Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Feli from Germany" channel.

  1. ​ @danliddiard This is happening everywhere and not just in Europe, although it is happening there first. Demographers have noticed the negative birth rate in Asia and increasingly in North and South America too. It's called informed choice and access to contraceptives. Unlike my grandparents generation, people have small families for economic reasons and women can now control their birth rate unless religion or cultism interferes with it. I don't subscibe to traditionalism, the past life historically on average was rather nasty, brutish and short. World War 2 was a shit show; i can't believe my grandparents put up with it. As for economics, it's tough but adapt. If houses are too expensive build more to bring down the price. Having a roof over your head seems a basic right.
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  2. The interpretation of "Schnitzels with noodles" is humour, not to be taken literally. No sane person combines these things. It's a play on children's word games, when Maria plays and sings with rhe Captain's children in the movie scene. Julie Andrew's character Maria (an Austrian novice nun) was very Mary Poppins like (an English fictional nanny), come to think of it. I've seen both movies when I was young. It's a musical film for young people (like Mary Poppins). Even the Nazis in Sound of Music weren't all that scary.
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  3. Note, hate speech is not free speech. Hate speech uses themes of racism, sexism, discrimination of physical appearance of a person, gender choice and religious discrimination. Using these themes is hate speech. Political debates are not violations of free speech and an discussion of history where hate speech and capital punishment applied in that era is not hate speech either. Particularly if this is used for historical education. That is my interpretation anyway. Free speech is not completely free speech because of these ressonsble restrictions. Sueing for libel is different to hate speech although hate speech may incorporate it. This is deformation justice. Calling someone an idiot is a mild insult. This does not necessary involve hate speech. Cartoons etc, if not hate speech thematic, is political satire and should not be banned. Hate speech, as well as hate images and writing, is still hate speech. Political symbols of a totalitarian organisation, party or religion, is hate speech. Not just the Nazi party. Communist hammer and sickle (Communism is a totalitarian movement) is not explicit hate speech, but is in a grey area, whereas displaying a Nazi swastika is hate speech. Making these Communist symbols too prominent may infringe free speech.
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  4. After the Cold War, Germany mqy have used the American military bases presence to underfund it's own military forces. About 2% of GDP is fair and does not affect normal civilian economic acitivity. Germany is not an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean (like New Zealand). Germany has historically been and still is in a contested space in central Europe. For example, France has 6 bordering countries with a subtaintial sea border, Germany has 9 bordering countries, and in the near past it was bordering Russia. You know, our old friend Russia that Germany was often at war with since the 18th century (France too, but there is a political accord now with it)? The American nukes should be removed. Germany can declare itself a nuclear weapons free state without affecting it's geopolitical position. There is little advange of holding nukes because of the nihilistic options makes using them too high a cost.
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  5. Actually I'm a bit of a Germanophile in that I quite like German culture, art, philosophy and so on. I can see past the short Nazi Dark Age. As a non-German, that understands some German but not fluently, I am not going to criticize the language either whether you might think it sounds harsh or not (actually other than the masculine/feminine/neutral pronouns that always puzzle a native English speaker in learning other languages, this syntax has been only thrown out in modern English, just read Shakespere). I like the way that the Germans run their nouns and verbs together. I'll never forget the lengthy German word, "Straßenbahnhaltestelle", which is tram stop or station but in German literally reads, "street rail car stop place". I love the logic of this; What if the tram stop was not in a street? Whereas the short word "Zug" means railway train (also meaning; pull), since in English the train can be a train as in a bridal dress or past or future tense verb teaching a person, athlete, child or a dog (training) as well as the rail locomotive plus carriages.
