Today, the vast majority of Germans are quite resentful to their society as it was during and immediately before the Second World War, and especially in regards to the National Socialist regime and party. Notably, the Nazi Swastika and justifying or denying German wartime aggression and atrocities is banned by law. Germans oftentimes appear ashamed of their country's wartime past.

It wasn't always like that, however. In the 1960s and 70s, a good many, perhaps even most, Germans (at least those in West Germany) had a neutral, or even positive view of their wartime government and society, and even the German war effort itself. Many former Nazis served in high-ranking positions of leadership in the German government, and a good many, perhaps most, Germans were quite resentful of losing the war and the changes imposed upon their countries during the Allied occupation of Germany - most of all the war crimes trials, the payment of reparations, and some occupation-era amendments to the German constitution.

So, how did things change. How did German society go from having an ambivalent, or even positive opinion of their World War II-era history to having a very negative, even quite shameful, opinion of it.