Do you mean nazis or German soldiers? There is - if you know your history - quite a difference. But, to answer your question, yes. A bit like British conscripts going off to fight and it being drilled into them to follow orders along with the threat of being shot if they didn’t follow orders. You seem to forget that the Allies also committed terrible atrocities on the European mainland in both wars. I don’t think ordinary people - German, Russian or British - are inherently evil and bloodthirsty in the way you seem to. But I do think that tools like propaganda and patriotism can be used to manipulate and coerce.
I mean the German soldiers who followed the orders of the Nazi regime. Orders to massacre entire villages, drag women and children out of their homes and into death camps, gather people in forests under the guise of providing refuge and machine-gun them down.
Patriotism and propaganda are not the only reason someone would want to protect their family and community from an invading army. You can “both-sides” it all you want, but if an invading army was threatening my community, I would take up arms against it. If that means joining a military I wouldn’t normally see eye-to-eye with, but which would help protect my community, then so be it.
Good for you if you’ve never had to make a difficult moral choice like that. You can stay in your world of hypotheticals.
Family. Country. Flag. King. Sunday dinner. The village green. Fish & Chips. God. Now that’s patriotism. Who wouldn’t want a bloodbath to save all that from the fiendish Enemies of England who eat babies and don’t speak the King’s English and whose leader is insane?
Look, if you don’t have anyone in your life who you’d be willing to fight to defend, then I’m sorry. I’m sorry you can’t countenance the idea of a community that isn’t built on flags and monarchies. But they exist.
Do you mean nazis or German soldiers? There is - if you know your history - quite a difference. But, to answer your question, yes. A bit like British conscripts going off to fight and it being drilled into them to follow orders along with the threat of being shot if they didn’t follow orders. You seem to forget that the Allies also committed terrible atrocities on the European mainland in both wars. I don’t think ordinary people - German, Russian or British - are inherently evil and bloodthirsty in the way you seem to. But I do think that tools like propaganda and patriotism can be used to manipulate and coerce.
I mean the German soldiers who followed the orders of the Nazi regime. Orders to massacre entire villages, drag women and children out of their homes and into death camps, gather people in forests under the guise of providing refuge and machine-gun them down.
Patriotism and propaganda are not the only reason someone would want to protect their family and community from an invading army. You can “both-sides” it all you want, but if an invading army was threatening my community, I would take up arms against it. If that means joining a military I wouldn’t normally see eye-to-eye with, but which would help protect my community, then so be it.
Good for you if you’ve never had to make a difficult moral choice like that. You can stay in your world of hypotheticals.
Family. Country. Flag. King. Sunday dinner. The village green. Fish & Chips. God. Now that’s patriotism. Who wouldn’t want a bloodbath to save all that from the fiendish Enemies of England who eat babies and don’t speak the King’s English and whose leader is insane?
Look, if you don’t have anyone in your life who you’d be willing to fight to defend, then I’m sorry. I’m sorry you can’t countenance the idea of a community that isn’t built on flags and monarchies. But they exist.
Pro patria mori, my friend. Pro patria mori. Go in peace.