Before I lived there, I had the impression that the German people had to be foolish or stupid or corrupt or hateful. I had seen all those traits in some of the most racist Southerners when I lived there.

But when I met German people, people who after I had known them a while, demonstrated or admitted that they had supported Hitler way back when, I learned that they were idealists, that they had believed in the value of the German culture and way of life. They were misled by the flattery of the NAZIs, by the sense of uniqueness that the NAZIs believed they had.

And underneath the entire NAZI system was the incredible corruption that can only exist in a society blinded by its absolute belief in its own purity, goodness and special destiny.

We are better because we are German.

The modern Germans do not have that naive trust in their own specialness, their own superiority. But some of the Germans I met who had been most vulnerable to German propaganda nostalgically expressed what they had felt, that naive conviction, during the NAZI era.

I once encountered a man (a leader in the culture of the town where I then lived) who preached to me, literally preached, the theories of the NAZIs about culture and religion all the way between Vienna and the town where we both lived.

I was shaking from fright when I got off the train. The fervor of this man, the absolute faith, the complete lack of questioning of of skepticism, were to me the marks of the NAZI fanatic.

That is why I am always encouraged when, on DU, people remind us to question our assumptions and beliefs. Questioning assumptions and beliefs, including the assumption that our country is not at all like NAZI Germany, is essential if we are to remain objective and protect our rights and our Constitution.