Anyone think that we ought to pull our military bases from Germany ought to think again.
I'm sorry for that terrible loss, which was repeated over and over and over. Noone who has not known up close the two surviving member of large extended families (70+), the rest of whom went into the ovens, can really get a grasp on the magnitude of the horror of what the Germans did.
My company hires programmers out of Germany. I was speaking with one of my programmers (29 years old, thereabouts) a couple of years ago. He told me quite proudly that Germany had changed. That Germany had not gone to war in 50 years and that war was impossible now. I took a deep breath and told him that Germany had been an occupied country for forty of those fifty years and still had powerful foreign troops on its soil. He swallowed, paled, and told me he had never considered that and that I was right.
I am starting to reassess my company's relationship with Germany. I deal with fine people, friends, there. But the atmosphere has changed a lot. The vicious anti-americanism is so thick you can cut it with a spoon. The business environment is getting more difficult as a result. With their economy tanking, the conditions could soon get ripe for some very disturbing political changes there.
Like you, I have never regarded the American troops there as a 'favor' we do Germany. It is a favor we do for the rest of the world.