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When I saw this pic, I thougth about posting. I decided against it though as I looked more at the subjective content of the photo, not the objective photo itself. I see that others did not have similar restraint.
This is, technically speaking, an excellent photo. It is very striking both in layout, mixture of light/dark, and all that photographer lingo that no one else really worries about. It also happens to be of a pair of the German version of GI Joe. No, not the hyper-patriotic comic-book hero, the guy that the term was coined for. The American grunt what fought day and night for his life, and maybe for a cause he believed in. In general though, he fought to keep alive, and to keep his buddies alive.
The average German soldier was precisely the same. Innumerable stories exist of German soldiers finding out what Hitler and the SS had done during the war and the period leading up to it. The response was usually shock and disbelief. These were not men fighting to be able to torture and kill Jews, homosexuals, and dissidents. They were men fighting for the same reason our boys did - to defend their homeland.
Get past the whole hate for the Germans. They were lead astray and lied to by those that they put into power. Were they wrong? Yup. Were they culpable? To the extent that they did not stop what they did not know about. I don't like Nazism, I don't respect what they stood for. I find it unutterably vile. The average soldier, though, was just a normal guy who had the misfortune of working for the wrong government.
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