perversia

I did want to leave the last entry longer but I've got better things to say at the moment.

Notice the tagline up there? Yep, that's right. My grandma was a Nazi. Well, she was in Germany during the war and chose to join the German equivalent of the navy, the Kriegsmarine. To be honest, that pretty much made her a Nazi. But did she have a lot of choice at the end of the day? She was in Germany during a time where you had one opinion shoved down your throat and to go against it was tantamount to death. Hitler's opinion of women was pretty obvious: do something useful like have lots of Aryan children or something else beneficial to the Fatherland. My grandma decided against being a mother at this point and joined the navy. I don't really know what she did. Her brother was also involved in the military but all I know about that was he was at Dachau at the time of its liberation. Why he was there and in what capacity, I do not know.

So yes, you could say my elderly German relatives were all Nazi's. To be honest, how many people in Germany weren't brainwashed into believing Hitler? He did do an enormous amount of terrible things but many people never saw this and only saw the good that was happening to their country like motorways, research into science, good economy. I know ignorance is no excuse now with the media being so much freer but I don't really think these people did know everything that was going on around them.

But do they talk about it now? Do they go on like they still believe it was all good? No, I have never heard any mention from their mouths that they still believe, or even ever did believe and follow Hitler and the Nazi party. I have a morbid curiosity to know what happened involving my family but I will not start dragging skeletons from cupboards whilst any of my mum's family are still alive. It would be very wrong of me. What I do know is that a simple search of Google does not yield any information on the family name so I am safe in thinking that they were not seriously bad people in what they did.

My grandma ended up marrying an Englishman. I do not know how they met, because, although my grandfather was in the army, he was never in Germany during the war. Unfortunately, they are both dead now and my mother does not know the story either so I will probably find it very hard to trace my German family's history as much as I would like.

So, does this make me a Nazi? Of course not. I will always see both sides of the story. I will always realise that not every single thing that Hitler did was evil and I will always know that people in Germany didn't have a lot of choice. Sure, they could have died for disagreeing but honestly, would you stand up against Bush (or Brown if you're English) if we didn't live in a proper democracy and would die for our views? I will admit that I wouldn't. Yes, in some places, people do sacrifice their lives for letting people know how they really feel but it will always be the minority.

Obviously, this stemmed from the NaNa incident. No, I don't think implied child rape is a good subject matter. I also don't believe in randomly including Nazi symbolism into a set on this site. Annoyingly, the Third Reich had some of the sexiest uniforms seen in the military and take away the symbols that offend people, there should be no problem. Luckily for most people, East German uniforms were almost identical too so I can get away with owning one of those, although I still get the Nazi comments. I've got a morbid collection of stuff to do with Nazi Germany but that does not mean I agree with the beliefs. NaNa, on the other hand...well, if you saw her journals, it was pretty obvious how she felt.