Today I will tell you how German history books describe World War II and who is called a hero and who is a villain, let's start!
Recently, I talked about what they say about the Second World War in US schools, everything is there, as usual, nothing new. The Americans won, and Japan was the main villain. But today is not about that, in the comments one of the readers wrote that he has been living in Germany since the 2000s, his children also study there, according to him, the history of the Second World War in German schools is presented in a completely different way than in our schools and schools of the USSR …
I replied to his comment and he emailed me, after our short conversation, he emailed me an electronic version of German 20th century history textbook with English translation. He also briefly described the most important points and marked the pages, in other words, Mikhail Valerievich, thanks for the finished article!
Going to the main point, as described in the tutorial?
In fact, contrary to the assumptions that there, Germany is exposed as white, fluffy, or even as a winner, this is not at all the case. In general, the textbook cuts the truth quite harshly, for example, I quote one of the sentences of the textbook:
" The Union continues to devastatingly deepen into the occupied territories, freeing them from the invaders”
So it cannot be said that the history of Germany is loyal to fascism, another thing is how it is played out, in short, the textbook exposes Hitler and his party as a villain, but German soldiers are good people, simply deceived by the dictator.
There's even a quote “misguided German soldiers”.
Based on this textbook, everything was like this – Hitler and the party came to power, who, by deceit, threats, substitution of values and other tricks, inspired their ideas to the German people, luring German men into the ranks of the fascist army. After that, under the leadership of the party, the soldiers unconsciously committed atrocities, but the Soviets and the Allies stopped the invaders and liberated Germany from the influence of Hitler.
By the way, the textbook says very little about the atrocities, briefly, briefly mentioning that there were massacres, occupation and so on, but without details, thanks also for the fact that at least they were not silent at all …
In general, the biggest difference with our textbooks is that we talk more about military operations, important battles, fronts, etc., the German textbook tells more about life ordinary people, they say, how hard it was in Germany during the war, people had to work for the front, which they do not even support, and so on.
It also talks a lot about anti-fascist partisans.
As a result, I can say that the rumors about the fact that in Germany they justify fascism and praise German veterans as heroes are lies , yet the textbook harshly criticizes fascism, describing them as villains who seized power in the country, and the Soviets and Allies – the countries that liberated Germany.
What do you think about this? Write in the comments!