George
I suppose neither of us have first hand knowledge of what
actually is happenning in Iraq, therefore I would say we should not use it as a sample. All I can say is that contrary to some pacifists, Iraqi people were quite happy to get rid off Saddam, but quite unhappy from the following occupation. This I know first hand.
Concerning cleansing, whatever hard, it is neccesary if not a must in situations like in Germany, and there were several reasons, including those you mention, that made this impossible. Please do not confuse two completelly different cases here, please. The Pope was forced to serve in Flak auxillary and the fact was never hidden nor used as an argument. Grass never mentioned his service in Waffen SS and was one of the top leftist activist chasing people with a brown past, ie. Grass from 1960s would hang present SS veteran Grass, even if he was drafted there. That is the problem, and I have little doubt, that he admitted only to increas sales of his recent book. Such a sort of a man.
Regarding general overview of the situation, I have to agree with Jochen, albeit not in one place.
Quality of photos has nothing to politics - at one point original nitrate(?) negatives were contact copied (reputedly due to fire protection) and originals destroyed. This is a pure stupidity and I am afraid if this does not happen with ECPA negatives (they have problems with quality of prints as well). Owners of old prints should treat them as treasures.
NSDAP translates into National Socialistic German Labour Party - I would hardly call anything socialistic and labour a right wing organisation. More, a comparison of what communism was to a German NS movement shows strucking similarities in almost every respect. The difference was that communism was international and nazism - national.
Otherwise, indeed it a general German policy to reduce negative (for them) effects of war. This is realised by various ways, one of them being forgetting the past, and a most recent one, making Germans victims of the war. The latter propaganda increases since most of the people who could testify otherwise, passed away.
Anybody wondered why Mein Kampf is forbidden? Perhaps you never read it? Do it, as I did. You will not become any worser, you will rather get bored and tired, but when you know a little bit about current German politics, you will start to wonder about the similarities. The so called denazification turned to be a farce, anybody remembers the scandal, when one of the electors of the present German president turned to be a judge of a 'people's tribunal' involved in trials of Hitler's assasins? In fact, one of the scandals I have mentioned is directly related to. During the past years Poland handed over to Germany plenty of documents in view, that German criminals will be trialed in their country. Insted, all prosecutions were turned down, and documents dispersed among various German archives. The scandal is, that the documents and photos were original and in many cases proven to be not copied, and now Germany denies to return them. Obviously, in view of such policy, those files would generally be inaccessible in Germany. Of course, one may note that it is Polish fault, but there were several suggestions, that it was not a coincidence but a planned work by a particular people.
Again, it is a popular knowledge or a widespread gossip, that several personal files of communistic Polish secret services were microfilmed and handed over to Stasi. Germany never admitted to owe those and the one may easily guess, why they were kept if the story is true.
Then we come to another scandal, that involved WASt. During the Polish presidential elections, there was some fuss about volunteer service of a grandpa of one of the candidates. He denied it, but WASt provided a document stating otherwise, and giving few details of granddad's service. This was a real 'killer', nonetheless the man tried to save the situation by showing another document
reputedly provided by WASt stating that the granddad later served with the Polish forces. This was then denied by the British MOD (they have a complete index of Polish soldiers in exile 1940-47), who stated that nobody of this name was ever registered. In the effect, the man lost the elections and this caused a lot of anger in several German circles, who favoured him and his party (it was sometimes suggested that the party has links to German secret services but nobody confirmed it officially) - this being evident from publications in the German press.
I cannot exclude, that it was not the Grassgate but the Polish elections that changed the rules. Strategically, Poland is still more important for Germany than an old writer.
Nevermind, this is politics, but our problem is access to photos and documents. I believe recent regulations affect freedom, as they are not equal for all. Apart of cost and quality, the one cannot get photos if he has no agreement with a publisher. I believe we have some lawyers here, and in my opinion we should ask them to prepare a letter in regard of free access to archives, then sign it and send to European Commission. I believe it will be a benefit for all of us.