You are right. The picture with the Swastika is indeed a fake - nevertheless he was in the Hitler youth - like everyone else in his age. The uniform is from a HJ-Flakhelfer. The real eagle-swastika emblem on this uniform looks like this: http://youtu.be/9D3jRxLR2j8
This thread is going from bad to worse. Only someone familiar with German history can understand that wearing a NAZI uniform does not automatically make one a NAZI! If you live in a closed political system, you basically have two choices. Adjust or leave the country. This is difficult for Americans to understand, because they were never unfree. Bundeskanzlerin A.Merkel is a bad european. She has no concept of europe and hasnt even thought about where Europe should be in 10 years. She just doesnt have the vision thing and thats bad for a country with the larges economy in Europe.
Sorry - but one of the most famous sentences ever said from a german politician came from our old chancellor Helmut Schmidt (Social Democratic Party). He said once: "A politician with visions should visit a hospital." http://youtu.be/RtuW08ZIgvg
Maybe Helmut Schmidt thought like a bookkeeper, Europe is changing and we certainly need politicians who prepare us for these changes. A vision thing is really not that hard. Helmut Kohl saw Europe as a way to make war impossible between EU members.
As far as I know, Helmut Kohl supported every war the Americans started. He is more of an opportunist than a man with a vision. Don't let me even get started about Helmut Schmidt. Angela Merkel is 20 times better than the two Helmuts combined. She knows diplomacy and she never was into Cold War thinking.
Helmut Kohl was a great European statesman. The German-French friendship is the foundation of a peaceful and unified Europe. If the two most important european economies have decided to end their mistrusting ways, then cooperation on economic and cultureal issues becomes more possible. Aside from that a French-German axis in international affaires is important to adjust to a American-Chinese world.
When he came here he was Austrian, then Swiss, then German. I think he has issues regarding his nationality.
Figures some papist would make an effort to clean up the Roman Catholic/Nazi mess. While Adolph Hitler embraced a lot of unusual religions in his life, he remained a-life long Roman Catholic. As you can see from this link, Hitler had a very "cozy" relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_religious_views Most importantly, THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH DID NOTHING WHEN HITLER WAS PERSECUTING THE JEWISH PEOPLE. This makes Catholicism as useless and dangerous as Nazis in my book. You won't find me giving my hard earned dollars so a bunch fairies can waltz around palaces fancy dresses. I will slam the Catholic Church every chance I get for crossing religion and politics with their actions on right to die, abortion, and GLBT rights. We need to tax Roman Catholic Church due to their political activities, and get these pedaphile priests in jail.
Red_Carpet are you implying that Protestants are not politically movitated? There was one Pastor who burned the Koran in front of tv and thus being responisble for the deaths of many US soliders fighting in Afgansitan and elsewhere. The Catholics have to orginize themselfs politically in order to defend themselfs agains politicains who want their land and money. The Papal States were once large, but not the Vatican is the smallest country in the world. Harldly a threat to the USA or World Communism, if it still exist.
Wasn't the Catholic Church very active in saving Jewish people back then? Admittedly, some Vatican routes used to help Jewish people were used to let top Nazis escape somewhere else later, but saying, the Catholic Church did nothing to help Jewish people is simply wrong.
Well, I think all in all the Catholic church i.e. the Vatican is rightly criticized for its cowardice concerning Nazi-Germany and for not speaking out against the holocaust. (And few German protestants were any better). But of course the Catholic Church was never a monolithic block and there were quite honorable and courageous clergymen such as Alfred Delp and Bishop von Galen.
junobet its very easy to say the Vatican could have done more, but as I remember correctly they were surrounded by a fachist state and had no army to defend itself. The americans wet their pants as the japanese bombed Peral Harbour, at that time not part of the USA.
Oh come on pedephile priests are only the most recent example of the Catholic Church only having an interest it what is good for the Cardinals waltzing around palaces in dresses. Get real. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html
As recent trials of pedaphile priests have shown, the Catholic Church takes care of the Cardinals waltzing around palaces in dresses more seriously than the well-being of any of its members. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html "The Allied governments issued a declaration, "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," which stated that there would be retribution for the perpetrators of Jewish murders. When Tittman asked Secretary of State Maglione if the Pope could issue a similar proclamation, Maglione said the papacy was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities." Pope Pius XII, friend to Germany's Catholic Adolph Hitler
It looks more like an anti-Catholic vendetta here meanwhile than like a discussion over German people ...
Perhaps the Pope should walk in our shoes. A woman's right to choose is the law of the land in the United States. Physician assisted suicide is legal in two states - Washington State and Oregon. Rights are conferred on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender like any other citizens. In the United States we have "separation of church and state." The Roman Catholic Church, while functioning tax free donates money and effort to political efforts against abortion, right to die, and GLBT rights. It is the Roman Catholic church who is breaking the law, and needs to be removed/destroyed. The Catholic Church is an enemy of the American way of life. We will bring down the Catholics the same way we got rid of Al Capone, the tax man will do it. And, I have not even entered the question of priests who can not keep their hands of teenage boys. The Catholic Church is going down in the United States as it already has in most civilized countries.
