Germany megathread

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Disgusting.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Pseudo-libertarian Astatine once asked me about similarities between the NSDAP and their Green brethren. Now we have yet another aspect that proves the kindred spirit between those two parties: Bücherverbrennung 2.0

Congratulations, PUTP, PJ and MAE! You killed Winnetou! 👏🏻

Bücherverbrennung=book burnings in 1933
Winnetou=Indian (as in Native American) hero in some books by Karl May

that's the gist of this.
I can see what Hades is saying here...I can't consider myself hostile to the greviance underlying it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Pseudo-libertarian Astatine once asked me about similarities between the NSDAP and their Green brethren. Now we have yet another aspect that proves the kindred spirit between those two parties: Bücherverbrennung 2.0

Congratulations, PUTP, PJ and MAE! You killed Winnetou! 👏🏻

Bücherverbrennung=book burnings in 1933
Winnetou=Indian (as in Native American) hero in some books by Karl May

that's the gist of this.
I can see what Hades is saying here...I can't consider myself hostile to the greviance underlying it.

The decision to pull the Winnetou book was made by the publishing company. I'm not aware of any Green Party offcial having come out in favour of the move (but considering that Hades lets his brain rot away 24/7 on Twitter he may have been successful in locating the co-leader of a local Green Party chapter in rural Bavaria who did such a thing). But even if a Green Party offical had done so, that wouldn't warrant a comparison with the friggin Nazi Party. And even if it had warranted a comparison with the friggin Nazi Party it still hasn't anything to do with me personally, let alone President Johnson as a SPD member.

It was very misdirected to name any forumites in that post, but the hostility towards American "woke" culture being exported being something I can sympathize with, is the broader implication I sought to express. Iirc, isn't the Greens the political party closest to that school of thought? Even if blaming the Greens directly at least potentially is a bit much...
EDIT: I should have prefaced this by noting that I don't hate the Greens and my personal politics are quite different from Hades, overall.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well, I hope the status quo in Europe is one that does not merit alarm.
American cultural nonsense ought to be something Europe is able to resist. Our cultural influence is considerable and this is far from just a good thing in some/many cases...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well, I hope the status quo in Europe is one that does not merit alarm.
American cultural nonsense ought to be something Europe is able to resist. Our cultural influence is considerable and this is far from just a good thing in some/many cases...

Good for you, but did I do something to give the impression that I care about something like that right now?

Well, it is true there's a lot going on.
Taking everything together, this is a secondary thing: present, but more like just one thing in the background. Personally, I do hope the publisher gets serious blowback or suffers some kind of penalty, but we should not lose sight of the bigger picture either. Bombs are being dropped in Ukraine and there is an incoming potential catastrophe regarding winter energy bills...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well, I hope the status quo in Europe is one that does not merit alarm.
American cultural nonsense ought to be something Europe is able to resist. Our cultural influence is considerable and this is far from just a good thing in some/many cases...

Good for you, but did I do something to give the impression that I care about something like that right now?

Well, it is true there's a lot going on.
Taking everything together, this is a secondary thing: present, but more in the background. Personally, I do hope the publisher gets serious blowback or suffers some kind of penalty, but we should not lose sight of the bigger picture either. Bombs are being dropped in Ukraine and there is an incoming potential catastrophe regarding winter energy bills...

You just keep babbling on endlessly, completely tone-deaf, unfazed and nonsensical, do you?

I was going to leave it, then and there, but you posted a reply with an express question mark, as if you were asking me something. I felt duty-bound to express the common ground between us. If that was not to your preference, then I apologize. Considering the (likely) implied intonation with this most recent post, this will be the last reply I give in this saga. Have a nice day.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

what are the FDP's constituencies?

The wealthy self-employed.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/TheresaAFallon/status/1630129964388343808?s=20

ungrateful bastards, should have dissolved their sh**thole country after the war

#morgenthauwasright

If Morgenthau was right, then we needed to march our troops onto the Moon to defeat Nazi space colonies.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/wahlrechtsreform-wie-der-bundestag-verkleinert-werden-soll-100.html
Interesting article I found on this.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Scholz calls climate activists nutty.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday sharply criticized climate activists as “nutty” for drastic protests such as blocking streets or gluing themselves to famous paintings in museums.

