General Discussion

...over whatever one is struggling with, so good for you for doing this.

20 or so years ago, my husband's oldest son (he has a son and daughter from an early marriage and we have 2 sons) was stationed in Germany with the US Air Force. We went to visit him. He lived in an apartment off base. As we walked around the little town, I was brought up short when we rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a life size statue of a German soldier in uniform, with the well-known Nazi helmet atop the head. It was honoring the German dead, something I had never seen before.

We also went to the American cemetery in Luxembourg, where Patton is buried. Pristine, with lush grass groomed to perfection, and row upon row of sparkling white stone grave markers. As we were walking out, we saw sign for a German cemetery just a short walk away. We went there, too, and the contrast was striking. Altho neatly maintained, the grass was sparse and weedy, and the grave markers looked to be made of some sort of concrete composite material - gray and grim looking. Particularly eerie was clouds suddenly obscuring the sun as we walked the path to this graveyard - almost like Nature was acknowledging the dark deeds done by those buried there. The place is called Sandweiler.

Sandweiler German war cemetery. The Sandweiler German war cemetery is a World War II cemetery in Sandweiler, in southern Luxembourg. It contains the graves of 10,913 German servicemen from the Battle of the Bulge in winter 1944 and spring 1945.

More than twice the number buried in the American cemetery. Many of the bodies are buried 3 deep, and are simply labeled Ein Deutcher Soldat - a German soldier.

For anyone interested - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandweiler_German_war_cemetery

What struck me about both the statue honoring German soldiers, and this cemetery, with so many bodies unidentified, was that each of those dead men had been someone's son/brother/husband who had no doubt be deeply mourned by their surviving family members, just as had those who fought on the side of light.

How do we know for sure how we might react if subjected to relentless and persuasive brainwashing, coupled with threats to our lives if we did not fall in line?

I despair of human kind ever figuring out that killing each other is a lousy way to try to solve problems.