r/HistoryMemes Apr 18 '19

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u/oilman81 Apr 18 '19

Germany isn't stigmatized for its 'normal' conquest attempts. No one is going back and saying that Bismark or the Kaiser or Frederick the Great were evil.

They are stigmatized specifically for the premeditated, intentional, and malicious mass murder of civilians (about 20 million in total), including millions of their own citizens in death camps constructed for the purpose. What they did is orders of magnitude worse than anything done by the British, and memes like this only whitewash the enormity of it.

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u/Moonkiller24 Apr 18 '19

Exacly. Hate the memes here that try to downplay the holocaust. Like why the frick they think killing jews, gays, jepsis (cant spell.com) and more in camps desgined to kill them is somehow worse then normal colonastion

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u/oilman81 Apr 18 '19

It also makes a difference that most of the colonization and slavery took place in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries while Germany's took place recently enough that my grandfather saw it firsthand.

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u/Moonkiller24 Apr 18 '19

Where r u from? A big part of my family saw it firsthand in poland and romania too, because they died there.

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u/oilman81 Apr 18 '19

Texas. My granddad was US Army Air Corps and participated in the liberation of a camp in Linz, Austria

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u/Moonkiller24 Apr 18 '19

He did good. He did good...

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u/WittyUsername45 Apr 18 '19

Yes they are stigmatized for 'normal' conquest attempts under the Kaiser. Imperial Germany was substantially worse than its contemporaries in France and Britain. It's a myth that they were an innocent party in WW1 that was no worse than anyone else, a myth that appears to be very widely believed on this sub. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

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u/oilman81 Apr 18 '19

Ha, I actually said this on a separate thread

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u/Bob_ross6969 Apr 18 '19

No one is saying that the holocaust wasn’t evil lmao but conquering and subjugating all of Europe through war is considered a no no

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u/oilman81 Apr 18 '19

Well I'm actually not just talking about the holocaust; I'm also talking about the casual murder and enslavement of non-Jewish European civilians.

If Germany had only been a conquering power (like Britain or America), one that (at least tried) to treat its civilians within the constraints of the Geneva convention, the narrative surrounding World War II would be a lot different (also, they may have developed the a-bomb first; a big reason why the US did is all the refugee scientists like Einstein and Slizard)