[quote=VenatrixXII](Still a bit confused on the -100, if you could clarify)[/quote]

Sorry, I missed this completely. It's just a bit of a lame joke about how little Johann understands muggles. I've just counted it as zero. :)

[quote=Imperfectionist]To throw my two cents in on the Germany thing, I have a counter-thought. Having a German Ministry with undercurrents of expansionism and social engineering just doesn't make much sense to me... What if we make it more conflicted, with a loud fringe group of aristocrats and others with some Death Eater-style philosophy/rhetoric (the aforementioned people that are feeling oppressed), and a more mild (read: scared) establishment that doesn't want to support such things overtly, but doesn't want to lose the power/influence/money that these groups have. You know, more internal conflict within the country than "oh, the Germans are hankering for another war"... But that's just me. Something about an overtly right-wing, master-race Death Eater Germany rubs me the wrong way.
[/quote]

I think my idea was kind of that that's just what the school of thought in wizarding Germany actually is. It's not some splinter group that's sneakily seized power; it's genuinely how a large proportion of the country feels. Sure, right wing countries exist even in our muggle world, and we generally get on with them, until they [s]march into Ukraine[/u] go off the rails, in which case we start to worry. I kind of wanted to capture the Russian feel of a powerful ally that we're not always best friends with, but I happen to speak German and understand Germany's history far better, so I took Germany instead. 

Generally think of how the West perceived Russia a few years ago: ultimately an ally, but one that we knew was right wing (by our standards) and speculated might do something extreme. Then we in the West started to be a bit twitched by Russia's not-overt-but-socially-aggressive stance against the LGBT community and everybody said they had seen it coming for years. Germany is essentially the same, but with its attitude to muggle-borns and muggles. There aren't death camps, but the general feeling is that they're not as welcome or protected as members of the community as they were before. It's still unclear as to whether this is the precursor to a deepening tide of anti-muggle rhetoric and international expansion (a la Russia) or just a flash in the pan.

I don't want it to be too comparable to the death eaters, because, while I enjoyed the books, I did find the whole political movement element to be rather hammy.