I still remember the end of WW2 as a young teenager in the US. Since I was not a German kid, I was not likely to be in the military, but I do remember the "atmosphere": we had no Gestapo, nor concentration camps, nor midnight arrests, but I can tell you, if you started talking about how our side might have been killing hundreds of thousands of "innocent" civilians, or any other atrocities, you'd be in trouble.

As the years went by, and the US has drifted into more and more Nazi type activities (torture, killing civilians, "denial" , etc) I am puzzled as to why we are not more sympathetic to the spot most of the Germans were in. My conclusion is that blaming any particular groups for modern war is a waste of time; the situation creates the "morality". If you can get Americans to believe that torture is OK, then it can happen to anyone. What we should be concentrating on is making killing people illegal, with all that implies.

Re:why it feels to be like a "good German" today in the US. I definitely agree that we are now in a much better position to understand how it must have felt to live in Germany both before and during the War.

One only has to think of the pictures from Abu Gheib, the numbers held in Guantanamo and their condition, and the crumbling of command morale in Iraq regarding the civil population.

I heard Gunther Grass interviewed at the 92nd St Y in NY the other night. He was nuanced and did not avoid questions but he was definitely not open. He was never asked why or how he could call others to account and hide his own involvement. The closest he came was saying that he needed to find the "right literary form". Amos Ellon did not pursue him on this point unfortunately. On the point that was pursued, "how did it feel? how could you have done this.etc. the best he could come up with was picture of a naive 17 year old who wanted to join the submarine corps,but got shunted to the Waffen troups. But from Tin Drum on he was no longer 17 and he never confronted this question or those many,many years.

I am afraid that to this listerner, Grass the man did not live up to the public standards of Grass the writer.