Talk:Herbert von Dirksen

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Explanation[edit]

I removed the tag saying this page needs attention from an expert in history. Most of this article is my work, and it seems like one was trying to question it. The Auswärtiges Amt was a very elitist group drawn from the German upper classes with a disproportionate number of aristocrats among its ranks. Dirksen himself fit the profile of a typical German diplomat, coming from a very wealthy aristocratic family, through the Dirksens were very new aristocrats, having had been ennobled by Wilhelm II in 1890, not at all like the ancient Junker families some of whom aristocrats for at least thousand years. There is a very annoying trend on the part of many to insist that Germany's traditional elites had nothing to do with the criminal policies of the Nazi regime, instead portrayed as "sand in the machine" working to sabotage Nazi polices. This claim has been made most insistently about the Wehrmacht, but it has also been made about the Auswärtiges Amt. Just like the absurd claim that the Wehrmacht had nothing with the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime, the claim that the professional diplomats of the Auswärtiges Amt were secretly opposed to and sabotaging Nazi polices has been debunked. Anyone who doubts what I saying should please read the following links: The machine's accomplices and Historian Calls Wartime Ministry A 'Criminal Organization'. Yes, it is true that individual officers and diplomats did try to overthrow the Nazi regime, but as institutions both the Wehrmacht and the Auswärtiges Amt were bastions of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Dirksen was not involved in the worse of Nazi polices, but he did join the Nazi Party and faithfully served the Nazi regime. Yes, he was an aristocrat and a professional diplomat, but to say that somehow that stopped him from being loyal to a criminal regime is very silly reasoning. Perhaps the picture I painted here is not very flattening portrait of Dirksen, but it is the truth, and if anything is not damning enough. Dirksen was a snobbish anti-Semite who in his memoirs published made a point about boosting that he never had any Jewish friends ever and never joined social clubs that admitted Jews. Not surprising, given attitudes like that, Dirksen found much to approve in Nazi anti-Semitic policies. In no way can Dirksen be considered a conscientious diplomat who happened to be serving a criminal regime that he disapproved of. That reflects the on-going unwillingness of a great editors around here to confront the fact on the institutional level, both the Wehrmacht and the Auswärtiges Amt were up to their necks in blood, faithfully serving the regime that so many of their members approved of.--A.S. Brown (talk) 19:24, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]