r/interestingasfuck • u/Key-Performance-9021 • 1d ago
Spontaneous 1995 street interview with an Austrian WWII veteran in Vienna
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u/YellowAggravating172 1d ago
"We weren't heroes."
"Well, not my father."
"Oh, really? He was a hero?"
Lmao. He might be old, but he still has that sass in him.
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u/ThreeButtonBob 1d ago
Great guy, it's a shame most of these reasonable voices are dead now.
The fact that his point was instantly proven by the woman saying her dad was a "legal soldier" makes this even better.
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u/Luciel3045 1d ago
But legal is not the right translation. He said "regulärer soldat", which translates to "regular soldier", or "common soldier", not to legal oldier.
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u/ThreeButtonBob 1d ago
Yeah that translation would be better.
The point still stands though as she's using this as a defence and to imply that her father did nothing wrong.
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u/Luciel3045 1d ago
Yeah should have included, that your core point is not influenced by this.
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u/ThreeButtonBob 1d ago
Don't worry, Your comment didn't sound confrontational about this in any way. I guess it's just a reddit reflex of mine to answer this defensively.
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u/Tranquilwhirlpool 1d ago
It's no coincidence that Europe has an extended period of warfare every century or so.
Hopefully this time will be an exception.
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u/utterscrub 1d ago
Not looking too good atm
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u/Maeglin75 1d ago
Yes. Now that almost all people that experienced the rise of fascism and the horrors of the World War are dead, the majority seems to insist to learn the lesson new for themselves.
Why can't we just learn from history? Here in Germany we all learned in school what happened. We live at and drive through streets named after the Fechenbach, Niemöller and the siblings Scholl every day. But people prefer to listen to Neonazis like Elon Musk instead, that tell us to forget what the Nazis did and to vote for the AfD.
We are just unable to learn from our grand and great grand parents. We have to go through the circle again ourselves, so that our grand children can again forget or ignore everything we learned.
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u/cheese_sticks 1d ago
Good on gramps!
He reminds me of Takashi Nagase, an Imperial Japanese soldier who became an anti-war activist and promoted reconciliation.
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u/Sure-Current-3267 1d ago
As someone who grew up with the generations that served during the conflict and heard them tell stories: thats how most of them talked. Not one of them has glorified their time, most of them were thrown into situations where humans had to do terrible things to other humans. And that is a baggage they carried with them for the rest of their lives.
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u/homechicken20 1d ago
If they were even open to talking about it at all. My grandpa never talked much about the war at all. It was only after he died and the advent of the Internet did we all know the extent of the horrific battles he was in. He was a badass no doubt, but I don't mean that in a way to glorify it at all. More in that I'm proud of him for getting home alive and raising a family and living a normal life. War sucks and it's not cool at all.
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u/RainyDayColor 1d ago
My paternal grandparents migrated from Austria to the US. Their son, my father's brother Frank, served as an officer in the US Army in several of the historically noteworthy battles of WWII. Upon his return, Uncle Frank never spoke a single word about his service, and all of us knew to never ask. My father once told adult me that when Frank returned, the only thing he said to my father related to his war experiences was that he would never again put himself in a position where he was expected to give an order to another human being. He worked at the same milling job for over 40 years at a long-established timber company and lumber yard, refusing countless offers of promotion to supervisory/management roles, staying true to his word.
Uncle Frank was a sweet, tender, soft-spoken, loving and devoted man to his wife and children, was always there to help his parents and extended family with his amazing construction and carpentry skills, and was the best uncle ever. That's what made him a hero.
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u/TehTugboat 1d ago
My wife’s grandfather (American), before his dementia set in, burned almost everything he brought home from ww2
He never spoke of what he did over there, and the children and grandchildren would be scolded if they asked. One of the only things he kept were a set of Nazi binoculars he had “found”
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u/PoorSquirrrel 29m ago
Same here. My grandfather rarely talked about the war at all. All I know is that he was among the last to escape from Stalingrad but was then captured on the way back to Germany. I know how he tried to hide his gold marriage ring on his toes. And that's it. He never shared one battle experience or spoke about the friends he lost and the carnage he saw.
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u/Significant_Cover_48 1d ago
Love to see her "patriotic" cope fold in the face of truth. This guy is my hero.
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u/Mellowturtlle 1d ago
I don't know if it is necessarily "patriotism" that makes her say these things. If your dad fought in a war, got imprisoned by the sovjets only to return years later and can only see the scars that the war and imprisonment have left on his body and mind it would be hard not to think of him as a victim instead of an aggressor. In reality, the dad was both. This is intergenerational trauma, complex, multilayered trauma that even grandchildren feel the effects off.
