The Shame Of War.  PRO

The Shame of War.

While living in Weil der Stadt, West Germany in 1989, my wife and I had a very profound experience with the local high school students.

In order to make learning English a little more fun, the High School English teacher made an arrangement with the local theatre. The students would make a list of films they would like to see in English, and the theatre owner would bring them in for the students to watch. One of the movies the students requested was the old Dan Akroyd, John Belushi movie The Blues Brothers.

I was suffering some culture shock at the time, and I desperately wanted to connect with North American culture -- so the Blues Brothers was ‘just what the doctor ordered.’

So we went and watched Dan Akroyd and John Bellushi in a German theatre, surrounded by German teens. This became plainly evident as the movie began because we sometimes laughed out loud all by ourselves – because the others missed the joke.

Part way through the movie, there is a scene where the Blues Brothers are confronted by a demonstration of American Nazis. In the film, this White Supremacist group had just won a court case giving them the right to demonstrate, and the leader, dressed in full Nazi uniform, made this speech in front of a jeering crowd;

"Men! White women! The swastika is calling you. The Jew is using the black as muscle against you. And you are left there helpless. Well, what are you going to do about it, whitey? Just sit there? Of course not. You, are going to join with us. The members of the American, Socialist, White peoples party. An organisation of decent, law abiding white folk. Just like you.

"I pledge allegiance to Adolf Hitler...."

There have been few times in my life that I have felt more uncomfortable as I did in that theatre right at that moment. Quite unexpectedly, we were all confronted by the evil of Nazism. The theatre was suddenly perfectly still and silent.

Most of those who were in the theatre with us were two generations removed from the...