CKC: My mother's ancestors came from Berlin in the 19th century to Milwaukee"
Visitor: which might have been called the furthest west of German cities?
CKC: Well, at least it made fairly good beer. But jesting aside, I want to ask you about the rise of fascism in your country".
Visitor: in my country and in my family. My father was a member of the party.
CKC: Did you grow up with sympathy for that?
Visitor: Love for him, yes, but a dawning sense that he'd been made a fool of, and that evil had been done in his name.
CKC: But from what you've told me, he was an intelligent man.
Visitor: Intelligent, yes, but the social conditions that he had to live under were daunting. I make no excuses for fascism, especially for what it did to its many victims, at home and abroad. But I grew up wanting to understand it, inexcusable as it was.
CKC: Some observers are likening the current rise of authoritarianism in my country with the rise of fascism in yours.
Visitor: I'm glad it's you who bring this up.
CKC: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." This is a line often and mistakenly attributed to our writer Mark Twain.
Visitor: Conditions in Germany under Weimar were worse than in your country now. Again, harsh conditions do not excuse what happened in my country, but I worry that whatever is developing in the U.S. is a reaction to conditions much less harsh than my father and his friends faced.
CKC: Well, it's true that our President brags about a booming economy while I've seen pictures of Germans in the early 1920s carrying paper money in a wheelbarrow to buy a loaf of bread.
Visitor: Yes, we had hyper-inflation. And we owed reparations to the victors of the war.
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