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.
Great stuff, and many thanks for posting. I missed it last year as well.
Let me ask a gentle question to all - what do you believe in enough to sign a pledge of your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor? Not theoretically, not theatrically, and not some stupid student petition that no one ever reads, but a document that will get you impoverished, thrown in jail, or executed by people who had both means and intention of doing so?
It's a sobering question - well, it sobers me, at least - because so many of the signers sacrificed one or all of those. If we don't have the courage to do the same then we are at least obligated in decency to be worthy of the ones who did.