Another question;
Is there still a sense of animosity towards the the US/GB for the bombing offense, or any other actions during the war? Even now I read they find UXBs all over Germany...
Is there any animosity towards the Soviets for their behavior during the war? (this one may be an easy question, but I'm curious what in particular would be mentioned)
Once again, thanks for your time Lusche.
Lusche?
You're going to get it locked before Lusche can answer Del's question.
I'm very sorry, but I felt it necessary to ponder a bit over this question.
At one point I even started a much longer reply describing the three different periods of German "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" -ways to cope with the 3rd Reich - before coming to the conclusion that this would just had been some very boring stuff
So in short -
Animosity is the wrong word I think. WWII is just too far away for most of us now. Even the generation that witnessed it as children are getting old quickly now. For sure, the animosity/hostility was far greater during the 50-60's, when most ironically there was rarely much talked about it at all.
But what indeed has changed in the the last 10-15 years was the public discourse. When you, as a German, did question the Allied bombing campaign, publicly pondered about Allied war crimes (true or or just perceived ones), or talked too much about German victims of the war, you easily got under suspicion of having revisionist or even neo-nazi beliefs. Not without good reasons, but as you can imagine this lead often to not very objective views/discussions and such.
Now, cold war being a matter of the past, most participants of the war being gone, and even immediate postwar leaders being long dead, things have changed. My generation is pretty much removed from this events, the taboos are getting less. So we can nowadays see much more reports, discussions, documentaries and features about Germans being victims of the war. A TV movie like "Dresden" that aired last year under much public attention would have simply been impossible that way during the 70's-early 90's. Though that still is nowhere near the 50's kind of "we were all victims, we didn't know nothing, we just followed orders, it's all Hitler's fault" kind of stuff you could find in the cinemas and bookshelves