Two childhood encounters with ex-Nazis

[Childress]

In the mid-sixties I was hospitalized in New York with pneumonia. I was about 12. I shared a room with a man, fortyish, attached to an IV and possessing a decided German accent. He was intermittently chatty, relating that he had been in the Hitler Youth before emigrating to the US. One day my dad came to visit and, having served under Patton in N. Africa and Sicily, questioned the man about his wartime experiences. But the German proved closed off on the subject. My father then brought up the unfortunate fate of the Jews. The man exploded, detailed the various crimes against civilization committed by that group and terminated the exchange with the remark 'Who cares about the Jews?'. He never addressed me another word. Months later my mother informed me she read in the local paper that the German had been arrested on a 'morals charge'.

The second encounter took place at the neighborood tennis club a few years later. One of the members was a German-American who had served in a Wehrmacht tank unit. He admitted joining the party as a teenager but deplored the Nazi regime for its crimes, swearing he had no idea what was going on- meaning the death camps. He was in his early twenties when the war ended. I believed him. Then he said something which I'll never forget: '*****, Americans (paraphrasing) who judge us for what we young Germans did do so unjustly. When the Nazis came in the economy improved. And they have no idea how thrilling and seductive it all was; the rallies, the pageantry, the comradeship. In retrospect it was a lie, but you had to be there. What would you have done?'

[agusto]

Then he said something which I'll never forget: '*****, Americans (paraphrasing) who judge us for what we young Germans did do so unjustly. When the Nazis came in the economy improved. And they have no idea how thrilling and seductive it all was; the rallies, the pageantry, the comradeship. In retrospect it was a lie, but you had to be there. What would you have done?'

Intersting IMO. Can people who grew up solely during the Nazi regime and who hadnt known anything else before the war ended be judged the same way for their actions as those who were born way before the Nazis came into power? I mean, the latter, the ones who were old enough to know the world before the NS regime, they willingly chose Hitler (or at least most of them). They knew that there were alternatives. On the otherhand, those who grew up mostly in youth organisation of the Nazi party, whose parents probably also were Nazis, how should they ve been able to know better? A difficult matter IMO that can only be judged in the individual case.

Concerning the guy you quoted, i think that he said the truth: the NS was terribly attractive for most germans back then, it is not a wonder that many, especially of the younger generations, were easily seduced. And IMO he is also right that what happend is hard to understand without having been there: it took me quite a lot of reading too to really understand why and how things happened back then. At least he realized later that 'in retrospect it was a lie'.