"Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" white wash history

[Lokanski]

["Split from "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter"]

And so the German campaign to white wash history of Germany goes on...

[Lokanski]

Official protests about Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vater in Poland and Russia:

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/tv/unsere- ... 91261.html

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/tv/eklat-i ... 93399.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 94386.html

Basically the Poles and Russians are portayed in the series as dirty barbaric antisemitic murderers while German main characters as nice guys and innocent bystanders of their acts, who don't rape, don't support extermination of "untermenschen", don't look forward to 1000 year old Reich. On top of that Poles from Home Army that resisted Nazi Germany murder Jewish friend of the German characters.

Polish state TV stated that under no circumstances will it ever buy rights to show this propaganda and will reconsider cooperation with ZDF.

[Marcus]

What you linked to there was no formal protest from Russia, it was "only" a comment from the head of the foreign committee.

Further fanning the flames of simmering tensions, Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign committee in the Russian parliament's lower house, the State Duma, accused Germany of playing down Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in the popular World War II miniseries "Our Mothers, Our Fathers" ("Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter"), that aired on German TV in late March, saying that it marked "a further attempt to rewrite history.

/Marcus

[Marcus]

I've not seen the TV-series (I very rarely if ever watch fictional TV-programs about the war) but as I understand it there were Germans guilty of war crimes as well as Germans opposed to the war crimes in the series just as in real life?

/Marcus

[Marcus]

Considering the offensive cover shown below I wonder how much of the criticism is really objective fact-based? Maybe the TV-series is rubbish but there can be no need to portray Merkel as a concentration camp victim in any serious discussion.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rmany.html

/Marcus

[Lokanski]

It is a fitting metaphor on how the series tries to distort the history.
Average German, Jews=primary victims of World War 2
Russians, Americans, British=bad guys of World War 2
Nationless Nazis, Poles=main villains of World War 2, primary perpetrators of genocide and war crimes.

Polish ambassador in Germany has issued a protest letter against this propaganda series
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/04/10/po ... tion-camp/

Last month Poland’s ambassador to Germany, Jerzy Marganski, protested the series in a letter sent to German public television station ZDF, which broadcast the show.

“The image of Poland and the Polish resistance against the German occupiers as conveyed by this series is perceived by most Poles as extremely unjust and offensive,” Marganski wrote. “I, too, am shocked.”

I've not seen the TV-series (I very rarely if ever watch fictional TV-programs about the war) but as I understand it there were Germans guilty of war crimes as well as Germans opposed to the war crimes in the series just as in real life?/Marcus

There weren't many Germans opposed to war crimes in WW2. Even resistance of July 20th plot was mostly supportive of crimes against Roma, Poles, Russians. An objective movie about WW2 Germans would be Come and See(there is only one German who sheds a tear during execution but that's about it, most are quite eager to participate). However even Come and See didn't dear to show the massive rapes Wehrmacht participated in on Eastern Front.

As to the series, the main characters are shown as innocent bystanders, main villains in the move are Poles who murder and oppress Jews, and Russians who rape.

[Marcus]

It is a fitting metaphor on how the series tries to distort the history.

In my opinion that image is offensive to all those who died in the camps, regardless of nationality, they deserve better than to be used to score some petty political points.

/Marcus

[Lokanski]

It is a fitting metaphor on how the series tries to distort the history.

In my opinion that image is offensive to all those who died in the camps, regardless of nationality, they deserve better than to be used to score some petty political points.

/Marcus

Attempts to resist white washing the history of the greatest organized genocide known in the history of man are not petty political points in my opinion. I say this as a member of nation that was to exterminated by Germans, and I know that many others feel the same.

[Marcus]

There weren't many Germans opposed to war crimes in WW2.

As to the series, the main characters are shown as innocent bystanders, main villains in the move are Poles who murder and oppress Jews, and Russians who rape.

Of course there were many Germans opposed to war crimes, the WW2-era Germans were humans even if they had been indoctrinated by several years of Nazi-propaganda in schools etc, just like for example there were many Hutus during the Rwandan Genocide that opposed those war crimes. But discussions like the many German (and non-German) war crimes including the Holocaust belong in the "Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes" section of the forum, not in this one.

/Marcus

[Lokanski]

There weren't many Germans opposed to war crimes in WW2.

Of course there were many Germans opposed to war crimes

Provide numbers please. Majority of Germans supported Nazism even post-war(I can add source on this if needed) when crimes became well known.

the WW2-era Germans were humans even if they had been indoctrinated by several years of Nazi-propaganda in schools

I am afraid that German ideology of superior culture race and expansion into the east at the cost of East Europeans goes far more back than Nazi era. Unfortunately majority of political groups in Germany supported these ideas and were elected by majority of Germans.

[Marcus]

It is a fitting metaphor on how the series tries to distort the history.

In my opinion that image is offensive to all those who died in the camps, regardless of nationality, they deserve better than to be used to score some petty political points.

Attempts to resist white washing the history of the greatest organized genocide known in the history of man are not petty political points in my opinion. I say this as a member of nation that was to exterminated by Germans, and I know that many others feel the same.

I have no problem with being critical of bad historical material shown around the world, there is definitely no shortage of it, I do however have problems with the political use of such images as it weakens the power of them and is offensive to the suffers. Incorrect claims about history should be met with facts, not images made only to shock and provoke.

Also, ZDF is an independent non-profit TV-station founded by the German federal states (not the central government) so why use Merkel if not to score a political point? It would be like blaming the Swedish government for some bad TV-series shown on the SVT-station, it is makes little sense.

/Marcus

[Marcus]

I've moved the above posts to the H&WC section, it is a discussion that deserves a more suitable place.

/Marcus

[Lokanski]

[Part of the post moved to http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 2#p1788292]

[Lokanski]

Protest against the movie in Poland

[Marcus]

Also, ZDF is an independent non-profit TV-station founded by the German federal states (not the central government) so why use Merkel if not to score a political point?

Merkel government does provide support funding and political support to organizations that try to falsify history in order to present Germans as victims(for example by portraying fleeing from the East Nazi administration, and children of the soldiers as expelled), so I see a point in this image.

To avoid leaving the the topic of the "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" series and the claims of white-washing there, I've created a new thread for those claims: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=198632

/Marcus