french vs german popularity

[Kurgan]

There seems to be some difference of opinion, but I thought it was generally accepted that Hitler DID in fact hide the holocaust from the general public (they might have been able to guess though), but of course he didn't hide his hatred of the Jews and other "inferiors."

His various considered plans for the Jews included sterilization and shipping them off to Madagascar as well, not just extermination.

[Cpt_Frank]

There seems to be some difference of opinion, but I thought it was generally accepted that Hitler DID in fact hide the holocaust from the general public (they might have been able to guess though), but of course he didn't hide his hatred of the Jews and other "inferiors."

Oh come on there was no attempt at hiding the holocaust.
They didn't exactly write into the newspapers 'today we gassed another thousand jews' or something, but it was most obvious what was going on, people voluntarily chose to ignore it, hell even my grandparents admit that!

[Kurgan]

Your grandparents ignored the holocaust?

[Cpt_Frank]

Your grandparents ignored the holocaust?

My grandparents told me that they, like almost all other germans at that time, knew that something like that was going on, and they did nothing about it.

EDIT:
of course, at that time, there wasn't much an individual could do about it anyway. People simply shouldn't have voted for Hitler.

[Kurgan]

Interesting. Where were they living at the time?

[Cpt_Frank]

Interesting. Where were they living at the time?

Germany. I'm German you know.
I don't know if one of my grandparents actually elected Hitler, but regardless of that when you look at the facts, you can't help but blame that generation for all the shit that came from Hitler being made chancellor. People should never, ever forget that, and they shouldn't also think that Hitler came to power with some kind of fancy trick, because that's simply not the (sad) truth.

[CJvR]

There seems to be some difference of opinion, but I thought it was generally accepted that Hitler DID in fact hide the holocaust from the general public (they might have been able to guess though), but of course he didn't hide his hatred of the Jews and other "inferiors."

I think one could say the Hitler and the Nazis never made the holocaust so obvious that you couldn't ignore it if you really wanted to. There were efforts in place to conceal the facts but the operation was simply to big to be kept a secret.

[Posbi]

And he got 33.7 percent of the votes. Many Germans wanted him and his perverted ideologies.

So? The KPD got 22+% of the votes in that election, yet that doesn't mean they wanted a quasi-stalinist fiasco-state. After twenty governments had failed and had been effectivly taken over by Hindenburg who very much reigned using Chancellor figureheads and the State-of-Emergency Paragraphs as a kind of replacement-Kaiser, after the absolute failure of the democratic parlamentary system, is is so strange that the people elected a self-proclaimed "tough guy", a "law & order" politician?

And even though, your logic is flawed. At this election, the NSDAP had already passed it's peak of public popularity, losing a good 12 percent of the votes in comparison to the former election triumph (they had 45.9% IIRC), because Brüning's reform measures were slowly but steadily beginning to work, getting the economy back on track.
This - the stabilizing economy as well as the dropping popular support for the Nazis - was most likely what trapped von Papenberg and his cronies into thinking that they could control and manipulate Hitler and his men; and as such they didn't realize that the mustached Austrian was far better in intriguing than they had ever been.

And the majority of the Germans didn't know of the holocaust itself, of the planned elemination of the European jews. The Death Camps were in the occupied Polish regions, and as such automatically out of the knowledge of the normal Germans of the time. The best they knew of -those who knew of anything at all- were the "working camps" that could be found in Germany itself. And as they were largely under the control of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and as such not exactly the spots people liked to think about, even the conditions there remained rather vague knowledge at best.
The only undisputable fact they knew is that the Jews were deported. The circle of those who knew about the Death Camps however was quite limited to the involved SS commands and officials within the affected ministries.

[Kurgan]

I assumed that, I meant what part of Germany.

I think one could say the Hitler and the Nazis never made the holocaust so obvious that you couldn't ignore it if you really wanted to. There were efforts in place to conceal the facts but the operation was simply to big to be kept a secret.

