There are a number of dopers who have living relatives who are survivors of the Holocaust. That made me wonder, are there dopers here with a surviving relative or friend who was a Nazi or fighting for the Axis side? Do you guys ever talk about the war and do things ever get uncomfortable? I imagine that if this person’s free and living, he probably has renounced any ties to his old life, right? I cant imagine any Nazi’s still around who are proud of what they did.
Not all of the Nazi troops were involved in the Holocaust. Most of them were just conscripts who had no say in anything. Anyone who spoke out against it probably would have been killed.
I always wondered how WWII German war veterans spoke of the war these days. Is it something taboo to speak about? What do younger civilians think about them? How are they treated?
I had a great grandfather who was part of a german bomber crew, radioman type, not a pilot. He didn’t have much to tell, he said his job was mostly sitting in a little corner with his radio gear, couldnt see anything, couldnt do anything else.
There was a man in my parents old neighborhood who claimed he was an SS Trooper in Germany, who moved to Salt Lake after the war…
Someone else in the neighborhood (who was also from WW-II era Germany) heard this guys boast (SS man apparently seemed proud of being a Nazi) told my parents that there was no way this guy could have been in the SS, as he was only around 5’3 or 5’4 (in other words a very short man) and the SS were all comprised of Aryan uber men, tall, typically blonde and very fit, none of which described this guy at all.
I of course have no way of knowing if any of this was true (SS mans story OR the accounts of the other German who said the SS were all Schwarzenegger-like hard asses) but I always thought it odd that someone would brag about being part of one of the most loathed, despised groups in recent human history.
PS the only reason I mentioned Arnold Schwarzenegger was because of his physique, nothing else was meant to be implied.
Years back, I remember hearing radio commentator Barry Farber talking about his travels in Europe as a young man. He was in Germany, during the Berlin Wall crisis, and he heard a bunch of middle aged Germans (probably WW2 veterans) mocking the Americans, sneering that Kennedy didn’t know what he was doing.
Being a patriotic American, he snapped back, "Well, if YOU guys hadn’t started WW2, none of this would ever have happened.
Their answer, according to Farber? “Nein, nein. VE didn’t start the var, it was POLAND!”
(Sidebar: Pat Buchanan is now in complete agreement with those Krauts!)
The GErman government won’t say such things aloud, but I’d bet that was a VERY common opinion among Germans from that generation. Ask an elderly German, off the record, and he’ll probably tell you, “If those stupid Poles had just given us Danzig and the corridor, none of the other unplesantness had to happen.”
I was an exchange student and lived in Scandinavia, but my host dad was German. It was a very weird feeling to go down to see Oma and see her wedding picture, in which Opa (who had died by then) had on his Wehrmacht uniform. He wasn’t enthused about the war and I doubt that he was really a Nazi–he fought on the Eastern front and came home in ruined health, which eventually killed him. The family’s general feeling seemed to be that the war hadn’t done them any good whatsoever, but no one ever talked about it. (Not to me, anyway.) WWII was just not a topic of discussion, at all, the whole year.
I don’t think they talked about it to anyone really–my host sister was 14 and didn’t seem to know until I told her that swastikas were really not OK. :eek: Not that she went around doodling swastikas or anything, but I was shocked that she didn’t seem to know that already. I’m not sure that she really knew much at all about the war.
My father, for one. He was a German Navy cadet (engineering branch), spending 1944 and early 1945 at the academy in Flensburg and on cruises in the Baltic (having the good luck to be on home leave when the Admiral Hipper was sunk). In March 1945 the cadets were transferred to artillery school in the Czech Republic, then to improvised infantry units (19-year-olds leading 16-year-olds against American tanks) in Bavaria. His CO dismissed his ‘men’ in April and my father was made POW shortly afterwards after striking out for home. He has told us a lot about that time in the last few decades. What struck him most was the absurdity of Kriegsmarine policy - first classes, among others, in accountancy and officerlike deportment right until March 1945, then being sent to the Czech Republic for what mostly were riding lessons, then being sent out as cannon fodder with little preparation (a lot of his classmates died in those last few weeks). There was a certain amount of lip service to be paid to the Nazi ideology - for example on the day after the 20 July coup attempt ships’ crews were assembled and told that henceforth the military salute was replaced by the Nazi salute - the admiralty covering their rear ends.
His one really traumatic war experience wasnt’ actual military service BTW but being caught in an air raid in 1943, in Coesfeld, during his Reichsarbeitsdienst service (they taught digging to 17-year-olds, at great length). They watched a bomber fleed overhead on their way to the Ruhr. Or so they thought, until the bombs hit and blew away some of them. He still tears up when speaking about that.
He also told about how his generation (he was born in 1926) was so used to the usages of Nazism, the only ones they had known, that after being released from the POW camp, when off the truck the first person he encountered was a former teacher, he greeted him with ‘Heil Hitler’, only then noticing that a) this wasn’t really the mandatory greeting to teachers anymore and b) they were in the presence of British soldiers. He quickly made himself scarce.
My uncle was Luftwaffe, mostly in France, and my aunt a German Red Cross nurse in Ukraine. The rest of the immediate family was too old or too young to have to serve. I have discussed history and politics with them and am reasonably confident they were not Nazis then, and certainly are not now.
Well my grandfather’s mother was german and he kind of celebrated the fall of Paris with a dinner party. At the party there were two of my grandmother aunts who, at the moment of the cheers, cheered for “Uncle Joe”… they were french.
Of course, Argentina was neutral and the war happened thousands of kms away, so it was all kind of a joke.
I wonder how he felt about the holocaust (he died when my father was a boy).
