[Platapus]

Based on my very limited and unscientific polling (talking with my co-workers/friends), here is what I am hearing:

- People seem to have no problems separating Nazis and German citizens of today. It never comes up about mixing Nazis and today's German citizens. Unless we are talking about splinter groups and they are always identified as splinter groups and not the underlaying norm.

- People are slowly recognizing that during the 1930's - 1940's not all German citizens were Nazis. This is coming slowly, but it is a positive change.

- People still have a hard time differentiating between the Nazi's and the German military during WWII.

- Because of this, when people think about WWII Germany, they think Nazi. That is probably not going to change.

- However, that being said, there is simply no way to ignore the Nazi movement when discussing German history. WWII is still a really big chunk of the public's perception of history. And the Nationalistic movement was a big part of German history.

- And let's be honest. For many people WWII history is a lot more interesting then Revolution of 1848. I would imagine that many European countries also have tourist focus on WWII (few seem to remember WWI but that is another peeve of mine).

- One of the cultural traits of Americans (and I am sure of other cultures) is our ability to forgive and move on. My co-workers/friends seem to have no problem separating Nazi Germany from Democratic Germany. We remember the Nazis of course, but that was a "different" Germany. We have the same perceptions of Japan. "Used to hate em, now like em. Let's move on and make money!"

- The perceptions of Germany are changing. Remember it has only been two generations since the Second World War. We are only in our third "post-WWII generation". Even in the current generation, I see signs that WWII is becoming "ancient history" and like other "ancient histories" is becoming interesting only to history buffs.

Just my unscientific observations.