Nazi War Crimes as Described by German Soldiers

[mgc1961]

Reposted and edited for length. Highly recommended, lengthy article.

It is March 6, 1943, and two German soldiers are talking about the war. Fighter pilot Budde and Corporal Bartels were captured by the British a few weeks earlier. The war is over for them, and it's time to share memories.

Budde: "I flew two spoiling attacks. In other words, we shelled buildings."

Bartels: "But not destructive attacks with a specific target, like what we did?"

Budde: "No, just spoiling attacks. We encountered some of the nicest targets, like mansions on a mountain. When you flew at them from below and fired into them, you could see the windows rattling and then the roof going up in the air. There was the time we hit Ashford. There was an event on the market square, crowds of people, speeches being given. We really sprayed them! That was fun!"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,755385,00.html

[petronius]

1. Link? (Interesting story about the saboteurs, by the way...)

[mgc1961]

2. Sorry. Fixed.

[petronius]

6. Thanks, it's a chilling read

I've read a couple of books on the topic as well - Ordinary Men and The Good Old Days. It makes you realize that, if considered honestly, the question "What would you be?" is not such a no-brainer as we'd like to think...

[pscot]

3. That was a long time ago

We have our own war crimes to think about.

[auntsue]

4. On bombing raids over Germany, if American planes

could not make their targets (military or industrial) their orders were to "drop bombs - kill Germans." War is hell and to enable soldiers to fight and kill they are "conditioned" during basic training to see the "enemy" as "less than human" otherwise a typical moral individual would think too much and not be able to kill a fellow human being. During WW II our soldiers fought against "Nips and Krauts" in Vietnam and Korea the enemy were "gooks". The side effect of this is "war crimes" - no country is immune. Sometimes even civilians have that mentality i.e. Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc.

[Sherman A1]

5. Thanks for Posting

It was an interesting and disturbing read.