Some Thoughts About Seeing German War Memorials

While cycling through the Germany these last 2 weeks, I've only come across three monuments that make any kind of reference to WWI or WWII. All three were monuments to the war dead affixed on the side of a church.

I snapped pictures of all three furtively, hoping no one would interpret it as a sign of disrespect, or assume I was going to put it on the web with the caption "Here lies a bunch of Nazi assholes".

Of course, this isn't how I feel. The dead are the the dead, after all, and it's useless to call them names. No doubt that within the names there were some particularly vicious dudes, rousting Jews from farmhouses and doing unspeakable things. There is no forgiveness or understanding there. But I can't help but think that most of these names were just German dudes that were swept up in events much larger than them, put into motion by people much more vicious and evil than them.

For World War I, this is undoubtably true: from what I've read the Germans seem no more "evil" or "wrong" than any other party in that ridiculous war. All the heads of states were all inter-related, they were all a bunch of buffoons, and all of the people on the ground were merely part of a much larger mistake. From my limited understanding, it sounds like a series of pent-up 19th century grudges and conflicts played out with 20th century technology and methods. For the Germans who died in that war, I can't summon an ounce of anger or bitterness.

In World War II, things get murkier for me. Hitler came to power with promises to get rid of the Jews. He was very up front about what an evil son-of-a-bitch he was, and if you signed up with him, you signed up for non-stop Evil. But at the same time, it's no doubt true that most of the Germans who died in WWII were no more "Evil" or "Wrong" than any other soldier of any other conflict. Of course, the Nazis needed to be stopped. But looking at a list of the dead, how are these individuals to blame? Why "blame" anyway?

Everybody I've met these last few weeks has been so unbelievably gracious, kind and welcoming to me, and this region is the conservative part of Germany that gave Hitler much of his power base. Now I'm in Austria, his homeland, and people here are equally wonderful. Am I to believe that there was some inherent evil in the mothers and fathers of these people that is no longer present after one or two generations. That the anti-semitism and the hate and the war-mongering were all some disease that captured everybody and then went away?

To me, that makes no sense. The simple lesson I take from it is that I've got the same capacity of evil as the names on these monuments. I'm no different than any of them, and for me to judge them is to deny my own nature. Who am I to say that I wouldn't do the same things under the same circumstances? Maybe I'd be a hero or a matyr, maybe I'd be a great villain. Until I'm faced with the same choices, I can't know. And I'll never be faced with the same choices since every moment in history is unique, with it's own context and stories.

To judge the Nazis is easy: they are history's greatest villains and there is nothing that will ever wipe that away. But I can't do the same to Karl Ertl, who was born on the 16th of April, 1923 and died on the 18th of October in 1944 and who probably belonged to a small church in the town of Kunzing in Eastern Bavaria, by the banks of the Danube river, whose named is carved on this plaque that lies on the main road through town.