One in four Germans believes that the Nazis had their good side, according to an extraordinary opinion survey published in Berlin yesterday.

The findings are the result of a gradual loosening of taboos about discussing the Third Reich after 60 years of tight-lipped political caution.

Recent German-made films have attracted mass audiences by depicting Hitler as sad and mad as well as bad, or even as an impotent comic figure playing with toy battleships in his bath. Bestselling authors, meanwhile, have been praising Nazi achievements and harking back to the good, or at least not so bad, old days.

The latest clash of cultures — between a taboo-breaker and a guardian of the politically correct — came in a prime-time television chat show. Germany’s former leading television anchorwoman, Eva Herman, was expelled from the studio by the popular host Johannes Kerner after praising the motorway construction of the Hitler era.

“I mean, autobahns were built then, weren’t they?” Ms Herman said. “And we’re still driving on them today.”

“Autobahn geht halt nicht,” snapped Kerner — roughly meaning, “Autobahns are a step too far” — before asking Ms Herman to leave. Newspapers have been swamped by post supporting her.

The survey, conducted by the Forsa institute after the chatshow incident, asked whether National Socialism had its good sides, citing not only the autobahns, but also the lower crime rates, the creation of full employment and the supposed respect for family values. On average 25 per cent of the sample agreed that there had been a sunny side to the Nazis. Some 37 per cent of the over-60s supported the idea.

“You can’t say all these people are Nazis,” said Ulrich Dovermann, head of the department of extremism at the Federal Centre for Political Education. “Praise for the Third Reich is only one of several components that make up a far-right worldview.” Eva Herman does not rank herself as a neo-Nazi and has been at pains to distance herself from her newfound politically dubious fans. Her bestselling books plead for a return to old-fashioned family values. In presenting her latest book, which accuses feminists of humiliating stay-at-home mothers and castrating men, she described the Hitler regime as a “time of cruelty”. She added: “There were things that were good too — the values, the children, the mothers, the families, the sense of solidarity.” That cost her job as an anchorwoman and presenter of a talk show.

Supporters of Herman —who presumably are among the 25 per cent registered in the Forsa survey — say that they want to recover the German language and its debating culture. “I just have to learn that one cannot talk about our history without running into trouble,” Ms Herman said.

Critics say that the crude listing of Nazi achievements is an attempt to cancel out or mitigate Nazi crimes. “There are plainly millions of people who share Eva Herman’s thoughts,” said Andreas Petzold, Editor of Stern magazine, which published the Forsa study. “But these people ignore the fact that the Third Reich can only be viewed through the prism of its end.”

Autobahns were encouraged to transport soldiers, motherhood sponsored in order to provide cannon fodder. Families were supported — but only those of healthy Aryan Germans.

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