Don't mention the war

Just before we set off on our Rhine cruise, the Fox reminded me of the episode from "Fawlty Towers" when Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) reminds everyone not to mention the war when some Germans were coming to stay in the hotel. I thought nothing of this, just laughed a bit.

For me, the war is something  that happened before I was born. My parents, in particular my mother, reminisced about it. She remembered both World Wars. She'd lived through them both, lost friends & family as a result. She did so without rancour. I never ended up with any ill-feeling towards the German people, who, to my mind, were almost as great victims of Nazism as the rest of Europe. I watched the war movies on the TV throughout my childhood. When I met the Fox I heard his parents war tales too. It still didn't alter the fact, that for me, the people who did those terrible things were not the German people of today. Any Germans I have met I've got on with reasonably well. I couldn't see there would be a problem.

I was, therefore, surprised how much I felt Germany still seems to be under the shadow of the war.I've been trying to understand why I should feel that.

Is it because Hitler's favourite hotel was pointed out to us? I gather it still has memorabilia from that time. Is it the shrapnel & bullet holes in Cologne cathedral walls? Is it just the sheer amount of new houses, replacing vast areas which must have been flattened in the war.

I can't really believe it is any of those. I have visited places severely damaged in war - Coventry cathedral in this country, many Dutch towns. I've visited museums devoted to the war - The Eden Camp in Malton Yorkshire, the museums on the Isle of Jersey & in Oslo, and most memorably the Resistance Museum in Gouda the Netherlands.

Or is seeing sights like this, the Bridge at Remagen. I remember the 60s film  starring George Segal, Ben Gazzara & Robert Vaughn.

The Bridge at Remagen, now a museum

The film was based on the story of the role played by this bridge in the war. But I have seen other ruins from the time, such as those of the Draguignan-Nice railway viaduct at Pont-sur-Loup in the South of France, which were blown up by the Germans in 1944.


In some ways I would have thought of other countries would maybe have a greater ability to remind me of the war. .Most places in Europe have their war memorials, some quite grand ones, & yet I didn't feel this shadow over the land. Maybe it's the fact that I didn't see any such war memorials in Germany & yet surely the German people must have needed to grieve over their fallen, many of whom I am sure died bravely & honourably, & left loving families who took pride in them & wanted to honour & remember them. Or was the war such a terrible thing that the Germans were to ashamed to honour their dead?


Maybe one day I'll work out why this trip had that effect. I wonder...