Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eure_Schuld.jpg
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“Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld!” (These atrocities: Your fault!") Propaganda poster used in occupied Germany after World War II. This poster and other posters like it were distributed in occupied Germany in the summer of 1945, immediately after World War II. As a publication of the US Government – OMGUS was under the War Department – it is public domain by law both under current law and under the law as it stood at the time. There was an Allied directive to Allied press agencies stating that the goal of these demonstrations was to convince the German population of their collective guilt. See Assmann and Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit - Geschichtsversessenheit.
Text of the poster:
These atrocities: your fault!
In twelve years the Nazi criminals have tortured and murdered millions of Europeans. Men, women and children were hunted and tortured to death by Hitler’s brutish henchmen simply because they were Jews, Czechs, Russians, Poles or French.
You quietly watched and tolerated it.
Battle-hardened soldiers of the Allies could not hide their disgust and outrage in the face of the gassed, charred and emaciated bodies of the victims in the concentration camps.
In Buchenwald camp, according to German camp reports, 50,000 people were burned, shot, hanged.
In Dachau, American soldiers found 50 wagons with rotting corpses. Since the beginning of this year, 10,000 people there succumbed to their tortures.
In Belsen, British troops found torture chambers, incinerators, gallows and whipping posts. 30,000 people died there.
In Gardelegen, Nordhausen, Ohrdruf, Erla, Mauthausen, Vaihingen, countless forcibly displaced persons and political prisoners fell victim to an inferno the likes of which have never been seen in world history!
You have watched idly. Why did you not rouse the German conscience with any word of protest, with any cry of outrage?
This is your great guilt - you are jointly responsible for these gruesome crimes!
Freight cars loaded with dead bodies were discovered by the American troops at Dachau. Layers of corpses stacked like firewood were found by the American troops in Dachau concentration camp. The blood flowed across the floor when the soldiers arrived. This inmate of the Dachau shame-camp was found hollow-eyed and emaciated with hunger by the American soldiers. Some of the 1000 corpses found in a pit, which were found by British and American soldiers during the liberation of a camp. American soldiers inspect an abominable camp where the burned bodies of Nazi victims are piled up. Charred bodies of political prisoners who were hastened to death by SS troops in the Dachau camp. An inmate of the Dachau camp views the bodies of his comrades who became victims of brutish SS troops. The Nazis poured gasoline over the bodies and burned them.
Think about this right now we’re starting to go the same direction the Germans did in Nazi Germany. Will you stand by like too many in Nazi Germany did or will you help make this time different by doing what you can to stop our current wave of far-right extremism and fascism?
At the very least please consider boycotting Twitter if you’re still using that. Ensure your money or your time doesn’t support Neo-Nazis. Fossil fuel companies are also big funders of the GOP, consider getting solar or wind for your home if you can. Demand a faster transition to renewable energy.
Lol nothing like guilt-tripping the losers of a war like they weren’t just trying to keep their jobs and feed their families just like everyone else
It worked precisely because everyone just shut up and looked away. If in every city thousands of people were protesting in the streets, even peacefully, then what do you think would have happened? Is the Wehrmacht supposed to gun down everyone in the county until no-one is left? Modern China also works and is this hellscape because people stopped after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Fascists need to be opposed violently. They do not speak the same language as you or I do. They only understand one thing, power. Therefore, as the government is the combined power of the people, if the people reject the government violently, the government will fall. There will always be less soldiers than population in a country. What do you think would happen if, for example, even 10% of the Chinese population would revolt? What is the Chinese army going to do? Gun down 110 million? Not even the first world war has seen death rates as high as 10% of the population. People think: “Yes, fascism is bad, but if I fall behind on my payments this month, there may be negative consequences for me.” And this is exactly how it works. From a micro level like the Chinese social credit system, to a macro level. Yes, there will be consequences, but you know what’s worse than these consequences? Putting millions into concentration camps.
As historical context, the people of Germany and Austria fully supported what the Third Reich was doing. Reason being was their treatment after the First World War, the Austrian Empire was deliberately shattered while Germany was given the exclusive fault for the war, which is absurd because everyone wanted the war. The goal of the treaty was to reduce Germany and Austria to essentially failed states. The Nazi ideology is an ideology born out of pure hatred. A hatred an entire people felt, rightfully, but that has escalated into concentration camps just a few years after.
And as modern context, remember, concentration camps were the final solution. The first solution was mass deportations. If people deliberately reject history, they will fall into the same mistakes again.
Edit: typo. Also, after the Second World War, people finally learned the right lesson. Conflicts must be solved through dialogue and not through war. If you doubt that, look at the aftermath of the First World War.
It’s a complex issue but I do believe that what is in the poster is true or mostly true. I say mostly true because in 1941 they had “the strongest, most explicit and most widespread protest movement against any Nazi policy since the beginning of the Third Reich”. They were protesting against Aktion T4 which was a policy to kill many disabled children.
Imagine if the protests were stronger against the Nazi regime?
Laber kein Müll.
Go to YouTube and look up “Time Ghost”. They have every single bit of info about Nazi Germany you’d possibly want, including why Hitler came to power and the human stories behind it all.
When America eventually loses world war 3 we are gonna get similar treatment
I’d rather we nip things in the bud, defeat fascism earlier and avoid millions of deaths. My point was to think about what we can do different this time so we won’t get the same treatment because we resisted and stopped Trump.
American fascism did not start with Trump and it will not end with him. I think it’s endemic.
Exactly, Trump is a symptom, not a cause. The rot runs deeper then the figurehead.
I will fight hard and do everything I can to ensure that it will end with Trump. I hope you will join me in doing what you can to put a stop to fascism.
I think it starts with worshipping a flag in school.
