[Ragnar]

To say that the average numbers of German soldiers were not nazi’s is as wrong as say that everybody was. Why is that? Simply because we don’t know. What we know is that Hitler was elected in a democratic election. That means the majority of the German citizens, including German soldiers, wanted him as their leader. Therefore the major part of the Germans (in that period) are responsible for the terror the European people experienced.

It’s correct that both sides committed war crimes, and that it is unacceptable.
However it seems like people outside Europe think of the war in a manner of great battlefields, heroes, glory, honor, and the fate of Jews.

I want to remind you about the fact that the people in Europe suffered terribly during the occupation. The condition in Poland was indescribable, and the condition in France, Czechoslovakia, Holland and Norway was not so much better. There are to many stories were the German soldiers behavior exceeded their duty.

Kids were shot as spies. They just wanted to see the German airplanes.
A lot of students were shot. For no reasons. It’s just a nice policy to prevent riots.
Union leaders were shot, because the employees didn’t work hard enough.
Kids were shot, when their parents (unarmed) tried to escape to Britain.
Have you ever heard about “Operation Freshman”? It’s about two British gliders, which crashed in Norway. All the soldiers who survived where executed. One soldier was paralyzed from the hip and down. He couldn’t stand by him self so they shot him lying on the ground.

The moral is. Hollywood is rarely historical correct. “The after war German generations” are not responsible for what happened, and don’t be to naive.