You do what you need to survive in a war. Afterwards for many it can be hellish living with the consequences and for others, well they don't lose a moments sleep over it. I do think that it takes a certain kind of mindset to want to hold on to hatred for half a lifetime. Perhaps it's some kind of personal motivator or driver for success, but many who do live do forgive, or if not forgive, at least find the space within themselves to move on with their lives.

Personally, I see hatred as an inefficient use of your mental resources. To actively choose to not let go when you know have a choice, shows a darker side to a persons nature. To hold on to anger through a sense of 'justice' or revenge or never forgetting... well how long are you going to carry on like that. To me, there's something rather sad about reading about such an otherwise vibrabt individual feeling the way he does. Like I said, inefficient.

Did anyone watch the documentary about the old boy who went to japan and met the equally old boy who was in charge of his prison camp?
There was a great deal of speculation about how he would feel- he too was unsure about how 50 years of pent up feelings of hatred for the guy who ordered executions and torture to be carried out on his friends would surface.

They met. They shook hands. They wept openly and they hugged.
God knows what the memories must have been like, but to react in such a way was moving to watch.

As much as people can let go, there are others that just can't. It's simply not for us-living in an infinitely more diverse culture- to judge them. No counseling, no time off work, no stress management courses, no go home on full pay until you feel better. Just- get on with the job. Why are 'the few' so highly regarded? A group of young blokes risking everything, several times a day, for the freedom and survival of the things held dear to them. The men that landed on D-day, the cockleshell heroes, the men on the raid to st. Nazaire....the list is endless. Its simply not for us to judge what they say/think/do- they have seen plenty already.

I imagine Simon Cowell will look like that at 89...

You're a moron.

Can you not see how mis-matched your point it?

The irony is strong in this one.

Sorry to cherry-pick your post, Dusty, but ^ that for me is very much on the money

Personally, if there still is anti-German sentiments within this country from those not affected by WW2, then some reading into events between - say - 1926 and 1938 would pull back the blinkers a little, and understand that most of Germany as a nation were hoodwinked by Hitler, and by 1940 were collectively thinking, "WTF is going on?".

As one historian puts it, 'If the Great Depression had never happened, then Hitler would have remained an odd character on the fringe of politics.'

I think he was saying that in once sentence you are making a negative generalisation about the English because they make a negative generalisation about the French.

The only anti -german feeling I have seen in a long time is when they knock us out the world cup and all the BMW/Mercedes owners start sweating!

When I was growing up the war was fresh in everyone’s minds. I knew many who had suffered greatly and never forgave. I heard their stories and cannot condemn them for feeling that way.

I don’t hate the Germans. But I am strongly influenced by one person in particular.

Despite her suffering, the wisest words came from one who had suffered the most. She was the mother of a boyhood friend and a Dutch Jewess. Her husband had been a British Army dentist assigned to help the inmates of a liberated death camp. A German guard had struck her in the mouth with the butt of his rifle, smashing her teeth and driving the fragments deep into her gums. She was barely alive when the camp was liberated. Her entire family had been murdered.

Her husband had tried to rebuild her mouth in the camp. There can be few less likely places for love to blossom than a dentist’s chair in a death camp, yet his heart went out to her. He saw beyond the emaciated and smashed figure before him. He saw the beauty that had once been, both in looks and personality and resolved to rebuild it. He bought her home and their love lasted a lifetime. Twenty years later bits of her teeth were coming to the surface of her gums and her husband was still removing them.

Her hatred was not for the Germans. It was not even directly for the Nazi’s. To her the greatest evil and target of her hatred was politicians who attempt to control what people think.

Nazi’s had a theory of the ‘oft-repeated lie’. If you said something often enough, if you prevented reasoned criticism of the lie, eventually people would accept it as truth. When enough people accepted the lie it would come to be so believed that to contradict it in society would make you an outsider to be denounced.

To her a democratic government should represent the beliefs of the people. The moment a government feels justified attempting to manipulate the beliefs of the people then it is no better than the Nazi’s.

She lived long enough to despise the current Political Correctness as the new form of Nazism.

No, you're a moron (see, it's easy!) and no, they aren't.

I should have thought it was self-evident, but no problem. You bemoan "reflexive, indoctrinated hate" yet accuse the English (all of them, every last one!) of having a particular talent for "island mentality and pure xenophobia". See it now?