• Xanthrax@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    This is random, but my great grandad is a German who settled in Peru after WW2. 90% sure he was nazi based on historical context and genealogy. Most likely, he was a civil engineer, which is terrifying. I wonder if he’s turning in his grave, knowing his great grandson is a communist. There’s a ton of records of his life from his account, but none of them match up with external sources. He claimed to have been American and fought at the battle of the bulge and d-day, but he basically “teleports” to South America after WW2.

    Edit: Another sign was that my Grandad (his son) would talk about 2nd generation Japanese/ Germans a lot. In South America, new immigrants from Germany/ Japan would go to talk to the people who looked like them, and they couldn’t speak German or Japanese. My Grandad was one of those people. He speaks English, Portuguese, and Spanish. He couldn’t speak German. They were all getting thrown together on engineering projects, but my Grandad switched to engineering for Boeing. Honestly, I’ll throw my last name out there if anyone is interested: Brendel. That’s not my actual last name, but that’s the accurate version. I don’t even want to get into that.

    • alcoholicorn
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      4 days ago

      Oh no, won’t somebody think of the poor landlords?

      “THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

      ― Mark Twain

      • Arbiter@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        right, because that’s the only group who were killed.

        Nevermind the fact they wouldn’t even need to be killed, just have their wealth redistributed.

      • the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Greetings, .ml user.

        I wasn’t aware that China, decades after the Land Reform Movement, had millions of landlords waiting to be killed or forced to commit suicide. Nor was I aware that, to a man, every single one of them was waiting to establish China’s First Reich.