Either they tried to cover it up, or they didn't. Whether or not they were completely successful or not was not my contention.

Obviously, there were rumors, and propaganda saying it wasn't happening, etc, and in the death camps they tried to destroy records before the Allies seized them, etc.

Some scholars have even speculated that Hitler himself didn't know about the Holocaust (!) (a very small minority of scholars of course). Now before you jump on me, it would be obvious that Jews were being killed, but that's not the same as a systematic plan (the final solution) to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Scholars seem to be divided over whether or not the German people "knew" about the Holocaust. How could the government and the military, who were carrying it out, not know? Obviously, most people couldn't do anything about it. Hence some historians charge that the German people were "Hitler's willing executioners" (which is also the title of a book on the subject with one such view), rather than powerless pawns in a totalitarian regime.

I don't mean to derail this discussion into talking about the holocaust.

The original topic is why is there this "perception" in American media/pop culture that France is somehow less worthy of respect than Germany.

I still contend that there is no such perception beyond what a few idealouges with loud voices have said (the theory that its a way for pro-establishment media to turn people's attention toward a common popular "enemy" in order to distract from real problems.... etc. sounds pretty plausible), that perhaps some gullible people have bought into.

Fark.com prints the phrase "France surrenders" quite frequently, and I read some article about a politician who wanted to ban French wins in his area or something, but that's about all I percieve about it in my daily life as an American citizen.

Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion....

[Kurgan]

that should be "French wines" btw. Sorry for the typo.

[Cpt_Frank]

I assumed that, I meant what part of Germany.

The Saarland. Small part near the french border in the far southwest, belonged to France at that time, (so they couldn't have voted anyways.)
However one of my grandmothers came from east-prussia (Poland today).

[Lord Pounder]

I'm not American but i'll contribute why i dislike the French as a nation.

It all stems from personal experience. When i was 16 i went to France Belgium and Germany as a school trip to teach us about the EU etc. When i was in France i tried to order a lunch in French, i'm not very good but i tried. This cunt in McDonalds looked me up and down and in English exclamed "don't you dare insult me and my nation by speaking my language poorly you english shit". As a 16 yo i was stunned and a little upset. Every other French person i talked to while there was haughty and arrogant. However when i was in Germany and indeed Belgium the people we talked to where nothing but nice and polite. The way a nation carries itself can mean a lot. As stated before the Germans are most known for nice sausages and damn good beer, though not as good as Guinness. The French are notorious for arrogance and upper class snobbery.

Another reason i dislike the french is the actions of several of the top players of Arsenal Football Club. While the war started they where threatening to go on strike over the war. They retraced the statement after it was pointed out that of they went on strike they's never work again.

[Iceberg]

The French hate it when anybody else tries to speak "their" language (including French-Canadians, who they treat WORSE than Anglophones). Does it never even OCCUR to this nation of closed-minded shitheads that the fact that we're TRYING to learn their pathetic excuse for a language - VOLUNTARILY, since a good 80% of the world's population knows English - is NOT an insult??

Jeezus, that's why I never bothered to learn French. I took Spanish instead.

[phongn]

The French hate it when anybody else tries to speak "their" language (including French-Canadians, who they treat WORSE than Anglophones). Does it never even OCCUR to this nation of closed-minded shitheads that the fact that we're TRYING to learn their pathetic excuse for a language - VOLUNTARILY, since a good 80% of the world's population knows English - is NOT an insult??

Jeezus, that's why I never bothered to learn French. I took Spanish instead.

At my high school, German, French, Spanish and Latin were offered. They gave various reasons for learning each particular language:

German: A lot of technical and scientific papers are written in it. Useful to learn if you plan on going into the sciences.
Spanish: I live in Florida, it'll be a useful language to learn and an added bonus on your resume.
Latin: Quite a bit of stuff has latin roots, plus if you're headed off to, say, med school, it'll help.
French: Culture. They simply couldn't think of a practical reason to learn it (though the teacher for that class was very good and also trilingual).