the "Foibe"? If we have to remember all the atrocities, then so be it, let's remember every single one. Not only part of it.

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Matteo, if you're interested, read Anthony Beevor's account of the fall of Berlin - I'd say the Russians were almost more brutal. Their naturally pent up feelings about the Germans had been whipped up to a frenzy by the politicos who used all manner of propaganda (much of it untrue, though not all) to inflame their hatred even more. It's a breathtaking read, totally absorbing and at the same time horrifying. The Western Allies don't come out of things too unscathed, either.

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OK, David, I don't often think about it but I'll give you a short history about my life too. I was born in Yugoslavia to an Austrian father and a mother of German origin. We lived in a town comprised mostly of people of German origin along with some Serbs, and a mixture of other nationalities and races. All of us lived harmoniously together. The Jews and the Germans were the wealthiest in town, also the hardest workers.

My family had an electrical contracting and installation company and store, along with selling and repairing radios and appliances and a warehouse full of materials and stock.

During the first ethnic cleansing in the fall of '44 by the Serbian partisans the retreating German army said to leave or be killed. Luckily my family left with three hours notice but most didn't, including most of my extended family. They were tortured and killed in the cruelest way imaginable, 370000 in Yugoslavia in a couple of weeks. We were tossed around in camp after camp until the war ended. Everything we worked for was lost.

I never heard of any of the partisans being held responsible for the slaughter, the war was over at the time in the region and they probably lived happily ever after in our houses, but I don't care, leaving there was probably the best thing that could have happened because we are very happy here.

So this goes on and on, mass murders from Attila the Hun to Hitler and Stalin to Sadam, etc. and I don't think it will ever end. We'll just have to live with it.

This is a depressing subject and I'm sorry to get churned up about it. That's the last of it.

....Ott

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Argentinian ski resort revealed as Nazi hideout

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