..."and there were no Nazis in Hamburg"

[moondust]

4. Recommended.

Good story, well written.

I was stationed in Berlin for 18 months in the 70s. For a while I lived in a neighborhood where some of the buildings were still pockmarked with bullet holes from the war. Read most of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich while I was there; have always been mystified by how so much evil could take root and spread like it did.

Of course Germans did not have a choice but to face down their demons and somehow "re-humanize" after the war. Much of their country destroyed, they were forced to outlaw Nazi paraphernalia to prevent a recurrence, and for 45 years the country was occupied by Allied and Soviet troops who could have easily enforced the ban and quelled any lingering Nazi activity as necessary. I often wish Confederate paraphernalia had been similarly banned after the Civil War to prevent lingering reminders and antagonisms, but I don't know who would have enforced it across the deep south without an occupying army.

Let's hope that third of the U.S. doesn't require massive brute force and bloodshed to get straightened out and re-humanized. I don't know what it will take.

Thanks for posting, Tygr.