This one is actually a very good article, very fair and insightful.

In Germany, where I've spent the last month as a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, history has a way of sneaking up and shouting in your ear. It also has a way of shaping government policy in international relations, which often exasperates those on the other side of the Atlantic.

Today's Germans have an allergy to military power--and a preference for negotiation--that often strikes Americans as naive or even cowardly. Germans, in turn, complain that the U.S. government is like the proverbial man with a hammer who sees every international dispute as a nail. Those differences split the two governments over how to deal with Saddam Hussein, and they have complicated joint efforts to stop Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons.

What both sides forget is that each is a product of its history--and that our very different histories are bound to yield very different views on the utility of armaments. ...

Germans have learned many lessons from losing two world wars, the most recent of which left the nation devastated, divided and disgraced. The biggest lesson is that war is an option to be avoided at almost any cost. When nations abandon talks and treaties for bullets and bombs, Germans believe, they risk catastrophe.

In the United States, by contrast, the two world wars left few visible reminders. Battles weren't fought on American soil, and bombs were not dropped on American cities. Instead of being left weak and impoverished, we emerged richer and stronger than any country on Earth. Our military might not only defeated the Axis powers but implanted democracy where despots once ruled.

Most of our experiences with the use of force have been successful--and when they have been unsuccessful, the cost on the home front has been comparatively modest. When we couldn't win, as in Korea or Vietnam, we exercised the option of securing peace and going back to a secure home.

It always impressed me when I lived in Berlin how reminders of that terrible part of history are everywhere. It's to the point where constructing memorials to WWII, though not exactly futile, seems to add only noise rather than enlightened rememberance since the actual, real history is amongst you when you walk down the street. Any street in Berlin. For instance, one of my favorite breakfast places--at least early on--was located across the street from a jewish grade school that'd been at that site from before WWII. During the--relatively short compared to other cities--period when Berlin had a sort of quasi-ghetto, the place I sat in would have been inside that ghetto. Walking into the restaurant one could still see bullet holes pock-marking the wall; a reminder of when Russian troops invaded--"liberated"--Berlin. Wow, the simple act of eating breakfast becomes a major tear-jerker and tells the tale of two of the most poignant reminders of that time. In that sense, the above article is well worth a read.