My Reaction On Seeing Slaugterhouse Five - Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) Discussion

[–] bj_arni 17 years ago

Even though the Nazis did many terrible things, that still dosen't excuse the fact that Dresden was filled with mostly innocent people, children and elders.
And the lack of Nazi Soldiers, and the numbers of Allied forces prisoned there make it a good example that of all the terrible things that happened during World War two, not all of them were made by the Nazis.

Of course, the Holocaust is much worse, as well as the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but unfortunatly, Kurt Vonnegut was not an eye-witness of that horror, but of what happened in Dresden, which is why he tells that story and how he lived it.

"I will make my arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh"
www.ibs-entertainment.com

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[–] AlbinoBadBob 17 years ago

The problem with heich1's argument is that it is without merit.Vonnegut based the novel on a particular traumatic incident in his own life.Whatever conclusions He drew from it are his conclusions and He is entitled to them.The Shoah(by the way the single greatest atrocity of the 20th Century,)was an irrelevance,as a GI He would have known very little about it at the time,it wasn't particularly well publicised until such events as Nuremburg after the war.
Since Vonnegut is neither a Nazi apologist nor a Holocaust denier this line of attack seems without substance.By all accounts criticise the novel and film on their artistic merits without tackling them as part of some great anti-semitic/american conspiracy.Further if Vonnegut felt He was treated well by his captors then why not say so.
The poster refers to another Vonnegut novel as supporting evidence.That I believe would be Mother Night,a fact based story about a radio presenter hired by US intelligence to broadcast secret messages to spies in the field in the guise of Nazi propaganda,He was arrested by MOSSAD after the war and put on trial as a Nazi agent,not quite the story the poster outlines.
Its difficult to quantify how many Germans were against Hitler really,those that spoke up were usually killed or tortured and killed or sent to a KZ.....and eventually killed.
The majority of the population of cities such as Dresden at the time of the bombings would have been women,very small children,the very old and the infirm,anyone who could not fight in short.
Countries such as Britain and America did not join the war out of any high minded ideals,nor to put a stop to the persecution they did it out of self interest i.e.they had no choice.Those last points are apropos of nothing as far as the movie goes.
When you've got to shoot,shoot.Don't talk.

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[–] Doctor-T- 17 years ago

First I just want to bring attention (bump) to the most intelligent response to heichl, which interestingly he never responded to even though he seems to be obsessed with repeating his arguments over and over:

"by ryander (Sat Mar 31 2007 17:39:19)

heich1 - we all understand your point with 100% clarity, and it isn't surprising at all that you view Vonnegut's work in such a way - in fact, its your point of view that he's attacking, because its points of view that create conflicts. Its points of view that create conflict, because we make them a part of us, and when we feel that we are being attacked, whether directly or indirectly through sentiments, that we do the most awful things in this world. People will defend their lives, and exact revenge, and defend their ideologies with all the ferocity in the world. Its this reactionary thinking that causes most of the problems in life. But it's inevitable that we fall into this sort of thinking - most of us are stuck in it all the time. If we didn't have it we'd all waste away to nothing - accomplishing nothing, feeling nothing. Its why we have nazis and popes and rapists and prostitutes and lynch mobs and juries. It's all the same stuff - we just create the dividing lines inside our minds to rationalize our own points of view and to keep from going out of our minds like Billy Pilgrim.

Now, if you still don't know what i mean, go and meditate, or smoke some grass, and listen to that Dylan song. With any luck you'll begin to appreciate the world on a whole new level. I hope I could help some."

Thank you Ryander!

to add my own 2 cents, the idea of the book/movie is that we are all passengers on a ride through time, through a series of events. Free will may be an illusion, so while the children of Dresden were certainly innocent, the events of every person's life which they have no control over lead them to make the choices they make, whether to choose to be a nazi or a pacifist, or a manic imdb poster is all determined by the events that led up to those choices. the exact same person who chose to be a nazi in germany 1939, would not make that choice if he was born in america 2007. So in a sense we are all innocent players in a great cosmic tragicomedy (all the world's a stage, etc).

