Re; Your quote on the modern history of Germany is well taken as is the John Adams quote (his #1 best selling biographer, David McCullough, is a personal friend of mine): A friend of mine (who is now in her 70s or 80s)lived under Hitler and she knew she was not free, she lived under a dark cloud of depression (& fear) from early childhood.
Literally, in describing the Nazis she recounts that everything went lamost literally from technicolor to chairo-scuro (sp?) black & white the day she & her grandfather encountered theri first Nazi thugs. She regarded them as evil, which they were.
My dad fished bodies from graves to study medicine and had his land stripped from his family by communist Nazi sympathizers.