Posted on 05/27/2003 10:10:44 AM PDT by knighthawk
Edited on 05/07/2004 5:21:19 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
CHICAGO - A German who helped save the lives of five escaped American prisoners of war in the dying days of World War II had a happy reunion with two of the men over the Memorial Day weekend.
Ernst Naumann, 72, was just a boy in 1945 when he and his brother and grandfather decided to hide the American soldiers in a cave to keep them safe.
(Excerpt) Read more at azcentral.com ...
It serves as a reminder that wars are never fought between people; they are fought between govenments.
This is in response to the following series of posts and my corresponding post is a true story. The first post is a decent example of patriotism although the forum has a 180 degree opposite ideological bent from here. The post following compared US soldiers to Nazis. I posted the rest in refutation.
March 19, 2003 Good luck to our troops LAST EDITED ON Mar-19-03 AT 04:53 PM (ET) Like many of you I oppose this war but I will not do anything to demoralize our troops once this thing starts. I'm sorry folks but I will am putting my differences aside on this one. I want my friends to come home safely and I want them to know they have my support and the support of most of america.Good luck troops, come home safely! If you disagree please go tell go visit a soldiers little girl in school and tell her that you hope her daddy gets shot because you disagree with Mr. Bush. thanks.
(follow up post)==================
The same words could have been said about Wehrmacht soldiers on their way off to the Eastern Front, by any German who "loved his country." So, where's the wisdom in it?
These American soldiers are "just following orders" -- NO DIFFERENT from SS guards. It's not particularly their fault -- in the same sense that it wasn't exactly the fault of the SS guys, either.
(My response:)========================
My wife's grandfather was one of those soldiers in the Wehrmacht who went off to the Eastern Front.
She never met him. Her mother only vaguely remembers him. Her grandmother (who recently passed on at 99 yrs of age- a witness to both world wars) never saw her husband again after he left for the Soviet Front. She was left with her children in a war torn country in the aftermath.
She (her grandmother) was something of a social pariah during the war because she refused to join the party. They lived in a small village in the mountains of Northern Germany so social nosiness and group-think were even more intense. When she went outside, she always made certain to be carrying something bulky in both hands so she wouldn't have to render the Nazi salute. This was her small way of protesting when protest against the government was illegal.
When the war ended and the Brits moved into her sector, she got word finally that her husband had been killed. She had no time to weep or mourn. Food was scarce and she had to provide for her children. She was a school teacher. As it turned out, she was the only person for miles around that had mastered English. So, in addition to trying to keep her own household, she became saddled with the role of liason between the British Commander for that area and the rest of the villages (not just her own). She was often summoned late at night away from home to the commander's quarters.
When the Allies began overseeing the restructuring and reconstruction of the German society, they wouldn't allow anyone who had been a Nazi Party member to be a school teacher (at least in that area). So, she was appointed regional school teacher for a wide area until they could work out a solution. Small kids right on up to teens. An entire generation of children in that area know my wife's grandmother now because she was their teacher for a good while. These people are all middle aged or older now. When she died it was a sad day in all the surrounding villages and it was quite surprising for my wife to see all these strange people who she had never met coming to pay their respects to this woman who had provided them with education when their parents and relatives who were teachers could not because they had been among the party faithful.
She was very old when I met her, but her mind was still clear. She read voraciously and did crosswords. She always voted because she knew what price had been paid in order for her to be able to do so. She liked me because I was American and she had good memories of the Americans and Brits (who she called Tommies). She related to me once her fondest memory of her youth- an occasion when she glimpsed the last German Kaiser strolling in the gardens at the winter palace in Kassel. That was the last time Germany was truly beautiful in her lifetime. She saw her country destroyed twice and she lived through the rise and fall of the most infamous regime ever known in history. Witnessed her country split in two and occupied by two Armies who were hostile to each other and lived long enough to see it reunited again and to hear the complaints of those in the East who wanted their wall back after a while. A whole Germany, but not the same Germany she was born into.
She never remarried. She kept a picture of her husband in his uniform (the last one made of him)on her desk until the day she died. Not because she was proud of him being in the Wehrmacht, but because he was her husband, her family, the man she had chosen to go through life with. But she had to travel that road without him.
My wife's mother- herself a retired schoolteacher- was seriously injured in a bus accident in the Ukraine while on a trip to try and locate her father's grave (an almost impossible task). The bus slid off an icy road and a couple of people died. She was laid up in a Ukrainian hospital for several weeks until she was well enough for the bus company to be able to provide transport for her home. Had it not been for a Russian woman who lived in my mother in law's village we would not have been able to communicate with the hospital at all. At any rate, my mother-in-law's injuries were insignificant to her. She still arranges trips every other year to try and find her father's grave. This is a matter of huge importance to her the older she gets. I imagine she doesn't want to die without visiting her father and letting him know that he isn't just one of a forgotten number who died on the 'wrong side'.
He didn't join the Army because he wanted to. He chose the Wehrmacht because it was the lesser evil between several evil choices. He didn't want to go off and die in a strange place. He didn't want to cause his wife to have to walk life's path alone. He didn't want his daughter to spend the rest of her life looking for the place where he fell fighting a battle for a man with whom he did not agree.
He wasn't a Nazi and he wasn't fighting for the Nazi cause. They (grandfather and grandmother) were both aware of what was going on in their country but there was simply nothing they could do about it. They had children to look out for. They had to try and survive. They were caught up in something that was far bigger than them.
I'm glad the Nazis were driven from power. My wife's grandmother is also glad of this, even though it cost her her husband and her children a father they don't really remember. But I say that man could have used a little luck, a nod from the creator, an acknowledgement from his countrymen that, while he may not ever be labeled a hero because of the cause he was forced to champion- he was still human, still German and he still died for his country.
If, because of the current political situation in America, you can't find it in your heart to wish your countrymen in arms good luck in the situation they are faced with- reflect on this inlaw of mine that I never had the honour to meet and what his loss meant to his family. He wasn't 'the bad guy' and neither are our fellow Americans who are headed into battle.
That's all I wanted to say.
You need to slow up a little bit and think before you mete out punishment in such broad strokes.
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