What if ... by A_Sunbeam
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Description
and before anyone complains - yes, that is a picture from the web. But the photographer may well be dead by now.
It's just to introduce this topic.
Ok. We will start here.
I was born in March 1939.
In England, and before the War.
I was in London during the Blitz - but it was just all noise to me, sitting on grannie's knee in the basememt and listening to her voice in her chest.
St Catherine's church up the road lost its roof, but so did the catholic church down the way and the baptists down the road - and Woolworths got hit, next to the station, and the post office, next to the railway, but the Germans missed the station and the railway itself. Rubbish bomb sights?
The school at the top of the road lost a building and the girls' school near the station lost their tennis court.
Not that I knew any of this at the time. It was all noise and breaking glass - I think.
Now that is all some eighty years or more in the past. Back when we wre still 'Sons of Empire' and on Empire Day put out flags for all our the colonies.
So why do I fetch this topic up now?
There is a problem.
For a start, I like uniforms.
Does that make sense?
Well, who had the best uniforms?
Quite. You know who.
I have read many books about that era - especially German ones.
Suppose, says I now to me - I had been born in Germany instead of England.
I am quite sure my father would have been anti-Nazi.
But,
what would I have done?
I have always been very easy to influence.
Could I - would I - have resisted the anti-jewish propaganda?
Or would I have followed my schoolmates and worn a brown shirt?
I still keep wondering if I would have gone for the brown shirt, the uniform and all that.
It is very unsettling.
We know the Nazi ideology was wicked.
But - would I have listened to it then , believed it, and followed it?
After all these years I have to ask myself - would I have been tempted to sign up?
This thought still nags me.
Because I honestly believe I would have accepted all that I was told.
Your comments are welcome.
Comments (7)
marcPoser
You are right; we do not know ourselves until we are facing such type of challenge. This is already happening in most western countries; will we follow the wokeism trend that is destroying any civilization, or will we be ready to resist and fight the wokeism. Wokism (a Marxism-inspired ideology) is now the official ideology of ALL institutions : UN, governments, NGOs, universities, international corporations, professional corporations, schools, and many more. Now, it looks like more and more like mid 1930, but in a different name. Hell on Earth, 1984 style.
Tracesl
Once a long time ago my mother use to drive me crazy, she would say something and just set me off. I asked her about it, and she said she just liked "pushing my buttons." I would respond, saying she installed them. Like her society has installed buttons and I find that things that they can be pushed by things I hear or see. At least I am aware of some of those buttons, but I don't know if other people see them in themselves, being that self-aware. We are built/formed by our society; we do not know all the buttons install by our cultural, family and the location we are brought up and we do not know when or how they can be pushed or used.
eekdog
much agree with above.
kalebdaark
Designer Hugo Boss (or rather his fashion company) designed them. Don't think the choice wasn't deliberate, or just went to the lowest bidder. Top-flight uniforms increase military morale and civilian population's perception of them. Especially for the officers. And this particular regime reveled and wrapped themselves in imagery.
A lot of young people who don't know any better (and most are so young that they don't) look at the pics, or the men themselves in their dress uniforms and think "that's for me" not going much further than that. Then when they're in, they themselves are now "under the gun".
Note that few if any militaries nowadays have cloned this specific look, it is now almost taboo. A few ape some of the features here and there, but you don't see a lot of this specific cut anymore. Typically the more totalitarian, the closer their uniforms to "the original". Others all want to distance themselves from the original, yet keep the "hints" of power and mastery here and there.
Most non-communist countries have gone with patterns similar to the United States military, and communist countries went along the lines of the look of the former Soviet union, both the winners over the Nazis, and everybody likes a winner.
Me personally, I think the US officer uniforms are a bit bland, the newer ones hearkened back to the old Cavalry days, with newer ones slated to look more WWII. Still, a tad too utilitarian. The only one we have that's downright snazzy are the USMC dress blues. Now that's a uniform that commands respect just by looking at it (IMHO).
A_Sunbeam
I'm not impressed by the modern German uniforms. But they could hardly have gone back to the older ones! Chile still has Prussian style outfits.
UteBigSmile
Sad story, dear friend, that you had to experience as a child (which many children in the Ukraine, in Gaza and in many other places still have to endure every day): the world has gone out of control because of power-hungry despots. To your question “What if…” I can only tell you that I’m scared!
Courtray4458
Unfortunately, the problem of racist exclusion is not specifically German. Black US Africans who were separated from whites until the 50s and 60s of the last century, South African apartheid among the Boers, even in England in the 60s and 70s it was still common to see, for example, restaurants pointing out through signs that Irish and black people were undesirable. We are currently experiencing again the seemingly global revival of Jew-hatred, which disguises itself as "criticism of Israel", tries to portray the necessary defense of the State of Israel as genocide in a grotesquely distorted manner and equates it with the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine - although between the defense of a country against an opponent (HAMAS) whose declared intention is to destroy the state and has no connection whatsoever to a war initiated to create a Russian empire. The so-called leftists of this world, even LGBTQ activists who would be among the first victims of radical Islamists like HAMAS, are not too stupid to go to demonstrations with draped Palestinian scarves and play useful idiots for these enemies of democracy with caliphate paranoia . The world has become much more complex since the Nazi era, including in terms of malice, hatred and violence, unfortunately!
moochagoo
Excellent and sad story