I find this disturbing

"To explain Germany's response to the crisis we must start from the fact that the country has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last 20 years. In the postwar era, leaders from Konrad Adenauer to Willy Brandt realized that, for Germany to be readmitted to the fellowship of civilized nations, it had to atone for the recent past. Germany thus paid reparations to Israel, concluded peace treaties with its eastern neighbors, and, above all, entered an unwavering alliance with former foes like Britain, France, and the United States.

But the contrite Germany of the postwar era has been long gone. Since Germany's reunification, the need to atone for Auschwitz has been replaced by the desire to draw a definitive finish line underneath irksome talk of the Third Reich.

The first decisive step in this direction was taken in 1998 by Martin Walser, a famous novelist, when he called Auschwitz a "moral baseball bat" wielded by sinister outsiders intent on harming Germany's interests. Germany's assembled political and cultural elite feted Walser's speech with standing ovations."


Germany's Not That Sorry Anymore - By Yascha Mounk | Foreign Policy

Maybe it is because I have spent the last two weeks consuming and digesting Evans' Third Reich Trilogy but this causes me discomfort. Eddie Izzard has a bit about parachuting German youth into conflict zones with the point of proselytizing for peace but this...makes me think that the peace may be enforced at the point of a gun, or at least the pen on a checkbook...