They never learn.. Berchtesgaden

[Maurice]

Peter,

Some building are of historical value because of their architecture, others because of what happend there, some for both reasons. The Hotel might only fit in as historical important because of her guests, like Paula Hitler, Erwin Rommel, Chamberlain, Lord George, etc, and even more important, because of one of the surrenders signed there by Kesselring.


Jon&Don,

Thanks for your replies! I read some interesting new things.

Most countries have unpleasant heritage, some more than others. We in the Netherlands have slavery, our colonies, and the jews in WW2. Some of these subjects are widely covered in the media, other subjects are laid to rest, although they are as important as the more pleasant things history provides us with. Untill recent years the general opinion about the war was the we didn't like them, we all were member of the resistance and we helped the jews by giving them shelter. Ah, those bad Germans did it all themself!
Reality is that the relative largest number of jews were deported from the NL, our industry was making overtime for the Wehrmacht, we had a large group of volunteers for the WSS and the NSB became very popular after may 1940. It's never black-white, but always grey, and this becomes more and more clear nowadays.

Kind regards,

Maurice

[Chaser]

The thing is you do not need to teach absolutes either, as the world is never black and white. We teach about the Holocaust, but nobody has ever heard of Hitler's top spy, Wilhelm Canaris, that flew 76 jews to safety before being executed. We don't hear about Hermann G******246;rings brother who was involved in jewish refugee escaping. We never hear about Rommels refusal to execute US POWs after an order from Hitler.

The only problem with the US is that we teach absolutes here. The US was good, the Germans were Nazi's, and the French were victims. They vaguely discuss resistance movements...but for the most part, that is the thing. It is taught that the Germans invaded and then that is it. Some of it could be time constraints, some could be the writers.

I do not by any means blame the teachers entirely, as they have an obligation to teach 4000 years of history in 90 days, and there are a lot of things to cover, but I do wish that people were told of the exceptions to the stereotype, like Saburo Sakai, who didn't shoot down a Red Cross transport despite orders and RETURNED from a Kamikaze mission because he didn't feel that crashing into an ocean was acceptable...and his book "Samurai" in which he describes Kamikazes being wasteful of resources.

*laughs* I had a long post typed up after this, but do not want to get this off the subject discussing history and education and into the grey area leading to politics. Maurice...glad you learned about the American education system....and I'm glad that other nations still teach the black marks...but maybe it would help ease the pain of the black marks by teaching of those few shining examples of defiance.
Jon

[Peter_Suciu]

Some building are of historical value because of their architecture, others because of what happend there, some for both reasons. The Hotel might only fit in as historical important because of her guests, like Paula Hitler, Erwin Rommel, Chamberlain, Lord George, etc, and even more important, because of one of the surrenders signed there by Kesselring.

I agree but in the case of the hotel I'm not seeing anything particularly significant. If you saved every building where so-called VIPs sleep then we'd have a lot of old buildings and nothing new.

Many important people stayed at the original Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. It had been in its original location I believe 70+ years and presidents stayed there, visiting royals, etc. The building was torn down and a new Waldorf Astoria (a bigger version of the original hotel) was build on 49th Street and Park Avenue and is there today.

BTW...the site of the original Waldorf Astoria was at 34th Street and 5th Avenue. The building that is there now...the Empire State Building.

[K.Chan]

someone claims that Germans are eradicating everything in Berchtesgaden to do with the Reich. That is false. There is a small museum about the Reich there. I have been there.

[Rob Brown]

If the building is unsafe then for the safety and development of the region it will have to come down, Im sure there are other buildings still there that reflect the WW2 era.

[Federico Perez]

In this age of technology where photos,film documentarys and "historical movies" most people in charge of making the dessisions to preserve this places make the easy choice, "blow it, we have the visual record and thats what's important" and is less costly to secure and preserve. The incredible thing about this is that this sites will atract more people triying to imagine how it was using the vintage reference!!!!

Is this kind of thinking that give us the "misterys" of the piramids reason,use and constructions, the actual use and what was inside the Parthenon, there are a lot of opinions about that. and most important the Roman colisseum wich was sistematicaly destroy until the pope save it from further destruction as a simbol of history turning points. People today belive like in the distant past, "we are advance, people want the future, the past is for historians" The most INCREDIBLE is that we know of the might of other cultures mainly because of their ARCHITECTURE, ART and in some cases writen history because is was incorporated in the building as a part of it . Now the most important goverment buildings in Germany where the dessisions and actions that shape the world we live today are long gone, only secondary structures remain and even those are look with a red eye, now we have to depend on those vintage photos and film, and that is more fragile and less personal than a building or ruins where the event made it's start in the first place . That's my personal, very personal opinion.

Federico
p.s. PLEASE excuse my grammar!!