AEON said:
Ironically, it was the "peace" crowd of the late 1930's that made the eventual World War that much worse.
Inaction is action. If you sit still and watch a murderer stab someone to death, that puts the knife in your hands as well.
Sometimes, there is a time for war.
What I intended to say was, that in war you shouldn't always blindly support your own country.
I'm well aware of the fact that the inaction, and also the appreciation of Hitler by people such as Lioyd George and Winston Churchill before 1939, of politicians and the ordinary people, and their blindly following led to the war, and I know that the people here in Germany, but also in Austria and Italy knew at least to some extent what was going on with the Jews, Sinti & Roma and other minorities, and what happened in the concentration camps.
Justin made the statement, that you should be pro-war in order to support your own country, when not physically then morally, so that your country can "smash the enemy".
I just wanted to show that you shouldn't support your country in each and every war, or that your country isn't always the right one to fight this war.
Like in the case of WWII it would've been better to be in favor of the allies instead of the Nazi crap.
This, however, is not meant in any way to critizise or blame the German, Austrian or Italian citizens that weren't opposed to the war, or just didn't undertake anything, as it was very dangerous at that time to say anything wrong, and you never know how you would act yourself.
I have the utmost respect for people like Sophie and Hans Scholl and their fellow "White Rose" activists, as for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as for all other people that in some way or another did their part in fighting the Nazis.
But people that didn't do anything, although they didn't agree to what happened, aren't to be blamed as it was a very risky thing to do anything, and not everybody is a person to put his own life to risk, or that of his/her whole famile ("arrest of family" was the least that happened, still very brutal).