That's what They want you to believe!, for sure some conspiracy theorists will run with this, and probably be guests on Joe Rogan Podcast.
A soldier had to carry everything with him, and as we know from the documents of the time the gold and watches were naturally among the most frequent loot items carried by them (sidenote: widespread motorized infantry armor has changed the game since then - the Russian BTRs and BMPs in the Chechen war for example were full of rags and electronics that the Russian soldiers looted from the Chechen homes, and in the Ukrainian war it has been computers/laptops/TVs, auto parts, etc.). The soldier in the article seems to have correctly decided that the ancient coins 1. may be more valuable than gold, 2. there is less competition looting local historic museum, and 3. if you're taken prisoner carrying those ancient artifacts you're less likely to be shot as a marauder than with say a pocket full of golden teeth - even today in this article they call him a "numismatics enthusiast".
Doesn't matter who's in there, or who was in charge of their country way back when.
> people even of supposedly “normal” mind are prepared to accept systems of delusions for the simple reason that it is too difficult to distinguish such systems from the equally inexorable and equally opaque one under which they actually have to live out their lives. This is pretty well reflected by astrology as well by the two brands of totalitarian states which also claim to have a key for everything, know all the answers, reduce the complex to simple and mechanical inferences, doing away with anything that is strange and unknown and at the same time fail to explain anything.
https://www.telospress.com/adorno-on-astrology/
I suppose it is easy to find evidence in today's society as well.
Such binary thinking misses much nuance and is very unhelpful.
Contrary to almost all comments so far, the dead soldier and the artifacts are not related. And this is not a grave. This is where a soldier fell. A grave is where someone is buried, not the place where they were killed and lost to history. The soldier may have been wounded and hiding in the pit, or literally fell atop, but would not have been burried there by anyone. The older artifacts were there long before ww2.
"Popkiewicz believes these coins may have belonged to the German soldier, possibly a numismatics enthusiast, as they hail from several countries the German 73rd Infantry Division likely traversed, to which the soldier may have belonged. The hypothesis suggests that the soldier collected ancient coins as a hobby or perhaps exchanged or acquired them during his military movements."
That seems like the kind of bold and all encompassing statement that would be trivial to prove incorrect.
(Soldiers dont bury bodies while under fire. The burials happen after the battle is over by whatever side now holds the ground.)
Not sure if I understand you right, but unmarked pits were very much a common thing in the last days of WW2 in europe. Plenty of dead individuals, no one knew where they belonged and not much interest to find out.
I didn't, only for a dog and this was already tough work in stony ground. Add frozen ground and the need to care to other things(and maybe no shovel), like surviving the last days of war and I can imagine many dead bodies not getting proper graves.
Just desputing the non issue claim here.
To misunderstand this (and apply the N-word to all of the regime's footsoldiers and helpers) is to fundamentally midunderstand how the dictatorship worked, and got so many millions of ordinary people to trudge along and do its dirty work. Or to at least shut up and try not to think too much about whatever they saw and heard.
I just like to deny that little hormone activation spike that some people seem to get whenever they encounter that word.
To quote John Wayne: "I’m responsible only for what I say, not what you understand."
It was just a way of showcasing how vacuous it was, the commenter's suggested innuendo -- that the reason the internet's favorite word didn't appear in the title was because someone was too squeamish (or for other reasons reluctant) to use it in that context. Like the reluctance you're suggesting, for example.
When the obvious, but infinitely more boring reason they didn't use it was because it had nothing to do with the core substance of the article. It wasn't even about stuff from the soldier's grave, but from the area around it. So if it had appeared in the title, it would have been meaningless clickbait.
I was also, if rather obliquely, making fun of everyone's obsession with the word, and the extent that its very appearance seems to inevitably cause the discussion to more or less instantly start veering into silly territory (regardless of the topic what anyone is actually saying). As evidenced by this post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42283656
Which I wasn't intending to trigger of course - but there you go.
How about the one in this article?
Yet it triggered all this weird, heated discussion anyway.
Totalitarianism uses many mechanism to fabricate cooperation.
From an academic point of view it seems not. But from a popular point of view it probably is.
Some threads I found on the topic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/40gq95/is_it_fair_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hw2fv/comme...
More than a purely academic point of view, the distinction actually does matter. It's the difference between someone who affirmatively made a choice to join the Nazi organization and someone who simply didn't actively decide to dodge the draft or desert. The level of agency invested into the Nazi cause varies dramatically, and it's useful to have language that can distinguish between those shades.
We can get into philosophical discussions about whether it's worse to affirmatively support evil than to just go with the flow and not make waves either way, but that's more than an academic discussion—it has real relevance for today.