We can try to choose in every case to see things not so black and white. otherwise what happens is: some corporate profiteers corrupt the US government to meddle in mideast affairs, some guys in saudi arabia and afghanistan blame the entire US population for this and blow up he WTC, otherwise intelligent americans get manipulated into an emotional state to support an unjustified badly planned war against a country that had nothing to do with it, the us destruction of iraq causes more muslims to become radicalized against the entire US population even though the majority of us are against the war, etc etc.

as ryander points out what you heichl are trying to do - spread and exaggerate blame whenever possible, making the world B&W good vs evil - is exactly what the nazis did, what george bush and osama bin laden are doing now.

ok that was more like 20 cents, sorry.

*
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[–] heich1 17 years ago

Recently I attended a lecture in our Holocaust Education Week given by Dr. Peter
Breit on the subject of Dresden. He was born there and came to the U.S.A. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hartford, Connecticut.
He said there were 5000 Jews in Dresden before Hitler came to power and only
12 when the Nazis were defeated. He also said Dresden implimented the anti-Jewish methods faster than the other German cities.
He also mentioned the the bombing of Dresden and even the book Slaughterhouse
Five which he critized for exaggeration of the number killed. He said he found the building in Dresden which became the title of the book and movie. I guess the present city of Dresden has made the building a historic site.
He also mentioned in Dresden today in the main museum there is detailed mention
of the bombing but no mention of the former Jewish inhabitants and their culture and buildings or the crimes that were committed to them by the Nazi regime. He called it a type of amnesia by the Dresdeners today.
He also said that Dresden is considered an innocent victim without mentioning
its dark side.
I asked him about the historians who stress the evilness of the bombing and he first mentioned David Irving the revisionist but did admit historians who
who try to be on both sides. I guess that would cover most of you here. He said this is relativism of the Holocaust which he condems.
I think if Dresden today is not willing to admit adequately what they did to the Jews in the past why should I feel anything for what they went through in the bombing.
Why should I smoke grass? It just means I am covering up reality.

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[–] les-cabbages 17 years ago

Forgive me for not reading anything in this thread, but I didn't feel it would be worth the time.

Kurt Vonnegut is showing humanity at its best and worst. This is NOT a political film at all. Politics are irrelevant. I'll spell it out- IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT SIDE YOU'RE ON. It's a film about humanity as a whole. People on both sides are portrayed in both positive and negative ways.

If you intend to post another history lesson, remember- it is totally irrelevant.

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[–] grendel811 17 years ago

I never post on these messageboards, but reading what you wrote made me a bit angry. Just a few points.

1. It doesn't seem like you read the book.
2. Youre comparing what Kurt Vonnegut went through at Dresden to what other people went through at Dresden.
3. This book isn't sympathetic to anyone, it is basically an anti war novel.
4. Most of my family on my father's side was killed in the Holocaust, this book isn't about the Holocaust or the terrible things done to the Jewish people, it is about Kurt Vonneguts experience during the bombing of Dresden.
5.Thank you for the history lesson, and your recaps of other books and lectures you have read or listened to but what does that have to do with this book.
6. Most people didn't know about the death camps.
7. Kurt Vonnegut mentions that he had know idea that the soap and candles they were given were made out of Gypsies and Jewish people.
8. Slaughterhouse Five = War is bad. People die for no good reason. So it goes.

I would suggest reading Slaughterhouse Five before starting a post like this, or at least realize that your challenging something that has no arguement. Kurt Vonnegut felt that what happened in Dresden was terrible, someone else may have felt differently but this is his book, not theirs, not yours, its his. Mostly, you need to get over yourself.

