All German citizens were made to pay reparations after WWII (in the form of physical labor and low food rations). Do you believe this was fair? Why or why not?
I am a big believer in positive reinforcement. I don’t think that punishing people by subjecting them to the same treatment they had forced on others would be helpful. I would have thought that inclusivity training would have been better.
I so agree with you. This was another thing I learned about from this book. I had no idea that German farmers were forced to do physical labor. This shocked. me so much, I had to go online to see if it was true. How could I miss so much history!
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I don’t think so. You could argue that some of what happened could have been prevented, so perhaps as a nation the citizens were responsible. But again drawing a parallel to current events, there are things happening that I vehemently opposed, yet as a citizen I’m powerless to change. And punishment tends to cause resentment, rather than changing the future
The German government was responsible for the atrocities carried out during World War II, not average German citizens. It is true that they did not rise up in protest to prevent the Nazis from carrying out their repugnant agenda, but as Sofie noted, to have done so would have been suicidal. Average German citizens lived in fear for their lives as acts of resistance or rebellion met with swift, often lethal, punishment. To penalize them after the war ended seemed quite wrong to me.