Neither Sweden nor Poland have an unresolved genocidal past that could reemerge into mainstream society. German culture is a particular combination of German Angst, lack of empathy, wish for a strong leader and reluctance to take responsibility for their own actions.
About 20% of the people want to vote for a party that considers remembering and warning about the Holocaust as bad. In Bavaria a guy is now vice president of the stat after gaining even more votes from a scandal, where it was shown that as a teenager he wrote fascist propaganda, suggesting to reopen Ausschwitz and made the Hitler salute and “jokes” about the holocaust at a former concentration camp memorial. The scandal gained him votes instead of losing them.
The individual responsibility of most actors during the Nazi time was swept under the rug. Many high ranking Nazis made a career in Western Germany. There is places named after Hans-Martin Schleyer and he is celebrated as a Martyr fighting against communism. He was a high ranking Nazi who was tasked with “aridifiyng the czech economy” and later become the head lobbyist of the Employer organisation. The interior intelligence and police were founded by Ex-Nazis and the guy who wrote the Nuremburg race laws later became the guy who defined what constitutes Germans and what not, under laws that are still active today. The laws on abortions as well as many rulings on the limits of the right to strike still originate from the Nazi era. Homosexuals, Sinti, Roma, people with disabilities and political groups that were also genocided in the concentration camps are to this day not properly recognized and compensated as victims of the genocide.
For lack of empathy look into the current political cliamte, where politicians gain votes and popularity, by demanding to cut social welfare, by demanding to abolish the constitutional right to human dignity (Art. 1 GG, see Jens Spahn on abolishing basic social welfare) demanding to violate the UN human rights conventions by arbitrarily limiting the right to asylum. In the more day to day you can see it in a lack of speaking up when seeing people being harassed, people generally being more negative. Her is an interview with a neuroscientist who concluded that not showing empathy is becoming presentable (https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/empathie-hass-ist-einfach-salonfaehig-geworden-100.html). German culture generally places high regard to economic success and the society is quite materialistic. This favors sociopathy and psychopathy as positive traits, rather than negative traits.
Finally if you spend some time in Germany and outside of Germany, you will probably find that Germans are generally more scared people, that are quick to project their fear of potential losses into hostility. Germans tend to not accept, when they are not knowledgeable or wrong about a topic and are quick to “klugscheißen” other people. Also if you talk with people who are considered not to be German, you’ll find that even if their great grandparents moved to Germany and they grew up here, and never went anywhere else, they are still considered foreigners. And if you talk with them a bit further, you’ll hear many stories of racism in day to day live. From my “non German” friends everyone experienced violent attacks. One was attacked with a knive. And even a German Saxon friend of mine was attacked in Dresden, because he has dark hair and his skin is a shade to brown for the likings of the “aryans”
Neither Sweden nor Poland have an unresolved genocidal past that could reemerge into mainstream society. German culture is a particular combination of German Angst, lack of empathy, wish for a strong leader and reluctance to take responsibility for their own actions.
Could you elaborate on unresolved past, lack of empathy and the wish for a strong leader? As a german I really wonder on what you base that opinion.
About 20% of the people want to vote for a party that considers remembering and warning about the Holocaust as bad. In Bavaria a guy is now vice president of the stat after gaining even more votes from a scandal, where it was shown that as a teenager he wrote fascist propaganda, suggesting to reopen Ausschwitz and made the Hitler salute and “jokes” about the holocaust at a former concentration camp memorial. The scandal gained him votes instead of losing them.
The individual responsibility of most actors during the Nazi time was swept under the rug. Many high ranking Nazis made a career in Western Germany. There is places named after Hans-Martin Schleyer and he is celebrated as a Martyr fighting against communism. He was a high ranking Nazi who was tasked with “aridifiyng the czech economy” and later become the head lobbyist of the Employer organisation. The interior intelligence and police were founded by Ex-Nazis and the guy who wrote the Nuremburg race laws later became the guy who defined what constitutes Germans and what not, under laws that are still active today. The laws on abortions as well as many rulings on the limits of the right to strike still originate from the Nazi era. Homosexuals, Sinti, Roma, people with disabilities and political groups that were also genocided in the concentration camps are to this day not properly recognized and compensated as victims of the genocide.
For lack of empathy look into the current political cliamte, where politicians gain votes and popularity, by demanding to cut social welfare, by demanding to abolish the constitutional right to human dignity (Art. 1 GG, see Jens Spahn on abolishing basic social welfare) demanding to violate the UN human rights conventions by arbitrarily limiting the right to asylum. In the more day to day you can see it in a lack of speaking up when seeing people being harassed, people generally being more negative. Her is an interview with a neuroscientist who concluded that not showing empathy is becoming presentable (https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/empathie-hass-ist-einfach-salonfaehig-geworden-100.html). German culture generally places high regard to economic success and the society is quite materialistic. This favors sociopathy and psychopathy as positive traits, rather than negative traits.
For whishing a strong leader and abolishing democracy the rates in surveys are steadily increasing. In eastern Germany every third person whiches for a Führer again. https://www.dw.com/de/jeder-dritte-ostdeutsche-wünscht-sich-einen-führer/a-66057204
Finally if you spend some time in Germany and outside of Germany, you will probably find that Germans are generally more scared people, that are quick to project their fear of potential losses into hostility. Germans tend to not accept, when they are not knowledgeable or wrong about a topic and are quick to “klugscheißen” other people. Also if you talk with people who are considered not to be German, you’ll find that even if their great grandparents moved to Germany and they grew up here, and never went anywhere else, they are still considered foreigners. And if you talk with them a bit further, you’ll hear many stories of racism in day to day live. From my “non German” friends everyone experienced violent attacks. One was attacked with a knive. And even a German Saxon friend of mine was attacked in Dresden, because he has dark hair and his skin is a shade to brown for the likings of the “aryans”