There could be some serious historical value or insights in that journal, even if there are terrible deeds listed within. If you can't bring yourself to read it, perhaps consider sharing it with a WWII museum or historian.

They might be willing to leave your great-grandfather's name out of it, if that's a concern for you.

I will definitely have to do something with it, at the very least photocopy it as another user suggested. It has luckily survived a fire, but I don't know if it'll be around forever.

Consider sending the journal (or a copy) to NIOD:

https://www.niod.nl/en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIOD_Institute_for_War,_Holoca...

To add, from their website:

> Even today, interesting things from the Second World War resurface. When people move house, when a house is demolished or when an attic is cleared. These finds can range from a pile of letters, to photos, films, diaries, documents or objects. Don’t throw these documents away. NIOD welcomes donations of new material.

Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars), and honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have been all condoned, like the US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan is. The Japanese committed vast atrocities in China, but they were never made to sit in a war crimes communal because the US thought the chemical warfare research was worthwhile knowing. Either way, what you grandfather did or didn't do doesn't make you a bad person, and reading it might give you reflection to make better choices in your life?

Don't know much about the history of this, but it seems like there were substantial war crimes tribunals in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#War_crime_.... Almost a thousand executed, and thousands more given some prison time, including some very high ranking generals and politicians.

Interesting! Thanks! I knew specifically about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 not getting tried by the Americans, didn't know the rest.

I see, yeah it's not surprising there were exceptions. Obviously agree with your larger point that winners tend not to subject themselves to tribunals.

>honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have been all condoned

Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. "History is written by the victors" is one of the truest cliches. But whether crimes or atrocities are acknowledged or punished tells you nothing about the impact or severity of the actions.

So, while one could certainly recite a laundry list of atrocities committed by the Allies which a victorious Nazi Germany would have prosecuted, and many by Imperial Japan that went unpunished (though you're wrong that none of them were charged with war crimes - many were, even if many others like Unit 731 escaped prosecution due to the US wanting their research [edit: I see someone else responded with this before I finished my reply]), WWII is difficult to write off as "everyone and everything was awful" like a lot of wars.

Every side was indeed awful, but Nazi Germany's and Imperial Japan's actions in particular were so unprecedentedly awful that far-future generations in those countries probably would've eventually had a reckoning and realized they were the worst actors in the war, like what eventually happened in the US when it comes to treatment of Native Americans, propping up brutal dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, and other things.

All this to say - if the parent poster's great-grandfather was a member of a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity, for example, it can't and shouldn't be dismissed as "well, that's war, everyone is culpable, and you can't know what it was like to be in their shoes, and either side would be considered as evil if the other side won". (I know you didn't quite say that, but there is a certain false semi-equivalence here, I think.) It's not exactly wrong, but it misses a lot of the bigger picture.

> if the parent poster's great-grandfather was a member of a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity

Britain and Belgium especially have this all over their history, and no one cares.

Wrt Britain what are you referring to particularly? I know all sorts of terrible things British people have done, and some 'we' are doing (selling weapons to people for murdering citizens, currently) but I've not heard of murder squads in Britain since the civil war??

Boer war for instance. Pretty well everyone in the concentration camps they had died.

Your reference to Britain having done what the Waffen SS did:

"division that tracked down and executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity"

I thought you meant that. It's not more palatable, but actions abroad have a different complexion somehow. Governments can get away with actions the citizenry don't witness (or citizens can claim ignorance) which is different to if there's literally squads picking people off the streets in front of your own eyes; which is what you referred to.

Like I said, I'm aware of many atrocities by British people but just not of that particular one in recent history?

I'm guessing they're mostly referring to the history of colonialism by imperial Britain and King Leopold of Belgium. I'm not sure anything was on the scale of the extent of the Nazi regime's worst actions (though Leopold wasn't far off), but there were certainly many atrocities.

Oh my. Well just off the top of my head. The UK has committed widespread systematic war crimes/crimes against humanity for generations in Ireland (+ is responsible for the deaths of the famine), Kenya, India, South Africa and localised war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and many Asian countries. Bombing of Dresden also. To name but a few. Then you can probably argue forcing and dumping opium on China is another one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes

Even today that are recent British war crimes where the perpetrators are alive and yet will never be prosecuted.

> Every side was indeed awful, but Nazi Germany's and Imperial Japan's actions in particular were so unprecedentedly awful that far-future generations in those countries probably would've eventually had a reckoning and realized they were the worst actors in the war, like what eventually happened in the US when it comes to treatment of Native Americans, propping up brutal dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, and other things.

You honestly think Americans are aware of even the most common atrocities committed in the name of colonization? My read is a) they mostly don't and b) there is an ongoing effort to victim-blame Native Americans going back centuries.

The alternate reality where Nazi Deutschland won would likely similarly deal with the occupied USA/UK/etc like the US treated the natives.

> there is an ongoing effort to victim-blame Native Americans

For example, CNN's Rick Santorum:

> We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture.

https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/138668534052253696...

