I’m still working my way through the fantastic WWI history book, The Guns of August.
In Chapter 13, when describing the Germans in Belgium, the author writes about the German First Army executing civilians en masse and burning villages. Their goal was to cow the Belgians into submission through terror.
The author states that in many cemeteries in Belgium there are rows of headstones marked with a name, the date 1914, and the words “shot by the Germans.”
She goes on to write in many of these cemeteries, there is a second even longer row of headstones marked with a name, the date 1944, and the words “shot by the Germans.”
History repeated itself one generation later.
It amazes me that the Belgians, having been the victims of German atrocities in 1914, reacted to the Germans in the 1940s essentially the same way.
I’d think that in America, had we been the victims of invader atrocities, when the invaders returned, the children raised on the stories of what the invaders did last time would proactively massacre every invading soldier that stepped foot over the border.
Tell me that the Germans shot my grandfather in 1914, in 1944 I’m going for a Nazi kill count high score.
If you want to understand Europe today, understand that the the children raised on the stories of German atrocities responded to another German invasion by surrendering even harder and getting massacred in greater numbers.
This is why so many Americans and Europeans never truly, deep down, understandeach other. We are fundamentally different in very significant ways.
I’ve made jokes to the effect that if the Russians invaded any large American city (esp. at rush hour) their tanks would be stalled in traffic for hours. Those tanks in the “bad” parts of town would have their treads removed while the crew was reading a map trying to figure out where the hell they were. By the time the armored column was ready to start moving again, armed civilians including “gang bangers” would have descended on the Russian troops, by the time the National Guard got there, the Russians would be begging to surrender.
“….proactively massacre every invading soldier that stepped for over the border.”
I think it more likely that, based on their established and proven behavior, were we to uncover definitive evidence they were headed our way we’d proactively start hunting them down before they arrived. But that would be individual Americans.
Our government would, of course, create a blue ribbon commission to study the issue a month after they arrived.
That would have been the case in the past. Today? Far from it.
It’s been noted by more than a few historians that the German attitude towards war was that it was to be practiced only by properly authorized and sworn agents of the state. An attitude that shocked even the Russians.
To be fair, the Belgians fought like hell to resist the German invasion in 1940. Go read up on the history of the Belgian Chasseurs Ardennais Regiment who so fiercely defended the K-W line.
The Battle of Belgium lasted eighteen days. The nastiest fighting happening in the Ardennes forest and fought between a unit of only forty infantrymen holding off the combined arms of the Germans; including General Rommel’s famed armored “Ghost Division.” They only surrendered after running out of ammunition… and took out more than a few Germans with bayonets and bare fists before that. Rommel himself called them “not men, but green wolves.”
Rèsiste Et Mords!
The Belgian army, yes. The Belgian civilian resistance was mostly non-violent.
Belgian civilians handed their arms over to the Belgian government to prevent reprisals.
In the US, every redneck with a rifle would don his hunting camo and shoot Germans for sport and patriotism.
That is the difference I am talking about.
Lots of us are different than Europe. BUT many in this country are just like those in the old country. Look how quick people shut down their own business and livelihood just because some asshole in a suit said we need to. To me thats more unbelievable than alot of history. People have been brainwashed to blindly follow what others order them to do. Scary and sad. None of them said hhmm thats not a good idea. It will bankrupt me and put my employees on the street. No, they just meekly do what gubmint says no questions. And Im to believe they wont give up their guns????????? Might as well, they act like they already have.
Very good points. Americans WERE once like that and for good reason: most Americans either were or were descended from Europeans (including those in the Med) who had the guts to resist and go venture forth to leave behind kings and other governments – OR – the descendants of centuries of fighting for their homelands against other AmerInd or Europeans. Whereas those in Europe are the descendants of those who submitted and did not seek freedom. (Those who did NOT escape but stood up to fight for freedom and their families were murdered in one of the dozen or so major and thousand or so minor European wars between 1492 and today – and since they were generally young, they did not reproduce as much. It was the submissive cowards with no sense of their man- (and woman-)hood that lived and populated modern Europe. As immigration became easier – both to the US and across the US to the West, the cowards and suck-ups were allowed to survive and breed, which is why we’ve gone downhill so much in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
Like all generalizations, what you say is partly true.
Then again, some recent immigrants from Europe understand the American culture of individual liberty and the proper tools for it just fine. I’m one of them. Oleg Volk is another.