> I meant it influenced _my_ perspective, not yours.
> Sorry, that was poorly worded.
>
> Of course I oppose his (former) political views (he
> converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses, which in this
> case was an ideological improvement). That's not the
> same thing as opposing _him_ in practice. Was I
> supposed to make a big deal at the dinner table or
> something?
>
> This is probably more personal family history than is
> warranted, but he idolized my grandfather, who was a
> believing Hitlerite until his death (despite the Nazis
> having sterilized his mother). The family was kind of
> polarized around the subject, my grandmother having
> given my mom a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank as a
> child -- I think the only books in the whole house
> where the Diary, the Bible, and a book of Nazi songs.
> It was a pretty wierd situation. Nobody knows who my
> greatgrandfather was, as my grandfather was the
> product of a rape, but according to my greataunt who
> is a repository of Family Lore, everybody at the time
> knew who he was (rape not being commonly punished in
> rural Germany at the time) and he later joined the SS
> and got killed in Poland. So where other people might
> see the political evil side of things first, I see a
> tragic family history first.
------------------------
These views are more nuanced and understandable.
FWIW, I also see fascist supporters as people, not as monsters, typically possessed of less understanding and empathy than their fellow citizens and therefore more inclined to commit or support atrocious acts. Fascism itself was a contradictory phenomenon, and many of those supporting it did so for social reasons and the kind of race prejudice which would have stopped short of countenancing genocide if they had been asked to choose. Your uncle, like many others, probably fit into this category.There was even some evidence of humanity in the "ordinary men" of SS Reserve Police Battalion 101, the subject of Christopher Browning's masterful study of those who conducted massacres of Jews and other "undesirables" on the Eastern front in the early days of the war. Of course, seeing them as people doesn't absolve them of their crimes, any more than in the case of non-political criminals.
I also strongly reject the notion of a "collective German guilt" propounded by Daniel Goldhagen and others. Fascism and anti-fascism knows no national or ethnic boundries. The German anti-Nazi parties were the largest and strongest in the advanced capitalist countries before they were crushed by Hitler. East Germany, the creation of many of Hitler's victims, whatever its other shortcomings, energetically educated its people about the horrors of fascism. And while "making a big deal at the dinner table" may not have seemed the right behaviour for yourself, a lot of young West Germans who came to political maturity in the 60s thought (and acted) otherwise, which I greatly admired at the time as being in the best tradition of internationalism, and still do.
But your clarification is appreciated.