"Never again" is still a big part of the culture. The rise of the Nazis is a common theme at school, not only in history lessons, but also others ("analyze this speech's rhetoric").

I suppose as a German it feels natural to be able to criticize what the people in your country have done before yourself and some patterns are fairly easy to spot. It's sometimes hard to understand why it can be so difficult for others.

My partner on this trip is a Brazilian (from Sao Paolo) who has been living in Paris for the past decade. She touched on the fairly complex history of that country and how someone like Bolsonaro could be popular. The country is large with very different regions, each with their own capital, etc, which leads to a sort of isolation in ways. Yet their supreme court was still able to see fit to punish claims of election fraud that the US is incapable of doing.

Is it true that US whistleblowers should consider getting to Berlin before leaking their information as German laws on speech would help protect them? For example wouldn’t Assange and Snowden have been much better off if they had?

Anti-whistleblower/leaker sentiment has always been a strong force in every gov’t - only being physically in the jurisdiction of the ‘enemy’ is decent protection, and even then assassinations happen.

Governemt criticism and whistleblowing is generally regarded more highly. As far as I can tell Snowden is well respected and the idea of granting him asylum is fairly popular (it almost happened, but the US's pressure is strong).

The laws in place aren't as good as you'd hope, though. The powers that be are, for some reason, not very happy with the idea of it becoming easier to expose their misbehavior, so protections for whistleblowers are not all that great. There was a recent attempt to pass a law that improves these protections, but it got watered down quite far.