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Hitler was an Everton fan who stood on the Gwladys Street Stand when he lived in Liverpool.

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Loz

That's a form of patriotism - and shows how it isn't bad for the 'outsider'.

I take pride in the fact our country is like that, and our country is a country built off of immigration. So I have a real problem with these dîckhead 'patriots' that tell people to go back to their own country and all the negativity towards immigration.

Somewhere along the line we all came from somewhere else, so why should it matter at what point in time they came here?

Illuminati? ha ha ha!

Free Mason??

I think it's interesting that in school I was taught WW2 was started when Germany invaded Poland (I think), yet my friend growing up in America was taught WW2 started when Japan invaded China.

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nomadic

That's it more or less.

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Poor Germans for starting WW2...

This Thread has gone way off base!

It is a football thread not a history course by Professor Tom, Professor Harry and Professor Dic(k).

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I was taught that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was a big cause of WW2. Or am I getting confused here?

MU82

I don't really know how to respond to that story. It's quite an individual case.

Hippo, but just because terrible things have happened in a nations past does not mean we cannot take pride in the good. And that was the point of the analogy.

People are social people and something like a football team, or their national culture gives them a common thing to feel part of.

If we cannot take pride in our past because so much bad has happened then everyone would be completely alienated from anything as their no common interest.

Religion works like this as people want to feel part of a community. A nation is a community as well.

You're basically saying do away with community if you're completely writing off the whole concept.

There's bad in everything, we don't live in a perfect world but we try to make the best of it.

Being proud that England won the world cup or some of the most important figures in history have been English is not a bad thing.

The_Red_Cognoscente

This Thread has gone way off base!

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You think?

The British Empire actually had very similar ideas to this.

However unlike Hitler we never went completely insane and started murdering millions of innocent people.

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Funny you say that.

Because any serious historian will tell you the British empire was responsible for millions of deaths.

The Britisjh Empire adopted policies that caused as many as 29 million Indians to starve to death in 19th century in addition to many other situations...

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As for having a national day, we don't need one. In the same way we don't need to salute the flag and swear an oath every morning (as in U.S schools). They are signs of countries needing to constantly overcome their own inner feelings of inadequacy. Like a small man with a big dog.

comment by nomadic_spur (U9863)



posted 2 minutes ago


The treat of Versailles indirectly led to World War II. The Germans were harshly punished for a war (WW1) that was not their fault with a reparations bill that was impossible to pay and they lost large territories that were previously theirs.

Hitler and the Naz! party were able to feed off this sense of injustice and justify invading other countries.
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And what exactly was Hitler going to do with it?

Hitler wasn't bothered about reclaiming land, or even Germany and it's people He was only bothered about personal power.

Any of the German people who didn't agree with him.......

Nomadic - thats about the size of it.

Perhaps you could educate Hippo, who thinks the Germans invaded Poland because they drank to much Holsten at the Oktoberfest!!

Love to stay but it's time to invade the mess to liberate a steak

Kagawa

I thought it was the Kaiser Chiefs?

hippo

Thanks for that. I had a feeling I was getting confused there.

I haven't read all the comments but because this article will mainly be discussed by supporters of PL clubs it will generally be anti-internationals. If you speak to fans of lower divisional clubs it's a very different story. I know many Oxford and Swindon fans and they are far more nationalistic than I could ever be.

Also Northeners can quite rightly feel detached from the England team because of the overuse of Wembley. Wasn't it better when the stadium was being redeveloped and the games were spread around the Country.

I was taught that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was a big cause of WW2. Or am I getting confused here?


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Technically it was. It started WW1 and after Germany and their ideas for a seafaring empire were thwarted by the allies in 1918 they were a humiliated nation.

That, combined with a terrible economic depression made the German people ripe for the manipulations of a man like Hitler and his particular cult of personality.

The rest is literally history.

On a separate note, I watched a great 80's movie based on the real life events of the escape from Sobibor, a concentration camp in Poland.

Was brilliant and I recommend you all see it.