This is an article that took a lot of strength to write and I might take it down again. But I felt like it is an article that is very necessary right now. https://bastianallgeier.com/notes/grandpa
@bastianallgeier thank you for sharing.
I can't imagine being a young child and brought up to believe Nazism is good and proper. If you learn it from childhood, it must also be extremely hard to change, too. I'm sorry you had such a person in your life but I'm also glad his influence actually had the opposite effect on you in the end.
Never again.
@Joe_Hill @bastianallgeier yeah. Terrifying.
@Joe_Hill @sarajw @bastianallgeier I recognise none of the faces, wondered whether it was computer/AI-generated.
Sadly, it was real.
@bastianallgeier Thank you for speaking up and out. This piece is a good model for me and perhaps others who want to write more in a fractured political economy.
@bastianallgeier Thank you Bastian 
@bastianallgeier This is very personal. Thank you for sharing, Bastian!
@bastianallgeier What a great, personal, empathic piece of writing, thank you for this. As an Austrian I can really relate, and I know many with similar stories. Yet the fascists are gaining power everywhere you look. Sad to see how short the collective memory is.
@bastianallgeier Thank you for sharing this 
We visit family in Germany a couple of times a year, and while I’ve never heard any views or stories of this kind, there is always some freshly removed graffiti of swastikas and such
Right wing views are on the rise in the western world, it’s pretty scary to think where we might be in another few years
@bastianallgeier Thanks for writing and publishing (!) this, Bastian. 
@bastianallgeier I can relate so much. My grandfather’s brother was in the Waffen-SS and died in WW II. My grandpa made it back home from the Russian front after losing his toes, but he died when I was two. I still don’t think he was a Nazi himself and my grandmother always told the story that when my grandfather once returned home for a short visit from the military, he said: “War is an injustice.”
@bastianallgeier Still, realizing that members of your family you love and look up to were either complicit or indifferent was eye-opening for me as a teenager. I also realized that the stuff from the history books that seemed so distant (and in b&w photos) actually happened just yesterday. And once you see the butcher’s hooks in Buchenwald yourself, all of this hits you hard. This is what people do to other people if nobody speaks up.
Just like you, I’m an anti-fascist for the rest of my life.
I know it's not the same, but I also feel like we're all in this together. My great uncle was a gunner in the RAF Bomber Command in WW2.
Lovely man. I don't know exactly what missions he undertook. But reading up on the firestorms rained down on Hamburg really puts me in knots. Whatever political bent those people had, so many died.
@matthiasott @bastianallgeier My great-grandfather kept a journal from 1944-1946 . It was written in "Kurrentschrift" so it was hard to decipher. A couple of years ago we sat down with my grandma and recorded her reading it - I later transcribed it.
He wrote about life in the last days of the war and the years after. Feels a lot more personal than the history books as it's set in my hometown. Tanks rolling down the streets I grew up in.
In one entry, he crossed out the name of the holiday:
@mxbck @bastianallgeier Amazing. And fantastic you took the time to record it with your grandmother and transcribe it! 
@matthiasott @bastianallgeier yeah it was a very special experience. I made a printed version and donated it to our local library.
The PDF is here if you're interested:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UZNn706igZjodFpo8ne7o2aDNnRrGQ4Z/view?usp=sharing
@mxbck @bastianallgeier Wow. Thank you!
@matthiasott @bastianallgeier I had a similar realisation, but in reverse. My parents had a book on the history of WW-II, with photographs of burning or burned out tanks and personnel carriers and such. The movies coming from Ukraine look eerily similar. It feels as if, when you’d take B&W photos, they’d fit right in the book. It gives me a sense of what WW-II must have been like.
@bastianallgeier thank you for calling out the opportunists. They are the most dangerous because when they inevitably can't control the monsters they helped take power they have a sunk cost so they do nothing.
Thank you for the courage to write this.
@waynejr @bastianallgeier yes, in the US those opportunists were called the Republican Party. That party has now been entirely taken over by the neofascists.
@bastianallgeier Sooo important to tell. Thnx Bastian... #NeverAgainIsNow
@bastianallgeier Hats off to such a powerful and emphatic piece of writing!
@bastianallgeier Thank you. Please don't delete it. One of the things that stood out for me:
"He once told me how you did not need to fear anything back then. If someone committed a serious crime, they would be executed, so nobody would dare to."
They promise: "All problems can be solved if we just dare to use enough violence. Crime exists because we are too soft." Who judges right and wrong based on what? Injustice doesn't exist because we are not cruel and brutal enough with each other.
@bastianallgeier Mine was not a Nazi, he was just a little wannabe fascist. He believed that foreigners should "all be kicked out" and that if there's any problem—use violence. "They'll quickly stop if you just..." All that while being a Swiss citizen in Italy, naturalized, married to a former Italian immigrant then pampered by a Rumanian care taker. Hard worker? He retired at 50 living illegally on two state pensions. Former truck driver, fries & TV all day, voted Berlusconi in every election.
@natew Of course. And that's just the legal issue of "Problem? Just [cruel violence]!"
The other is that people will not act, speak, think, fell as humans out of fear of making a mistake.
