Censorship of hate speech is an unconditional surrender to hate.

[True Blue Door]

41. I'm aware of the history, and of people's attempts to rewrite it for ideological purposes.

Thank you for adding yet another example.

The German resistance "movement" was a loose fringe of individuals breaking ranks with the government spread over a period of years, and only extended to a higher level of organization and potency when the inconvenience of losing the war became evident to his military accomplices. They were quite happy with the murdering tyrant who was going to deliver them glory and riches; not so happy with the author of their nation's destruction.

Attempts to exaggerate the extent of domestic resistance have largely been driven by a need to rationalize German society as being other than what it was, and to a large extent still is: A culture renowned since the Holy Roman Empire for its obsessive, suffocating regimentation of life. One late medieval joke about travel through German states was that you had best hold your breath unless you see a sign explicitly permitting you to breathe.

So then we get to the 20th century, Germans as a unified nation lose a Total War, are made crushingly poor by economic reparations, but are given the official right to bitch about it. Surprise! They found the situation chaotic and responded with either muted criticism or outright enthusiasm to the first tyrannical vermin smart enough to speak the language of Order and Vindication. Their experiment in democracy - one imposed on them by force - ended 14 years later in the furthest undemocratic extreme imaginable.

As to "American Exceptionalism," every nation has its own history and personality, just like individuals. No one is fundamentally anything, but their actions reveal them. Unless you wish to be guilty of the opposite extreme, fetishizing Germany and demonizing everyone else of similar size and influence who never became that monstrous, you can't just deny facts you find inconvenient.

Acknowledging differences in history does not deny similarities in fundamental humanity. Don't be so reactionary.