Well Guest Ronald Healey, you have a lot of reading to do mate. I do not know how old you are, or how old your parents are, I suspect not alive during the war. There were very few ordinary people who supported Hitler in England after 1939. Prior to 1939 a few wealthy people in England openly admired Hitler for his perceived leadership role in stabilizing Germany; and preventing it from turning to communism. This even included some members of our Royal Family. In 1939 that changed, and the vast majority of the British went to war determined to smash the Nazis. Many Germans were not avid supporters of the Nazis either, but you could get shot and beaten up if you opposed them, so they complied.

I sailed with a stateless person who was a university educated Estonian man who spoke Polish, German and French. Training as an engineer he studied in Germany, Poland and learned some French at school. He had no passport because when Germany invaded Estonia in 1942, an SS officer held a Luger pistol to his head and asked him if he was going to join the Estonian Foreign SS Partizanjaeger (resistance hunter unit) Of course a NO answer would mean a bullet in the brain so he responded Ja...yes absolutely I volunteer.... His job was to assist in the interrogation of prisoners as an interpreter. (he did not hurt anyone) Because of this he was a wanted war criminal in his own hometown(despite escaping from the SS after six months and eventually making it to the UK) The only id document he was allowed was a British Merchant Seamans Discharge Book, and he could only work as an unlicensed crewman in the engine room of ships that were never likely to go to a Soviet Union port of call (instant arrest and execution if he landed there, tried and convicted of war crimes in absentia) Not everyone was a willing member of the Waffen SS, 60% of the foreigners were conscripts, who were given the choice to face Allied bullets or German bullets.

Yours, Aye. Dave