Comments by "Regis" (@Timbo5000) on "Himmler's INSANE Reason for Recruiting non-Germans in the Waffen-SS" video.

@mickeymegabyte Actually, Dutch = Deutsch. Deutsch/Dutch is old Germanic for "folk". All Germanic peoples used to refer to themselves as "Dutch" a long time ago. In the Netherlands, we referred to ourselves as Diets or Duits up until the 17th/18th century. In fact, the sentence "of Duits/Dutch blood" is still in our national anthem, though that also refers to how our king at the time came from Germany. The English simply called the Germanic people closest to them, "Dutch", which is 100% correct (and/or we introduced ourselves as "Duyts" during trade relations). After thousands of years of calling ourselves "Diets/Duits" and many older forms of that term, we stopped using it but the English never stopped. Germany didn't stop and named their nation Deutschland. Even though at the time all German-speaking peoples would call themselves "Deutsch". Nowadays the original use of the term "Duits" is largely forgotten and we only call the Germans "Duits".
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You're forgetting that we were all similar Germanic tribes before that, for thousands of years, which also contributes to this sense of a shared identity. Ethnically, we are related to the Germans and are Germanic ourselves. My guess is that this genetic element is the main reason the Nazis were fond of the Netherlands, coupled with some cultural and historic factors that link us as well. Being as obsessed with eugenics as they were, that seems the probable main factor.
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@mickeymegabyte And another detail I forgot is this: technically the term "diets" is still alive. The term for a united Greater Netherlands (Netherlands + Flanders or Belgium + perhaps Luxembourg, the Low Countries united) still is Dietsland. When High and Low German started to part, High German kept using the term Duits/Deutsch but in Low German that slowly evolved into Diets/Dietsch. So the term for the united High German peoples is (Groß) Deutschland and the term for a united Low German people is Dietsland. I looked up the translation for Dietsland and in English it's Dutchland! There were some Dutch Fascists who wanted to establish Dietsland/Dutchland in the 1930's/40's, like Hitler wanted Groß Deutchland. In German it's Dietschland by the way. Man, it'd be confusing to see Dietschland and Deutschland as neighbouring countries. That's worse than Slovakia and Slovenia haha
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@slovene ball Oh lord, even worse
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@neilbuckley1613 Interesting... so the English probably didn't distinguish between Duits/Deutsch and Diets/Dietsch and just call Germanic peoples in general Dutch. Thanks for the info
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The most important lesson from WW2 is that perfectly normal people are capable of doing absolutely terrible things if they just take the wrong ideological turn. They were not crazy, they were no psychopaths, they were not insane. They were intelligent, perfectly normal people who somehow got to the point of believing exterminating entire groups of people would be a reasonable and good thing to do. That's the scary part.
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@brittakriep2938 Yeah that may be the origin of that term indeed. Groot Nederland / Greater Netherlands is also a term I think was only used by fascists trying to unite the Netherlands and Belgium. Groß Deutschland may be the same.
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@herrwagnerianer1739 Thanks for the info, thanks interesting stuff!
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