Why do we live in a world where people sympathize and side with rapists?

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[Beastro]

The big problem here is that people are trying to connect Germany's collective responsibility to their abuse at the hands of the enemy hordes, and tie "the traumas of war" to the reasons why they raped like pigs. I think that's a very flawed and misguided argument. It ignores so many factors, that reveals how weak and flimsy that line of thinking is. It absolves personal responsibility from the attackers (who just merrily strode home and got away with it) and tries to paint the victims of some rampant, monstrous injustice as guilty as Hitler was. I think that's frightening and horrible for us as a society to do.

And it keeps coming back to this. It makes me feel you've read something lately that has taken this stance and you're now taking it as a universal when the real wound that is fresh is inside of you over it.

I have family where the war is a sore point and the hackles will come out over talking about the Germans then, but they draw the line after the war and are happy to see the good both Germany and Japan have done since then, especially in places like zoos given my families animal loving nature.

They don't see them as the same people, so when I read again and again in your posts about traumas of war and similar things, it doesn't sound like a general thing that people have gone over about the Germany and WWII for decades, but a recent article or book you've read that's come to this conclusion that you're focusing on.

The big problem here is that people are trying to connect Germany's collective responsibility to their abuse at the hands of the enemy hordes, and tie "the traumas of war" to the reasons why they raped like pigs.

Don't you mean the Soviet Union's? They are who comitted the acts in the East as they pushed back the Germans.

It absolves personal responsibility from the attackers (who just merrily strode home and got away with it) and tries to paint the victims of some rampant, monstrous injustice as guilty as Hitler was. I think that's frightening and horrible for us as a society to do.

Part of the problem is the chronic pass the Soviet's and other Communists are given, and it isn't clear why that is. Maybe it's due to how laid out and deliberate the actions of Nazi Germany were that make them feel all the more potent, while the Soviet's we never met in war ourselves. I can see part of that, the other being part of the way the West has painted Communism that has now resulted in "But that wasn't real Communism" into a farcical meme.

The other part may be, that after so much pain and sorrow during that period, many can't be bothered to feel bad for Germans in the war even the innocent ones because they already have enough on their plate when it comes to the period and would rather just have things move on from it and allow the pain all around to fade which goes back to what I said about the line between remembrance and allowing the past to haunt us.

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[Madner Kami]

You can both be a victim and a culprit at the same time. For example, rapists (especially child rapists) are often victims of child abuse in all it's colours. One explains the other, but one doesn't excuse the other.

Though I agree that people often understand it as an excuse, both when they state the fact that the perpetrator was a victim him-/herself or when they listen to someone who points out how a perp was a victim.

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[Admiral X]

*double post*

[Admiral X]

In any case, I can't see the women being anywhere near as bad as the men.

Oh, they could be every bit as bad as men - just look at Ilse Koch, who had lampshades made out of human skin and the like, or Irma Grese, who got sexually aroused by beating women bloody and watching them suffer and would rape prisoners on a regular basis. Or Maria Mandl, who was Irma Grese's superior, and so high ranking within the SS structure at Auschwitz that the only man she had to answer to was the camp commandant. Or Hanna Reitsch, who was so fanatical that she tried forming a German version of kamikaze pilots, and stated in an interview in the 1970s that she was a true believer in the Nazi Party.

And what have we now in Germany? A country of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all of Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power ... Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share – that we lost.

I think collective responsibility works better.

Not going to pull any punches here - that is an extremely messed up point of view, and puts you on the same level as the Nazis. They were all about "collective responsibility."

Remember Hitler was appointed by the President. One could argue like Trump, he wasn't legitimately elected.

Trump was legitimately elected according to the system the US has in place to prevent the more populous states from having too much control over the less populous ones. And people really need to stop making comparisons between Trump and Hitler - even Holocaust survivors think you're off your rocker making that comparison. As for Hitler, yes, he was appointed by Hindenburg, but the way he gained power was by using the "tradition" (so to speak) of ruling by presidential decree started by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning back in the 1930s. Hitler got Hindenburg to make a decree that made it possible for mass arrests against the German Communist Party, so the Nazi party could give themselves the majority necessary to pass an enabling act to let Hitler and his cabinet pass laws without the consent of the Reichstag, and which were in contravention of their constitution. The act was only supposed to be for 4 years, but since they held the majority in their legislature (and just threatened everyone who didn't go along with it), the Nazis just kept renewing it. Then when Hindenburg died, Hitler's cabinet passed an act that abolished the office of the president and merged its powers with that of chancellor. This process was only "legal" in the sense that the Wiemar Republic had already been corrupt and let their executive branch wield far too much power, to the point that they could just make decrees that made it "legal" for them to ignore their constitution. If anything it's a lesson in not letting the government and the executive branch of it in particular gain too much power.