Germany is anty-nazi at face value only.
I have a proof of it every 08/01 and 09/01 - anniversaries of Warsaw uprising and WWII start respectively.
Usually there is nary a mention of it in German press, as there is nothing today. Yes, it could be insensitivity as well, but state media are the same, even news google de returns no single relevant result when I type Warschau in it. But we remember, so no surprise Poland becomes a pawn of US...

Yep, that's the exact scientific definition of a nazi.

https://www.google.de/?gws_rd=ssl#q=warschau+aufstand


lots of links


https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufsta...schauer_Ghetto




https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warschauer_Aufstand

During that war, a massacre happened someplace basically every day. Most were committed by Germany, some by the USSR and the Allies probably had a few of their own that nobody talks about.
So it's no surprise that at some point, they get forgotten.

That is also the reason I wouldn't have been able to put a date on the Warsaw Uprising (I think the Ghetto uprising is also often mixed up with it - I even did that writing this post...)

Just for comparison, we also have the "Volkstrauertag" in Germany -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstrauertag - but because of the distance between now and the last war, few people take notice of it these days - even more so as it's often drowned out by the pre-Christmas Sunday shopping craze nowadays...

At some point, even this war will be just a (rather large) chapter in the history books, like the Napoleonic wars, the Thirty Years' War or any other conflict that you find browsing your (or your kids) history lessons' book.

As cold as it may sound, but the list of ongoing armed conflicts (a wonderfully-gruesome euphemism in itself) on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...rmed_conflicts tells us that there are currently enough problems in the world to fill a typical 15 minute news section on TV.

If it's any solace to you: Putin has been warning about about the 3rd world war for a long time. I bet people will remember that one for quite some time.

I think everything has a context.

Right now, political relationships between Germany and Poland are souring off somewhat. Over the past 20 years or so, relations between Germany and Poland had improved to the point that relations with Poland were about as good as those with France. There were lots of city partnerships, lots of schoolclasses visited the other country. Lots of investement and business partnerships as well as partnerships in science and research. All the good stuff basically. But then these last couple of months, things have changed. Merkel doesn't like the newly elected Polish government and is trying to piss them off. Whereas it is normal that even good friends disagree sometimes, this spat has been more than an amicable rousing of feathers. Merkel has been making lots of threatening noises and getting involved in internal Polish political stuff, and this has been raising ghosts of the past. At such a time it is especially important for Germany to reassure Poland that those days are not coming back. One way to do this is to make special efforts to mark the appropriate anniversaries. This hasn't happened. You can conclude what you want, but others may conclude something different.

I would like to see what would happen in Poland if Germany got as much of a reactionist, right-wing government as Poland or Hungary.

But then, it could also just be biased media-reporting. So, I may be wrong and it's all hunky-dory in Poland and Hungary, democracy-wise.
Who knows - I don't speak a single world of both languages, so I can't read their papers, can't read blog-posts etc.

As you found out, it's easy to be friends when you mostly agree with the other person and everything else is sunny.
But your view that this is limited on Germany is a bit limited itself: it's a rift in the EU itself. Or actually multiple rifts, that are slowly turning into fault lines.
They have always been there, but could be covered up by spending/wasting money. As that is now in shorter supply, the old problems start showing up again.
As nothing seems to be done to fundamentally change this, your guess where this might end is as good as mine...

Agreed.

I don't speak any Polish and my Hungarian is too basic to follow any high level discussion, but there is quite a lot of political stuff on Hungary translated into English or at least susbtitled on youtube etc that I peruse. I also have friends there and conversations with them keep my interest in these things alive. To me it seems that the view the media in the west are presenting is not entirely balanced and the historical and cultural context and background are not properly explained. By reading up on this I discovered how little I know about Hungary, how the sparse stuff I do know presents a skewered and grossly misleading picture.

It takes two to tango and I'm not claiming the Hungarian side are angels, but I definietly think that western media are not doing their best to present a balanced picture or put things in context. Hungary, being a small country with an important diaspora, is naturally more aware of what happens in other European countries and I think that despite the bias, the picture Hungarians are getting is more balanced than the one we are getting.


Agreed, but I think Germany is being especially heavy handed in dealing with the rift.

Germany has a history of attempting to colonise and imprint its culture and way of thinking on eastern Europe. Hitler may come to mind but this tendency is not limited to Nazism but goes back much further.If you look at Polish history you will find a lot more stuff on Germany than you will find Polish stuff in German history. This creates awareness and things you need to be mindful of.

Sometimes you need to be aware of history and play things more carfeulyl and more subtly than would be necessary between countries without such a history. This would be very much like the British PM going to Ireland or to India and making a shipload of political demands basically saying you need to be more like us and you need to work harder trying to follow our example. This wouldn't go down well, even if there was some truth to it. I think this is something Merkel hasn't understood.