The real curiosity is why corporate media allows such speech to be broadcast as if it was in any way truthful. Let's all forget that the US Constitution was based in part on the Iroquois Confederacy [1].

Santorum is on CNN's payroll. Who or whatever is supporting Santorum isn't stupid, likely it supports some revenue/marketing scheme. All of this is fully funded.

[1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/indians-and-the-us-constituti...

>You honestly think Americans are aware of even the most common atrocities committed in the name of colonization?

Increasingly, yes. I'm sure it'll be many more decades before it becomes more widely accepted, though.

>The alternate reality where Nazi Deutschland won would likely similarly deal with the occupied USA/UK/etc like the US treated the natives.

Very likely, yes.

>"History is written by the victors" is one of the truest cliches.

It really, really isn't. Like, at all. No Historian would agree with you.

Can you elaborate? Genuinely curious. In what way is it not? Especially for the first few decades after a particular event. I'd agree that the victors don't necessarily have a permanent monopoly on history.

It is a very lazy and ultimately harmful way to introduce the concept of bias. There isn't really a perfectly pithy way to cover such a complex topic, but much better than winners writing history is writers writing history. This is more useful than it initially seems because until fairly recently the literate were a minority, and those with enough literary training to actually write historical narratives formed an even smaller and more distinct class within that. To give a few examples, Genghis Khan must surely go down as one of the great victors in all history, but he is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes. Or the senatorial elite can be argued to have "lost" the struggle at the end of the Republic that eventually produced Augustus, but the Roman literary classes were fairly ensconced within (or at least sympathetic towards) that order, and thus we often see the fall of the Republic presented negatively.

Of course, writers are a diverse set, and so this is far from a magical solution to solving the problems of bias. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.

Valid points.

Maybe it'd be more accurate to say "the immediate history that holds the most power in a certain area tends to be the history that's written by the most powerful entities in that area at that time", or something?

Nazi Germany wasn't able to spread its narrative anywhere once it lost its power, while the Allies were able to spread theirs in most places. If Nazi Germany had decisively won and became the top global superpower, I that situation probably would've been reversed.

Genghis Khan didn't hold the most power in certain areas after a certain period of time. When he did hold that power, even if the literary classes under his rule hated him, I assume their narratives probably wouldn't have spread or been believed very widely? Due to self-censorship, direct censorship and violence from his forces, and his counter-narratives. But maybe I'm wrong; I know very little about historiography.

Indeed, however there was something uniquely terrible about the Nazi atrocities.

The Nazis invaded countries and then systematically got to the task of murdering their entire totally harmless Jewish population, simply because of their ethnicity.

There was no possible military or tribal gain or anything, it was just pure racial hatred.

What's especially horrifying is that Germany was a very advanced civilization using sophisticated and systematic means to accomplish this.

They really aren't unique. It's happened in many many different places. It honestly is just what humans are capable of.

JFC, I agree that the poster’s not responsible for his grandfather’s sins, but let’s not literally “both sides” the literal Nazis.

Edit: “sins” -> “war crimes”

> Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars)

I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination - and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is comparable to most wars. Nazi Germany is viewed differently historically because it was different.

That is not to say OP's grandfather is responsible for all of Nazi Germany's actions, but it is not just "lots of people did shitty things."

>I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination - and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is comparable to most wars.

That wasn't the reason for the war. Nor were there any country actually try to help the jews before or during the war.

It's also not different from thoughts at the time held throughout the western world. Britain specifically didn't help the jews during ww2 because they thought they would flood Palestine (a british colony) after the war. A famous quote in Canada before ww2 was that "We'd take as many as we can, but none was too much." America as well famously turned away boat loads of jews.

> Nor were there any country actually try to help the jews before or during the war.

Depending on how you define "country" (as opposed to just "a large fraction or majority of its citizens"), Denmark did in fact help Jews, at least Danish ones.

And the story of Bulgaria is .. complicated. Again, they protected Bulgarian Jews in practice.

Portugal helped not only Portuguese Jews, but many others as well. In particular, they generally allowed a huge number of refugees (16% of the country's population), including Jews, into the country.

It's true that the main Allied powers were not particularly going out of their way to help Jews, but "any country" is a high bar.

Saving the Jews was not on any country's radar entering WWII. It was only afterwards that evidence of holocaust was discovered.

That's absolutely veritably false. The Polish government-in-exile in London first reported crimes in the Auschwitz complex to the western public in 1941.

Yes you are correct. I should amend my previous statement.

>It was only afterwards that evidence of holocaust was verified and/or believed.*

The reports from the Polish government in exile did not make front page news. I'd still stand by the earlier statement:

> Saving the Jews was not on any country's radar entering WWII.

You might argue that Poland wanted to save the Jews, but at the point that reports of mass murder were coming out of Germany in 1941, the Polish government no longer had a country to manage. They had exited WWII as losers.

Reports of mass murder of Jews weren't verified by the USG until 1942. I would still argue that saving the Jews did not even crack the top 10 reasons for the USG invading Europe. After all, they verified these reports and still waited 2 years before making landfall.

