In no manner, do I claim to have all the answers. I am not worthy of such self delusion. Depending on the circumstances and geography of ones birth, during the WW2 era, one could have been presented with very few choices on how to live your life. I would like to believe I would have made the “right” choices and for honorable reasons. I have no idea what decisions I would have made, had I been alive then and in an active war zone. It is easy for us to make judgement 70 years later, based on linear logic.
I read a very short novel about WW1 that was quite powerful.
It was called “All Quiet On The Western Front”.
I recommend it to get a brief glimpse of what life was like for an enlisted man during that struggle.
Also it’s not clear whether the soldier (as a teenager to young adult in 1940s) lived in Ukraine or in Canada, as Ukrainians flocked into Canada as early as the 1905 troubles and again during and after WW-I, and a few certainly went back to Ukraine to fight Stalin’s Red Army given that opportunity. We cannot easily know how informed they may or may not have been about their new friends from Germany. They were probably motivated by anti-communist sentiments, some may also have been fascists. Europe was not short of fascists or communists in 1941. Even after they killed each other in large numbers, there still are a lot. What irks me is that progressives see only one side as evil. I’m not sure this guy Poland wants to extradite knew a lot about what the Nazis were about, at least not until after it was too late to leave the unit. And it is unseemly to want to put a 98-year old on trial. Let God deal with it.