I don't think Germany is really "leading".
It's more a case of everybody else pushing Angela and using her as a kind of mine-sweeper and scape-goat.
Also, Germany is footing the bill for much of what is going forward in Europe.
If something doesn't work or it looks like there's going to be bill at the end and money to be coughed-up, first call goes to Berlin.


As I already said at the time: when the refugee crisis started, nobody really had any idea how to deal with the refugees in a human way. Most Central and Eastern European states would probably have started a competition on who could treat them the worst so they would move elsewhere.
But that is not a legacy and an "achievement" a politician from Germany wants to leave behind.

From here, it looks like Poland is about as important to Germany as Switzerland. Politicians have got bigger fish to fry these days.
Sorry Poland, but that's the reality.

Maybe she isn't leading but just reacting. But in that case its even more worrying as Europe's most important country is effectively leaderless.


Maybe the Germans see themselves as the sugar daddies, unconditionally paying for the failures of others. But I don't think this view is unanimously shared across the rest of Europe. Ask the people suffering from austerity in Greece for example.


Maybe this is part of the explanation. Politicians more concerned about how history would judge them than in doing the right thing on the ground.


However, it was not really a question of how best to cope with the refugees who were largely there, but Merkel's "das schaffen wir" quite definitely set into motion a far greater stream. And the rather two-dimensional and childish insulting of Orban's fence sounded much more like an appeasement of the pro-immigration faction inside Germany than a nuanced and intelligent understanding of the conditions on the ground in Hungary. In other words, Merkel hammered a wedge into the rift that divides Europe in order to temporarily look good back home.



Could be. maybe Germany has bigger fish to fry and if you lose Poland as an ally, what's Poland ever done for us anyway? And the Brexit? Who cares if we pissed off the Brits. What did Britain ever do for us anyway? And Greece? And France? What, the EU is down to Germany, Luxemburg and Vallonie? Why is it that periodically in history everybody gangs up on us Germans? We'll never understand.

Some more statistics:

• Men make up 73% of Europe's asylum seekers
• Asylum seekers from non European countries more likely to be young and male
• Biggest single demographic group are young males 18-34 making up 42% of all asylum seekers
• 7% of asylum seekers are unaccompanied minors
• Over half of unaccompanied minors have applied for asylum in either Germany, Sweden or the UK
• Germany, Sweden and Hungary received over half of all asylum applications

Source:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/08/02/...llion-in-2015/
http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/articl...Asyl-Last.html

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This Pew report and Welt.de comment use the same Eurostat data that I linked in my post 1233.

Your comment was "This data isn't accurate. 1.1 million asylum seekers registered in Germany alone in 2015."

So now you think this data is accurate although it shows only 467 thousand asylum seekers in Germany in 2015

The full picture still isn't clear. Someone has just bothered to sift through and analyse the current data properly.

As it got deleted on another thread though this is relevant to this one.

I love the way we get a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote of an unnamed source. I totally believe it.

Golly Gee I wonder which mod goes around selectively deleting posts on refugee threads and yet has the gall to post about bias...

Eh?

1. If you post stuff like this in the wrong place, e.g. putting a quote about criminal violence in Germany in a thread about refugees, in the Switzerland/Daily Life section, your posts will be reported and most likely removed. I even suggested you repost it in the right place, but you had to let someone else do it for you.

2. I wasn't posting about bias - I can't see why you should think I was.

No you did NOT suggest that I repost it in the "right" place - and I thought you were one of the mods who were particularly hot on posting the content of private messages but since you even contradict yourself on that point I think it entirely fair that I post the entire content of your private message - which I should also point out you request that I not respond to :

You posted about iteratively second hand information - despite everything being direct quotes.... and no surprise the original source does not wish to be named... for reasons obvious to everyone except you. Your posting and deleting behaviour indicates a large degree of bias in your views - which you are perfectly entitled to (IMHO) as a normal poster but as a mod I feel calls into question the board's integrity.

"Up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not appear in the official statistics,"

What has 2014 to do with the topic which is believed to be "Arab gang assaults [by recently arrived refugees] in Germany?

So what part of that did you fail to understand?

It's an automatically generated message, simply asking you not to reply to the PM itself'

Well no - your post was quoting an article that was quoting another article that was quoting a "direct" source. I'm only expressing some scepticism about the reliability of such a convoluted trail.

Where is the suggestion to repost ??
Hmm I rather thought you were claiming credit for suggesting that I repost somewhere else ? Are you now claiming that it was not you who triggered the PM ???

On it's own fine but your track record - and indeed many posts on this board indicates a large degree of bias unfitting of a mod.