German obsession with Jews

Interesting if disturbing piece in today's Irish Times.

Derek Scally, the paper's German correspondent, reports on the new controversial book on Germany by Israeli born Tuvia Tenenbom.

Tenebom is a self-confessed Germanophile.

A woman in Bavaria tells him that "everything in America has something to so with to do with Jews". A nun informs him: "All over the world the Jews are united."

He argues that a terrible collection of cultural cogs clicked into place for Hitler in Germany: overbearing righteousness and naivete, a love of absolutism and consensus groupthink rather than individual decisions and personal responsibility.

Tenenbom believes these 'cogs' still whirr today - ouf of sync for now but not necessarily forever.

He concludes: " I have always thought great things of the Germans .... and I always defended them when people said they were Nazis.

"I didn't think that this book would contain more than three pages about Jews if at all .... but the obsession with Jews here is frightening. I so much wanted it not to be that, but this is what it was."