Imagining a Better Future by Re-imagining the Past

Saturday, December 29, 2012

German Soldiers in WWII

Recently, on the forum Dieselpunks.Org someone posted that she had a “Nazi Fetish” and wanted to start a page dedicated to her interests while attaching the name to our genre. The purpose of this post isn’t about that controversy but concerning a mature look at the reality of the average German solider during World War II. 

(Note: those that followed the discussion on Dieselpunks.org might find this post surprising considering the comments that I made however, they shouldn’t. I’ve said all along that dieselpunk doesn’t shy away from the dark side of the source material. However, neither should it glorify it. There’s a difference between acknowledging it and glorifying it.)

 The October 12, 2012 episode of the radio program “The Leonard Lopate Show”, Sönke Neitzel, Professor of International History at London School of Economics who co-wrote with social psychologist Harald Welzer, “Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying” was interviewed about his investigations into the mind-set of the German fighting man during World War II. The source of the material for the book was based on declassified transcripts of covert recordings taken within the confines of the holding cells of German POWs.
This episode of the “The Leonard Lopate Show” is a short but fascinating program with information that might surprise many listeners about a rarely discussed aspect of World War II.

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