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[...] the government's need to legitimize its own educational dictates coincided completely with the citizens' need for exoneration from historical responsibility. Add to this a kind of "Hiroshima effect." The genocidal bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had transformed the Japanese into victims, and they no longer wanted to hear about their own complicity in starting the war. Similarly, East Germans were transformed into victims by the Soviet occupation. Whatever role they may have palyed during the Nazi years was atoned for by their sufferings under Stalinism. Unlike in West Germany, the perpetrators had become the victims, and that's how they saw themselves. [...]
about how East Germany (government and citizens together) had somehow recast German imperialism and Nazism into something for which West Germany had been responsible, to the extent that children believed that "East German troops had fought alongside the Red Army to liberate Germany from Hitler and the fascist yoke"
[...] While the West German says, "After all, I earned this with hard work," the visitor from the East holds out his hand expectantly, with the reply, "You were just lucky," and hopes for a private contribution to the "balanced burden." The conceit of the first is that his success is due solely to his own industry, while the second would like to think that the only difference between the two is a matter of luck.
of course the truth is somewhere in between the two
[...] According to him, unification was "a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe." He warned of the German tendency to be "uppity" and then explained with refreshing but, as it turned out, suicidal precision, that he wasn't really "against giving up sovereignty in principle--but not to this lot. You might as well give it to Adolf Hitler, frankly."
quoting Nicholas Ridley, Margaret Thatcher's Minister of Finance (who was dismissed after these remarks, even though Thatcher herself felt similarly)
the author seems to partly agree with this view, at least the point that the burden of on Germany to quell the very valid fears of their neighbours (and the world)
interestingly enough, it seems that the citizens of other European countries were in usually favour of reunification, even if their leaders weren't
With all due respect for our neighbours: What can they possibly expect? After a war which the Germans started and then lost, and which cost fifty million lives, the Germans have learned better than anybody else that war is something to be avoided under any circumstances. The children and the grandchildren of the Nazi generation grew up with this antiwar reflex, and I consider that historical progress. Compared to the bloody fanatics of fifty years ago, the sensitive, tormented German draftee should be a welcome change to the rest of the world.
referring to an military incident in the Persian Gulf, during which German troops had no morale despite great weaponry and technology
[...] present-day German anti-Semites have to make do with virtually no Jews. Before they were hunted down and murdered, about 600,000 Jews lived in Germany; now there are between 30,000 and 50,000. [...]
on the fact that anti-Semitic views are often held by people who don't personally know any Jewish people
A Jewish rabbi best explained the mainspring of this narcissistic anti-Semitism: the Germans will never forgive us for their having gassed us at Auschwitz.