Hi!
I am back and deeply disappointed by AH.com! "Life in black" slurred millions of soldiers by his heavily implied opinion that all, every single German soldier was a war criminal. When I defended them, saying that beside the war criminals there were millions of Axis powers soldiers who simply did their soldiers duty, I got kicked for "apologism of war crimes".
Calbear, not even trying to give the impression to be impartial, gave his highly biased opinion as reason for the kick. He stated that every(!) Japanese soldier and heavily implied that every German soldier as well, was a war criminal. This is factually and verifiably WRONG!
(For those who want to read about the real and supposed war crimes of Germans instead of Calbear´s polemic should look into the actual number of the "Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte", one of the most important and renowned periodicals for Historians.
In magazine 1/2015 the equally renowned Historian M. Brechtken brings a ton of hard evidence that the report on the war crimes of the German foreign ministry was concocted by limelight-greedy cobblers.
Some examples from the article: "Unterkomplexität" (lit. under tapestry, a polite German euphemism for utter crap), factually and scientifically hardly useable, trumped-up charges, overblown single cases, partly deliberate false depiction and a damage for the reliability of Historical research.
There are similar evidence backed critical works on the real and supposed war crimes of the Wehrmacht by e.g. Musial or Schmidt-Neuhaus (Der Fall Tarnopol 1941/1944 und das erfolgreiche Katyn-Modell der sowjetischen Geschichtsfälschung). Take for example the massacre of Tarnopol 1941, which had been pinned on the Wehrmacht for decades. Today it is proven without doubt that this war crime was executed by the Red Army, but propagandists still bend backward to paint the Wehrmacht responsible.
While some units of the German Army took part in more war crimes than was comported for decades, there are factually less incidents than the media-hype trumped up.
This is not apologism, I know well what happened, but hard cold facts are needed in light of Calbear´s untenable accusations.
Calbear insulted millions of soldiers with his knowledge on FOX-News level and his abuse of moderator power to further factually wrong German (and Japanese)-bashing. That Calbear is unable to treat all nations fairly, is nothing new, but what disappoints me most is that the upper echelon of AH let him do as he pleases, influencing discussions, dealing out unjust punishments and spreading verifiably wrong, highly biased opinions and polemic.
I like AH, but fear for this site since the number of incidents where true, but in some circles unpopular opinions are suppressed with moderation abuse, are on the rise. And the belittling tone does not help. I had to read that I had lacking knowledge. When it comes to German History, good parts and bad parts, several users including me, surpass Calbear´s one-sided, questionable one by a wide margin. If not for family matters, I would have become a full-time historian for German History. I know quite well what the Wehrmacht and the Teikoku Rikugun did - and what they did not! Calbear generalises deadbeat arguments with his ofttimes attested fragmentary knowledge of German History, which is insulting to many and borders on sedition. In twenty years of Internet use, I never came across such a one-sided, judgemental "moderator" before.
From the book "Plebiscites or How to surprise politicians every time", O'Quinn Publishing 2004
It is a truism that the outlooks of politicians and the people they govern are most often different from each other. Nothing shows that better than national referendums. An astonishing 94% of all referenda in the last 130 years did not go quite as "perfect" as the politicians hoped or counted for.
A prototype for this phenomenon is the "Alsace-Lorraine plebiscite" of 1888. The German Iron Chancellor had never been a big fan of retaking the region for Germany. Political considerations in relation to France and other strategic aims were more important in Bismarck´s view. But the very successful way the Romanic-Germanic War went, forced even Bismarck to change his targets for the treaty negotiations. Prestige reasons alone in conjunction with the politicians and parts of the military at home made it necessary to take some parts of metropolitan France.
It helped Bismarck greatly that the late Emperor Napoleon III requested negotiations comparatively early. The Iron Chancellor, the ultimate Realpolitiker, used this to get a result more to his liking. In the end, the treaty stipulations concerning Alsace-Lorraine went like this:
Germany annexed the majorly German-speaking areas directly, including some French-speaking regions to get smoother, more logical borders. Twenty years later, in 1888, there would be a plebiscite, but not only in the annexed areas, but in several other parts, coveted by German hardliners, as well. (OTL Alsace-Lorraine plus Belfort. Belfort belongs to the Sundgau historically. In OTL it stayed French, because Germany had taken more in Lorraine than the moderates in Germany wanted. As Moltke said: In victory, the victor has to be moderate.)
France accepted this easily, because it gave them the chance to regain further losses without a shot fired and were sure that the French regions in the plebiscite would vote for France. Bismarck got the moderate stipulations he hoped would poison the atmosphere of the German-French relations less heavily and it gave the hard-line nationalists a two decades diversion.
What followed were 20 years of gifts and propaganda by both sides for the region. On the eve of the plebiscite, both capitals were optimistic about the results.
While Paris counted the districts directly at the old borderline to be lost beforehand already, they were sure to push the new border far closer to the old one than the Germans would dream in their worst nightmares.
In Berlin many were sure to keep what was already German and win more of Lorraine, while several majorly French districts were seen as hopeless.
It was Rose Monday when the referendum results came in, due to several recounts by the astonished officials and shocked both nations. In Germany, the moniker "ein Rosenmontagsergebnis" (a Rose Monday conclusion) for a totally surprising event became proverbial.
Both nations competing fiercely with each other for decades brought about a mess of pro and con moods in the whole region, since many advertising efforts had been made uncoordinated by competing ministries. The German officials had underestimated the loss of connections with the old home-country since the whole Alsace-Lorraine had become French a century earlier, while the French underestimated how their centralist approach could alienate regions "out of favour" with Paris and the federal example of Germany close by.
The Lorraine vote was seen as a disaster by Germany, while the Alsace vote was one for France.
In Lorraine, while a strip along the old border was now staunchly German and the Saarburg area had expanded (to OTL borders), the rest of Lorraine had not been won, no, even some German-majority areas were lost again. Coupled with the wins in some now isolated districts, among them the then French-speaking towns Duß/Dieuze and Spangen/Pange, led to a rather awkward borderline. German-speakers know this region by the nickname of "das sechsfache Büsingen" (the six-times Büsingen), after the German enclave Büsingen in Switzerland.
In addition, the results laid to rest all preparations to make Lorraine a real district of Germany. Saarburg was incorporated into Elsaß/Alsace, the rest of German Lorraine was added to the Grand-duchy of Luxemburg, the Prussian Rhine-Province and the Bavarian Palatinate.
While Germany, despite considerable efforts to win more of Lorraine, lost there, France had to swallow her bitter pill concerning Alsace. As expected, the Schirmeck-Markirch region, with the exception of Markirch (Saint-Marie-aux-Mines) itself and some villages near Ottendorf, becoming the French Levencourt enclave, returned to France. But to the consternation of Paris these were the only wins in the whole of Alsace. The Belfort and Montbeliard region of Alsace, back then having only a small minority of German-speakers and being expected a sure win for France, instead voted for Germany. What had been countered in Lorraine by heavy French propaganda efforts, had functioned here. The region of Beffert had had the choice of further German investments or becoming a French backwater again. Combined with less efforts by France, believing the region to be assured, this led to the Burgundian Gate becoming German again.
Belfort and Montbeliard got their German names, Beffert and Mömpelgard, anew, becoming part of the Sundgaukreis (Sundgau district). To this day, Mömpelgard retains the distinction of being the only halfway large city in all of Germany with "MÖ" licence plates.
All in all, while the plebiscite helped in lowering the tensions between France and Germany, the unexpected results still left dreams on both sides.
