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[A Black Falcon]

Just defending their country from enemies...? They started the war. And military service was NOT mandatory... and there was no conscription. Those people who invaded Poland in '39, France in '40, Russia in '41...they weren't "fighting to defend their nation", they were trying to conquer the world.

You may see it that way but to them it was very different. Remember the atmosphere of the time... the people of those nations just didn't see it that way, as is perfectly understandable... they act like they are taught, and what they learn is what the government tells them...

No mandantory military conscription? I don't know... Hitler did a great job of militarizing his whole nation by greatly increasing the military.

See... Germany. The people are depressed. The depression has hit very, very hard...

Remember. After WW1, Germany was hit with a horrible peace treaty that made them pay for the whole war. Way more than they could. But they did manage it... mostly from money they got from investments in the American stock market. So it really was a circle -- US to Germany to England, and some of that money went to the US stock market...

But then there was the depression. The stock market bombed. And Germany was suddenly thrown into a very, very severe depression. So they had to blame SOMEONE...

And then Hitler, who had been scorned several years earlier when the economy was going well, suddenly was listened to. He had an answer for their nations problems... can you really blame them for listening? And its not like anti-Jewish sentiment was new... actually Europe had a very long tradition of hating the Jews... he just brought it farther. And people listened... which is bad but hardly surprising given the situation.

What I don't get is this part. If we are so brave to defend our nation from the evil axis what makes them so horrible to defend theirs from the evil allies? Its the same thing, just in opposite sides... and as I said its not like the average soldiers had major differences. Now groups like the SS or something, the death squads that wen around killing civilians... they were criminals and evil people. But not the average soldiers...

Oh please. Neighbors disappearing; whole Jewish ghettoes going silent. No, I didn't see anything. They weren't ALL ignorant.

Sorry, but not even most of the JEWS had a clue about what was going on until they were herded into cattle cars. I'd hardly expect that the population of Germany would know any more!

It was a well-kept secret for years... one that they didn't tell anyone and that the Allies had gotten rumors of but had ignored (it is true... the Allied leaders had heard rumors of deathcamps and the like but didn't listen. Was that due to our own anti-Jewish bias? I don't know... but that's not the point. The point is that it wasn't really something that most anyone -- in the Allied or the Axis nations -- paid much of any attention to until they opened the concentration camps and found the evidence.

Before that even the people who knew didn't really want to believe it... excepting of course a small minority of Western Jews... but they were ignored.