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

Since I originally posted this I have read the book.
Of course what Vonnegut went through hell but he is implying it was not worth it. You seem to imply all war is bad even that against the Nazis. Would you mind
if they are still around doing their evil deeds. What Vonnegut did is relativize the Holocaust with the bombing of Germany (especially of Dresden), i.e. that both were equally bad. What the Jews do to deserve their fate? The Germans mostly actively or passively supported the Nazis. Anyhow when Dresden was bombed Jews were still killed in the Holocaust and London was hit by V1's and V2's. If it is true that members of your family were killed by the Nazis would you be so sympathetic to those that that killed and the nation they ruled. Remember the Nazis if they had a a chance would have killed you also.
You and others also imply that Vonnegut is beyond critizism because of his fame and writing skills. Well if some people have critized Shakespeare for the
Merchant of Venice definately Vonnegut can also be critized.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

In his book Vonnegut clearly says the Dresden bombings are bad as is also implied by the movie. He also states he was encouraged to write Slaughterhouse Five not only by his own experiences but that a book was written by a historian called David Irving(who is now completely discredited) on the bombing of Dresden and the Vietnam war(which was a war of a different purpose and much
less popular).
If you have cancer and have to go through a very disagreeable treatment to get rid of it do you blame the doctors for diagnosing it and making you go through the aggravation and treatment? Maybe but that would not be rational. This is equivalent to what Vonnegut is saying about war.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

That is where I disagree with him. I do blame the Nazis and the large majority
of the German people who supported them for World War II and not the allies. And
if the German people suffered some of the consequences of it so be it.
What is it with the people in this group? They think Vonnegut is a secular
prophet who cannot be questioned just in the same way a religious person would
not question God or any of the things they believe he did. My alleged lack of understanding that you say I have is what a religious person would say if I questioned anything about their religion.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] mrseek 17 years ago

Life unworthy of life, he would say.

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[–] Leo_debtfromabove 17 years ago

Does no one else find it slightly comical that he persues this arguement for ten pages and then doesn't reply to that?
Placing a lesser value on people's lives... Hmm... sounds remarkably like a certain Führer...

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

This argument has been going on for more than a year with me not able to persuade anyone. Suppose the person nearest and dearest to you has been kidnapped and the kidnapper threatens to kill them. Then the police shoot and kill the kidnapper. Would the kidnapper's life have a lesser value than the person he kidnapped? Suppose also the police kill the kidnapper's five year old
child in addition. Would you still be relieved that the person you are closest
to life has been saved and not be angry at the police for killing a five year old child? Be honest. I think I may have made this argument before.
Comparing me to the Fuhrer is insulting. He murdered a large number of innocent
people because their race, people who were no threat to him.

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[–] Leo_debtfromabove 17 years ago

I simply found it odd that you chose to end the debate on a response that suggested so much about the nature of your argument. It gave the impression that you had no answer for it. As for the Fuhrer crack it was intended to point out the hypocracy in the fact that you clearly don't like the man or his ideals, yet you can place a lesser value on German civilians life to the point that it's excusable to kill over 40,000 of them. That is essentially saying it's okay to "[murder] a large number of innocent
people because their race, people who were no threat to [them]." You cannot kill someone simply because they had the misfortune of being born in Germany before the war.
And before you pull the "german citizens were facilitating hitler through inaction" card, not every German agreed with the Nazi party and to air concerns about the ethics of ethnic cleansing would have meant the death penalty.

If you want to continue the debate then okay.
I would place the kidnapper's life as equal as anyone else's. I believe that all loss of human life is something to be avoided. If my nearest and dearest survived, yet the kidnapper was shot, even without the five year old child in the mix, I would feel deep remorse. The point of Vonnegut's novel was not to free the germans of all blame, but to state the futility of war and the senselessness of such mass killings. In the analagy Vonnegut would be stating that the Kidnapper shouldn't have gotten into a situation where he had to have been shot down as it's a senseless loss of life.
And that is why Slaughterhouse 5 is considered one of the greatest anti-war books. It is about the absurdity of war in the first place, and if for any reason you felt that Vonnegut was trying to free the German's from blame, then you're seeing his attempt to show that there are normal people on both sides, andnot everyone is wholeheartedly commited to all out war.
Sgt. Campbell is at the other end of the spectrum, showing the there are right wing pro-Nazi, anti-communist nuts in America too (His character is a little more complex than that, but that's one of the purposes he served).

