If your country became a totalitarian dictatorship like Nazi Germany, and you were expected to join its military or paramilitary, would you? And after that regime fell, would you be honest about your involvement with it?
I ask only because of the controversy concerning the German poet Gunther Grass, who recently wrote a poem implying that Israel's possessions of nuclear weapons is a threat to world peace. Responses in the German press (and by others who are criticizing Grass' poem) have often brought up Grass' participation in the Nazi Waffen-SS, when he was 17 years old, and his subsequent years of not mentioning the fact that he was in the SS.
My question to y'all is: would you have done the same, in his position? Or would you have hid, or fled, or done something else to avoid participating in a group that was so tainted by oppressive, genocidal policies? And when the regime fell, would you be honest about whether you did or did not participate?
I ask because, as a human being, I can't blame Grass for serving his country or for saving his own skin by doing what was expected of him. But at the same time, as a Jew, I can't take him or his poetry seriously when he is so tainted by his participation in an organization so obviously dedicated to the destruction of my people.
What say you, reddit?
Note: This thread is not about the content of Grass' poem. It is also not about whether or not [insert democratic Western state here] is already a totalitarian dictatorship, so if anyone says "but I already live in a totalitarian dictatorship: America," they deserve all the downvotes in the world. It's about what you would do in a specific situation.
Posted Apr 6, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC
As long as the uniforms were nice and smart, yes.
I operate under the assumption that all oppressive, totalitarian states have Hugo Boss uniforms.