>Saving the Jews was not on any country's radar entering WWII & >Reports of mass murder of Jews weren't verified by the USG until 1942. I would still argue that saving the Jews did not even crack the top 10 reasons for the USG invading Europe. After all, they verified these reports and still waited 2 years before making landfall.

I absolutely agree with these.

Yes, America turned away boatloads of Jews. Yes, the world did not do enough, and turned a blind eye when it didn't affect them directly.

> That wasn't the reason for the war.

This is false. Hitler spoke and wrote at length about the "Jewish problem." It wasn't the _only_ reason for the war but it certainly was _a_ reason for the war. Even the war against the USSR was framed as against "Jewish Bolsheviks."

This is aside from the fact that OP referenced their grandfather being a member of the SS. The SS was _not_ the German army. The SS was the military organization of the Nazi party - often conflicting with the army to achieve their goals. They enforced racial policy in Germany and its conquests, ran the concentration camps and death camps, and were specifically tasked with eliminating Jews.

Perhaps it is because of the collective guilt of not having done enough for Jews at the time, but people often gloss over the explicitly racial and antisemitic aspect of World War II. The extermination of Jews was not a byproduct, it was one of the key goals.

For further detail, I encourage the interested reader to check out "The War Against the Jews" by Lucy Davidowitz.

Agreed, a single market Europe is all the US cares about

It doesn't care if its German run, Russian run (as long as it is market based and not marxist based), or “not-German” wink run like today

It would have been tolerable just like Saudi Arabia is tolerable

Liquidity, market depth, and less people to negotiate with is the American priority

The moral highground arguments that it upholds now and in hindsight are just to continue deriving support from its own people, who culturally eat that shit up, but it can successfully package any moral argument for any scenario even if they are complete lies

that doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective. The larger your bloc is, the stronger your negotiating position is. The stronger your negotiating position is, the more you can make the US pay for your goods and services

It makes very little sense to want simpler negotiations in lieu of a strong negotiating position

Its the investors with a foothold in the US that want more markets.

The country itself is a sideshow.

At the same time they use the countries within the bloc to avoid paying taxes.

The Monuments Men Foundation[0] is a non-profit that, while they typically deal with artistic works, can absolutely assist with getting this to the right people to preserve it for historical value.

Very happy to make an introduction if needed

[0] https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/

When you say "It's typical that most people will tell you their grandpa was in the resistance, rarely they will tell you that they collaborated." - do you mean that people lie about being in the resistance or do you mean that they only talk about the war if they were part of the resistance?

Of course it might not really be lying but just being selective about what to say. Many people were collaborators early in the war when it looked like Germany was winning, but gradually shifted over to the resistance when it began to look like they would eventually lose.

Many people don't know because of the shame, their parents never told them they or their parents were collaborators. After the war many destroyed as much evidence of their crimes and kept everything to themselves. In the Netherlands the death penalty was brought back for just for these crimes after not having been carried out since 1850 (officially abolished in 1870).

There was a strong desire for revenge in the first years after the war. That meant anyone who did anything 'wrong' was not going to talk about it.

Not op, but both happen. People do lie about their own past when it is politically or otherwise inconvenient. Including to their own family. People also lie about their relatives past, if it is convenient.

And people are more likely to talk about their family past if it sounds cool and good. They are less likely to talk about ugly parts of it.

Regardless of whether ugly is personal, business related or political.

I know what you mean, OP. On the other hand, your great-grandfather was just a man, and he lived under very difficult circumstances. I'd like to think that I would have risked my life and resisted in his shoes; but I have no idea. Best case scenario is that his diary humanizes him to you and to others.

(Speaking as a Jewish American with no SSS relatives but many who perished in the Holocaust, FWIW)

>Best case scenario is that his diary humanizes him to you and to others.

And the worst case scenario is that his diary demonizes him. Given the stories they mention and the potential SS division they hint at (perhaps one of the mobile death squad or extermination camp divisions), it seems quite possible.

But, especially so long after he's died, it might be better to know who he really was, whichever way it turns out. If I had a relative who potentially did and expressed terrible things, even though it'd hurt, I think I'd want to know the truth.

Or, as another commenter said, they could ask someone else to read it and give a vague but honest summary. If the contents are bad, they can learn that fact without the additional serious emotional impact of reading the lurid details.

There was a lot of mental manipulation to scapegoat the Jews for everything, to make them be seen as animals and not humans. I think reading this paper can help to better identify how the media tries to manipulate us.

This brings up a question: should children be responsible for 'sins' of their fathers (parents)?

In my opinion, no. However, it gets complicated when one's status is derived from misdeeds of the predecessors.

No, one hundred times no. Just ask yourself the opposite: should a child be honored for the goodness of his parents, if he is a vicious criminal? It's obvious that he shouldn't. By what principle could we say that, but still hold children responsible for their parents' wrongdoing?

It would be worth scanning its pages (even without reading) to make sure whatever history is in there is saved for posterity.

Maybe let someone else read it?

You could then ask them about it in non detailed ways.