guntervent wrote: imagine being one of the young German soldiers Not a nazi mind you, but just a common German youth forced into service of a madman out of fear of retaliation the controlling party would take on your family if you did not serve, who before the war was a farm hand or a school boy, waiting in those bunkers peering out and seeing the coming invasion and the armada of ships and shell flying overhead. It must have been hell on earth for all present, I cant Imagine in any dream or nightmare what that must have been like for all of them.
I will tell you a story that I have only told to my Jewish friends.
My mum had a cousin who was about fifteen years older than her husband Peter was a small man with a beautiful English accent and interest in many things , he was an engineer and he had a story with hearing because it touched and challenged so many of our conceptions of the Germans during WWII.
Peter was conscripted into the German army when he finished college in 1941 and after basic training was sent to the French coastal defences where he stared across at the English coast and fired at the RAF planes that would appear overhead as they made their way to bomb Berlin. He wasn’t a Nazi party member he just had no choice, one afternoon he was summoned to see his Commanding Officer. When he entered his office he was surprised to see know other German officers only his commanding Officer no images of Hitler on the wall they had been taken down and no compulsory salute to Hitler like we see in old war films. He sat down and he was told that a secret order was sent to him to arrest Peter early the next morning and that the Gestapo would turn up to take him back to Germany later the following day!
What had transpired was that Peters family had been Jewish until a few generation earlier but had converted to Catholicism and from that moment on they were very active within the Church and Peter himself was a choir boy at the Cathedral.
As you can imagine he was in turmoil because he knew that he would not survive at the hands of the Nazi secret Police and so did his Commanding Officer, he also knew that Peter was a good man and wasn’t filled with hate.
What followed is stunning to me now as a grown up because I know the implications for his Commanding Officer, he took Peter to the beach where he had arranged for a rowing boat to be left, he handed Peter a letter to explain what had happened and to assure whoever found him of Peters honourable character. He told Peter to row to England and surrender to the British Armed forces and to join them and come back and liberate Europe of the Nazi occupiers’
Peter was frightened because he knew that he himself had watched the coast line and opened fire of small craft in case they were British spies or soldiers launching an attack, this threat had been erased by this brave German Officer because he had stood down all the guards and watchmen for thirty miles for an hour so Peter could get himself out of range of the German guns.
He arrived in Britain and after a short time establishing that Peter wasn’t a spy he joined the British army and was one of those who fought across the beaches fighting those who he had served with a couple of years earlier. He went on fighting across Europe and hunted for his family only one of his sisters survived the rest of his family were sent onto Concentration camps and murdered. Peters sister never forgave him for not taking her and his family to safety with him and she refused to ever have contact with him after her liberation. Peter lost his faith and became atheist but hung onto his kind sweet nature he wanted children but his wife was unable to conceive and he died in 1982 of cancer.
I often wonder what happened the next day when the Gestapo turned up and discovered Peter was gone and the coastal defences had been stood down for a hour?
How did he feel as he was targeting young frightened men who were just like him who hated Hitler and now he had to kill them?
And how he dealt with the rejection of his only surviving family member whose experience within the Nazi death machine left her so mentally damaged that she rejected him?
As a person who has studied history and politics it took me a long time to realise that in 1945 we liberated the Germans, The Germans had democracy removed and replaced with secret police and political army units who murdered and pillaged Europe in the name of ordinary disposed Germans.
Cologne she'll wear silver and americard, She'll drive a beetle car and beat you down at cool Canasta. And when the clothes are strewn don't be afraid of the room touch the fullness of her breast feel the love of her caress she will be your living end.
