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152 points doener | 11 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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octaane ◴[] No.44416911[source]
Is anyone surprised by this? Europeans still vividly remember, and are reminded, of the cost of WWII. When the head of a company, no matter how trendy, sieg heils on stage (twice!) and then goes on to publicly appear at far-right german political rallies - europeans take note, and act accordingly.
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v5v3[dead post] ◴[] No.44416970[source]
[flagged]
nick_ ◴[] No.44417031[source]
He went to Auschwitz after being pressured to apologize for some unhinged tweets. This was all before he swig heiled twice on stage.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68055368.amp

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1. v5v3 ◴[] No.44417047{3}[source]
Wow, didn't know that. Thanks.
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2. fluidcruft ◴[] No.44417110[source]
He also has been known to show up at costume parties dressed as a Nazi commander. (Long forgotten controversy from over a decade ago)
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3. mschuster91 ◴[] No.44417190[source]
wtf, the only such instance I remember from a VIP is one of the UK princes. How can these people think that such stuff is acceptable is beyond me.
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4. fluidcruft ◴[] No.44417246{3}[source]
It came up at the same time as the UK prince as a "wealthy folks just do these things it's funny and not an endorsement you pleebs don't understand" sort of way.
5. kbenson ◴[] No.44417262{3}[source]
For what it's worth, a UK prince is one of the few people or groups of people that I would assume were likely not hiding Nazi sympathies. Their entire country, and specifically their recent royal ancestors, where subject to Nazi aggression and responsible for countering it. There's a long history of dressing up as those you want to lampoon, especially in British media.
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6. fluidcruft ◴[] No.44417362{4}[source]
Well, there is Edward VIII which as an American who doesn't follow UK monarchy drama was flabbergasted and in disbelief to learn about and which triggered a wikipedia rabbithole after seeing in particular the closing credits of The Crown S2E6
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7. kbenson ◴[] No.44438930{5}[source]
I haven't watched it, and skimming the wikipedia page isn't making it obvious what you might be alluding to, other than maybe him touring Germany prior to the war.

I'm not entirely sure where the downvotes came from since other than you nobody bothered to respond, but maybe it's based on people's belief that Nazis are some special and unique threat or that the only thing that should be thought about when they are mentioned is concentration camps and their treatment of the Jewish people, but they did so much more than just that, even if that was uniquely horrifying for the period. The Jews weren't the only people sent to concentration camps, and overall, WWII cost 70-85 million people their lives. Nazi Germany affected so many people, nobody gets to claim them as uniquely their own boogie men to the exclusion of all others.

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8. fluidcruft ◴[] No.44448926{6}[source]
He was part of a plot to depose Elizabeth, reinstall himself as king with the help of Germany.
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9. kbenson ◴[] No.44451476{7}[source]
Hmm, from some light reading I'm unsure how active he was as "part of the plot". In any case, that sort of supports my original claim, in that the British royals not only have a history of Nazis attacking their country, but trying to meddle with their royal line and succession, which also wouldn't enamor the royals to them.
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10. fluidcruft ◴[] No.44452102{8}[source]
Honestly when watching I had figured The Crown was playing it up for drama or invented it whole-cloth because the whole thing was so foreign vs what I was taught about WW2 British monarchy. And that's why the way they calmly deliver receipts (artifacts from the Windsor File/Marburg Files) in the credits triggered a rabbit hole of surreal bewilderment. In fact you will find historians of the British royalty who say The Crown was very lenient in its handling. But specifically about S2E6 there's a section here that summarizes what was in the episode

https://www.history.com/articles/history-behind-the-crown-qu...

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11. kbenson ◴[] No.44466886{9}[source]
I actually ran across that and read the relevant section when googling earlier in this thread. To me it seemed unclear what his motivations allegiances were, just that enough people were worried that he was a piece on the board that could cause problems that he was removed from it. That doesn't mean it was likely, it just means that they didn't want to deal with the complications of having to think about it at all would entail, or to worry about players that would be enticed by it, etc. I imagine in a time of way you try to reduce complexities and unknown as much as possible. Even if a few people have concern over him, it may be easier to just ship him away and appease anyone's concerns if he's not meaningfully important to the war effort. He was made a major-general, but how much experience he had in that role and how good he was performing in it is unknown to me, but I suspect it was at least partially honorific or nepotism whether from the top down or emergent (do I promote the royal or the unknown? Which is safer for my career...).

But that's all during the war, and with one individual of the royals, and I would think the rest of the royals would not be happy going forward with the Nazis thinking they could mess with the line of succession/assassinate they King.