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Abstract of morals and ethics term paper
Morals and ethics in society
Sources of ethics
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The book, Your Loyal and Loving Son, is a compilation of letters home written by Karl Fuchs, a young German male sharing his experiences, feelings and emotions from 1937, when he comes of age for the Labor Service until his premature death on the Eastern Front in 1941. Even though many contend that serving in the German military during WWII inevitably classifies an individual as evil, Karl Fuchs, a young man who grew up in Germany during the Nazi Party 's escalation of power ought not be generalized into the taxonomy of 'immoral Nazi ' for the underlying principle, his only true offenses of patriotism, a sense of nationalism and honor developed as a result of exposure to the Nazi faction 's propaganda machine. Many argue that service in the …show more content…
Even though many argue that service in the German military during the 2nd world war makes a person criminal, Karl Fuchs, a young man who grew up in Germany during the Nazi Party 's rise to power should not be placed into the category of being "evil" because his only true crimes were that of patriotism, a strong sense of nationalism and honor. In his letter dated 22 August 1937 to his parents, after four months at the Schnaittach, National Labor Service Camp, Karl writes: Dear …show more content…
Throughout his letters we repeatedly see this notions. However, by the Spring of 1941 he tires of waiting for battle action and anxiously awaits the birth of their son, we start to see a shift of serving primarily for the honor of the Fatherland, to one of honor for his family. For example, in a letter to Mädi from 13 May 1941 Karl writes, "I was daydreaming today...I heard church bells...announcing peace... One day peace will come and your tired soldier will come home, and rest his head in your lap." The most important reason that Karl Fuchs should not be described as being evil, is the unfortunate fact that he grew up in a Germany consistently bombarded with Nazi propaganda. And as author Russell Grenwell is quoted as stating, "If a thing is said often enough it becomes true," certainly could be said of children like Karl growing up hearing and saying, "Heil Hitler." Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, promoted the Furher 's idea of education, that it was essential that German children understand the importance of race and equip them with the necessary tools to fight for the honor of the
On Hitler’s Mountain is a memoir of a child named Irmgard Hunt and her experiences growing up in Nazi Germany. She herself has had many experiences of living during that dark time, she actually met Hitler, had a grandfather who hated Hitler's rule, and had no thoughts or feelings about the Nazi rule until the end of WWII. Her memoir is a reminder of what can happen when an ordinary society chooses a cult of personality over rational thought. What has happened to the German people since then, what are they doing about it today and how do they feel about their past? Several decades later, with most Nazis now dead or in hiding, and despite how much Germany has done to prevent another Nazi rule, everyone is still ashamed of their ancestors’ pasts.
The next text analyzed for this study is the first monograph read for the study, therefore, there is a lot of information that had not been previously discussed by the latter authors: Claudia Koonz 's 1987 text Mothers in the Fatherland. The author begins her text with a Preface where she discusses her interview with Gertrude Scholtz-Klink, the leader of the Women 's Labor Service. While this is not the first time in the study that Scholtz-Klink 's name appears, but Koonz 's discussion of the interview personifies Scholtz-Klink, rather than just make her a two-dimensional character in historical research. For the first time in this study, the reader can understand the reasoning some people (right or wrong) sided with the Nazi Party. The interview
Storm of Steel provides a memoir of the savagery and periods of beauty that Ernst Jünger’s experienced while serving the German army during the First World War. Though the account does not take a clear stand, it lacks any embedded emotional effects or horrors of the Great War that left so few soldiers who survived unaffected. Jünger is very straightforward and does remorse over any of his recollections. The darkness of the hallucinations Jünger reports to have experienced provides subtle anti-war sentiment. However, in light of the descriptive adventures he sought during the brief moments of peace, the darkness seems to be rationalized as a sacrifice any soldier would make for duty and honor in a vain attempt for his nation’s victory. The overall lack of darkness and Jünger’s nonchalance about the brutality of war is enough to conclude that the account in Storm of Steel should be interpreted as a “pro” war novel; however, it should not be interpreted as “pro” violence or death.
Griffin spends a good portion of “Our Secret” writing about Himmler’s childhood. It is through his family’s history and child-rearing practices that she hopes to find answers. When Himmler is just ten years old he is told by his father that “his childhood is over now” (236). Himmler has to take himself seriously now and obey his father’s watchful eye. Everything Heinrich does from that point on is directly meant to influence his future and who he will become. This is a choice the society he is born into makes for him, he has no choice. Gebhard, Himmler’s father, is extremely overbearing and controlling of Himmler. Like many Germans of the time, he follows the advice of German child-rearing experts: “Crush the will. . .Establish dominance. Permit no disobedience. Suppress everything in the child” (237). German parents are taught that children “should be permeated by the impossibility from lock...
In this passage, an excerpt from Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the Light We Cannot See, Doerr depicts Werner, an orphan German boy, visiting Frederick’s house, whom he had met in Schulpforta, an elite Nazi academy. Through the experiences Werner has with Frederick’s family in Berlin, Doerr emphasizes Werner’s discomfort towards Frederick’s relationship with his mother to convey the corrupt nature of parental love may harm the child.