Their officers had skulls on their uniforms. They were rounding up and slaughtering people they viewed as less than them, they had posters in the streets painting them as rodents and infections.
Nobody saw all of that and said “well, I don’t want to dodge a draft, I better just sign up and do this evil shit, it’s my moral duty to serve”. Nobody was blind to what was happening and nobody accidentally went and did those things without believing they were somehow right. They were doing those things because they wanted to, the same way everything any person does when they have something that they have the power over to choose between.
Edit: not sure why I’m getting downvoted. Downvote the people trying to claim German soldiers in wwII were not nazis.
>Nobody saw all of that and said “well, I don’t want to dodge a draft...
Nobody saw all of that and said, shit if I dodge the draft they may give me the death penalty, no wait I'm wrong - that's exactly what they said.
You also do not seem to have any particular dividing line between say, soldiers who were underage (later years of war) or actual adults?
This article on American slavery seems to pertain here too https://medium.com/luminasticity/what-makes-you-think-you-wo... - what makes you think you would have been better - not you now, but a you born in Germany during the great Depression, came of age as World War II started, drafted into the Army but because of your character you would be able to stand against your society, your friends, the law and say no, I won't go. I'm not saying that's impossible, but it is rare.
On what grounds of your character do you think you would be better than most of the population at that time? What great wrong have you opposed to your detriment and personal danger?
Again - it may be that you would be better than almost everybody else at the time. But it seems more people think they would be than seems statistically possible, based on nothing other than being born "now" and knowing it is wrong "now", I would like some sterner examples of character to back up the moral self-regard.
> After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany, and thus became commander in chief. In February 1934, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge.[33] Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934.[34] In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took the Hitler oath, an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht
The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.
I also said that towards the end of the war Germany used underage soldiers - meaning as young as 16, I did not directly ask but implied that perhaps you did not think that underage soldiers were as culpable of being Nazis as the adults, but I see now by your strong commitment to your moral stature that I was wrong.
I finally asked just what makes you think you would have been good and able to resist the pressure to go in the army, which you didn't answer. You have done an admirable job in opposing every response to you with copy pasted Wikipedia content it's true, but I'm afraid I wanted some more hard-nosed and non-online behaviors to confirm the ability to stand against evil.
I don't think that's what this everyone-was-a-Nazi language is accomplishing, though. When someone uses the word "Nazi" they mean someone who is entirely unlike themselves or most people they know.
If we lean into this language, we risk forgetting that the vast majority of Germans in the 1930s were no different than the vast majority of us today—they had lives, jobs, families, and they looked the other way or even participated because they didn't want to rock the boat and risk those things. They were not Nazis, they were just citizens, but they enabled genocide.
I don't think that embracing the label "Nazi" for everyday Germans who never joined the party (and maybe even voted against Hitler when there was still a vote!) will scare people into standing up if they end up in a similar situation, it will just serve to create the sense that "1930s Germany was a really awful place with a lot of awful people and aren't I glad that I don't live there?"
If we take the approach instead of talking about how many ordinary people aided and abetted the Nazi cause by being silent—how they committed war crimes without ever being a Nazi—I think that will actually be more effective at teaching people how to avoid recreating the Third Reich.
Doesn’t take many people to actually hold a nazi ideology to make it come to pass.
After all, “ The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”
Simplifying into “nazi” and “not nazi” is not helpful
Also:
Nazi imagery now symbolizes ultimate evil, but that's the effect of history and reflection and cultural symbols changing. Fascism, including in 1930s Germany, is always packaged up in appealing packaging. It seems appealing, promising national revival and cherished values.
People didn't sign up for overt evil; they got swept up in something that appeared reasonable and popular, or just said nothing about the same.
This is the real lesson that I think we're losing; that it's possible to be an ordinary person of ordinary good morals, and to support terrible crimes happening if one isn't careful.
I don't, generally, disagree with you--there is no way every single one of them deeply identified as a Nazi--especially when coercion is involved.
However, as for the comparison with American slavery...many people stood up, said no to slavery, and lost lives because of it--they didn't just stick their head in the sand nor did they continue those ways since "everyone" else did, otherwise we would still have slavery. Maybe because this did not seem to happen in WWII Germany, or at least on a large enough scale of division within German loyalties, (as happened with American slavery), it bolsters the view of/comes across as WWII Germans full buy-in
Aside from that the German situation was very short time frame - it may have some effect on resistance.
I completely agree. I posted a lengthly reply to a sibling poster on this and provided context into my view on it and relates your statement "most white resistance to slavery - in supporting the underground railroad was through groups like the Quakers", if interested and includes a story relating to my ancestors and an incident I found involving them and pro-slavers looking for runaways.
