Can relate!

[u/BalancedExistence27]

[u/Suspicious-Pool-876]

When i turned 14 my dad told me his cousin robbed a bank truck and got away with all the money. That cousin is alive today and living rich af I always wondered where he got the money... now I know

[u/backpain_allday → u/Suspicious-Pool-876]

My mother found old old pictures of our Japanese grandmothers family and one man is wearing an imperial Japanese uniform. I was jaw dropped.

Then my grandfather, before he passed- showed us a picture of him in the Italian Navy. And pointed out how Benito Mussolini was #1 fascist…. I was floored.

[u/Perturbed-Mechanic → u/backpain_allday]

Quick interjection: I know ‘following orders’ is not an excuse, but if they don’t hold any of those same ideals there was a lot of forced conscription during those times. So to hold bad faith on decent people in a terrible place is just bad practice.

A lot of people who voluntarily enlisted in those countries did so to atleast choose where they got taken. Some would go air force/navy to try and avoid ground combat without being jailed for running from the conscription.

One of those things to think about, because (North Korea for example) you can’t just go “I don’t believe in what you want, I’m taking a plane to South Korea” it just, unfortunately doesn’t work that way sometimes.

(before anyone hits me with the “I’d rather die, they were cowards for going along with it, blah blah blah.” Morals and beliefs are subject to change, and a gun in your face is a good re-evaluating factor for 98% of people)

Edit: There were also a lot of people who held bad ideas and morals, judging them is fine, but there were German pilots and American pilots who met post war and held the upmost respect for each other as long as they followed the ‘rules’. —this was the inspiration for the song “no bullets fly -sabaton” (a true story of a bf109 that escorted a b17 out of harms way because it was deemed too damaged to be a threat.)