On "German Engineering."

C'mon kids, be honest.
You hear that phrase, what do you think?

9 out of 10 Americans think: Excellent autos. Well made motors.

If something "screams German engineering", it means it's well-made. Capable. A funny play on the stoic temperament. (Germans might pout, deny, walk away even, but you don't much think of them as a screaming people.)

I think the Goldblog must be thinking of specialized demographics here, in taking offense at a 21st century ad. Sure, if your parents or grandparents had family exterminated in the Holocaust, "screams German engineering" might mean something more personal to you. But that's you.

The sins, nay, the crimes against humanity by Adolph Hitler can't erase the mathematical, rocket-minded brilliance of Wernher von Braun. That's German engineering, at it's finest.

I doubt that even the most conscientious, Holocaust-museum visiting American would read the Bosch ad the way Goldblog here does.

It's so interesting -- I've gotten a bunch of emails and tweets on this already -- about 60 percent of the people who write are stating some variation of "these unbelievable clueless Germans." The other 40 percent or so of my correspondents are asking what the big deal is. Either you get it or you don't, I guess, but "German engineering" connotes the mechanized, efficient, aspects of the program of Nazi extermination. The word "scream," well, means "scream."

Another point of order though,
weren't the Jews led into the gas chambers quietly, that was part of the whole Holocaust tragedy thing -- they didn't realize until too late, or were bred to be compliant in accepting their fate until it was too late -- that the Jews stoically accepted their deaths at Nazi hands?

I'm all for calling out offenders where they exist, but it seems to me absurd to pretend that hyping "German engineering" on a superior product is some secret code designed to appeal to Holocaust deniers and those who simply don't see the death chambers everywhere these days.