City fan' letter in "Radio Times"

[AliBobbyJ]

On another note. Lots of weird people were members of the Hitler Youth. When you're fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, you do some strange things and you belong to some strange organisations. Who is 100% certain on here that they wouldn't have been part of the Hitler Youth in the atmosphere of 1930s Germany? I can't say I am. And I think of myself as a firm socialist. I suspect that in a totalitarian society some people take full advantage of it to get a kind of power that they would never in a million years have got. Some actively oppose it, at the risk of their lives. And most keep their heads down, waiting for this to pass. I'm not by any means certain that I wouldn't have been part of the third group.
Towards the end of his life, Nobel prize winner Gunther Grass even owned up to having been a member of an SS battalion towards the end of the war. Now that was a jolt for a lot of people inside and outside Germany. Including myself. Bert, so far as I'm aware, was never in the SS. That would be a different kettle of fish entirely. My parents both fought in the war (mother in the land army) and had a lifelong hatred of all Germans. They saw the newsreels about the liberation of the camps at the end of the war, and were deeply, deeply shocked. I understand their hatred, and don't judge it, not having lived what they saw. But I've never remotely felt it myself.

Thoughtful stuff and it rings true. I think most English people were able to distinguish between ordinary Germans and hard-core Nazis like the S.S.; Bert's sporting heroics and his acculturation to English ways helped with that. It's a moving moment in the film "The Bert Trautmann Story" when he talks about how Manchester folk helped him see what tolerance & forgiveness mean, and how in his old age he said he felt more English now than German.
There's also been some (recent) willingness to forgive the Japanese for their army's atrocities. Actor Mark Rylance did a lovely interview for a tv series called "My Grandfather's War" recalling his grandad's time as a P.O.W. after the fall of Hong Kong and seeing a strong moral equivalency between Jap brutality and the suffering inflicted on Hiroshima.

Last, yes you do join some strange organizations age 15: I was in the Ian Allan Locomotive Club. And I supported City.

 

[Big Swifty]

With due deference to Rylance, there is no equivalence between Jap torturers and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The nearest equivalence to the Japanese cities would be the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in February 1945, when the war was nearly over, and a city of little strategic importance was seton fire, roasting up to 25,000 civilians and devastating the city, an action which was dubiously defended by some apologists.

I reckon it was verging on a war crime

 

[Bonzo Nododo]

Thoughtful stuff and it rings true. I think most English people were able to distinguish between ordinary Germans and hard-core Nazis like the S.S.; Bert's sporting heroics and his acculturation to English ways helped with that. It's a moving moment in the film "The Bert Trautmann Story" when he talks about how Manchester folk helped him see what tolerance & forgiveness mean, and how in his old age he said he felt more English now than German.
There's also been some (recent) willingness to forgive the Japanese for their army's atrocities. Actor Mark Rylance did a lovely interview for a tv series called "My Grandfather's War" recalling his grandad's time as a P.O.W. after the fall of Hong Kong and seeing a strong moral equivalency between Jap brutality and the suffering inflicted on Hiroshima.

Last, yes you do join some strange organizations age 15: I was in the Ian Allan Locomotive Club. And I supported City.

The Locomotive Club would be perfect for derailing.

 

[john blue]

Was it tedd knott or something similar that used to write in a lot to the fanzines and I think also some of the national papers. Forgive me if I have it wrong.

Just reminded me of him reading that letter.

correct.

 

[Blue Mist]

I once had a cup of coffee in Guatemala. Age 20 I took the bus in from Mexico and the border guards made me submit to a haircut before they'd admit a long-haired hippy Communist. They gave me a coffee while they did it.

Was it shit ? But I suppose you were in a police station (part of the original quote)

Anyway, surely as it was the Mexican Border Guards who made you get your haircut, ergo (I learnt a new word) you had a coffee in Meeh he co.

Are you still a communist ?

 

[JGL07]

Bell Book and……..(catholic ritual)

Bell, Book, and Kendall?

 

[tweety]

Inspirational, Liz. Puts me in mind of this lovely piece about Vera Cohen, until recently the oldest living Blue.

The incredible life and times of Man City's most loyal fan

From Manchester City's first league title win in the 1930s to Pep Guardiola... she witnessed it all

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

That was a beautiful piece that brought a tear to my eye.

 

[better dead than red]

Who. or what, or where - is a "minkey"?