--- uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
> Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt:
> Ahmadinejad
Ahmadinejad is behind the times. Germans as a collective national entity have long since stopped feeling any sense of guilt or responsibility for the Holocaust.
Instead, they've turned towards projecting their guilt onto the victims of German imperialism, such as the Serbs. Not much on this national process of "Schuldentlastung" in English, but one recommendable source would be the excellent Chapter 4 of Diana Johnstone's solid _Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions_.
If anything, Germans have made the full turn towards national self-pity, and have rediscovered themselves as the true victims of the Second World War. Witness the national Dresden cult. Witness Jörg Friedrich's bestseller _Der Brand_ (a popular little piece of historical revisionism and relativism that compares firebombing of German cities with the Holocaust). And last but not least, the truly awful movie "Der Untergang" with Bruno Ganz as Hitler. There's also the national cult of victimhood around Silesians and Sudetendeutschen.
Then there's pop cultural nationalism such as the rock band MIA's (not to be confused with the excellent British electro artist M.I.A.) declaration that they are proud to be Germans because Germany stands for Peace (tell that to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and the Congo).
Agree with Doug Henwood that Americans could use more guilt about the genocide against native americans and slavery. I just think that Germans could still use a heaping spoonful of the same.
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