World cup seen as chance to recognise Nazi pastGosh! Who would have thought so! Of course without that "study" and those no doubt hardworking "arguing historians" we'd never have learned of what was going on!
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin
Published: April 14 2006 18:43 Last updated: April 14 2006 18:43
This summer’s soccer world cup is proving to be another test of how Germany deals with its Nazi past.
[...]
A particular focus is the match between Iran and Angola on June 21 in Leipzig. The NPD plans to “send a clear message of solidarity” to the Iranian regime led by President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, following his denial of the Holocaust and call for Israel’s abolition, and what the NPD calls his “defiant stance against the western powers” on the country’s nuclear programme.
[...]
Germany’s main football authority has also been examining its past. The DFB refused for decades to reflect on its role in the Nazi era from 1933 to 1945, but this month held a conference on “soccer under the swastika”. Based on a study published last year, historians argued that the DFB had failed to protect Jewish players and had stabilised Hitler’s regime...
And as far as those few pathetic Nazis are concerned, yes, they don't like Jews. And they rather jeopardise their "Aryan" superiority and racial sensitivities and deal with what they'd normally call mud people as long as the latter promise to help them with their "Jewish problem". So what else is new?
New are politicians like Angelika Beer, German Greens MEP who thinks that Iran is "a fascinating country with a young well-educated society". Yes, the same Angelika Beer who finds the delivery of two submarines to Israel "irresponsible".
New is (well, sortof...) the Greens' "elder statesman" Hans Christian Ströbele who recently blamed in a TV chat show the United States and co-guest Richard Perle of planning an attack on Iran with nuclear weapons. The very Ströbele, who thinks that Iran has the right of using nuclear technology. Ströbele who thinks that, if Iran is banned from having nukes, Israel ought to be too. Yes, that very Ströbele who described Iraq's missile attacks on Israel during the first Gulf War as "the logical, almost unavoidable outcome of Israel’s policies", thus following the old and cherished school of thoughts, which maintains that antisemitism is the Jews' fault anyway.
New, too, is the recurring fast forming Grand Coalition of politicians of almost all colours when it comes to not selling weapons to Israel.
Just leave the few pathetic Nazis alone and stop abusing them as scapegoats, smokescreens and, worst, guinea pigs to prove how well you are dealing with your "Nazi past", Mr. Average German.
(On German hypocrisy regarding Vergangenheitsbewältigung see my blog entry Barking up the Wrong Tree as an Art Form.)
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