I do love Bruno Ganz, as he's the go-to actor for practically every German film. War films aren't generally to my taste, either, though it depends (I loved Casualties of War but seeing it once was enough).

Bruno Ganz was great in Nosferatu. Have you seen it?

Oh, would you consider Jacob's Ladder a war film, per se? Probably not.

He could just be referring to his views a child, but if he still feels that way now, he just comes off as a little too simplistic. Or perhaps it's just my bias against him coming out.

Nah, you're right. He sounds asinine.

Nazis and the like have been over-romanticized and mythologized to an insane degree, when what's truly horrifying about all of them is that they were regular people. To read original publications from that time, you just see Hitler and Goebbels at dinner parties and shaking hands with children; it's the banality of evil. They wielded great power for sinister purposes, but were totally average. It would be a mundane existence and many people would likely allow themselves to fall into a simple life of routine.

I hate to namedrop thirty different things in one comment, but you really ought to read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night.

Something that particularly aggravates me about the way Nazis have been turned into villainish caricatures-- people so overtly evil that, like Tom Cruise says, why didn't somebody just kill them? is that it seems to me that it trains people to look for governments with big "I'M EVIL" signs hanging from their foreheads. We could learn from the whole Nazi thing to be suspicious of leaders who come on with the, "You're under attack, and the only way to survive is to give me more power!" routine, but, instead, we've learned only to look out for people who seem obviously maniacal.

I believe I have heard of Fatherland before, but as I'm always into finding films and books, I will have to add it to my list. I've been reading non-fiction for so long that I greatly appreciate finding rewarding, well-written fiction.

It's pretty decent, as I remember it. I'd suggest Mother Night first, though.