Wolfgang, I don't see Nazism as anything specifically German. We've all got blood on our hands. Jews funded Hitler's war machine (most significantly from the US), and the anti-semitism exploited by Hitler existed across most of Europe. (Not so much in the UK, but only because the UK had got rid of most of its Jews many centuries earlier.)

Language can't make anyone do anything, and to blame one's own crimes on someone else's language is a feeble excuse. Hitlerism prevailed not so much because of Hitler's language but because of economic crisis and the humiliation to which Germany was subjected by the post-WW1 treaty.

To shift the focus off Germany, I have noticed in the past that Nazi memorabilia is openly bought and sold in the UK, whereas such trade was (maybe still is?) prohibited in France. This French constraint is healing the symptoms rather than the illness. But again I put this down to needless sensitivities in France about French collaboration with the Nazis. Needless because any body of people caught up in the same cirucmstances would probably have behaved the same way.

To deal one last time with McGrath's argument, Birmingham Rep judged Behzti on its artistic merit, as it was its job to do. Unless one supports censorship and Stalinist-like control of creative work, that should have been the end of the matter. As our laws are framed now, and even if they were amended as the Mercer bill seeks to do, the responsibility for upholding the peace in such a situation is on the police and not on the theatre management. There is simply no basis for mealy-mouthed pussy-footing around this basic fact. And no-one whose job it is judge work on its artistic merit should ever allow that judgment to be compromised.