It’s not your daddy’s reich anymore.
Being part Swiss and part German with family from both places who were part of my growing up, I do get the Germans. And they mystify me at the same time (collectively). Individually, Germans think like who they are, and I like them and enjoy spending time in Germany. Some of the best Turkish food I’ve ever eaten was served in Germany. They invited in a lot of guest workers from Turkey over the years who stayed and joined the culture in a weird way.
When visiting Germany I continue to be amazed to see more Turkish flags flying than German flags. In some areas of Germany the ethnic Turks far out number the Germans. And by this I am not addressing the nearly one million unemployed military age Muslim males from Syria that Germany welcomed into its borders.
Being part Swiss and part German with family from both places who were part of my growing up, I do get the Germans. And they mystify me at the same time (collectively). Individually, Germans think like who they are, and I like them and enjoy spending time in Germany. Some of the best Turkish food I’ve ever eaten was served in Germany. They invited in a lot of guest workers from Turkey over the years who stayed and joined the culture in a weird way.
Interestingly enough, Russians (modern Russian Federation types) are more conservative when taken as a whole than the Germans are. The Germans are socialists by in large. Some are International Socialists, some are National Socialists, some are another brand of Confused Socialists (my term, not theirs), but they’re leftist/nihlists who aren’t sure about what they want.
Russians don’t tolerate Muslim minorities in Russia these days. They give them the bum’s rush to the border and invite them to return from the fetid desert that they sprang from. Germany has taken the opposite approach and while I don’t understand it, they rolled in the dung of military age Muslim males, still unemployed, and seem to want to keep them.
Germany is our ally sorta – Russia is our enemy sorta. We send troops to defend Germany, we send troops, ostensibly to fight Russia. Don’t look for reason in American foreign policy. Even the Trump Administration refuses to brand the confiscation of land in South Africa based on race to be “racist”.
When visiting Germany I continue to be amazed to see more Turkish flags flying than German flags.
Sounds like SoCal and Mexican flags.
I've never worked with Germans or German companies, so I have no reference point other than anecdotal.
All the Russians and Ukrainians I've worked with were professional people, and as Engineers, they'd tend to be conservative anyway! And they were fiercely nationalistic, as I expected them to be.
Yes, a lot like Mexican flags flying proudly in SoCal.
The Turks we GIs knew circa 1960's in Germany didn't seem to mind a bit of alcohol now and then. Good people from our point of view. Maybe it was what we had in common. The Germans didn't like either of us.
That was my take-away as well.
My only dealings with them were the German Submariners, they were good folks!
Was this post sua sponte, or inspired by the recent festivities in Chemnitz?
So far I've generally gotten along with the Germans I've met, and more so with Swiss-Germans (who sneer at the idea of hereditary guilt for Nazism that some Germans seem to labor under). Pretty sure I've lost a German friend over the gun thing though. I think living a decade-plus in London softened his head.
Not many of their boats can put to sea these days.
There wasn't inspiration of the sort that were experienced in Chemnitz, but I've had some dealings with Germans and have "talked Germany" with them. These are German ex-pats, living in the USA and their perspective is skewed because they visit home and notice uncomfortable changes. The Turkish guest worker invasion began forty or fifty years ago and was a very different thing from the current round of Muslim folks.
The Germans, like most Europeans seem to love socialism. So they're doing their best to become Muslim.
When that doesn't work they'll become National Socialists.
Will this socialism never end?
I did two tours of active duty in West Germany (at that time, 1976-1984), and we 'Ami's' and Turks were considered as less than third class citizens. American GI's, of course, were assigned strictly to their ghettos (also called Kasernes or barracks), and did not intermingle with the locals much if at all. Some of us did anyway, and many of the German locals catered to US GI tastes, but it was really only around the perimeter of the barracks.
When I went scouring for an apartment for rent off base, I was told more than once that landlords do not rent to Amis and Turks.
My oh my how that has all changed. Turks were called guest workers back then, but could not obtain citizenship. Now half the country is Turkish.
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