When I was done he puffed out his chest and said “When I was 17, I volunteered for Hitler’s Army.”
The rest is in the Police Report??
Something along the lines of, ya busted his chops and said, “Best regards from General Patton”?
He was a good neighbor and took good care of his American-born wife who had cancer. When she needed assisted living, they moved in together even though he was still healthy.
I stayed away from the obvious topics, concentration camps, etc.
I positively mentioned Reagan’s deregulation of the airline industry. He would have none of it, no matter how I proceeded.
He totally rejected any form of de-regulation. As far as he was concerned, there was regulation and occasionally more regulation, but that did not rule out the possible need for yet more regulation. Regulation goes one way only. I’ve talked to average Americans who think the same way. It’s kind of like fine-tuning your car where you occasionally add parts but must never take any away. This story repeats again with our laws, where laws are added, but hardly any are repealed.
Hitler’s party was the German National Socialist Party. Talking to the old Nazi, the socialism part came through loud and clear. Government can do no wrong. Any apparent wrong can be explained away. He had little trouble labelling people in the private sector as “crooks.”
By the way, I have a relative who was in a concentration camp. She never talked about it. She may have been too young to understand what was going on around her, especially if adults kept her sheltered. She was liberated by the US Army, came to Ellis Island, studied, and passed her naturalization tests.
She could keep a grudge about the past. Her father did not get the inheritance that he deserved. It all went to his brother, my grandfather. I got the impression that changed everything. Perhaps in some biblical sense, he lacked his father’s Blessing.