Indeed. Which of course touches on a pet peeve of mine: has history too much overlooked the agitation within the Weimar Republic? In this case, it were not the Nazis, it was democratic Weimar which incarcerated this man, the (national-conservative) politicians and judges and military who closely co-operated in censoring the whistleblower.
Germany's legal system acknowledges Weimar as democratic, and will uphold its legal decisions. Unlike Germany's two dictatorial regimes, of which especially the legality of the legal order of the Nazi period is mostly unrecognised.
Ah well, add in an autocratic Kaiser and not much democratic history remains. A country can not undo all of its history.
Excellent.
An overwhelming amount of later Germans would wish their history had listened to Ossietzky, instead of to the national-conservatives. Who is the traitor of Germany? The man who warns for the coming catastrophe, the whistleblower, or the people striving towards the catastrophe?
Who is a traitor to the Chinese people? Who is the traitor to our societies?
Quod non. Weimar Germany was a member of the League of nations. Enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in Europe. Received massive foreign loans. Was fully embedded in the western legal, economic, scientific and cultural order.Originally Posted by PJ
The Soviet Union was none of that. Its only friends were foreign communists, and German nationalists. Germany has always been the patron saint of the Soviet Union, from installing it, to allying with it in the 1920s, to overrunning Eastern Europe together with it in 1939. Only Hitler was a brief interlude, his virulent anti-communism nearly undid all the hard work of German diplomacy of the fifteen years before. Silly man, even after he had renewed the alliance with the Soviet Union, he couldn't resist the temptation to challenge Stalin, his superior by far.
Why were German nationalists and the Soviet Union such good friends? Because only together could they ever hope to stand a whiff of a chance against the rock-solid alliance of the three western powers, who would of course never be so stupid as to undo their succesful alliance and let themselves be picked off one by one..
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