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Originally Posted by Letum
Exactly!
Back then it seamed the right and honorable thing to do, now we can see it was not.
Their ignorance goes some way to excuse their actions, but we can not use it to
justify our actions.
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I am not saying you are wrong, Letum. And I do agree to a certain degree with you. All I am saying is: Why put them all in the same box and make no distinction between 'Monster' and 'Hero', so to say?
There were many many soldiers who fought brave and honorable on either side, did not commit any crimes or cruelties. Why not use those as an example that even when the **** hits the fan, there are still people out there that are (or rather were) decent human beings?
The Nazi's where bad guys? No doubt about that. Hitler a loony? Hell yea. Unfortunately all attempts on his life (I think it were 42 attempts) failed. And mind you many of those came from within the military (for many different reasons, admittedly) or from the German resistance, who got no support whatsoever from the Allies and subsequently were doomed to fail.
I prefer to look at things from a rather 'detached' point of view and try to see things in perspective and look at the alternatives and not to judge everyone as being in the same box.
One, in my opinion, important thing the 'everybody is in the boat and therefore guilty as charged' does, it totally ignores soldiers that actively supported the German Resistance or even those who joined the French Resistance while on active duty. There were many acts of kindness and active or passive resistance from regular Joe Grunts. And I am not willing to negate those by just saying: Bah.. they were all Nazi's or in the Wehrmacht, therefore off with their heads.