Alfrons Heck puzzled that “a civilized, humane people had allowed ourselves to become indifferent to brutality committed by our own government.” Yet in the end his analysis verged on self-pity: “I developed a harsh resentment toward our elders, especially our educators. Not only had they allowed themselves to be deceived, they had delivered us, their children, into the cruel power of a new God.” Heck concluded that despite their enthusiastic support for Hitler, his generation filled the role of victim surely as those cruelly murdered by Nazi aggression: “Tragically, now, we are the other part of the Holocaust, the generation burdened with the enormity of Auschwitz. That is our life sentence, for we became the enthusiastic victims of our Führer.” Similarly, confessing that, “I and with me millions of Germans turned to Hitler as the Führer, willingly fought and died honorably for him.”

Friedrich Grupe still professed shock at the remark of German President Richard von Weizsäcker - himself the son of a diplomat who had served the Nazis - in October 1988 that “the German people were led by criminals and let themselves be led by criminals.” “Without a reconciliatory and clarifying word to onetime soldiers,” Grupe complained, “this is a bitter obituary for the millions of German war dead whose death under the swastika was pronounced: ‘fallen for Volk and Führer.’” Even Claus Hansmann, certainly no apologist for Hitler or the Nazis, at the end of the war fell victim to the “victim” claim: “We are no heroes… Heroes? What are we? Poor, mistreated, mutilated victims of a nightmare.

“Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II” by Stephen Fritz (p 225- 226). —

On 8 May Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally. We were told this momentous news, but considering our own peril and misery, no one cared much. “So what” was typical of the remarks I heard around me. We were resigned only to the fact the Japanese would fight to total extinction on Okinawa, as they had elsewhere, and that Japan would have to be invaded with the same gruesome prospects. Nazi Germany might as well have been on the moon.

The main thing that impressed us about V-E Day was a terrific, thundering artillery and naval gunfire barrage that went swishing, roaring, and rumbling towards the Japanese. I thought it was in preparation for the next day’s attack. Years later I read that the barrage had been fired on enemy targets at noon for its destructive effect on them but also as a salute to V-E Day.

Eugene Sledge on V-E Day on the Pacific (via greatestgeneration) —

German police arrest 93-year-old 'Auschwitz guard'

Hans Lipschis claims he was an SS cook not a death camp guard

will there ever be a day the band of brothers tag isn’t 78% posts about “OMG IS THAT ONE ACTOR FROM X AND HE’S SO SEXYFINE IN A UNIFORM OMG I DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE IN THIS SHOW OH NO HE’S DYING NOW I’M SO SAD”