When I learned that my sweet grandpa being a soldier in the fascist army in ww2 wasn’t the most fucked up bit of our family history, I kind of started wondering if I want to explore it any further.
Was he conscripted? Did he actually have fascist politics or was he literally defending his homeland? I’m an American and definitely oppose the fascist turn our politics have taken, but if we were invaded I would feel compelled to defend my city, personally.
Also the grandson of a tail gunner that shot down two planes over Normandy, though in the frenzy of battle my grandfather was only absolutely sure that one of them was a Nazi plane.
Was he conscripted? Did he actually have fascist politics or was he literally defending his homeland?
Tough to say at this point, as I say in the other comment. He was likely conscripted (he was around 18 near the end of the war), but defending his fascist homeland wasn’t the ideal choice, there was a massive antifascist resistance at the time that many had run away to join instead, that was the proper “defend your homeland” movement as far as history is concerned.
For context, we’re from Croatia, i.e. Independent State of Croatia (Nazi puppet state) during 1941-1945, and then a part of socialist(ish) Yugoslavia 1945-1991.
Not too much, in a way. He was around 18 when he was in the army near the end of the war, I don’t know (and there’s likely no way to find out now) how willing he was about being there, how much he believed in the ideology, and how much of a choice he had at all (though it surely wouldn’t have been impossible for him to escape and join the partisan resistance, as many others had done), and either way he went through this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleiburg_repatriations so I count that as atonement for whatever crap he might’ve done.
And, well, half a century later, when I came about, he was effectively a different person. I have my own picture of him from one time period, that picture is already wildly different from the picture his children had/have, and adding what he did before all of us is tough to put together into a single picture, at least for me right now. I mean, purely for myself his most important contributions were sparking my interest in natural sciences, showing me a bit about how computers work back when he was the only family member with a computer at home, providing me with formative books (Don Quijote), and (probably unintentionally) making me turn atheist. His past has to be objectively acknowledged, but it necessarily has a different role in my subjective perception of him.
When I learned that my sweet grandpa being a soldier in the fascist army in ww2 wasn’t the most fucked up bit of our family history, I kind of started wondering if I want to explore it any further.
That can be a complicated thing.
Was he conscripted? Did he actually have fascist politics or was he literally defending his homeland? I’m an American and definitely oppose the fascist turn our politics have taken, but if we were invaded I would feel compelled to defend my city, personally.
Also the grandson of a tail gunner that shot down two planes over Normandy, though in the frenzy of battle my grandfather was only absolutely sure that one of them was a Nazi plane.
Tough to say at this point, as I say in the other comment. He was likely conscripted (he was around 18 near the end of the war), but defending his fascist homeland wasn’t the ideal choice, there was a massive antifascist resistance at the time that many had run away to join instead, that was the proper “defend your homeland” movement as far as history is concerned.
For context, we’re from Croatia, i.e. Independent State of Croatia (Nazi puppet state) during 1941-1945, and then a part of socialist(ish) Yugoslavia 1945-1991.
Dang.
I can’t imagine having to make that choice as an 18 year-old kid. That’s huge, heavy stuff.
How does grandpa’s service impact your view of him? I don’t mean that as a “you should hate him”, but rather as a genuine question.
Not too much, in a way. He was around 18 when he was in the army near the end of the war, I don’t know (and there’s likely no way to find out now) how willing he was about being there, how much he believed in the ideology, and how much of a choice he had at all (though it surely wouldn’t have been impossible for him to escape and join the partisan resistance, as many others had done), and either way he went through this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleiburg_repatriations so I count that as atonement for whatever crap he might’ve done.
And, well, half a century later, when I came about, he was effectively a different person. I have my own picture of him from one time period, that picture is already wildly different from the picture his children had/have, and adding what he did before all of us is tough to put together into a single picture, at least for me right now. I mean, purely for myself his most important contributions were sparking my interest in natural sciences, showing me a bit about how computers work back when he was the only family member with a computer at home, providing me with formative books (Don Quijote), and (probably unintentionally) making me turn atheist. His past has to be objectively acknowledged, but it necessarily has a different role in my subjective perception of him.
Damn, that sucks. And it probably isn’t the best that my first thought was the old joke about falling off the guard tower…