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Return of the Iron Cross?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7281434.stm
Are the German's right to shun the Iron Cross, or should they be reclaiming a symbol of courage?
Are the German's right to shun the Iron Cross, or should they be reclaiming a symbol of courage?
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However, I think that there comes a time when the Germans should stop pussy footing around the second world war and avoiding anything with a slightest connotation. The Iron Cross was awarded before then and should be, as you say, reclaimed as a symbol of bravery...
They're in Afghan. So, they ARE in some combat, be it a limited role.
I think they should bring it back. OMG, the Nazi's awarded it. The Nazi's brought us the age of the Jet Fighter, we didn't stop using those.
The Nazi's did alot of things. They used the Swastika. It's still used today, by lots of the original people who used it before. Just because one person did something, and they did alot wrong, doesn't make all the things they were associated with wrong.
PLUS. The Iron Cross looks cool. And it a good award for any soldier. Now, as for the Iron Eagle on the other hand...
All the more reason why it should be reclaimed by the democratic state
The horrors of Nazism aside, you're both talking as if the Prussian militarism that preceded it was tea parties and cute pink rabbits.
Anywho, to me it seems contradictory to feel fine about using it as a symbol on their tanks, but to go all coy about using it as a medal.
An important point.
One bit of metal given out for killing people for cash really, really well is pretty much the same as any other. Why argue otherwise?
I was reading about a gurkha who had died earlier in he week, he had been given the VC for slaughtering a lot of people like pigs, including caving one man's head with a rock, blinding some others with phosphorous grenades and other such wonders.
Soldiers are such cowards.
I'd argue that a soldier capable of beating another man to death with nothing but a rock isn't a coward. Hard core perhaps, but not a coward.
:no: That wasn't my point. Prussianism, along with the militarism of Japan were particularly brutal/aggressive. The military came to be quite all-encompassing in those states. Britain isn't and wasn't that way. I read about the Gurkha too - damn proud I was.
He wouldn't be there in the first place if he wasn't.
Soldiers kill because they can't face up to their own peer group.
Erm.....?
I know a few people who are/were in the forces. They've never had any trouble facing up to their peer group. Unless you're suggesting all soldiers were bullied at school or something. I know that's what gets bandied around about us.
Could you look your peers in the eye and say "this is wrong"?
Given that you accept money to do things that normal people would find immoral, I doubt it very much. The white feather works.
It depends what you're fighting for. If I joined the army, i'd be confident that i'd have strength in my own convictions to tell people what I do, and what i'm doing is a worthy cause. I couldn't look my peers in the eye and tell them it is wrong, if I didn't believe it is wrong.
On that basis you could argue my job is immoral. My sole purpose at work, ultimately is to deprive people of their freedom. You're saying, essentially that the ends are irrelevant. My actions undoubtedly improve the lives of god-only knows how many people, but because i've deprived someone of their freedom i'm a tool of the state.
A soldier, ultimately will be improving lives of people. That may not be immediately evident to you, or to me or to the soldier, but it does happen. But because he deprives someone of their life, the ends are irrelevant.
agreed.
Difficult issue as sensitivities are obviously high. But there is no reason why the Nazis should tarnish a symbol forever.
Another famous case is the Svastika (sp?). Agreed that the Nazi version is tilted 45 degrees, but the original svastika is more than 1,000 years old and a symbol of peace.
One of the things we sell at work is old books, and works by Kipling often have the original svastika on their covers. We get lots of people recoiling at it and asking why is that emblem present on the bindings. They're always surprised when we tell them it is an Indian sign of peace many centuries old. The Nazis just adopted, turned it around and gave a different background.
At the end of the day it's a symbol (the iron cross for the unobservant, not the swastika) used by the German military for hundreds of years. If they're going to put it on their military hardware I don't see why putting it on a soldier might be a problem.
:yes:
I wouldn't be telling Don Corleone he was an immoral sack of shit either, doesn't prove much really.
You wouldn't find me shooting others on his behalf though, I got strength enough to tell murderers I won't join in.
Ah, a psychology student...
It would explain a lot
Most soldiers aren't murderers.
I was idealistic once.
Ahh a mind reader.
It would explain a lot.
I can't read yours (perhaps a lack of one might explain my difficulty)
I see that you have a royal legion banner, and will leave your excuses for being a killer in peace. You won't have it and are too weak to take it.
However, you know it's all lies and that men in costumes are just killers with good PR. You have to lie, or you wouldn't be able to sleep.
This is why all soldiers are cowards.
Never, ever forget that the price of your freedom is someone else's blood.
Never killed anyone in my life. I have however saved and help save people from dying.
Aah, so you have got inside my mind and no how I think...
Well, perhaps not as I don't think like that at all. You think like that, and rather naively, have got your troubled little thoughts muddled up with some universal truth.
Well that's true. I've never been able to sleep standing up - I suppose I'm strange like that
Nonsense.
How does paying one man to kill another man grant me freedom?
Soldiers murder for pay. This is the fact of the matter.
They are hit men. That's all.
The fact that you have to ask that question shows what comfort you live in. Get your head out of your books, step off campus and learn a little about life. Failing that, change to history instead of sociology.
So you would happily sit back, with no armed forces, and be "free" while another country walked in, took over, and raped then shot your family.
You might be free, I beleive some freedom must be sacrificed to preserve the little we have.
Sigh. Then again, you remind me of another member who enjoyed his circular, illogical, philosophical arguments.:chin: