State exports to the European nation are on the rise, and at the same time, Germany's foreign direct investment in Alabama remains strong.

There are also new and ongoing efforts to develop more business, cultural, educational and social ties between individuals and organizations with a vested interest in each side.

Germany is one of Alabama's most important economic allies, said Greg Canfield, secretary of the Alabama Department of Commerce.

"Certainly Mercedes-Benz and its network of suppliers have played a major role in the creation of Alabama's auto industry, which has in turn transformed the state's economy and the lives of many residents," Secretary Canfield said.

"But there are also significant German investments here in industries including aerospace, chemicals, steel processing, and more," he continued. "Like the automotive firms, these companies have found highly-skilled workers in Alabama who are helping them achieve their goals, and we look forward to seeing even more growth in the future."

The Alabama Community College System hired Jeff Lynn in October as executive director for Workforce and Economic Development. Before that he was the head of the state of Louisiana's LED FastStart workforce training program, for which he worked since 2008. Prior to that, he directed workforce development projects for Georgia's Technical College System for 10 years. He grew up in Alabama and graduated from Auburn University. His first months in his new job were spent visiting campuses around the state and the companies they serve.

On our visits to campuses around the state and the companies in those service areas, a common theme is something that we should have been addressed 20-plus years ago. Having a strong manufacturing base throughout the state, we need a better certification program through the two-year college and dual enrollment high schools. One of our immediate goals is the implementation of MSSC standards, a national manufacturing certification program of the Manufacturing Skills Standards Council.

The 22-member delegation also is promoting the cutting-edge developments happening at research centers from Huntsville to Birmingham to Mobile and beyond, an effort to encourage new investment in the state as a gateway to the broader U.S. life sciences sector.

Alabama Secretary of Commerce Greg Canfield is leading the trade mission, which kicked off today in Berlin with meetings at the U.S. Embassy and continues Tuesday with tours of biotech sites, including a research incubator.

World War II became the most vicious conflict mankind has yet seen in its global reach, devastation, and casualties. It spawned record numbers of dead and wounded, as well as those whose spirits were broken and whose souls were seared. An estimated minimum of 60 million people, both military and civilian, died. Hundreds of millions of others had their lives drastically interrupted or irrevocably changed.

Among the untold millions of prisoners - soldiers, sailors, airmen, and medical personnel, as well as political, ethnic, and cultural civilians, and the unwanted and unloved - who were held against their will, some 435,000 came to America to be interned for the duration of the war. The majority were German.

                

They were the lucky ones, though they may not have realized it at the time.

               

They entered a sprawling country, a land of  bounty ready to greet them with a friendly curiosity and treat them with a degree of humanity they could not have imagined, a nation with no "ethnic cleansing" concentration camps, no pogroms, no death squads.

More than 600 detainment centers - some small and temporary, others large and permanent - throughout the United States stood ready to accommodate them.