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Personally, I think this kind of stuff is ridiculous. My husband is into building model airplanes, especially combat aircraft, and these days it's hard to find models of WWII German aircraft with swastikas! I mean, it's HISTORY, for Pete's sake! Politically-correct censorship, aka rewriting and sanitizing history, is a disservice to everyone.

BMW built the engines for the fabled, feared, and respected Focke-Wulf 190 fighter plane, and Daimler-Benz built most of the engines for the equally legendary Messerschmitt 109, which was probably the most famous German figher of all. (Rolls-Royce built the Merlin engines that powered the lovely, incredible Spitfires, and Packard-built Merlins, licensed via RR, powered the great P-51 Musgangs). Heck, BMW started out as a builder of airplane motors -- to this day, its logo is of a rotating airplane propeller. For that matter, so is the logo of Mitsubishi, which built the engines that went into the Japanese Zeros. So what's the deal -- are BMW, Daimler-Benz, and Mitsubishi all supposed to pretend this didn't happen, and is the world supposed to pretend that the planes they helped power, especially the Me 109 and the FW 190, were anything other than great feats of engineering and design?

Furthermore, RR, BMW, and DB are among the companies that pushed the ol' piston engine to its ultimate limits, and the constant refining and improving they did on those old figher-plane engines has found its way to the cars we drive today, making them safer, faster, and more economical. We have all benefitted from it. The fact that BMW and DB engines went into Nazi planes, doesn't negate the facts that they were great engines to be proud of.

Denying history doesn't do anyone any good. Changing the name on a plane, removing swastikas from historical replicas, is stupid. Denial is destructive. Embrace the truth of the past, abhor what was evil in it, and celebrate and use for future good and the development of morale and national pride, the positive things that came out of it. That's my philosophy.