I was stationed in Germany in 1959-61 only 15 years after the end of the war. I spoke German and went to restaurants and Churches that the locals frequented. The younger people {at that time} really liked Americans, but the majority of the older folks hated us with a passion that comes from being defeated in a war. The older folks would not admit their complicity in the Holocaust, it was too shameful for them to contemplate. They pretended that they didn't know about the camps. That was just impossible.
It appears that today's Germany, like most of europe, is a combination of capitalism and socialism, with little admitted memory of the period of history from the 30's and 40's. All societies make mistakes. The USA had slavery for 78 years of our history. We admitted it and fixed it. God Blesses America everyday.
Having lived in Germany for the better part of two decades (except in the winter when I flee to Florida) I am inclined to cut the Germans a good deal of slack with respect to their owning up to their Nazi past. Just the other day on this forum I read a comment to the effect that the Japanese, but not the Germans, had learned the lessons of their fascistic experience. I for one would draw precisely the opposite conclusion. For years a viewer of German television would have had to conclude that hardly a week went by without a full treatment of the "Hitlerzeit" (the time of Hitler). Now that we have a German version of the History and the Discovery Channels, one must observe that scarcely a night goes by without a similar treatment.
The Japanese, on the other hand, continue on every level to deny their atrocities.
I believe the problem in Germany is not a problem of collective amnesia which seems to afflict the Japanese but rather it is a case of having drawn the wrong lessons from the Holocaust. For example, the Germans seem to have concluded from their experience that the jingoism of the Nazi party ran out of control and therefore, not only is nationalism to be feared, but it is to be stifled. So today in Germany it is simply not politically correct to flagrantly maintain a posture of patriotism except perhaps in support of the soccer team. This leaves a gaping hole in the German psyche and leaves the nation defenseless to the sirens of oneworldism, communism, regionalism (read pan-Europeanism), global warming gremlins, and the United Nations.
In my view, it would've been better for the Germans to have concluded that their problem was nationalism gone wrong but not nationalism itself. The world seems to have no problem in applying this standard to the failures of communism. Every failure which leads to the deaths of millions and tens of millions who get caught up in one communist experiment or another has always been excused with the idea that if only the right communists were in charge we would have gained utopia.