Furthermore the analagy is flawed in that the police would not have planned to have shot the child. Dresden was a planned murder, not an accident in trying to take down Hitler.
Dresden was an atrocity, as was the Holocaust and the entire mess that was World War II and there was no justification for any of them.

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[–] Bill_Hicks_Ghost 16 years ago

Most of Hitlers very worst crimes came after the war started, under the conditions of war governments tend to be a lot more authoritarian and ruthless "for the greater good" - "The ends justify the means" type of mentality sets in, there's no evidence the holocaust and other nazi atrocities would have happened without the war.

Britain made some huge blunders which would ultimately lead to ww2, here is a couple of them-

1.
Hitler came to power railing against the treaty of Versailles, which was imposed on Germany by Britain, the US and France after ww1, the treaty unnecessarily humiliated Germany and stripped it totally bare of it's former land and regional powers, Hitler wouldn't have come to power if the treaty hadn't been so harsh, it was under those conditions he was able to get a foothold in politics, he held speeches simply titled "The treaty of Versailles", this is how he rallied people to his cause.

2.
Britain gave a war guarantee to Poland, Poland was a place where Britain had no national interest, and this was a war guarantee Britain knew it could not possibly honer until the US came into the war, so in retrospect it was a disastrous decision. Hitler never wanted war with Britain, in fact he admired the British empire, he even wrote how much he admired it, and even IF it was true that Germany wanted to invade Britain, how exactly were they going to do this ? Germany didn't have a proper navy to speak of, you can't invade and occupy Britain without a navy, it's impossible .

The holocaust was by no mean inevitable, and in fact without the war it wouldn't have happened at all, the war was ultimately caused because Britain stupidly gave a war guarantee to poland, no war guarantee no war, no war no holocaust, that decision to honer the disastrous guarantee would cost hundreds of thousands of British troops and millions of lives, the stalinazation of half of europe (including Poland, who we supposedly went to war for), the end of the British empire, the holocaust and many other disastrous events, Communism claimed more lives than nazism ever did, yet we cosied up to the Russians during the war.

so was it worth it ? i don't think it was, Hitlers natural enemies were to the east, not the west.

WW2 was a massive suicide pact imo, nobody really "won", it was just a bloody battle to see who could last longest, it was a bit like watching two huge seals fighting to the death on a beach, they just clobber each other until there covered in blood and by the end one limps away and claims victory, but at what cost ? the seal that "won" is damaged beyond repair and will never be the same again .

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[–] heich1 16 years ago

I agree with 1. As far as 2. goes there is no reason the holocaust would not have happened if Britain did not enter the war in 1939. After all Hitler wanted
war and definately would not have stopped at Poland. He would have continued farther east and attacked the U.S.S.R.
Hitler said in Sept. 1939 that the Jews caused the war and would not have survived it because of this. He would have behaved the same way to the Jews in the territories he occupied, whether Great Britain entered the war or not.
Also 3,000,000 Polish gentiles alone were killed ny the Nazis. I doubt Poland
under communism had as many killed. Your arguments are similar to the America First group before the U.S.A. entered the war.

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[–] blondekitty1703 17 years ago

You went to see a movie and expected science fiction and sex, and instead got a whole lot more. Vonnegut was using his own experiences in war to write fiction. The movie was based on his book. Either way, the situation you saw was fiction.

Unless you sat down with Vonnegut and talked with him about his feelings on the Dresden bombings, don't assume you know what he was doing by writing a book. Have your own opinion, but don't tell us that we're wrong and that only you are right.

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[–] gondolkozo 17 years ago

Haha, yeah, I get your point, a few Jews for a hundrend-thousand.

Go cry more.

