I was in the local town today meeting a few friends (all German and about my age) at a café . As we all have an interest in aviation history I was showing them the video coverage by the Beeb of yesterday's flypast.
At the next table was a German of about seventy years of age who asked asked if he could look at the videos as well. After seeing the first video he said "Ah yes, the English Terror Flyers". At this point I was expecting a diatribe about English aircraft bombing Germany. However, after saying this he smiled and explained that he was born and brought up near the Dams. As a child he had seen the raid and was terrified by it. For quite a few years he had hated what happened, but as he grew up he realised that bombing raids such as this had helped to shorten the war. The point I found most interesting was that he claimed that over the years he had come to realise that if the war had been lost he would have had none of the freedoms that he had been brought up with and would have had to live under one of the most repressive regimes of all time.