The little old lady who lived opposite me several years ago was a radio operator in the (I’m probably spelling this wrong) Luftwaffe. She did all the nazi youth sort of stuff at the time and believed that Hitler has some good ideas but failed in the implementation.
I tended to avoid her - because of those sort of ideas and the fact she was a nasty, spiteful evil old biddy.
It helps that the subject always comes up, since I sorta share the last name of The Man In The Glass Booth. Some kid asks, I point out the different spelling, then take a very serious demeanor as I tell them that the subject is one I take seriously, since I lost a relative in a concentration camp. They fall for it every time.
I recently saw a repeat on the History Channel about Hitler’s relatives, and it had a guy being told that a friend of his was Hitler’s great-nephew. The guy (Hitler’s nephew, that is), never had told anyone. Can’t say I blame him.
When I was growing up, one of my grandmother’s closest friends was a German immigrant who was sort of like another grandmother to us. She always was buying us presents, she came to Mass with us every Sunday, and she was present at most family events.
Around seven years old, I began to put the pieces together of “German,” “around Grandma’s age,” and “World War II.” I started to ask my parents what seemed to me the obvious question: “What was Melita doing during the Holocaust?”
They immediately went into panic mode and exclaimed, “DON’T EVER SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THAT TO HER!” I never found out anything about Melita’s pre-America life.
WW II gets confusing for my family as we were caught between a few different countries at the time. My Dad and his siblings served with the volunteers and then the US in China - or other theaters once the Air Force was formed, one of the other branches of cousins had people in the Russian army. A few in another branch of cousins “volunteered” to serve with the German army in the various units for foreign/Russian nationals. I put it in quotes because they were very anti-communist and saw it as a chance to refight the White Revolution. It didn’t work out that way.
There was a few family reunions where all three were together and discussed the war. Mostly it was about the hardships, fears and joys all soldiers share. When it came down to “sides” sometimes, the debates reminded me of the debates between my generation when we talk about colleges – the Penn State against the Pitt against the CMU crowd. Good natured but well argued - sometimes friendly but not always totally so. I imagine it was much like after the American Civil War when families were divided; the unity of blood overcame which side you were on. Usually.
My high school German teacher had been in the Hitler Youth. As I remember he was frank about having been excited at the time to turn old enough to join and get to march around in his fancy little uniform. He had a story about Allied bombings during the war and seeing a bomb hit his beloved nursemaid and her limbs flying off in different directions… It’s good for him he wasn’t older during the war because (aside from the obvious reasons) he was flamingly gay. At the time I knew him he exuded a kind of Old World, campy decadence - like a figure from “Cabaret” or something. Wouldn’t have gone over so well with the Nazis, I imagine.
Here in Troll Country, a number of veterans who fought on the Nazi side are still around. Most of them will assert that they were fighting against Communism or fighting to help Finland (which was caught in a war with the Soviet Union and thus temporarily allied with Germany - temporarily - once the Continuation War was over the Nazis learned what the Finns really thought of them). But as it happens I recently read a newspaper article about a book that will be coming out shortly, a book about war crimes committed by at least one of these Norwegian units, and the article included bits from an interview with one of the veterans who was not the least ashamed to say he was fighting for fascism. He said he believed Quisling was absolutely right and the day was coming when everyone would realize that.
I found it interesting that he didn’t mention Hitler. He claimed to have been fighting for Quisling. In this man’s mind, Quisling was a great leader and patriot, and not, as the rest of the world sees him, a traitor and a sniveling little weasel who even Hitler got fed up with rather quickly.
My Grandfather, born 1925, fought as a conscript in the Wehrmacht. He was mainly involved in rearguard actions from southern France to Germany’s borders as a driver of self-propelled guns, losing two of them to air-raids in the process.
He is not ashamed, but not proud either. Combat was about surviving and protecting your comrades, the days of conquering were already over when he got deployed. Of course the occupation and the fight in France was never as savage as on the eastern front.
He doesn’t tell much about combat, though, the stories are more about daily life during the war and the immediate aftermath (my grandmother is a bit younger and says being in the Bund Deutscher Mädel was really exciting for her, for example). They lived in the countryside and only few bombs fell in their vicinity, but they were near an airfield from where fighters attacked the bomber fleets.
They knew that Jews were being stripped of property and rounded up, but not what happened to them. The propaganda was really strong and they were ok with confiscating their “parasitic” earnings at the time. Hearing about that made me really uncomfortable.
As for hating the Americans or whatever, that sentiment is not there at all. Most Germans realized that the war was started by Germany, and the behavior of the occupiers was reasonable and sometimes even friendly (giving chocolate to kids etc).
Regarding current feelings toward the Wehrmacht soldiers, it’s not taboo to talk about. They mostly speak about it only when asked, but many people do ask because they want to know the stories before they die off. But of course there are no parades or anything, except for occasional memorial services together with the Allied veterans, mainly outside of Germany.
They are not condemend for it, they were mostly drafted and every male in a certain age group had to fight. The worst criminals have been largely punished, the only ones that are still in the courts are those who left the country to avoid prosecution. The time were there was widespread hate and condemnation was during the counter-culture of the 60s.
I only know this from stories by my mother, aunt and grand mother, but my Grand father (who died before I ever got the opportunity to discuss his war days) was finishing high school in Occupied Yugoslavia and was sent to fight at the Eastern Front (on the German side).
After his entire regiment (squadron or something) was killed while he was in the infirmary for a less serious issue, he deserted and pretty much walked (!) back to Yugoslavia where he joined the Partizans. In the end the idea I got from it was that he was never really ashamed of fighting (for a small amount of time) on the Germans side and that the whole period was more about surviving till the end of the war.
