My father was in Germany right at the end of WWII and I keep the medals he received for his work on the Berlin Airlift. But I can recall his vivid description of what Germany was like during those years--and particularly the image he painted of Hamburg as a city of rubble. I also remember him telling me about a German girlfriend he had and about her father and her father's friends (businessmen all) whom he witnessed greeting one another with fascist salutes. I grew up with my father singing and strumming his guitar to German songs. Germany had a big influence on him because it was the first part of the world he ever saw outside of America and in a strange way he remembered it fondly. He was just 17 years old.