Has Germany ever been properly punished for it`s mass murder during world war 2?

Answer 1

You are confusing Germany with the Nazis.

Answer 2

No if anything it was rewarded by the Americans as was Japan and the crimes were not those of the few the majority of the German people knew and condoned and many cases assisted.A lot of propaganda was spread after the war that the Nazis were a separate entity to the German people so that the allies could go about rebuilding Germany for their own purposes as a buffer against the USSR.Luckily the British Army of the Rhine and their allies have made sure that Germany has not being able to pursue any military aspirations since.Even nowadays companies like BMW reuse to pay compensation to slave workers they used and had executed when they were of no further use.I think that shows how sorry they are.

Answer 3

The main perpetrators of the atrocities were either captured and tried at Nuremberg or died before they could be captured. A few famously escaped supposedly to Brazil.

The majority of people involved in the war were not there by choice, whether they were French, British, German, Russian, Australian, Japanese. And those who chose to join their respective militaries didn't do so with the aim of unleashing such outrageous acts on other people.

As has been said by others, the second World War ended over 60 years ago. The world has changed, nothing can bring back the people who were lost nor can the pain be erased. It is more than time to move on.

As for punishing Germany, you should spend time here. As a Briton living in Germany, I am frequently saddened by the ways in which Germans are still castigating themselves for what happened. Children are marched around the camp museums to be shown what a terrible thing their grandparents and great-grandparents did. I was taken by a taxi driver to the eternal flame in Munich and was given a lecture about how "we Germans did a terrible thing and it must never be forgotten" When I suggested that after 60 years it was time to move forward and as the taxi driver was in his thirties he was two generations removed from the War it wasn't HIS fault, he very adamantly said, my father's sins pass down to me.

ENOUGH ALREADY

This is a lovely country with lovely people whose ancestors were (in the main) caught up unwillingly in a war and who feared for their own children's lives if they didn't follow the rules. The Germany of the forties no longer exists, so just as we can't punish Adolf Hitler neither can we possibly punish Germany.

Furthermore, if you wish to 'punish Germany' for its eugenics, surely you should also punish the country whose own advanced study and implementation of a eugenics programme formed the research basis for Adolf Hitler's Aryan plan. Who would that be? Well, the US actually.

BRAVO MR. ED. Thank you for putting what I feel so succinctly!

Answer 4

1. There is no way you can punish a nation sufficiently for something like that, apart from wiping them out. Punishment as such is not the question.
2. Did they suffer for it? Yes. The bombing during the last years of WW II, a large part of Germany under Soviet domination for so many years. The stigma has also lasted since then.
3. Was any reparation made? Germany has paid a tremendous amount in reparation to the state of Israel.
4. Was Germany the only guilty party? No. The USSR government wiped out millions of innocent people, including a tremendous number of Jews. Only the Russians are much more secretive.
5. There is no point in carrying on hatred for generations. It is in fact self defeating. In the case of Germany, that nations recognizes its crime, and Germany is today probably the only country where it is a crime to deny the holocaust.
6. Russia has not recognized its crimes against Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies.
7. Turkey refuses to recognize its genocide of Armenians.
These two countries will continue to bear the guilt of their crimes until they admit them, apologize for them, and do what they can to make reparation for their crimes. That is the difference between Germany and those countries.
Perhaps we could ask other interesting questions in this context, such as:
"Was Spain ever punished for the genocide in Central and South America?"
"Were the English and Americans ever punished for the genocide in North America?"
I am not lessening at all the horror and the crime of the holocaust. On the contrary, I believe "never again!" is the best and only way of responding to such horrors. All I am saying is that we need to be careful not to be self-righteous about it either. All of our nations at one time or another have been systematically cruel to defenseless people.

Answer 5

I have a bit of a problem with this question, Germany has been punished, in a way, and so has the world at large. The National Socilists however, on the whole got away scott free.

The price for turning a blind eye to the politics of hate used by Adolf Hitler and his cronies was to be split down the middle, and to have the industury carved up by foreign companies for years.

Germany was totally ripped apart during the last years of the war. The world was also so sick of war, that they let Stalin put half of Europe into a form of hell for 50 years.

The guilt of America also gave way to Israel, which has put another group of semetic people - palestine - under occupation for 60 years, backed by US dollars.

Japan was never punished, because of the guilt of dropping thr bomb, and Italy was let off because the switched sides against the Germans.

also many other mass murdering dictators have not been punished, Pinochet, Pol Pot....

you should learnb from history, and move on, you take an eye for an eye, and pretty soon the whole world will be blind.

Answer 6

I don't think there could have been a suitable punishment.
The only thing you can say is that Germany was completely devasted by the war and in some cities it was difficult to find a house that hadn't been bombed into a ruin.
The major Nazi leaders were put on trial at Nuremberg and either killed themselves or were hung. A few escaped justice.
Rudolf Hess spent the rest of his life in prison because he had flown on a secret mission to Britain before the invasion of Russia in 1941 to try to do a peace deal with Nazi sympathisers in Britain and was captured.
The vast number of soldiers responsible for atrocities escaped punishment although many of the concentration camp guards were shot immediately they were captured.
The Russians and the Americans fought over who should have some of the more useful members of the Nazi regime.
The most notorious of these was Wernher von Braun who was in charge of the Nazi's rocket program and was responsible for killing thousands of British and Belgian civilians with his V1 and V2 weapons.
The USA took him to be in charge of their rocket program and he led their space program eventually and lived a very comfortable life in the USA until he died of natural causes.

Answer 7

Germany's leaders, that were captured, were tried and executed, the streets of Germany were not a very good place to be when the Soviets came in. Women caught on the streets were beat and raped until they literally could not stand. Food shortages and unhealthy conditions were the only thing in abundance immediately following the war. What else would YOU recommend? They had NO infrastructure left, were homeless, many had lost loved ones etc., etc.,

Answer 8

What are you talking about? Are you racist? You're blaming Germany as a whole, not the Nazi party. The innocent German civilians were pawns in Hitler's sadistic little game. When the Soviets turned up at their doors, women were beaten, raped, children and men shot dead, and Berlin was ravaged by tanks and grief-stricken soldiers of the Red army. So, yes, you ignorant moron, Germany was punished for a crime done by a madman.

Answer 9

Have the US ever been properly punished for its mass murder during the colonial years?

What kind of question is that?

Of course you can consider than losing half their country, being chased off those lands, having half of what's left under communist rule,not counting the razing of most of their big cities (Dresden, Berlin for example), is not enough and every German of that time should have as well been... what? Shot?

The leaders were condemned to death, the only annoying thing is how many high level underlings managed to escape and hide, usually in southern America.

Answer 10

No because the punishment inflicted in the first world war (treaty of Versailles) caused the second world war.

We clamped down on Germany so hard that Hilter played on this to rebuild his political party/army.

We learnt that the only way to prevent further conflict was to rebuild the economy of the country we destroyed.

Answer 11

The people who carried out the attrocities were defeated in war and many of the leaders were tried and executed. You cannot punish subsequent generations for the sins of their ancestors. How would you like it if someone wanted to punish you for something that was done by some ancient king of England?