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  6. It's good that the education about World War 2 in Germany is about concentration camps and the political effects of the Nazis, and less about battles and the arms technology race between Nazi Germany and their enemies, which is interesting but not very instructive of the political side in which wartime scientist or engineer did what, or how good tanks and planes were etc. This topic diverts from the political effect if the Nazis, and the biographies of the main henchmen in the Nazi government, as well as Hitler. The brutal and primeval ideology of Nazism is uncovered aa well as it should be, and this only reflects credit in young Germans in daring to analyse their dark past, as well as the good side of German culture under men like Beethoven, Bach and Kant (i'm sure we can uncover German women participating in the German Enlightenment as well). Studying the Nazis also leads to other totaitarian powers and how awful and brutal they were too; like Stalin in the Soviet Union and his predessesors, Trotsky and Lenin. Also war is never simplistically about the "good guys" and the "bad guys". The Anglo-Americans were not good guys, but initially beseiged governments who wished to survive the onslaught and later to win. To do this they were prepared to kill about 600,000 German civilians by mass bombing so as to weaken Nazi Germany's war effort. This is not a moral act (no wars really were and are). The fire bombing of Dresden probably was a war crime on a city that was not a primary military and economic target (it did not have the factories and docks that Hamburg had as an example). So countries that waged war against the Nazis (and also the home islands of Japan) also bear some guilt and responsibilites for their actions as well (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
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  7. Tax religion, especially if it owns substantial properties and wealth assets! This is a secular idea,because I'm a secular person. Nazism was a totalitarian government and a state religion! Yes, you heard me right, Hitler was heading a cult and a government in which race guilt was a main component of it (hence turning Jews and other minorities into scapegoats and victims). Nazism had self-consciously some ideas of the Old Testament in it. Of course the Nazis supressed the good aspects of Christianity and imprisoned, tortured and murdered pastors and priests. Myth no. 1. Reparations from the Treaty of Versailles First War War caused Germany to be plunged (repeatedly) into economic crises of 1919 through to the mid-1930s, reponsible for the coming to power of the Nazis. Many of these problems, such as stagflation and currency devaluation were caused by socialist policies of successive and unstable Weimar Republic governments. Reparations had an immediate impact in1919 then the Americans and British softened it by early 1920s by extending the payment periods and reducing amounts so it didn't become onerous. Myth no. 2. Stab in the back theory by Jews and Communists. This myth was amplified by the Nazis, but by the devious and authoritarian Field Marshall, Erich Von Ludendorff, who was mainly responsible for Germany's defeat in 1918, originated it.
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  8. I correct more often than a German, sorry Feli. Grain sugar is maltose which the yeast converts to alcohol in all grain based fermented beverages. Not glucose, specifically. You see, chemistry is fun 😂
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  9. Small painted image of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart seen in the gifts. Salzburg to me is the birthplace of Mizart. As music goes, more attractive and diverse than Sound of Music, which is a bit lachrymose and kitsch. My opinions. Sound of Music, very popular in Australia (not Austria). Yodelling had a thing in Australia in country music in the twentieth century.
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  10. German national politics hasn't been this unstable for ummm.. decades. Not as volatile as France and the UK. Now it is
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  11. Peppermint Patty ;-)
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  12. It's good that young Germans are acknowledging their past (first half) twentieth century history, pretty well warts and all. Valid though the criticisms are that not enough was examined where Germany was not engaged in World War 2, such as in Eastern Asia and the Pacific, where the Showa Japanese German allies were doing some pretty terrible atrocities as well (against Asian people, mainly Chinese and against Western allies POWs in defiance of the Geneva Convention). No one particularly likes to read about atrocities of the past, even if their nation were not directly engaged in it, but we should be informed truthfully about it. I have to add an Anglo-American revision of the war that the bombing of Dresden was military unnecessary (it didn't have much industry) and was possibly a war crime (although this is my opinion as a non-German amateur historian), as possibly also was the fire bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 (although Tokyo had plenty of industry and was more of a legitimate target). In some defence of the Allies, the Gauleiter of Dresden was a corrupt official and failed to install even basic anti-aircraft defence, such as sufficient barrage balloons, spotlights and flak guns, leaving the city defenceless. The Western Allies were not "good guys" either during WW2, but initially beleaguered and desperate governments that took drastic measures to win the war. The lesson to take home here is the terrible and deadly effect of totalitarian governments, wherever they are and whatever their political creed (for example, the Soviet Union under Stalin).
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  13. Two of these cases are probably individual radicalization from different sources for different motives. It is not a political conspiracy, except if extremist politics, politicians and parties run with it. Elon Musk is a Fascist. He amplifies extremisim, not examines and disassembles it. Adolf Hitler flirted with Communism, before he joined the Nazi Party, but did not become a member so true that he was not Communist. I don’t subscibe to the view that the Nazis or Communists were opposites, but their totalitarian means of governance were actually fairly similar and equally totalitarian; supression of free speech, constitutional overthrow, end of rule of law or voting, ideological constraints to justify power, end of habeas corpus, end of public debate and parliament, propaganda deployment and so on. The ideology of the Nazis and Communists were different (race guilt versus class guilt ideology), but the state control apparatus was fairly similar; concentration camps and gulags.
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