My Ukrainian grandfather was part of the SS black skull brigade and his call sign was “Jew Slayer” and now you are all telling me he’s a fascist? Wow. He fought for YOUR freedom to be free from Putin style fascism and now he’s the bad guy. It really hurts.
Though we shouldn’t have pity parties for troops, it’s worth mentioning (in cases where they aren’t, like, SS freaks) that some of them are alienated from a healthy understanding of the meaning of what they are doing and that is something that can be reversed and has even happened spontaneously, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Railroad_Massacre#16th_Regiment
There are many reasons for bootcamp being largely a process of traumatizing soldiers into seeing their targets as non-human and orders as unquestionable, and among them is that people have a tendency for compassion that can even emerge spontaneously and lead them to not carry out their job as butchers for the empire.
Just something I had been meaning to mention but didn’t have a chance to.