Peter Bills: Germany is getting to grips with its greatest demon

This country is now the one that bails all and sundry in Europe from their financial woes - with Portugal said to be the latest

Yet for all his evil, the world has somehow never quite managed to forget Hitler.In this week, 66 years ago, the world began to fall in on Germany.

At 5am on January 12, 1945, the Russians launched their offensive over the Vistula River. Marshal Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front swept into Poland, soon reaching Krakow and discovering the site of one of mankind's greatest sins, Auschwitz.

The Russians would be in Berlin by the spring and Hitler would be dead by April 30.

In these days of Germany bailing out all and sundry in Europe from their financial woes - Portugal is said to be the latest, probably requiring an €80 billion ($137 billion) lifebelt - those times seem long ago.

Yet for all his evil, the world has somehow never quite managed to forget Hitler. The Germans have tried exceedingly hard to do so, clamping down at every opportunity on the far right and any attempts to revive the Nazi memory.

But, call it macabre if you must, the image of Hitler, a human being who epitomised evil, has never gone away. Decades ago, I remember going to Berchtesgaden, his mountain retreat, and gazing up at the place near Salzburg where Hitler spent much time before the war.

In those days, there was still a lingering sense of bewildering awe about the place, a kind of unspoken respect to the man whom millions of Germans had embraced as their saviour. You couldn't quite put it into words but for sure it was there.

Perhaps that was why the democratic German authorities have spent the past 66 years coming down like a ton of bricks on any hint of Nazi sentimentality. They wished to keep that particular door firmly closed and bolted.

But the lingering fascination has now surfaced in a curious manner.

A British tour group has announced it will take visitors on an itinerary of famous sites where Hitler lived, worked or stayed. For £2000 ($4100) to be exact for the eight-day visit, visitors will be transported by luxury coach to such places as the Munich Beer hall where Hitler launched his famous putsch - Berchtesgaden, the site of the bunker in Berlin where he shot himself (today, it lies buried beneath a car park), and Nuremberg, where many of the Nazi rallies were held.

Just to lighten the mood, the visitors will also be taken to the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau, plus the Holocaust memorial site in Berlin.

Nor is this the first ice-breaking tour of Hitler sites. Berliners can take an official bicycle tour of famous former Nazi sites and some museums have opened with documentation of Hitler and his entourage.

Should the free world be concerned at these developments? Would it be only the sick, the macabre who would sign up for one of these tours to revive memories of one of Europe's darkest times?

I am not sure that is the case. Indeed, I should declare an interest here - as a lifetime student of history living in Europe, much of this period continues to hold my interest. Hence my trip to Auschwitz two years ago, on a day when snow lay thick on the ground. I found the experience hauntingly unforgettable.

In one way, it is surely an indication of Germany's growing assurance and maturity that it feels able to loosen the restrictions and acknowledge history. Times have changed so much in Europe that it seems much longer than 66 years ago when Berlin was being flattened by Allied bombers and the population was being murdered or abandoned.

A new Germany has arisen, with a very different mentality to the one Hitler subsumed and then used for his own evil purposes.

So, although Germany will never forget what happened in Hitler's time, perhaps it is encouraging from mankind's point of view that the German people, so brutalised, scarred and regretful that such an era was allowed to unfold, are finally allowing society to embrace their greatest demon.