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You have written an eloquent and persuasive argument which should be read carefully by those who have visited this thread. Unfortunately, many of the posters are blinded by their hatred of all things German -- from a land once known for its composers, poets and philosophers before the invasions began. The posters are happy in their hatred because it is the one thing that unites them.

One poster implied no German has a right to express a moral opinion because they are German. It is a hatred rekindled 50 years ago by Nazism, even if some Germans fought against it and many lost their lives, and now by pacifism -- itself a revulsion to war and the Holocaust. It was a stupid and shameful remark.

Would that not mean no Jew could be judgmental because of Christ's death, no white because of slavery, no American because of manifest destiny? Of course not. Certainly one can argue that the admission of guilt and the payment of reparations has only encouraged Germany's enemies.

Anne Applebaum wrote in "Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps" that it was easier for governments and scholars to look deeply into the Nazi horrors because they were looking at a system that had been destroyed. Telling the truth about Hitler did not require any government or any individual to take any dramatic action. No great risk was required, only honesty.

But to tell the story of the Gulag at any moment from the rise of Stalin to the end of the Cold War was to lay down a moral and political challenge to the West, and to force men and women of good faith to fight against the Soviet Empire. Thus, for several generations, Westerners were reluctant to take a hard look at Soviet Communism, because they were unprepared to fulfill the imperatives that flowed automatically from the subject itself. That reluctance persists today.

To indict Communism for killing 100 million, albeit not primarily Jews, is to indulge in an exercise of self-loathing because of their ineffectiveness in stopping the killing -- by Fascists and Communists -- and often because of what their parents or relatives believed in as the Noble Cause, the Great Dream.

Thus, it is noteworthy but not surprising that the vitriol on this and other FR threads always flows in the same direction. Of the skeptics I ask, Which is more prevalent: anti-Semitism or Racism of a different sort? What reason would anyone have to respect such views?

Hypocrisy and hatred are soulmates.

The survey and related story appear to be cleverly designed to foment the hatred that is on display. Many FR posters were willing dupes.

You have given us all an excellent analysis. And BTW, thank you for your kind words. :)

The real shame is that one of the fundamental lessons of Nazism is missed in the certain type of knee-jerk reaction we see in some of these posts.

Wasn't it Hannah Arendt who said it showed us all the "banality of evil"? The same thing Solzhenitsyn tried to get across in the Gulag Archipelago: hey, you Russian citizens, how can you allow this to continue? this knock on the door of a neighbor in the night, which you ignore? The same thing pro-lifers try to convince people of about abortion: that ordinary people are capable of participating in inhumanity . . .

So, we don't see a recognition of the banality of evil, we see no lessons in it for ourselves. We only see: Germans are evil. "They" were Nazis. And likely still are.

How convenient, as you say, to keep projecting even the CAPACITY for human evil away -- over there, those other people; not me, not us.

And, as you also say, one reason it is successful is that the German nation has not resisted it, but has attempted to be a responsible modern nation. They have done basically whatever they think has been expected of them, and then even more, to make recompense and to rejoin the world of nations. Nazi and revisionist literature is illegal in Germany. However, the more they do, it seems, the more they are expected to do. The more they are expected to wallow in guilt, indefinitely. The more they are expected to claim to themselves the view of them that some posters here have: you Germans, you have no right to even exist; you should have been bombed off the planet, etc. etc. AND, of course, some Germans DO believe that about themselves.

It doesn't even seem to occur to those righteous posters that by throwing all Germans into the Nazi category, they are following the same logic Hitler used. Of course they are not for putting Germans into KZs, -- just dropping a couple atomic bombs on them . . . ;)