You speak as if most Germans alive at the time were directly responsible for the rise of Nazism and Hitler and the Holocaust. In a way, they were. However, given the same set of circumstances, the people of any other country would be liable to do the same. Hitler came to power during the Great Depression, which hit harder in Germany than most countries, because of its already failing economy due to decisions at the Paris Peace Conferences and its loss of WWI. The harshness of this initial punishment for Germany drove people to desperation as they found their money become worthless. What do people do in desperate times? They take desperate measures. Sadly, democracy is hardly suited to the type of desperation the Germans were facing at the time. Hitler, with his charisma and opportunist nature, took advantage of this mass loss of reason, gaining supporters swiftly throughout the early 30s. He used communism as a scapegoat to get him into power with his Enabling Act, and used his own, perverted hatred for Jews as a scapegoat for the problems faced by desperate people in Germany. It is not like these people were any less intelligent than the people of other countries; they were simply desperate.
As for most Germans supposedly being 100% supportive of the Holocaust, it is extremely hard for the average individual to deny a totalitarian party once they have gotten power. For many people, the standard of living vastly improved under Hitler, and because most humans are inevitably self-centred, they were willing to turn a blind eye to Hitler's perversions in exchange for their own family's lives. When two people are in a room and one is to be killed, both instinctually want the other to be killed. Most Germans simply did not want to die and tried to ignore the horrors around them (made easier by Nazi propaganda), even if they themselves were the ones committing them ie. The Night of the Broken Glass. Mob mentality can reduce people to savages, and Hitler was a master manipulator. Children, who made up a sizable portion of Germany's population, were unfairly brainwashed into believing in Nazism; this is not their fault, though they too were killed in the bombing of Dresden. Of course, if there had been a large enough resistance against Hitler, his time and the Holocaust would have been either non-existent or much reduced. However, fear of death convinced people otherwise, and whenever someone tried to act against what they knew was inhumane atrocities, they were put down, convincing other people to become "innocent" bystanders. In the end, as much as people can hate Germans for "their" crimes, they are crimes that are due to human nature and the cruelty of the circumstances around them. To describe the majority of the German population during the Holocaust as evil is similar to describing humanity itself as inherently evil, which you can or don't have to believe.
It really all comes down to whether or not you believe that two wrongs can make a right. Vonnegut never claimed that the fire bombings of Dresden were worse crimes against humanity than those committed during the Holocaust. He simply made a novel based on his own experiences in Dresden; he didn't experience the Holocaust to anywhere near the same extent. He noticed that many people had simply forgotten about this horrifying act due to its being under the Allied umbrella. It is this reason that he put the emphasis on Dresden over the Holocaust, because he felt that he could offer something new as opposed to another lesson on history, in which of course the Holocaust would be much more prominent.
As for his satirical presentation of the Nazis and Germans at large, it is in no way because he treats the subject matter as "light". If you think that, then you read novels and watch movies as a child reads picture books and watches cartoons. At its heart Slaughterhouse-Five is a harsh condemnation of humanity's shortcomings. He presents it as satire to induce a deeper reaction from the reader. He doesn't mock the Holocaust; he mocks humanity at large. The Holocaust was one of the most terrible exploits of humanity, and Vonnegut knows this. None of the murders in WWII are justified, and if you truly believe that the killing of Germans is justified by the much larger amount of people killed during the Holocaust, then you are no better than the roots of Nazi doctrine.
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horrorshowmovie
14 years ago
Vonnegut doesn't try to compare the bombing of Dresden to the Holocaust. He has a passage in the book that compares it to the bombing of Hiroshima. That's the comparison you should come away with.
Billy Pilgrim doesn't really witness much of the Holocaust (I doubt many POWs did). In the book, Vonnegut makes a couple of creepy references. You might think they're "light," but they're just irreverent. He deals with deadly serious issues by laughing at them, because there's no other way to make sense of them.
here are the references:
"The British had no way of knowing it, but the candles and the soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the State."
"As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time. I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time.” This was true. Billy saw the boiled bodies in Dresden. “And I have lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings who were butchered by the brothers and fathers of those schoolgirls who were boiled. Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe!"
Don't confuse irreverence with lightness.
If you think that Vonnegut is trying to endorse one side over another, I really think you came away from the movie with the wrong message.
Finally, never make the fatal mistake of blaming an author for an issue you have with a film he didn't make. If you want to criticize Vonnegut, read his book. For all you know the director changed the story heavily.
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