If you want to know how British society feels about its teenagers you only have to wait for exam results season. Among the photographs of beaming students waving their A*s, you will inevitably find articles lamenting how pathetically easy exams are these days.

Time was, these articles jaw, when British youth sat challenging exams, not like now, when they're about as hard as pulling on a sock. Thus, do we enact our annual smear campaign against British youth, and that's just the ones passing exams. The rest are too unphotogenic and unsuccessful to contemplate. There's the feeling in some quarters that there is something uniquely stupid and hopeless, and probably rather drunk, about our youth, setting them apart from their more sophisticated academic wine-supping European counterparts. Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

The results of a study in Germany have startled the nation. It involved 7,400 children, between the ages of 15 and 16, from all over Germany. Half of them did not realise that Adolf Hitler was a dictator. A third presumed that human rights were safeguarded during the Nazi regime and in the former East Germany – in the way they are safeguarded in the present unified Germany. Two-thirds also believed that Hitler was a keen amateur children's entertainer, whose "glove-puppet Nuremberg" cheered up the darkest days of the Third Reich. Actually I made that last one up; though I can't say it looks out of place.

A German story calls for a German word. As we are so hard on our own feckless youth, perhaps we could indulge in a little schadenfreude. Just how thick are German kids?

Interestingly, when it came to spotting the differences between democracy and dictatorships, the brightest were from an area in the former East Germany, while the dimmest came from a region in West Germany. Still, how could half of them not know what Hitler and the Nazis stood for? Did they ever know, or did they, well, just forget? After all, it's so easily done.

Stop the schadenfreude now. The main reason this is so surprising is that one imagines the Germans go to exhaustive pains to teach children, not only the history but also the wider lessons of this particular time period. Moreover, while some among the first wave of postwar Germans may have felt reluctant to talk about what happened, preferring a state of generational amnesia, their children, and children's children, the parents of today, would not.

So how did this socio-historical blind spot occur? And why now? Especially when most British 15 to16-year-olds are, if anything, hyper-aware about Hitler and the Nazis.

From royal princes in dodgy fancy dress to satellite channels bulging with Nazi documentaries, it would seem that Britons, in a range of ages, make a fetish of that period, in a way that Germans, and indeed other Europeans, don't. To the point where it might be the only historical period some British people know anything about. Is this because Britain won the war, or is it because it is passed down in our collective DNA that fighting fascism was the last time we were truly "great"?

Something has to explain why we are so Nazi-literate, while many Germans seem to be fast forgetting them. Indeed, this study made a few things clear. Jewish people aren't being paranoid if they worry about memories fading. Nations aren't always the chief guardians of their own history.

Finally, schadenfreude aside, generational amnesia is not an exclusively German problem. It might be timely to introduce a new international history module for the "yoof" of everywhere. They could call it "Dead important stuff not to forget, sort of thing".

Tune in next week, to read how half of young Americans think 9/11 is a type of store that stays open all-night, where you can buy snacks and soft drinks.

Oh, let the ladies make a racket

Why all the fuss about lady grunting at Wimbledon? Are the British so miserably sex-starved that this is what passes for salacious – female tennis players grunting a bit? The Women's Tennis Association has issued a warning that off-putting noises will no longer be tolerated. A new smartphone app, a "gruntometer", registers who has the loudest, longest, or most ear-piercing grunt or yelp.

If I were a female tennis player, I'd be ladling it on just to wind everybody up – bellowing loudly with every shot, like a pro-wrestler receiving a particularly vicious wedgie. More seriously, is this really an issue?

Men make noises, and throw rackets around, and it's viewed as evidence of determination, proof that they're "killers". Women make a bit of noise, and they're held morally responsible for turning Centre Court into Sodom and Gomorrah with ball boys. It's as if women aren't supposed to be human (sweaty, physical, athletic) when they play tennis. They're just there to look cute in little skirts and ponytails, until a sponsorship deal comes along.

Codswallop. These women are professional athletes – if they need to grunt, so what? It's a tennis match, not holy communion. All of which chimes with what certain male tennis players, such as Andy Murray, have been saying about how women should be paid less (they play shorter games; they're less tired for doubles matches, and so on).

First, what a pathetic bunch of begrudging freaks the male players are. If I want to see rich boys whinging self-pityingly, I can start watching Made in Chelsea. Second, shorter games or not, perhaps the women deserve a bit of danger money for all the sexist rubbish they have to put up with. Grunt away, ladies. You've earned it.

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