cboettger

The makers of this film obviously knew that the American soldiers on occupation duty would be fraternizing with the German populace. Many American soldiers, then as now, were of German descent. They would naturally be tempted to explore their ethnic homeland. Other soldiers would simply be responding to the kindness that the German population showed them, or the tragic poverty that the German civilians experienced after the war. But the threat of counter-insurgency was a real concern, and soldiers needed to retain their perspective as an occupying force. So this film, an obvious piece of propaganda, wildly exaggerated German history to paint the German populace as being something different from their American military occupiers. It is a blatant attempt to dehumanize one of the world's most vibrant and creative cultures. To view this film as an accurate representation of German behavior and culture or as an explanation of the root causes of the Holocaust is ludicrous. Before one condemns the German populace of extraordinary callousness or zeal in supporting its government, I would offer a reminder of the Japanese and German-American citizens who were entered in concentration camps in the United States during the Second World War with the full cooperation of the American populace. Do we know even today what the U.S. government is doing to those it has interred in Guantanamo Bay, again with the full support of the American people? Perhaps we should look to our own glass house before we start throwing stones at others.