Crazy: Several German journalists used the term "assassination" to describe the damage to the Hitler wax figure on the opening day of Madame Tussauds's new Berlin museum.

It is easy to predict, what the Wall Street Journal wrote about the "killing" of the dictator and Germans' lessons from the Nazi past.

"Support for the far-right National Democratic Party quadrupled in local elections in the eastern state of Saxony on Sunday. In the village of Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna, one in four voters chose the NPD," writes Spiegel International.

Michael van der Galien of the PoliGazette blames Germany's culture for these election results. He also claims that most of his Dutch compatriots "basically believe that what happened in World War II was not an 'accident,' but a logical result of Germany's intolerant and militaristic culture."

Such accusations will not lead to more German troops for Afghanistan, more burden sharing within NATO or a higher defense spending, which have been long-standing demands by the United States and other NATO allies. Instead these accusations contribute to the dominant feeling among the majority of Germans that we should not participate in any wars on foreign soil anymore.

Well, the Dutch press -- in contrast to their US or Canadian counterparts -- has not called for more German troops for Afghanistan. I thought the reason was that they understand that there just is not enough support among the rather pacifist (a better term might be: "war-weary") German public. Though, perhaps van der Galien is right and "the Dutch" are really concerned about the next invasion by their xenophobic and militaristic neighbors and therefore they don't want the Germans to play a stronger military role in Afghanistan, but I doubt it. I think he exaggerates Dutch concerns regarding Germany.

Soeren Kern, Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group, might have something interesting to say in his American Thinker op-ed "Anti-Americanism: It's About American Power, Not Policy," but I am not reading it to the end after this accusation: "They [=The Germans] routinely equate the US invasion of Iraq with the Holocaust." Such nonsense disqualifies him and the "American Thinker" from being taken as serious as their logo and name pretends to be.

The American "Thinker" has published such stupidity before (see The Superiority of American Culture and Sports), which might actually increase the popularity of the stereotype that Americans are arrogant and clueless.

Related: Top Democrat on Auschwitz, Guantanamo and Europe.

A few people, me included, read into this step Merkel's desire to put an end to using Germany's awful World War II history as a false moral refuge from taking sides and putting troops and convictions on the line in the new century.

In response to a recent study which showed that Germans are fatter than all other Europeans, the German government called Wednesday for concrete steps to wage a nationwide battle of the bulge. (...) The new initiative was spurred by a study released by the International Association for the Study of Obesity. It found that among EU countries, Germany has the most overweight women and men. Among adults, the study found that 58.9 percent of German women are overweight; 75.4 percent of men tip the scales. (...)
The rates of obese and overweight Germans now match those of Americans.

Germans are being told to go easy on their bratwurst and bier in favour of more sauerkraut. A looming obesity crisis has seen Berlin ordering an action plan to persuade the nation to shed the kilos. Click to learn more... But the slog to fit into those slim-fit lederhosen will be an über challenge for the nation which gave the world the litre-sized glass of beer, where restaurant portions are often so hefty that those who cannot empty their plates are offered doggy bags so they can finish the rest later, and where being able to cruise at speed in a sleek car rather than walk is regarded as a divine right. (...)
The common self-image of a happy German life is to be seated at a table groaning with huge portions of regional foods accompanied by piles of mashed potatoes and sauerkraut, and with a huge mug of foaming beer never far away (Germany produces an estimated 5,000 different varieties of beer). A crucial part of political campaigning is sampling regional specialities, usually with a glass of beer or wine, and politicians with poor appetites face an uphill struggle. Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor who reunited Germany, was addicted to saumagen - a regional haggis type dish which had a dramatic effect on his waistline - with the 6'4" politician weighing in at about 20 stone.

Knowing both countries, Scotland and Germany, I can tell you that portions served in German restaurants are by no means larger than those in Scottish restaurants. Besides, the idea of the doggy bag was imported from the US of A and this bag is not commonly used in Germany.

Call it a humanitarian offensive, or call it historical revisionism, but Germany is on the march again. Seventeen years after German reunification, and 61 after top Nazis were condemned at the Nuremberg Trials, Berlin is taking a newly assertive role in attempting to define permissible international conduct. Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel claims that there is no effort to "reinterpret" Germany's checkered history, the evidence suggests a determined campaign at rehabilitation.

