German dopers: What is the status of Nazi veterans?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In the USA, there are still living World War II veterans, which made me realize that there must be veterans from the Nazi side still kicking around. So I wonder…

  1. Do they have organized meetings and do they participate in parades?
  2. How are they generally regarded by Germans today?
  3. Do they get veterans benefits from the modern German government?
  4. In the USA, World War II veterans are called “The Greatest Generation”. What do you call yours?
2

First of all, it might be better to ask the status of German war veterans, as despite being drafted into the army, not every German was a member of the National Socialist Party - as a matter of fact, in the last free election before Hitler took over, the vast majority of Berliners voted against that party - but I nitpick.

I am an American who lived in Germany for many years, so here is what I know:

  1. No, there are no "organized meetings, no equivalent of the VFW, American Legion, etc. and certainly not in any parades. Actually, there pretty much are NO parades in Germany other than the LOVE Parade (Google it), Gay Pride Parade and the parade of people in costumes for Fasching (Mardi Gras).
  2. Most Germans who were in the war, both soldiers and civilians, really don’t want to discuss it much and soldiers who are still alive almost never want to discuss it - as far as how they are regarded, it wasn’t like they had much choice to be a soldier then, so they are regarded like every other male drafted into the army back then.
  3. I am unsure about Veteran benefits per se. I do know that if you were injured in the war, there were some additional disability benefits, but not sure how long those were dispersed and if they still are.
  4. One of the least militaristic countries in the world today, Germany by no means celebrates any facet of war - thus there is no Memorial Day, no Veteran’s Day and certainly no label attached to veterans of the war. They do honor Kriegsgefallene (those who died in the war), but nothing like we do in the US.

The above is what I gleaned over the years - perhaps a German Doper would care to correct anything, or add to what I have observed.

The basic answer to your question is: the war is not a period of history Germans are proud of, nor wish to celebrate - thus, quite simply put, they don’t.

3

Mostly what DMark said. ‘Nazi’ in German usage is used for ‘believer in Nazi ideology, especially a NSDAP member’, not for ‘WWII era German soldier regardless of political convictions’.

  1. There are some clubs of ex-members of particular units or of contemporaries in military academies (for example my father is a member of the association of Flensburg Naval Academy Class of '44 members). Their members meet (increasingly: used to meet, as they die or become unable to travel) every few years. Some of them have published collections of reminiscences (I have read those of may father’s contemporaries and am very thankful that I wasn’t born forty years earlier - they are terrible reading). Publicly these associations keep a low profile - even as what I know of their activities is far from glorifying warfare, their meetings are often protested - not just associations of former Waffen SS units (for obvious reasons) but also e.g. the association of a Wehrmacht unit that used to meet in the town where I live - as they served on the Eastern front these units are publicly associated with the atrocities that were frequently commited there.

The unit that I mentioned used to have a memorial stone to their fallen in a public park; now they had to have it relocated to a military area because it used to be vandalized. WWII veterans certainly don’t have parades or such - there’d be riots if they did. BTW units of the present German army (*Bundeswehr *) are forbidden to assume the traditions, colors etc. of units of previous German armies.

  1. Generally the members of the WWII German military (other than Waffen SS members or soldiers known to have commited war crimes) are regarded as ‘male Germans who happened to be born within a certain time period’. The more self-righteous of the younger generations view them with a certain degree of suspicion (personally my view is that only by the grace of God I am not one of them, so I hardly have cause to feel superior), apart from that the general view is that they were people who lived through a terrible calamity (of collectively our, but not individually their, own making) and in the best case came back with all parts attached and not tainted with crime. Or expressed differently, it is assumed being part of that cohort might possibly got your moral balance sheet far into the red, but it certainly did not get it far into the black - absent specific information a zero is assumed

  2. There are disability benefits (for these still living - I suppose the disabled had a reduced life expectancy, though I know a 90-year-old man who lost an arm in WWII) and there were widow/orphan benefits for dependants - not enough to live on though. There is not a separate veteran service administration as in the US but rather these are/were entitlements within the general social benefits system.

Military service (and POW time IIRRC) is counted towards the minimum employment length for purposes of eligibility in the general social security system, i.e. ‘conscription from 11.1940 to 05.1945; POW from 05.1945 to 10.1946’ would mean that you’d need to work six years less to be eligible for a social security pension, and that it’d also count a bit towards the amount of that pension (not much as the pay wasn’t much).

  1. No general label AFAIK. There is die Kriegsgeneration (the war generation) but that mostly refers to people who lived through the war as civilians or soldiers. There is as specific term die Flakhelfergeneration for that age cohort that was too young to be drafted as soldiers but had to serve in AA batteries.
4

Re 3., I forgot one serious WWII-related benefit: children and siblings of soldiers who died in WWII were not required to serve in the postwar German army - e.g. former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder benefited from that (his father died in the war).

5

Thank you tschild for your clarification of my previous post.

And regarding not having to serve in the army, when I was living in Berlin (while the Wall was still up), West Berliners were not required to serve in the army. (Mandatory for all other German males.)

Needless to say, the influx of West German men of draft age to Berlin was rather large - and Berlin Universities were chock full of guys who decided to study in Berlin and avoid being conscripted into the army. I believe this is no longer the case, now that the Wall has come down.