I am not really able to respond adequately in one posting to either Wolfgang's initial posting or the many other interesting comments, which have followed. I would end up writing a book.
I have written this elsewhere here, but this is worth repeating. In 1941, a frightened, ten year old boy, Peter Moorhouse, stood on the Torpoint side of the Tamar and watched the bombs burn his native Plymouth. His parents, who were in the middle of it, survived. His cousins, who were playmates, were killed in one direct hit.
For years later, the then fourteen year old Rolf Peters, an evacuee, returned to the bombed ruins of his native Kleve, an area which had also been devasted by the deliberate destruction of the dykes in the high water of February 1945 and the battle, which finally took the Arnhem objectives.
Until the killing arrived on the doorstep of these children, the war had seemed like a sports score board. They had been told that the good side was winning.
It was the ability of so many people to distance themselves from the reality, which allowed this awful tragedy to take place. Even the appalling Adolf Eichmann could not stomach the consequences of his work, when he saw it close up. The tragedy was predicated by the mass surrender (insidious, as LH says) of common humanity. Not only Germany was guilty of that.
The Germany of 2006 has a strong constitution and a human rights record, which shames most other countries. A lot of very bad people did get away with their crimes. All the same, I reckon Germany has made a far better attempt at facing up to its past than most other countries.