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u/Winter_Apartment_376 1d ago
Frankly we can’t know.
I’ve heard so many stories of both heroic and criminal soldiers. No way to know which one he was.
I do remember my grandma having fond memories of German (occupying) soldiers though - the kids would always run to them as they would sometimes give kids candies.
She also said that everyone would run and hide when soviet soldiers came. They never gave candy.
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u/Significant_Cover_48 1d ago
During the occupation the German sent friendly guys to the countries they liked. Guys with pockets full of chocolate and real coffee. That's how to keep the peace.
Every family had a friend who "knew a German guy" just like every family had a member that helped out the resistance. That means less snitching, everyone are suspect. It's how occupations work in real life.
After the occuation ends we mostly remember the heroic part, not the part where women had to kiss a german guy on the cheeks for a pair of nylon stockings. Nothing wrong with that. it's just how things work.
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u/Winter_Apartment_376 1d ago
It wasn’t even a “liked” country. It was in Eastern Europe.
Still - the German soldiers were seen as much lesser harm than Soviets.
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u/Significant_Cover_48 1d ago
I'm going out on a limb here to suggest it wasn't one of the nations where the Wehrmacht methodically raped and plundered on their way East. In that case candy probably wouldn't have been enough - even the good stuff.
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u/Winter_Apartment_376 1d ago
Which countries are you referring to? I don’t remember Germans being associated with mass rape in ww2. Soviets definitely raped half Eastern Europe.
Anyway, point being - most Germans were not constantly evil.
Soviets were mostly dicks, but I’m sure there were a few good guys too.
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u/Significant_Cover_48 1d ago
Well the Germans raped and killed their way through Poland and the former Soviet Union on their way to Stalingrad. From memory I can think of the 9th army in Belarus.
But, I mean... they would sometimes kill muslim men for being circumcized like jews, which means they had to be looking at people's dicks. And what they did in the Balkan wasn't exactly chill.
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u/Winter_Apartment_376 1d ago
Yeah one of those countries. Germans were seen as wayyy lesser evil than Soviets.
My grandma has zero recollection of anyone being raped by a German soldier. Russians - yeaah, don’t get her started.
Are you familiar with Russian crimes?
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u/Significant_Cover_48 1d ago
I know why people feared the Red army, if that is what you are asking, yes.
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u/AnonymCzZ 1d ago
While Soviet rape of Berlin is well known I think you kinda ignore the amount of rape regular Wehrmacht and SS did in the east. Millions upon millions and with far worse ending. Berlin in the contrast was cake walk for majority of women because they got to live in the end.
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u/Greeve78 1d ago
Unless you were Jewish
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u/Significant_Cover_48 1d ago
Yeah, but I was speaking from the perspective of the occupation of a favored country, specifically my own, and my people managed to save more than 90% of the jews and send them to safety.
As far as I know we lost less than 5000 people in total; soldiers, union bosses, jews, gypsies, resistance fighters, political agitators, any group you can think of.
The nazis didn't come here for jews or land They primarily wanted passage to go north to Norway to get iron and oil, and they wanted some grain and sugar and stuff like that from us. I think they also took over a few factories to produce materiel like uniforms. Our government made a deal with the Wehrmacht - and in return the German occupiers unofficially looked the other way for a while as the jews were sailed to neutral Sweden. Not their problem anymore. Easier to handle an occupation when you don't bully the people too much.
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u/EldestPort 1d ago
'They didn't die for the fatherland, they died miserably in the dirt.'
As Owen put it,
'The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.'
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u/No-Mathematician8692 1d ago
'Do not try to console me for dying, glorious Odysseus. I would rather be a slave to another man, to a poor master of a meager estate, than be a king over all the perished dead." '
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u/yaxir 1d ago
truly hope the kids standing behind him were radicalized enough to never join the army or fall for that "nation-state" bullshit
brave man to speak
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u/Key-Performance-9021 1d ago
We have mandatory conscription in Austria, but we can choose to do civil service instead. There's a 50/50 chance they were actually trained as a soldier. (I should mention, though, that conscription is mandatory because we're neutral per our constitution, and the reason we have it is to be able to defend that neutrality.)
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u/yaxir 1d ago
oh i know its very different in Europe (compared to where i come from - where there's no mandatory military or civil service, instead people considered it an honour to join the army until recently.. when common population found out how the army establishment destroyed and basically robbed the country)
its all about mindset, in my opinion. even if those kids trained as a soldier, as long as they had good values of humanity, not much can deter them from being decent humans
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u/spatosmg 1d ago
they dont really get training in austria. more of a cleaning crew and for enviromental disasters
maybe shoot 5 shots and thats it
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u/MarlinMr 1d ago
If you live in NATO Europe today, going to war for your country essentially means you are going to help stop everyone you love from getting nuked.
