LogFAQs > #913729579

If you were to go into a bookstore (and yep, people still do) and browse the shelves and spines on European history, you'd form the impression that German history was only twelve years long: 1933-45. I don't know if book retailers' obsession with the Nazi era is because they believe that swastikas sell books, but fuck me, I'm sick to death of it.

And I'm saying that as someone who, in his teens, voraciously consumed anything he could read about that era. The Axis forces fascinated me. Seeing the war through German eyes was a bit like watching the original Star Trek with the Klingons as the good guys: something coolly subversive. (And it was, back then -- when for most Brit schoolkids brought up on a diet of comic book patriotism, the war was all about GIs and Desert Rats battling a faceless foe: squareheaded and jackbooted hordes whose only speech was "Donner und Blitzen!" and "Gott in Himmel!" as Captain Hurricane clobbered them with a torn-off tank cannon. When you finally read about WWII from the German perspective it felt like you were breaking a taboo, and breaking taboos is always exciting.)

The important thing, Sunhawk, is not to become so close to your subject that your sense of perspective starts to erode and you find yourself always leaning towards your subject's side. I'm not saying you're letting that happen -- I'm just cautioning you against letting it happen.
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texty bastard