Historians: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Was Overreaction. European Leaders Blame Jews for Disproportionate Response

Groupthink: If today's NY Times editors were in charge in 1943

Guns in the Closet
At home in a town in southern Germany, an SS fighter waits to be called to action.

Hamburg, 1944 - Plumes of black smoke begin to fan out over the coastline in the distance. We ask someone in town what has happened. He tells us it's the power plant; the Americans have struck it with a missile. But it's impossible to confirm because the roads leading to it were bombed early in the offensive.

In fact, Germany's main north-south road is so pocked with bomb craters, blown-out bridges and blasted highway spans that there is only one route left for drivers headed into Berlin.

It is in this unfortunate but familiar reality for Germany that the new landscape is being formed - deepening current loyalties rather than shifting them.

Nowhere is that more clear than in the area I am traveling today, a Nazi stronghold north of the city of Duesseldorf. Here, I am told, few families have fled. Instead, they are waiting for the call of Nazi leader Adolph Hitler to come south to fight the Americans.

It's not a difficult or even particularly mysterious undertaking to meet members of the National Socialist Party. Politically, they are part of the current German government and have been highly visible throughout the country, particularly for the millions of der volk in Germany. But it is the Nazis with which America says it is at war.

Even its critics concede that the Nazis are a well-organized politically and highly disciplined militarily, and the two are woven together through common religious, cultural and social threads.

"They are an integral part of the fabric of German society here," a source with an intimate knowledge of Nazis who did not want to be identified told me. "It's a fallacy to think they can be cleaned out or eliminated."

We meet "Heinrich" at his home and sit down to talk in his living room, while his four-month-old baby daughter lies on a blanket on the floor. He is in his late 20s and has a calm face. He is polite but has a resolute sense about him that creates a cautious distance. Like many fighters, he says, he has another job and only joins the SS when he's needed.

But even though he's not on the front lines now, he says there is still a lot of work to do in the village — like looking for American spies. "We caught someone last night, he says, "sneaking around in the middle of the night."

"What do you do with 'spies' after you catch them?" I ask. "We question them for a while," he says, "then turn them over to the (German) army."

As for the fighting in the south, he says it's not necessary for him to leave yet. "I have a job to do and if the Americans want to come inside," he says, "then we'll do our job and defend our families."

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