Ethics of pilots fighting for the sides in WWII

[BadAim]

Actually, the Luftwaffe was probably the least Nazi organization extant in Germany during WWII, which is quite odd considering their leader, so I suppose if any of us are going to wear the "black hat" it might as well be as a Luftwaffe pilot.

I'm not sure the same can be said of the Japanese, but I'm just not in a position to know what some kid who had been brutalized during his training was thinking 60 years ago.

As for the Italians, you can say what you will about their armed forces, but they had the courage to not give up their Jews to the death camps, and that rates them a bunch of extra points in my book. The same can't be said for the French.

The problem with a discussion like this is (as has already been mentioned) is that we tend to paint with a broad brush, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, but always roughly. The truth almost always lies somewhere between our perceptions (and I do believe there is such a thing as truth).

While I believe that the "average Joe" fighting in the mud or the skies or wherever his job put him for the most part fought for his comrades, the pall of brutality hangs over the Axis forces, and any honest evaluation (at least I believe so) of the war will show that much of the brutality committed by the Allies was in reaction to this (though I don't offer it as an excuse).

Here is what I do know; nearly all of Europe was culpable in the Holocaust, (again, the broad brush sweeps up unintended victims [The Dutch for instance paid a high price for their resistance to the 'final solution']) and the US can certainly be accused of pushing the Japanese into the war. The war on the eastern front was perhaps a case of it's own, but even there the grunt on the ground had a grudging respect for 'Ivan' or 'Hans' as the case may be. The simple fact of the matter is that War is a brutal affair, and no amount of armchair Generaling will ever change that.

Maybe we're all odd ducks for our fascination with this war that was fought by our fathers and grandfathers but I think we can all respect the courage with which they fought their own little corner of the war no matter what flag they fought under.

Should it interest anyone I'm a Yank and I generally fly Axis, though I fly almost anything at sometimes or another.