Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire JEWS - Were The Nazi's on the Right Track?

Thank you, Viking.

Look, I'm 3rd gen German American. We had family on the wrong side of things. Granted, the Nazi's did the world a favor by knocking Communism down a peg or two, but at what cost? What bloody cost?

German Exceptionalism was a wonderful ethos at one time. Germans believed they were exceptional and that they had a powerful onus to go out in the world and make it a better place. Guys like Albert Schweitzer were the epitome of this thinking. Here in the States, you can thank the Turners for the concept of Physical Education and Gymnastics. Germans were also responsible for introducing public hygiene, and sanitary hospitals to the US. If it wasn't for Germans, our cities would still be open sewers, and we'd all be dying young of wretched easily preventable diseases. That was the German's gift to humanity.

Then WWI comes around and in its aftermath, some psychotic bastards take that wonderful ideal and turn it into Aryan Superiority. Instead of the ever-vigilant Shepards of the world, Germany was turned into a race of butchers and the world became its abattoir.

To give you and idea what German Exceptionalism was all about, let me digress a bit. When I was in college, I stumbled upon a stone monument to "Turnvater" in the neighborhood park. It was overgrown with yew bushes. I had no idea of what it was or how it got there. About a decade ago, I found out the real meaning of it.

Turnvater (Father of Turners) was the nickname given to Francis Ludwig Jahn, the founder of modern Gymnastics. All the gymnastics equipment we know today (bars, rings, vaulting horse, etc) come from Jahn. The park was built in the early 1900's out of an abandoned quarry/landfill. One of its most unique features is a dance pavillion looking out on the steepest stretch of Vine Street. Its reason for being was that this was the reviewing stand for the gymnastics pagents. As many as 11,000 German American gymnasts would do cartwheels up this hill in parade, showing off to the world what could be done with a healthy body. It was all gone by the end of WWI.