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[–] mmcashan-1 17 years ago

Vonnegut may be of German descent, but he is an American writer, and that's what I think Slaughterhouse Five is: an American anti-war story. I don't think Dresden is supposed to be set up in opposition to the Holocaust. I think the point is that ANY bombing is despicable and ti has consequences that we cannot even imagine. Vonnegut may very well have chosen to write about Treblinka or Chełmno, but I think he wanted to focus on the horrors that his OWN people were perpetrating. War is awful on both sides, and I don't think Slaughterhouse 5 is about choosing which side is "right" or "better," but about examining the profound affects of war, specifically bombings and air raids that kill civilians.

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[–] gilmour-scott 17 years ago

Categorising one person over another is the fly in your ointment. Vonnegut promotes distinction of the individual and attempts to show that humans are capable of atrocious things, regardless of the perceived self of the individual because of his affiliation. It is apalling to think it possible that a murder is made better or worse because of race. Political ideologies change, some are forced change or engineered. We will look back in 50 years at the middle east situation and realise we have made mistakes too.

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

I never said that the German Jews were a seperate race from the gentiles. It was the Nazis who thought so. All I did say that I was pleased some of the same group(not race) as I am suvived.
While different races are different groups this does not mean the reverse. The members of the Democratic and Republican parties are different groups but definately not races.
Also being influenced by a bad polical ideology may increase the likelyhood
being a murderer or leting other people to be tolerent of murderers which is what happened to the german people.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Leo_debtfromabove 17 years ago

This is all well and good, heich1, but this is a tangent from your original point that Vonnegut was trying to free the Germans from blame through showing Dresden.
At numerous points in this thread people have explained that the aim of showing the Dresden bombings was not to free the Germans from guilt, but illustrate the brutality of war.

If you were to ask any respectable literary/film critic about it, they would tell you as such. You seem to have completely missed the point and to me it looks like you are imposing the resentment you have towards the Germans on to this film. Yes, this book/film may not be entirely historically accurate, but Vonnegut (or any writer) could make a similar point through a completely fictional universe, it just so happens that he was there, at Dresden so it was appropriate for him to use it as the event to make his point.

Seriously, this is getting rediculous.

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[–] juniormike 17 years ago

It is always good when films provoke discussions like this. Makes people think. Quite an achievement for a 36 year old film (or a 39 year old book).

I saw the film again yesterday night, 'superb quality that DVD! (German issue).
I liked it 20 years ago, now I love the film. Some things get better over the years - a rare family, of which that film is a member. Which such an ambitious project, it is so easy the fall flat on the ground. HILL & his team made an extraordinary piece of film art, like CATCH 22 a film directors love. I love BUTCH CASSIDY and its success is a natural thing since the majority of filmgoers need stars and great glossy productions, but SLAUGHTERHOUSE is a much more important picture: not many films like this one exist and won't be produced. It came out of that golden decade of New Hollywood when it was possible to produce something worthwhile in Hollywood without being a independent arthouse filmmaker.

As for the Germans in WWII and so on: that would always be a pointless discussion. First, there are ALWAYS two sides. My girlfriend just made her diploma in Pforzheim, a city that is not much liked these days, because it is rather ugly. The reason for that is that 90% of its city were destroyed in one night in February '45, 17,000 died in less than one hour. When they rebuilt the city in the 50's they decided not to restore the (awesome) ancient city but to forget the past (like a bad Karma) and build a 'new' (ugly) city. So once you start digging in the past it becomes incredible emotional and fascinating. There a places (not only the cemetery with its 10,000+ graves of that nights victims, where you still feel the horror and the sadness of it all. But there is no one to blame! It's just more than one can bare: by early '45 the war was over (but not over yet). Yet all these civilians and those BEAUTIFUL old cities became victims at such a late date in the war. In the last weeks more soldiers died than in the years before. THere is no way to discuss matters like this (and came to a conclusion). The allies wanted to end the war and the loss of lives on their side. The Germans had been trained to face defeat as the end of Germany (Sovjiet invasion) and those who new better didn't succed to get rid of Hitler.

