Right after WWII, the big question was "How could a highly civilized, culturally advanced nation do the things Germany did? How could they have allowed those things to happen?" Later, the 70s maybe, the questions were dismissed. Hitler became the devil incarnate, evil was named and tamed, and later Godwin's law was created to keep analysis away. Useful when Saddam was Hitler so we had to attack him, and now the Iranian leader is Hitler, so we have to. . . . No analysis, no thought, just evil.

I now live in a country that launches aggressive wars, that uses torture to terrorize opponents, that spies on its citizens, and that resists the leader's assumption of dictatorial powers far less than the Germans did (Hitler's seizure of power involved a lot of street fighting and bloodshed). A picture of a German shaking hands with Hitler or receiving a medal from him brands the German as morally deficient, rightly I think. But how many Americans are hesitant to shake hands with George Bush because he heads a criminal regime? How will they be seen in the future? I think there's a difference between the deliberate mass murders of the totalitarian regimes and the targeted cruelty towards thousands in the current so-called War on Terror. But I don't know that I'd feel that way if I were brown-skinned or Muslim.

This whole current framework of absolute good and evil, of the easy morality (how much should we condemn the Pope for his teenage membership in Hitler Youth?) buries the issue of what constitutes complicity in organizational evil, and what is really just living in difficult circumstances in a highly imperfect world. On the whole, I don't think Americans are resisting their government well enough to condemn the citizens of fascists regimes for very much.

this story is long but let me see if I can tell it to you briefly.

my father also fought for the Germans during WWII. he would never say that he was drafted, because he volunteered to become a Waffen SS. sounds pretty terrible, but he was in fact, the kindest person I have ever known. He never raised his voice at us, and when we did something wrong, he explained why we shouldn't do what we did, and that was it.

we have to understand that in those days, war was still looked upon as something glorious and that everyone had to do their duty. on top of it all, the area where many Germans had lived for centuries had been given to Poland or Czechoslovakia after WWI, which I believe, was one of the major reasons of WWII. my father lived in Danzig, which was very German, and voted for Nazi government in their Free City. The Nazis spent a lot of time with propaganda there, and the people bought it.

My father admits that he was brainwashed by it. He was a tank commander and an officer throughout the war, and was never involved in any war crimes. After the war, he was kept as a POW for 3 years by the French while they investigated him.

He came to Canada and became partners with a German Jew who had lost his whole family in the camps. This man was the sweetest man, and was like famly to us.

I should mention that while my father was in his teens, he was sent to the Soviet Union to work on his relatives' farm, during the forced collectivization imposed by Stalin. He saw people literally starving to death. He became quite the anti-Communist after that, and really felt that WWII was essentially a battle between facism and communism.

So, life's never black and white, is it?

that someone that fought for the Nazis would become one of your life's mentors.

What shutter do people put over their minds that close the pain of killing? My stepfather joined the Royal Marines at the age of 19 and fought many battles in several theatres of WWII. When it was over, he searched for German scientists for MI5. His commander was Ian Fleming, the writer of James Bond books.

Yet he was able to compartmentalize that period of his life as if it never existed. He was a survivor and when I met him was immediately after his returned from Korea where he served for Canada in the military police.

The man was soft as a brush and wouldn't hurt a butterfly. Yet he had been subjected to a violent period of a history for a goodly period of his life. The man I knew had no relationship to guns and killing, but he was more than capable of pulling the trigger of a rifle and snuffing enemies out, up close and seeing fear in the eyes of a human being that shortly thereafter ceased to breathe.

People and onions...several layers and I never did know one of the dark layers. He was a good man with a sense of duty that is beyond my ability to fathom. I strongly doubt my ability to block the horrors from driving me mad?

Good people are deceived by evil men. In churces. In government. With complicity of a few people in the media.

Bears remembering when making statements like Republicans are..., or Democrats are...

I did inhale.

Pat Tillman fought for Bush.

In an oblique way your post points out the need for mercy when dealing with those we perceive as having crossed the bounds of society. People f/u, they do things they had little choice about doing, they do things with the best intentions, etc. I wonder how many US soldiers currently in Iraq will be find themselves in the some position as Peter, having fought for Bush.

_{"I beseech you in the bowels of christ think it possible you may be mistaken."}