How does the average German citizen feel about Adolf Hitler and their nation’s role in WWII and the Holocaust?
Thanks for asking.Beside dealing with this topic in school (in German, Art, History, Social Science…), I got a lot of first-hand information from my family.Both my parents grew up during the war - my mother, born in 1931, fled Berlin after the first bombings (and went to 11 schools in 12 years), my father, born 1924, was forced into the army, when he was 18.He told me about his feelings, when he was shown pictures of the concentration camps - that was during his time as POW in a French coal mine.So, as an average German with some background information, it’s not the feel of guild - it’s over for 70 years now. There is no point in asking on guild or shame; Germany worked like any other dictatorship - like a Russian criticizing Stalin would have been moved to the Gulag, a German would have been moved to a concentration camp. And it’s no special German “gene”, which enabled our people to follow Hitler and his promises to make “Germany great again”, to “end unemployment and the dependency to other countries, who betrayed us”. Our neighbors in France, the Netherlands and to the East were all too eager to support him (there was even a vivid exchange on racial theories with US scientists, leading for instance to the sterilization of “criminal elements”). It was just too easy for the frustrated nation, humiliated by their enemies, to fall for these promises. And they just had to vote for him one time - after that he took care that his course wouldn’t be questioned again.But the shadow of our history will stay; the knowledge of that the Germans put all their skills, all their efforts into a most industrious killing; the knowledge of the fall of a nation with highest ambitions in science and arts into a barbaric abyss in just one generation.Many political decisions of today are just understandable against this background. With the Euro crisis, Greece tried to get reimbursement on money and gold stolen during WWII, now during the refugee crisis we see the result of a different education in the East (which saw itself per definition as anti-fascist) and the West, and the rising Nationalism is nowhere seen with more distrust and disapproval then in Germany; on the other hand, elder people are quite open minded towards refugees, based on their own experiences (or that of their family) - the topic is far from over.