A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is a memoir about his time as a Jewish child in multiple ghettos and death camps in and around Germany during World War II. The author shares about his reunions with family and acquaintances from the war in the years between then and now. Buergenthal wished to share his Holocaust story for a number of reasons: to prevent himself from just being another number, to contribute to history, to show the power and necessity of forgiveness, the will to not give up, and to question how people change in war allowing them to do unspeakable things. The memoir is not a cry for private attention, but a call to break the cycle of hatred and violence to end mass crimes.
“The Spirit of 1914” gives a comprehensive examination of the opinions and feelings felt during the beginning of the Great War by the German people. This monograph goes into extensive detail on the complexity of the German nation’s reactions and response to the vast, “patriotic outbursts…which many contemporaries and historians categorized as “war enthusiasm.””(2) The content of the book also centers on how German unity was portrayed. “Conservative journals claimed that these crowds spoke for public opinion…what had transformed a materialistic, egotistical German “society” into an idealistic, fraternal, national German “community.””(231)Verhey challenges the myth that all Germans wanted to go to war in 1914 by methodically explaining each of the different regions, classes, and political parties’ reactions and responses. The argument of his work comes down to how well he is able to answer the questions of:
In the Red Badge of Courage, the protagonist Henry, is a young boy who yearns to be a Great War hero, even though he has never experienced war himself. Anxious for battle, Henry wonders if he truly is courageous, and stories of soldiers running make him uncomfortable. He struggles with his fantasies of courage and glory, and the truth that he is about to experience. He ends up running away in his second battle.
Paul Baumer is a 19-year-old volunteer to the German army during World War I. He and his classmates charge fresh out of high school into military service, hounded by the nationalist ranting of a feverish schoolmaster, Kantorek. Though not all of them want to enlist, they do so in order to save face. Their first stop is boot camp, where life is still laughter and games. “Where are all the medals?” asks one. “Just wait a month and I’ll have them,” comes the boisterous response. This is their last vestige of boyhood.
Recently, a 38 year old woman named, Jennifer Teege, discovered that her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the sadistic Nazi who was commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland and the person who killed more than 8,000 Jews. When Teege was going through depression, she tried doing psychological research at a library, which coincidently, was where she found her biological mother’s book called, "I Have to Love My Father, Don't I?". After realizing this discovery, she could not phantom the fact that she was related to this “monster”. Sometimes, she questions if whether or not she has any traits of him, but learned to accept her history and that they are both two very different people. Throughout Teege’s years, she was born to a Nigerian father who was a student which her mother had an affair with. Since her mother had a lot of work to do, she took Teege to Salberg House, a Catholic home for infants in suburban Munich. She was taken care of for about 3 years, but was adopted and was not able to see her mother until age 21. Now, Teege still sets out to discover more about her family’s history and even wrote books about it as well. In addition, she hopes to find her true identity and expresses that life should not be lived in the past.
The author's main theme centers not only on the loss of innocence experienced by Paul and his comrades, but the loss of an entire generation to the war. Paul may be a German, but he may just as easily be French, English, or American. The soldiers of all nations watched their co...
Simon Keller argues in his essay "Patriotism as Bad Faith" that patriotism is not a virtue but it is actually a vice. Keller begins by splitting the views on this philosophical debate into three different representations. The first being the "communitarian patriot", where patriotism is not only a valued virtue to someone's self but that it is actually an essential virtue. The second representation is a radical contradiction of the first, known as the "hard universalist. The hard Universalist sees patriotism as a vice instead of being any type of positive virtue. They think that everyone should be valued the same, and that there should be no favoritism. The third representation is the idea of the first two combined, to form what is called the "soft universalist." This view is understood as patriotism is allowed, and is not seen as a vice, but also that one has an obligation to the rest of the world, almost to try and treat them as a loyalty that you would have towards your own country. (p.112).
The Forgotten Soldier is not a book concerning the tactics and strategy of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Nor does it analyze Nazi ideology and philosophy. Instead, it describes the life of a typical teenage German soldier on the Eastern Front. And through this examined life, the reader receives a first hand account of the atrocious nature of war. Sajer's book portrays the reality of combat in relation to the human physical, psychological, and physiological condition.
In “My Papa’s Waltz” some readers have the perception that the dad was an abusive alcoholic. Roethke looks back as a little kid enjoying the memory that was spent with his father he admired. Most people who have not experienced war have happy memories just as I did with my brother in law. They see the soldiers as heroes and just remember the happy moment when they hear fighting has ceased and their soldiers have won. Even though the people back home have happy memories the memory has a completely different meaning to the solider. Wilfred Owen wanted to show his memory of the war through his poem. Owen wanted people to realize the destructive effects of
At the commencement of the war, the general view of the civilians and soldiers was excitement and joy. To the general public, war had “become legendary, and distance had made it seem romantic and heroic” (Zweig). The romanticized tone of the war inspired a festive attitude that permeated through each nation. Soon the “...average men and women were delighted at the prospect of war” (Russell). Otto Dix, an esteemed German painter, painted a portrait of himself before he went into the war titled, “Self Portrait of a Soldier”. Through the vibrant colors that Dix utilizes, he conveyed the message that participating in the war is an honorable act. This contributes to the overall tone of soldiers, who believed that they would gain glory and pride