there are only loosers in wars: those who lose the peace and those who lose even more.
the main problem with wwii concerning both germany and japan was the awesome war crimes conducted in both cases - they may not be as known in the japan case as in the german case but they were gruesome there as well. this is why the relationship between china and japan is pretty chilly for the time being - due to that the japanese prime minister visits funeral places of former officers read war criminals that conducted these in china.
china see this as a strongly offensive act as if the primo honour the war criminals. touchy.
the same will be the case for germany - it is hard to "honour" those who were not nazis fighting "for" germany without sort of accepting the war crimes.
the germans do "honour" their ordinary soldiers/marines/airmen in very discrete ways though and on soley military basis.
one example is the underground memorial in Laboe/Kiel:
http://www.deutscher-marinebund.de/ehrenmal
anyway the films available are important historical documentaries about a time we will have to keep in mind to ensure it will never repeat.
abt 10 years ago swedish TV showed a full nazi propaganda film - very long and detailed. it spanned from nazi art to "ratzen bekämpfung" not sure abt the spelling but they showed how they kept the country clean from rats with the cyclone B gas. the "rats" were the jews and the cyclone b was the "tool" they developed for Auswitch.
spookey stuff - especially when we know the historical facit of implementation of all aspects of that stuff.
Partially sideline but i once - abt 1980 S8ed a sort of cemetary near the border bwteen W and E germany. think drove east over the Lüneburger Heide towards Hannover or so and then suddenly a roadsign caught my interest - not knowing exactly what ot was. it was a cemetary/memorial for: "unknown victims of gestapo". lots of identical crosses in granite.
just a short distance from there was the border - the east german pointed thir machine guns at us from thir camuflaged bunker on the other side and the watchtower in the no mans land in the middle. al on s8.
later i visited the bergen belsen consentration camp near hannover. it is sort of a museum today. now, this was a concentration camp not a extermination camp like auschwitz. anyway, the following months after the british got in there in 1945 9000 people died each month even though they were cared for.
All that strikes you is the total feeling of death, death, death, death, death, - made for nothing else and if some do not get a bad feeling by visiting a place like that - id like to meet him.
it is all covered on s8 of course.
auschwitz is a lot worse of course.
regarding wwi all that participating are soon gone abd the war had a different character so it is a bit different. never the less it is considered the war of all wars and was far worse for the soldiers than wwii with the gas an all that.
all a total waste of course.
the wii genosides makes a dufference.
my twinola DuNots
s8
