Michael, based on your summary, I think the authors generalize about conscience way too much and give Europeans too much credit for superior conscience-formation. As a Catholic growing up in Europe, I can't say I witnessed an attention to conscience that was, according to your summary, less present in the US. For one thing, it's very dangerous to generalize about "Europe" and assume that what is true of Germany, for instance, would also be true of Italy or Poland or, for that matter, European Russia. One could make a good case that post-War Europe was conditioned more by competing political ideologies than by principles of conscience. I also question the idea that conscience in the US was made to suffer by American attitudes toward the war. If anything, I have found the American people to be more guided by conscience than my European friends. Having said that, I also have to say the authors may have done their homework better than what is reflected in this essay.