Basically, that's exactly why my lens of it is coloured the way it is. A line of ancestors were dedicated Quakers and fought not only against the Crown (interference in their beliefs and Queen Anns demanding they take a renewed oath of loyalty), but also abolition. Another one fought for the Union, and the second generation would also forgo slaves--the original British merchant family of this line had kept them;(second gen of my/this line did not, the first gen might have not as well, the slaves were inherited but not sure what happened to them at that point---which is simply awful to type, but I get the reality of it/the time)
Slavery didn't end in the US until the end of the Civil War in 1865—246 years after the first enslaved people arrived in Jamestown. It's grossly unfair to take the eventual success of abolitionism to try to argue that there must have been less German opposition to Nazism than American opposition to slavery.
For the vast majority of American history, nearly everyone did "just stick their head in the sand" and "continue those ways". At best they fought to avoid expanding slavery, trying to keep it contained to the South.
For people who "stood up, said no to slavery, and lost lives because of it" you might be thinking about the likes of John Brown, but he died in 1859. If Nazism took as long to abolish as American slavery we'd have expected a John Brown to come along around the year 2173. Instead, we have dozens of well-known stories of opposition starting from before Hitler even took power.
I was not taking that view, nor do I believe there was little opposition to Nazism in Germany. I simply do not believe such a large population can fully agree on one direction--in such unison, for any "cause" in such short time, whatever that may be. I was pointing out that the lack of visual division (as taught in modern times) could give it the appearance that it was unified. As the other poster pointed out, the differing time frames (length of time) is likely the cause of the visual discrepancies. I agree. I was in no way saying that there was no division, only that the appearance between the two, as taught now, could lead the OP to have the view that they were unified; unlike the general view of American slavery and the overt division that eventually appeared.
As for people that stood up to slavery, I was actually thinking of my ancestors I have been researching. One were first settlers and granted land in and around Jamestown, then the Carolinas. As the other poster mentions "most white resistance to slavery - in supporting the underground railroad was through groups like the Quakers", turns out the first American born generation (of my direct line) broke away from their slave holding prominent British family, were hard-core Quakers (involved in and charged in Cary's Rebellion) moved to the free states and became known in their area for fighting for abolition; including an incident/scuffle with pro-slavers looking for runaways in which he and companion were robbed, beaten and held/kidnapped for a time before being released.
So while it's a single example, the fact that there are only a few "known" examples with more well known people doesn't mean that it was limited--only that stories are hidden, unlike well-known stories of opposition to Nazi's (which I fully believe) and I am sure there are many more that never have surfaced, or only to a limited degree.
I'm not saying that opposition to slavery was instantly wide spread either, I get that. For one more obscure story, another line that married into a wealthy British colonial family of merchants, also had the second American generation forgo slaves and stayed in Va.--(I get that is shitty still, and after all the research, I understand better than before slavery and how it was simply the way of things at the time, but hindsight can be ugly)--they lived out their lives, working their own land until the Civil War where those generations (of age) fought for the Union.
TL;DR: The main issue I believe is the visual appearance in both early education and popular media, which would cause some to believe they were full in Nazis.
You can call them all "bad" if you want. But (regardless of whether they committed war crimes) the Nazis and the armed forces were different (though obviously overlapping) subsets. This is not an academic distinction at all, and is extremely important if one is to understand how the dictatorship and the Final Solution actually worked.
Exactly. And understanding this is vitally important—labeling every member of the German military a "Nazi" can create the dangerous illusion that the ratio of nut jobs to normal people in 1930s Germany was dramatically different than it is in 2020s USA/UK/EU/wherever, but it's not. The ratios were about the same, and most people who were complicit in the Nazi atrocities were complicit in a very passive, "don't stand out" kind of way.
Exaggerating the number of true Nazis ironically makes it more likely that something similar will happen again because it creates the false impression that you need some sort of overwhelming consensus in favor of pure evil to end up with a Hitler in charge. It allows us to let our guard down because we know that we aren't surrounded by Nazis, so such a thing must be very far away indeed, right?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Army_(1935%E2%80%9319...
So far, seems one army existed. The German army. That army was the army of Nazi Germany. that army was Nazi Germany‘s army.
> The Wehrmacht (German pronunciation: [ˈveːɐ̯maxt] ⓘ, lit. 'defence force') were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe (air force). The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr (Reich Defence) and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.[11]
Here’s probably the most important thing to read, because it directly disproves you
> After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany, and thus became commander in chief. In February 1934, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge.[33] Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934.[34] In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took the Hitler oath, an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht
The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.
It's not the snippets you're quoting that are wrong. You're just reading them wrong, and drawing plainly broken inferences from them.
