I am on your side. There is no point villifying grunts. Wehrmacht troops were not the Waffen SS, and neither are US soldiers.
The number of German men who were killed in that war is unbelievable. The Wall of the Dead inscribed with the names of locals who died in WWI and II in my mom's hometown (population of only 15,000) is enormous. Her family is pretty singular in that no men in it were killed in WWII -- almost miraculous fortune!
Actually there is a German Cemetery outside St. Petersburg that contains the remains of 20,000 German soldiers who died during the Seige of Leningrad. Occasionally aged Soviet and German veterans have reconciliation meetings there, which I think is really beautiful. Pretty amazing.
--- boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, many Nazi soldiers were draftees and we
> prosecuted realtively few
> people of lower rank (compared to their overall
> numbers). There were
> even Nazi draftees and officers who rejected their
> orders at times as
> illegal. I don't think the fact that there were Nazi
> draftees does
> anything but strengthen my point. Voluntary
> participation in war for
> one's society has been expected from citizens at
> least since the days
> of Greece and Rome.
>
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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