Responsibility was never owned. It was all dumped on the Nazis. The Solution of Caiaphas. Germany's repentance was to point the finger at a small segment of their society and say, "They did it. They are the ones to blame. We are innocent."

Undoubtedly, dealing with such a painful and dark chapter in history as the Nazi era is an immensely difficult task. But overall, I think Germany has done a pretty good job. Here's an example that came to my mind: A few years ago, a proposal was put forth to name a school in my vicinity the "von Stauffenberg Gymnasium", after one of the "heroes" of July 20th 44. It was turned down, mainly on initiative of the history teachers, who pointed out that the role of von Stauffenberg and his accomplices had been quite questionable in the long years leading up to 1944. IMO that reveals a high level of awareness, and it is not at all the blind hero-worshipping that Cowen feels to perceive. It is not at all the black-and-white "the Germans against the evil Nazis"-view that you accuse Germans of. Instead, it shows a very distinctive and mature approach.

My grandfather was an ethnic German, I was born in Germany, though my parent's were American and as a a child in the United States, I remember being called a Nazi by kids who were only acting as kids act and repeating the crap of their parents.

After Reunification, in 1993, the Neue Wache was re-opened as the “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany”. The inscription had been changed. Instead of the “Victims of Fascism and Militarism”, it is now dedicated to the “Victims of War and Tyranny [Gewaltherrschaft]”. The substitution of “Tyranny” for “Fascism” served to establish an equivalence between the Nazi regime and the Communist regime of East Germany. The substitution of “War” for “Militarism” served to evade the question of responsibility: notably, of German responsibility for the Second World War and hence for the carnage it entailed.

Although it is true that when Chancellor Schröder and President Köhler lay their wreaths before the Kollwitz Pietà they paid tribute to the victims of Nazi crimes, this is only part of the truth. They also – silently, without having to say any words that might provoke unease outside of Germany – paid tribute to many of the perpetrators of those crimes.

The Bush Administration has taken a pounding for its unauthorized spying on American citizens in the name of national security. But imagine living in a country, the former East Germany, in which the secret police, known as the Stasi, had 100,000 employees and 200,000 informants, and whose stated goal was "to know everything." And all this for a population that never exceeded 16 million. A new German film, "The Lives of Others" (Das Leben der Anderen), which opens Friday, makes the horrors of this police state concrete by focusing on the relationship between a writer, Georg Dreyman (played by Sebastian Koch), and his actress wife, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), and a Stasi agent named Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) who monitors every minute of their waking lives through the listening devices planted in their apartment. The film has already won a host of prestigious prizes in Europe and is one of five finalists for the foreign-language Oscar this year.

When you look at the recent stories in both CNN and the NYT about Germany this past week, you’ll find the following: weather in europe, jewish property returned, dax earnings, holocaust survivors, merkel on the eu constitution, some soccer news, holocaust archive and more sports briefings, oh wait another one on nazi germany. I could bet that you’ll find some news of the weird in there too, more of those funky orgelplayers and cannibals. The point is that the American media paints such a simple/negative image of Germany that you’ll rarely find positive news - never mind a diverse picture.

Coverage of foreign affairs dropped from 27% in 1987 to 14% by 2004, according to a month-long study of 16 newspapers’ front pages by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The same study found the nightly broadcast news devoted 19% of all stories to foreign affairs in 1987, slowly dropping off to 10% by 2002 then spiking to 25% in 2003 before dropping again to 14% in 2004.

Two forces are facing off on the European continent: on the one side, the modern social-democratic state that the American left thinks should be our model; on the other, the resurgent Islam that the American Left insists is just a scam cooked up by Karl Rove. We now have an excellent opportunity to test both propositions. How bad is it going to get in Europe? As bad as it can get — as in societal collapse, fascistic revivalism, and then the long Eurabian night, not over the entire Continent but over significant parts of it. And those countries that manage to escape the darkness will do so only after violent convulsions of their own.[p.104]

The Pentagon is, of course, making some decisions on Iraq. The Pentagon is trying to convince Germany to send more troops to the war in Iraq. Yeah. This marks the first time anyone has asked the Germans to send more troops.