I think the film portrayed it very well. That fact of 'being there'. Those two sides.
And when I think of those dead women and children, hundred thousands that died that February I also think of Yossarian who is supposed to fly over enemy ground and gets shot at.
There are always two sides.

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[–] farzhan 17 years ago

I saw it last night and thought it was pretty bad with the exception of the woman driving her cadillac dying of carbon monoxide poisoning and some of the wwII stuff, and of course the tits. I can't remember a more uninteresting lead character.

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[–] Serris 17 years ago

This moron is the only person on the damn planet who thinks that Vonnegut was in any way pro-Nazi or tried to minimalize the Holocaust. There isn't any point in trying to change heich1's idiocy, in the same way that you can't teach a dog calculus. Let it go, let him buzz off to wherever he goes.

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

No that is not what I said. I said that Vonnegut was a German Nationalist(i.e.
because of his German descent) he equates the actions of the allies to that of the Germans during World War II. He equates the bombing of Dresden to the Holocaust.
I am also not alone in my opinions, although in this group it appears so. In my post of Nov. 10 I refer to a talk by Dr. Peter Breit. In the end of his talk he said there are those who stress the bombing of Dresden and minimize the Holocaust like David Irving and also people who try to have it both ways. In this last group I would put Vonnegut and most of you. Also see the posts under "Jewish Attitudes to Dresden Bombing" in the group soc.culture.jewish.moderated which I initiated
and most but not all agreed with me. There were over 1300 posts, some not relevant to the topic, so if you want to look at them look at the earlier posts.

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[–] kdk7 17 years ago

you are wrong. he does not equate the bombing of dresden with the holocaust. his book is, among many other things, about the futility of war, about fighting violence with violence, about the cost of war, both human and material, and about man's accomplishment and destructiveness.

he was not a german nationalist, he was a humanist.

you're being very black and white, while kurt vonnegut is all shades of gray.

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

Well the war he illustrates was World War II and it did eliminate the Nazis from power with their evil deads until the present, so it was not futile. There
was no other way. Would you prefer being put in jail for what you have just written by the local Nazis ruling the U.S.A. That is what would happened if everybody thought like this.
Vonnegut in his book calls himself a German American.

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[–] Leo_debtfromabove 17 years ago

Look, did I not already explain this? In my earlier reply I referred to war as senseless brutality. I did not say that if a war was started, the you should stand there defenceless. I (and Vonnegut) assert that war is futile. It should not happen. Wars are started due to man's greed and possessiveness.

If everyone had this opinion, wars would not need to be fought, nor would be. It is because of megalomaniacs and sociopaths such as Hitler that war happens in the first place. You may argue that WWII was inevidable considering the state of Germany's economy and the diussillusionment of the people, but that state was caused by the loss of WWI, an essentially unessential war.

WWII was not neccessary and the Holocaust most certainly wasn't.
And yes, neither was the bombing of Dresden, and although I don't equate that loss of life with the Holocaust (and neither does Vonnegut, from the best of my understanding), but was in his book to illustrate that war crimes were committed on both sides.

You really seem to be ignoring what I said earlier, if not please keep it in mind, and if you disagree please explain what you don't think makes sense.

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

You are contradicting by saying youself, on the one hand you are saying that war is senseless and brutal on the other hand you are saying that if a war has been started one should not stand there defenceless. I would agree that WWII was brutal but not senseless. How could it be senseless if the allies were defending themselves from attack. After all it started when Hitler attacked Poland. They already let get away with Austria and the Sudentland.
I agree if everyone had the opinion of Vonnegut, wars would not need to be fought but you know that is not true.
Your argument about WWI is the same as lung cancer. It probably would occur less if no one smoked and the treatment is disagreeable but this is no argument
for not giving the treatment.

