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Re:Getting to Know Americans by rdouble on Monday April 04, 2011 @03:47PM (#2408202)
You might have a thin skin. Old soldiers (and old people in general) say outrageous things all the time. My grandpa is also a ww2 vet and busts out new offensive material every time I visit. Even the hyper educated oldsters do it. 8 years ago I went to a lecture by James Watson and he spent the whole 45 minutes making racist jokes about Asian people...

Whatever you do, don't ever visit Australia.

Re:Getting to Know Americans by yequalsx on Monday April 04, 2011 @05:41PM (#2408680)
Your last sentence seems to imply that I do have a thin skin. It's possible. It's also possible that the generation of Germans that brought us Auschwitz is a disconcerting one to me and justifiably so.

Would you have lunch with Rudolf Hoss and be pleasant to him? What about a guard there? Perhaps the discomfort in me has to do with the fact that so many Germans committed atrocities and my conclusion is that I am no better. That is, in the same situation I would have done the same thing.

I could have a thin skin. By the way, my experience with men who saw combat - real combat - don't talk about it. The will tell a few anecdotes but nothing to do with combat. The ones who talk about their war experiences usually aren't the ones who actually did any fighting.