Hello Der Adler!
You made several strong points in your comments.
As you can see people, Der Adler is experiencing himself many of the things the German soldiers experienced throughout the countries Germany attacked and occupied.
Has any of you ever read a book from an individual named Omer Bertov, where he speaks of the German invasion of the USSR and the "barbarization of warfare"?
The book is mainly bunk, depicting absolutely all the German soldiers, officers and commanders as terrorific demons whose blood lust could not be ever satisfied; remorseless beasts, so the author says.
The opposite side of the coin is the soviet population of the areas where the Wehrmacht operated: they were all inoccent harmless hummingbirds simply exercising their holy sacred divine right of defending their homeland.
The German soldiers had no right to defend themselves from partisan attacks or after being ambushed by people wearing no military uniform: whenever they did, in a powerful reaction, the Germans were "criminals".
Do you realize how easy is for virtually any individual to approach the war in such a manner the serves his personal agenda?
Today, the USA is the attacker and invader. That the reasons Hitler had for launching Barbarossa are completely different to those the USA had to invade Irak in this century, might be true, but in the end the scenario is virtually the same. It is not my point to get further into silly details of comparing Barbarossa with the military invasion of the USA in Irak.
The fact is the world sees a foreign army occupying an independent nation where a big number of its inhabitants do not like the invaders; many of them will pick whatever weapon they can to kill as many invaders as possible.
Der Adler makes a strong point when he says you can not be gentle and nice with the people of the invaded country: many of them will be glad to kill you if they have the chance, so imposing fear becomes compulsory. You do not have time to detect with accuracy which ones are likely to be friendly from those who are to be hostile.
You assume all of them are your enemies. Is this what you are trying to point out Der Adler?
In many places, many German officers and soldiers applied the principle Der Adler is poiting here, and for that the Wehrmacht was put in trial and copped out as "tool for genocide"; a ruddy ridiculous verdict, laughable.
If the leaders of one nation decide to go to war it shall be assumed they are aware of the consequences of such a tremendous decision. All wars have brutality attached to them. I am sure many soldiers of the USA have committed acts of brutality against inoccent iraki civilians -the scandal of the abuses on Iraqi POWs conducted by the red neck punks the USA Army brought in to take care of the prisons would be a joke- , in one level or another, and such acts will continue to happen for as long as the USA army stays in Irak.
Violence of course brings more violence. The violence applied by the side keeping the upper hand (USA) can certainly help for a while, but the problem will certainly continue to be there, and the violence of the subjugated side (people of Irak) will certainly rose to the surface sooner or later.
All soldiers have all my respect and admiration; in the end they are the ones paying the high cost of the decisions of the lunatics in power.
Der Adler, i tell you all this with all due respect, and again, admiration. I wish you the best and that soon you can get out of there and make it home safe; there must be some people waiting for you.
Cheers!
