Guest op-ed by
Martin France, Brigadier General, USAF (Retired),
MRFF Advisory Board Member
As we approach Memorial Day, dedicated to honoring those that have fallen in service to our nation, we should not only honor their heroism and mourn their loss, but also consider how we should think about our past enemies. Such a discussion is playing out now as a member of Congress, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), and others appeal to the Veterans' Administration to replace or remove swastika-inscribed headstones from the graves of former World War II German POWs that passed away on American soil and are now buried in taxpayer-supported, national VA cemeteries, alongside American service members who fought fascism and the toxic, racist, genocidal Nazi ideology and war machine.
Many have written to us expressing the argument that the Nazi swastikas should stand, for solely historical reasons or to "honor" these soldiers, with one of the more civil responses being along the lines of: "These soldiers served their country whether willingly or not, they may have felt that what they were doing was right, just as we have felt that many of our choices were right, even when they turned out to be wrong."
Another said that "Those headstones were placed to honor those 3 men."
I don't see it that way – at least not on American soil.
First, we have no obligation to "honor" deceased members of the enemy – only to respect them in a humane manner (i.e., to not dishonor them or desecrate their remains). While I understand that they (in some way) served and died for the Nazi symbol depicted on their tombstone (and the textual homages to Hitler, the Third Reich, and the supporting German people it represented during the war), that still doesn't mean that we should somehow perpetuate that hateful symbol – a symbol now banned in these own soldiers' homeland.
To follow the argument of those who would honor the symbols of our enemies, let's consider an example. Should we then have assembled the remains (if possible) of one or more of the 9/11 terrorists (or any other Al Qaeda terrorist deceased on American soil) and placed them in a VA cemetery with an Al Qaeda (or ISIS) emblem or banner on their headstone because that's what they fought and died for? Next to the graves of real American heroes who fought against them? Then what about the body of Osama bin Laden himself (since we had his body)? No. We chose to dispose of his body into the ocean. As far as I know it wasn't desecrated, but it also wasn't placed among those we honor on Memorial Day. Should the body of a terrorist (treated as a POW or enemy combatant) who might die awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay be buried in one of our VA cemeteries? Again, the answer is clear.
I concede that in any war, many or even most simple soldiers may be forced to the front lines without fully embracing the ideology for which their leaders send them into battle. However, be they foot soldiers or senior officers, if they were fighting under the Nazi Swastika, they were effectively enemy racists responsible for the most hideous genocide and destruction of the century, millennium, or all of history. To "honor" their service by putting that hateful symbol and accompanying text among the graves of our heroes (especially our heroes of Jewish descent!) is simply wrong and disgraceful.
This treatment also raises other ugly questions about our own racist past when we consider the treatment of these German POWs. Our domestic WWII history is littered with examples of hundreds of German POW camps in the US in which these same prisoners were allowed to attend civilian churches in ethnic-German communities while German officers were hosted for "teas" with the local ladies and prison staff.
I'm not advocating any undue harshness or cruelty for POWs from any nation. But, we should also consider that while we were "honoring" the service of these German POWs to their Swastika-symbolized racist state, and ultimately burying those that passed away with swastika-emblazoned headstones among our own soldiers, we were IMPRISONING fully-fledged American citizens in camps on the West Coast because of their (non-European) ethnic heritage – certainly one of the darkest and most painful scars on our nation's history. I wonder if all of our fellow American citizens of Japanese ancestry who died in our concentration camps were granted the same manicured cemetery and noble marble headstone afforded our enemy? Weren't they more deserving, in the end?
So, what should we do? Frankly, we should exhume the bodies and send the caskets and remains back to Germany to let them handle the issue. If that can't happen, then we should simply replace the headstones with ones that contain simple statements of name, rank, date, and a generic "German Soldier" or "German Prisoner" or similar statement. If that's not acceptable to the German government, then they can retrieve and repatriate the remains at their cost. None of these actions would dishonor these soldiers. Any of these actions would restore our own hallowed ground to a place where those who have fallen gallantly, and their families and fellow Americans who honor them, can reflect in peace upon that terrible conflict, consoled in knowing that they defeated Nazism – both militarily and symbolically.
Martin France
Brigadier General, USAF (Retired)
MRFF Advisory Board Member
Brig Gen (Retired) France is Professor Emeritus of Astronautics at the US Air Force Academy. He retired from the Air Force in 2018 after more than 37 years of distinguished active duty service that included assignments on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US Air Force and Space Command Headquarters. He is a 1981 graduate of the US Air Force Academy with graduate degrees from Stanford (MS, Aeronautics & Astronautics), Virginia Tech (PhD, Engineering Science and Mechanics) and the National War College (Distinguished Graduate, MS, National Security Studies). He has served as an unofficial and official advisor to the MRFF since its original advocacy began in 2004.