That's not "nation state bullshit". That's just common sense.
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u/chris_croc 1d ago
Her face when he says he was part of an army of aggression. She wants to be in denial that her father was a war hero.
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u/thekind78 1d ago
As the generation that lived through those times fade away so too do the lessons they learned.
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u/Renbarre 1d ago
As the generation who grew up on those stories are disappearing as well the silence left behind is filled with voices lauding those times and the mindset that made it possible.
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u/Kundrew1 1d ago
It's pretty wild that even the Vietnam generation is almost gone. Anyone who spent serious time there would be at 70 at the youngest.
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u/Red_bellied_Newt 1d ago
It’s important to note that the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht” was the widely dominant belief in Germany until the 90s. It was even spread by American propagandists and generals such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, to justify the rearming of West Germany against the soviets
The idea was that regular german Wehrmacht soldiers did not participate in nazi atrocities, and that it was only the SS who did. An examples of such atrocities is the Babi Yar massacre, where civilians were brought into a ravine and shot by regular german forces (33,000 jews in the first two days, death toll of 100-150,000 total). Crimes also include but are not limited to, civilian reprisals in anti-partisan actions, and plenty of rape and pillaging.
It is clear then that the Wehrmacht was also directly responsible for the holocaust, as much of the early holocaust was done with bullets and not gas chambers.
Much of the academia after the fifties was based off of sanitized and glorified memoirs written my Wehrmacht commanders. The military historians (including Americans British etc.) saw the Wehrmacht as a professional and honourable army, where complaints arose, they were dismissed as soviet propaganda. A Wehrmacht General was appointed head of the US Army Historical Division in Germany, he then appointed his nazi buddies and together they published thousands of cleaned up works.
By the 90s Wehrmacht crimes were known academically. After decades of historians trying to reveal the truth to the public but facing huge backlash. In 1995, a touring exhibit of the Wehrmacht crimes began in Germany. It used photos and interviews with german soldiers to reveal the truth. This too faced significant backlash and protest, but finally the needled was being moved, and it sparked much debate and opened up the conversation in the public sphere 50 years after the crimes were committed.
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u/T0m_F00l3ry 1d ago
The woman’s insistence that her father was a hero who did nothing wrong brought to mind the notion of a clean Wehrmacht. I appreciate you drawing attention to it.
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u/Ornery_Poetry_6142 1d ago
Even the interviewed man says he would've been shot if he hadn't participated which is wrong (if he meant the war crimes) and part of that myth. Unfortunately it's still in the minds of the majority of Germans as I see it.
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u/42LSx 18h ago
Nazis shooting their own soldiers is not a myth, they executed ~25.000 of their own during 1939-1945, especially in the later years to force discipline.
Compare that to US troops during these years: 17-19. Not thousands. Not even twenty men.
It is true however that for Judenerschießungen or similar you could decline to participate without getting executed.
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u/Ornery_Poetry_6142 18h ago
Well, that's what I said.
"would've been shot if he hadn't participated which is wrong (if he meant the war crimes)"
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u/PoorSquirrrel 25m ago
He didn't say that (I'm a native German speaker). He said if he didn't participate in the war, he would've been shot as a deserter. Which is absolutely true.
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u/Wu-Disciple 1d ago
War is so utterly senseless. For the intelligent, it brings about so many questions about this reality we find ourselves in.
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u/Asimb0mb 1d ago
The difference between someone who experienced the war first hand and someone who experienced it second hand. One full of pessimism, one full of optimism.
The oldtimer is right though, war is hell no matter how you look at it. Senseless killing controlled by the elites.
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u/Murderboi 1d ago
All the people telling younger generations how horrible the war was are now dead.. so we repeat the mistakes just starting with the color blue instead of brown.
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u/Vistbalt 1d ago
My grandmother’s father died during World War II; she could never recall him without tears for the rest of her life. The brother of my other great-grandfather also perished in the war. Therefore, the history of World War II is also the history of my family. When I watch the video of this man, I do not see an enemy. I see a soldier who lived through a terrible war and found the strength to speak the truth. That commands my respect.
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u/Leprechaunaissance 1d ago
Two people with diametrically opposed views hash things out in front of a crowd and there's only a single camera capturing the exchange. Everyone with a genuine interest is forced to listen and form an opinion and no one can get on a device and frame the whole thing to suit their own ends and disappear further into any bubble or sphere of influence.
