Originally Posted by LakieLady:
“As a socialist and a trade unionist, I'd have been rounded up at quite an early stage, I think.
I think a lot of people just went along with it out of fear, and because it became a sort of socil norm.”
A guy I went to school with, enlisted in the army in the mid 80s, and after basic training was posted to Northern Germany.
He always had a thing for blondes, and he got captured by a fräulein and that was it, he married her and never came back.
When his father-in-law died, he was asked to help clear out the basement of his in-laws house, he told me that he found a loaded Luger, SS runes, a death's head cap badge, and photos of his f-I-l in SS uniform.
He couldn't understand it, he said the old guy was the most gentle, polite person that he'd ever met, all he knew of any war connection was that he would collect annually for the German equivalent of ex servicemen clubs.
I said that I understood that the SS were entirely volunteers, but my friend said that he had found his f-I-l's pay book, he had volunteered for the Kriegsmarine, (Navy), at age 17 in 1940, but when it was discovered that he was an excellent shot, he was transferred into the Wehrmacht as a rifleman, from there the SS apparently creamed off the best, and he was sent for sniper training with them.
He was wounded at Kursk in 1943, sent home to the Fatherland to recover, then sent to France, where he was captured in Alsace, and released in 1946.
My friend said that his mother-in-law had been aware of the SS bit, but the daughter, (my friend's wife), had no idea, just knew that her dad had been in the war, but knew nothing of the SS, plus she wasn't born until 1968.