We can see the consequences of this brutish formula in North Korea. People may not steal anything or say anything bad about their dear leader. But they don't live a humane life anymore. They don't live. No one does. Not even their dear leaders, who tremble in fear of reality for decades.
@bastianallgeier Great post. It is distressing to see, and the parallels to Great Depression plus “after” are frightening. Willful ignorance is a powerful drug. Thank you for sharing!
@bastianallgeier @sarajw Please don’t take it down.
@bastianallgeier thanks for writing and sharing this.
@bastianallgeier amazing, fascinating read. Totally agree. My grandfather navigated a plane that dropped bombs on Nazis. What a weird time in history, huh. And we both turned out antifascists. Kudos to you, man. For writing this and for choosing the right side of history.
@bastianallgeier Have you’ve seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s video about his father too?
@amazing_snacks @bastianallgeier It’s very powerful.
@bastianallgeier Danke für den Text. Mein Opa ist kurz nach meiner Geburt gestorben, er hatte einen ähnlichen Werdegang und Überzeugungen. Ich hab schon oft überlegt, wie ich mich wohl mit ihm verstanden hätte.
Packen wir’s an.
@bastianallgeier I'm just listening to The Rest Is History podcast series on the Nazis, and it is very clear that it could happen again, and it could happen here.
@bastianallgeier The second, most recent, part starts here:
[The Rest Is History] 404. The Nazis in Power: The Night of the Long Knives #theRestIsHistory
https://podcastaddict.com/the-rest-is-history/episode/169115618
@bastianallgeier The earlier series on Hitler's rise to power starts here:
[The Rest Is History] 295: The Rise of the Nazis #theRestIsHistory
https://podcastaddict.com/the-rest-is-history/episode/163257061
@BackFromTheDud @bastianallgeier I mean but honestly there's still a long way to go. Terrifying echoes, the same direction, but even if Trump wins the next presidential election that puts us around 1932 on the Hitlerometer.
@bencurthoys @bastianallgeier Listening to the same podcast series, and as someone with a Grandfather who flew heavy bombers over Germany with the RAAF, the worrying seeing the parallels as Nazis rise again...
@caity @bastianallgeier My Grandfather was in a Lancaster Bomber. Can't remember his role; not pilot. Navigator, I think.
@bastianallgeier @kithrup thank you for taking the time to put this top paper, and the risk to share it on a public forum
@bastianallgeier @fuzztech This is an amazing post, and so badly needed right now. Thank you for sharing it.
@bastianallgeier powerful story that took courage and, assuredly, a lot of emotion/inner struggle to write. I thank you for having the courage.
@bastianallgeier Thank you so much for sharing.
@bastianallgeier Great, courageous piece. Thank you.
@bastianallgeier @halfbyte thank you so much for sharing. I grew up in Chile in the 90s, we had a dictator in the 70s. When I was 12 I learned that my best friend (and his family) were a supporters of him, my friend told me anyone who commits a crime should be killed immediately, and that’s the only way to be safe. I’ll never forget that moment, before I thought we shared the same values, could never see him again the same way.
«My grandpa taught me that Nazis are fantastic storytellers. The new Nazis are on Tiktok and elsewhere on social media, telling great stories. Stories of safety, of simplicity, of order and justice. Stories of lives without crises. Adventure stories.»
@bastianallgeier This is a brilliant, brave piece of writing. Thank you for posting it.
I've also recently been thinking a lot about my German grandparents. Their story is very different from your grandpa's (they were Jewish refugees from the Nazis, and very lucky to escape in the 30s) but learning about their lives led me to the same conclusions as you, and, also like you, to an anti-fascism I feel in my bones.
@bastianallgeier This is well written and very important. Not only for Germany, but America too.
@bastianallgeier Thank you for writing this. I've had the unforunate chance to experience something like that in my family and it's so hard to describe to people how messed up it is.
“My grandpa taught me that Nazis are fantastic storytellers. The new Nazis are on Tiktok and elsewhere on social media, telling great stories.”
I think the economy and clarity of conservative storytelling contributes enormously to cultivating conservatives. Conservatives think linearly. Their stories pit good guys against bad guys without the clutter and confusion of nuance. Thus Fox News. Thus Bill O’Reilly histories. Thus the Redemption. The list goes on.
️ @bastianallgeier thank you for writing 
@bastianallgeier Thank you for writing.
@bastianallgeier Thank you for sharing this.
@bastianallgeier thank you for sharing this. I hope you decide to leave this up. I have a similar story as my grandfather was Waffen SS in Poland. When my kids said it can’t happen here I would tell them of seeing Star Wars, watching Star Trek and eating ice cream sandwiches with him as a kid. If he ever found out that my parents adopted a Jewish kid (me) he never let that stop him from complaining about the Jews ruining everything in front of me as I got older. It was painful to reconcile this.
It can happen. It is happening. It cannot continue.
@bastianallgeier seems rather harsh judging him as a young boy, who brain had not fully developed. He was still a child at 16. My grand dad was in the kkk, and he moved on from it in age and became a work member of society. Who wasn't racist