Having had the privilege of meeting and hearing many WW2 vets, including several now deceased in my own family, something frequently mentioned was the sense that many of the young men who killed each other, in other circumstances, could have been good friends.
This guy fought, and now he goes to his maker as we all will.
Pretty easy for British and American troops to befriend before former German enemies. They didn't particularly hate us, and, except for the Death Camp guards and Waffen SS units, we didn't really hate them. You don't see former enemies from the Battle of Stalingrad partying together the same way Rommel's Afrika Korps and Monty's 8th Army did (heck, they were buddies even during the war).
What's more amazing is that there are former Japanese and Ally enemies who've become friends after the war.
Oh please. I’ve zero sympathy for the Germans of that generation. I had members of my family who risked their lives in WW2 fighting those bastards. Ever give any thought to what the world would look like today if they had won? And yeah, I’ve known many guys who fought in the ETO and none of them had anything warm or fuzzy to say about the Krauts.
As a bombardier on a B-24 in the Pacific Theater, my late Father's plane was once clipped by a Jap Zero during an air battle. Years later, in the early 1980s, he met and shook hands with a former Japanese Zero pilot at an air show.
Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident