General Discussion

It makes me want to delve into the series some more.

I think there's a growing willingness to look at the post war period with a bit more nuance, "nuance" seeming to be one of my favorite words these days.

Even in Germany there was a reluctance to bring up the miseries and violence of the post war period. The publication of A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in a Conquered City, was somewhat controversial at the time, with some people uneasy about dredging up this part of the past. Have you read it? There's a movie now based on the book but I haven't seen it. I'll give you a trigger warning, since the book describes in some detail what the Soviet soldiers did in the immediate aftermath of the battle.

There were a few accounts earlier on that didn't flinch at the reality, and I'll post trigger warnings for these as well. The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan came out in 1966, and describes the mass rapes during and in the aftermath of the battle for Berlin. Susan Brownmiller, in Against Our Will: Men Women and Rape devotes some pages to the topic as well. And there's a movie, Town Without Pity, the fictional account of a German girl gang raped by a group of American soldiers that came out in 1961. But by and large the topic was brushed under the carpet. And all of these early accounts, the ones I know of anyway, are by American or British authors, not German. When Gunter Grass describes a rape in The Tin Drum, he even turns it into something of a joke.

The damage the Nazis did is incalculable, and the fact that the ideology still holds an attraction to so many people is appalling.

I'm holding my breath until the election, and probably won't feel totally relieved until President Harris is sworn in on January 20.

Thanks again, and best wishes.