My wife’s father joined the Marines to stay out of Europe because he didn’t want to kill people who looked like him. This was a common feeling in Appalachia. My father’s grandmother was a “Kuper”(Prussian) which placed him on a “list” that was created in WW1. He was in Operation Torch, served in North Africa but was sent to the Pacific before he could get into Europe.
One fascinating fact of the war was regarding coffee. Coffee disappeared in Germany when the war began because of the embargo. When German officers were captured, American interrogators would give them coffee for 2 reasons
1. It made them more loquacious
2. It showed them we could get luxuries to the front lines which meant we were unstoppable logistically.
It would amaze you how many German soldiers from WW2 are Korean War veterans. If a German soldier had a relative in America, they were allowed to emigrate. My boss’s father was a radio operator for an artillery unit compromised of German WW2 veterans. They transmitted in German which the NK/Chinese could not understand.
That is absolutely fascinating to read😀 Germans as code talkers, just like the Navajo in the USNavy!
I had no clue that there were any Germans fighting in Korea, although I knew of Germans in the Foreign Legion fighting for the French in 1950s Vietnam against the insurgents under General Giap, the victor of Dien Bien Phu.
I always think of the "Battle of Bulge" movie, where the German Panzer leader notes that the Americans have chocolate cake, “We do not have fuel to move our Panzers (tanks) across the field. The Americans have fuel enough to fly chocolate cake across the ocean. There is no way we can defeat them.”