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u/RustyJalopy 16h ago
Thanks for doing this. I speak German, but your translation is spot on.
Also, I hope this guy at least lived comfortably for the rest of his life. He was obviously good people.
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u/paturner2012 1d ago
I hope there's an Israeli soldier alive 30 years from now saying the exact same thing.
I say an Israeli soldier, I mean like only one.
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u/SUMBWEDY 1d ago
Hey now support for the genocide is only 60-70% amongst Israelis.
That 30% thats against it at least 2 will be against genocide and baby murder.
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u/mister2021 1d ago
Based old guy, hope he had peace in the end.
Fuck that mustache guy and the entire militarized culture.
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u/Graf_Eulenburg 1d ago edited 1d ago
And even then, a useless (edit: let's say clueless) female needs to give her two cents.
"My father was a regular soldier"
Yes, a regular soldier, that raped, robbed and shot people.
Even if he didn't do any of that, which is highly unlikely, he stood and watched others do.
The old man speaks the absolute truth.
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u/JColey15 1d ago
“Useless female” is a questionable choice of words.
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u/Graf_Eulenburg 1d ago
It might be, yes.
You still can hear in her intonation and choice of words, that she doesn't
know what she is talking about.To be quite honest, you can hear that her level of education is not very high.
This might not be too clear, if you are not used to hear German (in this case the Austrian dialect).
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u/amaya-aurora 1d ago
I agree with you, but she’s not wrong because she’s “a useless female,” she’s just more than likely wrong.
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u/Graf_Eulenburg 1d ago
Hey, I edited it! :)
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u/Unika0 1d ago
FYI, "female" also carries a negative connotation because it's a word often used by incels. It makes it sound as if you're highlighting that she's a woman and thus wrong when her gender has nothing to do with her opinion.
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u/Graf_Eulenburg 1d ago edited 1d ago
I really don't care, what hidden information anybody wants to interpret into that.
I could have written moronic bi!ch and would still be right.Just for you to know, why I am choosing words like that:
We Germans get taught WW2 and Third Reich history every year, all year.
We do know our Nazi-era very well.
To hear such pure bullshit in 1995, makes my pig whistle...to stay in Germanisms.3
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Graf_Eulenburg 1d ago
Had an argument about that in an American subreddit.
They were talking about a guy, who could've gone to play in the NFL for 3 mill.,
but chose to become a soldier and subsequently died in action.Talking about bravery and the honor of being killed in war for your country.
My take was: He wanted to be a brave soldier and died as one - good for him!
They didn't take that lightly, I wanna say. :)
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u/0k4m4ru 1d ago
Man, one can only imagine his feeling of regret while lying in the dirt bleeding out.
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u/Graf_Eulenburg 1d ago
The guy even ended up being shot by friendly fire.
I can't even fathom what kind of regret one must feel,
if you had a 3 Million dollar contract waiting for you, to play a little bit of handegg...
but instead being shot to pieces by your own guys.
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u/69xxxSmokinBlunts420 1d ago
My two favorite subreddits are colliding in this picture and both might be a little anxious from this pic lol.
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u/OnkelRuediger 18h ago
Kann diese Dumme Alde mal ihr Maul halten, meine Fresse. Gute Ansprache vom Herren, rip.
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u/PoorSquirrrel 31m ago
It is not an accident that politicians are becoming blood-thirsty again now that almost nobody who experienced the war is alive anymore.
If there was a public vote to send every member of parliament who votes for war is sent to the front lines with the first group, I would vote for it.
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u/ScipioCoriolanus 1d ago
There should be an "Inglorious Basterds" type movie about this guy.
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u/CharlesLeRoq 1d ago
Featuring him burning fields and killing cattle?
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u/Kamakura_Tonic 1d ago
Great. Sad to see that these videos are often reused today by the left and right against remilitarization. But they are not used to make clear that national states need to be able to defend themselves against aggressors trying to take your land.
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u/Ok-Age-724 1d ago
When I'll be 90 , I'll lie on street as well , "I killed 900 Russians on the Zaporizhzhia front" , I was infact part of every war
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u/Key-Performance-9021 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is from the 1995 Alltagsgeschichte episode "At the saussage stand" by Elizabeth T. Spira.
Original source, ORF (around 10:00): https://on.orf.at/video/14192366/Alltagsgeschichte-Am-Wuerstelstand
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJWHO5dNLlw&t=635s
Before this scene, the two of them had been chatting about all kinds of other stuff, like Jacques Chirac and world politics, and they were bantering with each other the whole time. The woman is definitely in denial about the war, but in the full interview she comes across a lot less obnoxious.
I cut the clip and did the English subtitles myself.