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[–] Leo_debtfromabove 17 years ago

Again, you seem to be missing my point.
Are you somehow implying that what Germany taking Austria and Sudentland was a sensible thing to do? It's not like it was a inevidble thing to have happened. It was a move made due to the results of war, a war that was borne out of greed.
WWI was not nesseccary, and hence neither was WWII.

I don't think I'm being contradictory at all. My point is thus;
People should never need to resort to violence. The sad fact is that people do. And self defence, (I feel) is the only situation in which using violence is permissable. If the Nazis did prevail, who knows what sort of state the world would be, certainly one for the worse.

And yes, I feel that if everyone did have the opinion of Vonnegut (in relation to war, anyway. I do disagree with his stance on scientific progression) then the world would certainly be a less violent place.
And again, yes, I do know that that isn't the way the world works and so did Vonnegut when he wrote Slaughterhouse 5, which is why it's regarded as such a pessimistic and bleak book, even as a critique of human nature.

I also find your idea that the bombing of Dresden was a "Treatment" callous in the extreme.

But this is a digression.
The point of the matter is, that Vonnegut was not trying to free the Germans from blame, despite his heritage (a fourth-generation German-American, and of Jewish descent. I suppose he's obviously biased towards the Nazi's). You seem to have accepted that his stance was that wars are pointless ("I agree if everyone had the opinion of Vonnegut, wars would not need to be fought but you know that is not true"), not that the Germans were without blame.

If you look up any respectable literary review of this book I think you'll find deeper meanings to many of the things you shrug off as him trying to free the Germans of all blame.

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[–] heich1 17 years ago

How far are you going back to find the cause of WWII? When tribes of cavemen
first fought.
Where do you get the information that Vonnegut is of Jewish descent? I never
said he tried to free the Germans of all blame, rather that mankind was to blame, i.e. the allies and Germans equally.

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[–] kdk7 17 years ago

dude, i call myself a german-american (50% german, 25% romanian, 25% scottish), and i would not put someone in jail for having written what i wrote.

i can't figure out if you're just so fixated on an idea that you simply cannot let go, or if you're the worst kind of troll-- a troll with infinite patience and resilience. either way, this "discussion" has gone on way too long.

later.

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[–] incrediblellama 16 years ago

Tough it is irrefutable that one can't defend the Nazis for their role in the war, I don't think it's fair to blame Vonnegut for showing them in a human light, as after all, they were human, and not just the taboo topic that they've become. In describing the bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut in no way lays the blame on the US nor does he defend the Nazis; simply, he shows the horrors of war in a realistic light.

We can always watch the classic Hollywood war film with the good guys and the bad guys: the good guys have no faults, an unyielding supply of courage, and are noble in every light, while the bad guys are blood-thirsty monsters. That way we could embrace our perfect homeland. It would also be easy to forget the drop of the atom bomb on Hiroshima by the US, as well as the Tokyo fire bombings, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their lives. The US did these things at a time of war, to win that war, yet that doesn't simply allow us to forget they ever happened.

As far as Vonnegut's depiction of German soldiers, I believe it was the SS, not the Wermacht combat troops, which carried out most of the atrocities, making the Germans troops, drafted troops, much like the GIs, as they may not have even known the mass murders being committed by the country they fought for. As a man I once knew said: "people are a combination of good and bad: some may be 90% good and 10% bad, others the opposite." It is interesting to note that Hitler refused to bomb civilian targets at the outbreak of the war. It was not until the Allies had bombed civilian targets in Germany that he ordered bombings of cities in Britain. Not in any way a defense, but a fact nonetheless, and though Hitler was perhaps 99.99% bad, and though the US was the victor, it still doesn't give us the right to forget Hitler's .01% along with whatever 'bad' the allies inflicted on German and Japanese civilians.

On a side note, there exists a German made film titled "Das Boot." It depecits German soldiers on a u-boat during the very same war. Are we to hate and vilify the captain and crew of the ship simply because they fights for Nazi Germany?

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