[Milsurplus] Toys on Parade

[Mike Morrow]

Hue wrote:

> One thing I kinda still don't get is how enthusiastic Dutch and other
> Europeans seem to be about ex Third Reich militaria, considering how they
> experienced the stay of their uninvited guests.

In 1973 I was on exchange duty with the Royal Netherlands Navy, aboard
Hr.Ms. Amsterdam (D819).  By then, there were few sea-going senior officers
who had experienced WWII in military service...those few remaining were
shore-based.

Many younger officers were then rather easy-going about events of WWII, and
Germans in general were the subject of many jokes.  At an informal evening
meal ashore at the officer's mess at the Vlissingen naval base on 20 July,
a younger officer proposed a memorial toast in German to the Fuehrer's
survival of the of the 20 July 1944 plot.  It was intended as pure joke
and sarcasm, but one of the senior officers present had been imprisoned
and tortured by the German occupiers.  There was embarrassed silence.

The Hr.Ms. Amsterdam spent two weeks in Kiel for the annual Kieler Woche
attended by naval vessels of NATO and France.  There were many senior
Bundesmarine officers who were former Kriegsmarine officers still on active
duty.  Many of their WWII decorations had been de-nazified and authorized
for wear as small emblems on a typically blue ribbon bar.

> Or maybe it's just the steadily fewer older folks, who can remember those
> years, in fact - cannot forget.

That's the key, I think.

Mike / KK5F