“I think it’s completely nutty to somehow stick yourself to a painting or on the street,” Scholz said during a visit to an elementary school in the town of Kleinmachnow outside of Berlin, German news agency dpa reported.

The chancellor added that he did not think anybody's opinion on climate change could be changed by such actions but rather that these protests made people angry.

"That’s an action that I don’t think is going to help,” Scholz told the students.

Good on Schulz for these remarks. Scholz is a great Chancellor.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Has population always been like that, or is the E being more sparsely populated a post-WW2 thing?

That depends on what you mean by sparsely populated.

The map and its description are misleading because what the map really shows are rural settlement patterns. Uninhabitated square kilometers are shown in white, whereas all other square kilometers are shown in dark red.
- Regions with mountains and large forests have a lot of white. These areas exist in both East and West.
- There are many flat and slightly hilly areas in the West with small hamlets or single farms on every square kilometer. In vast swathes of the East that have always been dominated by large estates the population is concentrated in the villages and the square kilometers inbetween are uninhabitated.

So the map would probably not have looked too different before WW2.

At the same time you are right that the population in the East is now lower than it was before WW2 and in the West it is now much higher than before WW2. Before WW2 the average population density in the West and in what is now the East were roughly equal. Interestingly in the most sparsely populated areas of the East (e.g. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) the population gains due to refugee settlement after WW2 still exceed the losses during the last decades. The regions that really lost compared to before WW2 are the industrial areas in Saxony and parts of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, but I don't think that it would show in less dark red areas. In the West on the other hand basically all areas have grown compared to before WW2, and often by a lot.

https://www.deviantart.com/robeatnix/art/Population-Density-of-Germany-and-Austria-1910-818312533
Relevant.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A map I saw on twitter:

https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1672955310066073601?s=20

Bonn isn't even labeled.  Truly remarkable for being a former Capital.

A history youtuber I enjoy made a short video about why Bonn was chosen as the FRG's capital:


- Bonn wasn't heavily damaged in the war unlike nearly all larger cities in the Allied occupation zone, so it was established as the temporary capital when the FRG was established in 1949 .

Eventually it was decided to keep the capital in Bonn because:

. Adenauer didn't want to move the capital to a larger city in order to avoid making Germany's division appear permanent.

- The city had no strong assocaition with Nazism or Hitler (unlike Munich for example).

- There was little (and soon none because the British had no money) foreign military presence in the city

- I kid you not: it was only 20 minutes from Adenauer's house.

- Since the government was already established there, it was decided it wasn't worth the effort and expense to move the capital to a larger city.

To this day, Bonn functions as the primary seat for six of the federal government's ministries (defence, agriculture, health, environment, education, foreign aid) as well as the secondary seat for all the other ministries. As such, Bonn is officially designated as a "federal city" as opposed to Berlin's status as a federal capital.

Would it be fair to say that the vibe of the city is still dominated by its role as a major governmental center?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A++ creativity. Props to whoever came up with that idea.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The budget fiasco has been a catastrophe for the favorability ratings of the governing parties, with all of them taking a massive hit.

Notably, the SPD now has a negative unfavorability rating for the first time since 2005. This government is cooked.

Union's unbroken streak of having favorable ratings for almost a full quarter century is really quite something.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.bild.de/bild-plus/politik/inland/politik-inland/dokumente-aufgetaucht-baerbock-ich-wusste-nichts-mein-opa-und-die-nazis-87090146.bild.html



Seems like somebody out there wants to get rid of Baerbock so papers about her grandfather being a Nazi and being awarded Hitler's War Merit Cross with swords come out.

Fail to see the logic behind the idea that this would "get rid" of Baerbock, mainly because there is a fairly high precentage of Germans with ancestors who were Wehrmacht soldiers with a (supposedly) popular opinion of Hitler.

Helmut Schmidt's Wehrmacht files also described him as a loyal supporter of the regime, and his face is still on commemorative Euro coins.

What share of the population would you say that is, most likely?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

And yet... Annalena Baerbock has just tendered her resignation!







Nah, I'm just messing with you.

It would be pretty shocking if she resigned and that was the reason.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Though stranger things have happened.

Yeah, if she had wanted to have a way out.

Where there's a will there's a way.