David Maddox: How do we remember the bad guys?

The two minutes silence most of us observed a few minutes ago allows us to remember those who died for this country and, in terms of the Second World War at least, those who gave their lives in the cause of liberty and democracy.
But what about the men who fought on the wrong side?
A few weeks ago I tried to find an answer to this while I was visiting my Dad in Normandy.
One of the places I visited was the German war cemetery at La Cambe (pictured) where more than 21,000 men are buried.
These were men who after all gave their lives defending modern history's most notorious regime which subjugated Europe and was responsible for the systematic murder of six million people. Some of those under the soil may well have played a part in those crimes against humanity.
Yet the message of the cemetery's existence is that everyone deserves to be remembered and not forgotten. After all, just because they were fighting on the side of evil does not mean there are not men buried there who showed acts of bravery to help out their friends and comrades in battle just as many Allied soldiers did.
The opening statement at the cemetery reminds visitors too that many of these men were also forced to fight for the Nazis, although it is impossible to say how many.
The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfüsorge) has perhaps done all it could do with the site which is to dedicate to peace and the futility of war. The visitor centre includes pictures of other more recent wars, including Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the Second World War.
It's perhaps a little ironic that many of the men buried in the cemetery and certainly the Nazi leaders they served did not share that world view, and indeed one argument for war is to defeat such regimes.
Indeed, the American and Commonwealth cemeteries are in some ways celebrations of liberators with enormous car parks for the many visitors who come each year compared to the very modest collection of parking spaces at La Cambe for the modest amount of visitors.
But the German cemeteries are equally worth a visit just to remind us that even the bad guys were ordinary human beings and the waste of life that the pursuit of unnecessary war brings.