Mark <-- redeacted --> writes:

>      I don't think anyone ever admired Hitler in any Piper story.  What Von
>      Schlichten remembered was that he had German ancestors who had to flee
>      Germany in a submarine at the end of a losing war.  *flee in a
>      submarine*  What a romantic piece of family history.  Almost as good
>      as having a great-great grandfather who was an Old West outlaw.

   "[My family] came to the Argentine in the Year Three, Atomic Era."
   "On account of the Hitler bust-up?"
   "Yes.  I believe the first one, also a General von Schlichten, was what
was then known as a war-criminal."
   "That makes us partners in crime, then," she laughed.  "The Quintons had
to leave France about the same time; they were what was known as collabora
-tionists."
   "That's probably why the Southern Hemisphere managed to stay out of the
Third and Fourth World Wars," he considered.  "It was full of the descendants
of people who'd gotten the short end of the Second."

Maybe they don't admire their ancestors, but they sure don't seem too
bothered by them.  Indeed, one might even read von Schlichten's last comment
as indicating he saw his forebearer as a "victim."  (The best contemporary
example of this sort of attitude might be about someone like Geronimo or
Sitting Bull--not Attila the Hun or Genghiz Khan.)

>      I don't think you appreciate the effect of long periods of time on
>      inherited hatreds in a middle-class population.

Maybe not, but I think Hitler--as the leader of a deliberate, organized
genocide against a *domestic* population--is almost in a class by himself
and by all measures quite different from the likes of Attila the Hun or
Genghiz Khan (or even Stalin or Mao in that regard).  It's not the *numbers*
of people killed--note how we're not talking about the American Indians
or the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (which in "deaths per minute" pretty
much hold the all time record) here--as much as it is the ways in which those
who were killed were selected.

> Yes, I do think
>      Hitler will fade into just another monster in the vast blur of
>      history.  For goodness sake, Stalin and Mao deliberately caused the
>      deaths of more people than Hitler (though mostly by starvation, a
>      quieter and more traditional approach).

Well, you don't see any of Beam's characters waxing nostalgic about their
ancestor Stalin or Mao (or even Karl Marx or Eugene V. Debs).  I'm not so much
arguing your point about the way memories fade with time as I am trying to point
out the peculiar (in my view) choices Beam made about *which* historical figures
become most "rehabilitated."

David Johnson                        Net: -- redeacted --
Rockville, Maryland, North America   Web: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~david
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"When a man tells you something you don't understand, don't tell him he's
crazy.  Ask him what he means."      -Capt. Otto Harkaman (H. Beam Piper)
                                     *Space Viking*