Germans no longer see conflict as a defeat in WWII conflict, conflict

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Germans no longer see the Second World War as a defeat and now think of themselves as victims of the Nazis, it has been claimed.

Nearly 70 years after the end of the conflict, attitudes are reportedly changing among the younger generation.

Research carried out by the Forsa Institute found the number of people who considered the end of the conflict a defeat fell to just nine per cent - a 25 per cent drop in the last decade.

Instead, they now exploring the impact of Hitler and the Nazi regime on everyday Germans, the Times reported.

The findings have been published exactly 70 years after Hitler committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin.

Author Florian Huber has sold tens of thousand of copies of his book, Child Promise Me You Will Shoot Yourself, which examines the number of German suicides after peace was declared.

'German journalists are interested in my book, but they keep asking me whether I am doing something to make Germans out as victims, which is not allowed, it seems,' he reportedly told the newspaper.

'We have to think of ourselves as the bad guys, and it is still a controversial thing to suggest otherwise.'

Crimes committed against ordinary Germans by the Allies and the millions that were left uprooted by war are also the subject of other tomes.

The German city of Munich is today opening a new museum dedicated to exploring its past as the birthplace of the Nazi movement.

The Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism charts the rise of the Nazi party from its founding in the Bavarian capital in 1920, a year before Adolf Hitler became its leader.

German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters praised the city for tackling what she called 'the long repressed confrontation with the special role Munich played.'

Gruetters noted that Germany's effort to examine its past - which encompassed World War II and the murder of millions the Nazis considered unworthy of life - is getting harder by the year because the number of witnesses is dwindling.