My grandfather was a Nazi. I’ve seen why we need the EU | Matthias Bergmann

Since world war two, there have been three generations of Germans living in peace. That peace is taken for granted

Until his death in the early 1990s, my grandad was a committed Nazi. Most of his elder brothers died in one night at the battle of the Hartmannsweilerkopf in the first world war. In a bitterly traumatised interwar Germany, defined by hatred against foreigners, Jews and democracy as well as delusions of national grandeur, he was unemployed for most of the 1920s. He joined the Nazi party early, and volunteered to fight in 1940. He became a staff sergeant in the Wehrmacht and led a so-called “anti-partisan” unit on the eastern front, and participated in the capture of Kiev.

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Read More My grandfather was a Nazi. I’ve seen why we need the EU | Matthias Bergmann

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