The year is 1946, and the man standing before us is a former Nazi party chief. He is German, but we are in the bitterly contested region of Alsace, which has been freshly and fanatically French since ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Josh Weiss is a writer covering the nexus of pop culture and Judaism.

First Lt. Gerhard G. Hennes, a communications specialist in Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps, had heard rumors of Jews and Gypsies being herded into concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

Germans born in the 1940s came of age in a shattered world. The Kriegskinder, or children of the war, inherited a country of ruins and silence. Cities were choked by rubble; millions of people were ...