For example, the statement "Army X was a manifestation of the Y regime's Z" does not imply the statement "Army X is simply a subset of Y" or even "Everyone in Army X basically agreed with Y". Of course it doesn't. Any more than being a member of the Red Army meant that one was communist, simply because it happens to be true that "The Red Army was the army of Soviet Russia".
Similarly, this idea that people taking an oath to anyone or their platitudes means, in all cases, they actually believe that oath, and that what the oath says describes what they believe. In the context of the huge fact that not everyone who joined the various fighting units did so voluntarily -- in fact a large majority were outright drafted (or shoehorned from civilian law enforcement roles, including many regular policemen).
Does that excuse them of culpability in what they may have done -- obviously not. But to think they simply believed everything they were asked to believe at face value goes against everything we know about human nature, and the basic social reality of was going on in Germany and Europe at the time. And about the fundamental psychological and operational mechanics by which the Final Solution worked.
And then there's this:
That army was the army of Nazi Germany. That army was Nazi Germany‘s army.
That army was the army of Germany. That army was Germany‘s army.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht
The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.
Only one way to read it. The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.
Which means we're definitely talking past each other.
But you wrote "every soldier in German military" which is just wrong. German military had many soldiers forcibly drafted from occupied countries. One famous example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Tusk
People downvote you because you were confidently wrong.
You seem to be ignorant of how badly democracy worked in the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic never had an elected government, every attempt to form one failed. While the elections had an effect on the composition of the Reichstag all positions of power ended up getting assigned round robin style. The Nazis established their control of the country through emergency legislation passed to deal with terrorism, which let them bypass the Reichstag almost entirely. When the Nazis called for a vote in the Reichstag at gunpoint to establish Hitler as the Fuhrer they had to fudge attendance records because most elected members of parliament where either dead or in prison.
And whose fault is that? If you fail to fix your country political system for long enough - you get dictatorship and eventually war. There's nobody responsible for it other than citizens of that country.
Whose fault is it that USA democracy is turning into oligarchy? Politicians - sure, but these politicians keep getting elected despite gerrymandering, taking billions in "lobbying" for tax cuts, openly lying, ignoring obvious systemic problems, etc.
Whose fault is it, that Putin could invade Ukraine and kill hundreds of thousands of people? Regular Russians had a faulty democracy and decided to do nothing as it was dismantled step by step. Now they are sent to die murdering innocent people.
Ultimately you can't escape the responsibility for your country. If you did nothing - you're an accomplice.
The German empire underwent revolts during the end of WWI. They just missed the mark a bit. Instead of Willhelm II they should have gotten rid of Hindenburg, who starting 1916 was singlehandedly in charge of the German military and refused every peace offer until the empire was left without allies and struggled with countless internal revolts. Instead of taking the blame for prolonging the war he walked away smelling like roses, helped establish the Weimar Republic and played a key role in it to its end where he got cosy with the Nazis, directly aiding their rise to power.
In short, people tried to fix things, they got rid of Willhelm II and got Hitlers best buddy instead.
By communists and far-right :) Where were the pro-democratic mainstream protests? It was the communists (USSR) and nazis (3rd Reich) who started WW2 after being unchecked for 2 decades.
> Instead of Willhelm II they should have gotten rid of Hindenburg, who starting 1916 was singlehandedly in charge of the German military and refused every peace offer until the empire was left without allies and struggled with countless internal revolts. Instead of taking the blame for prolonging the war he walked away smelling like roses, helped establish the Weimar Republic
Is this view mainsteam in modern Germany? Considering how popular the Stab-in-the-Back theory was in interwar period I would think prolonging the war more, letting german cities be occupied etc. - would have resulted in nazis losing popularity not gaining it. So if anything - Hindenburg mistake was the opposite - saving German infrastructure and lives at the cost of making Germans conspiracy theorists and nazis.
But nevermind the WW1 peace treaty. Nazis could have been stopped at many points. If socialists managed to work with communists for one thing (but then again - Germany was already training their army in secret in USSR at that point after Rapallo, so it's probably not realistic).
The problem is that Germans seemed to protest in favour of extremes more often and more violently than against them. So extremes won.
BTW it might seem like I single out Germans. But in my country - Poland - democracy failed in a very similar way in 1926. And people were at fault too. Keeping the country democratic is the responsibility of citizens.
I did not say any of this, ever. Read my comment. Don’t put words in my mouth.
> After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed the office of President of Germany, and thus became commander in chief. In February 1934, the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg, acting on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr given an automatic and immediate dishonorable discharge.[33] Again, on his own initiative Blomberg had the armed forces adopt Nazi symbols into their uniforms in May 1934.[34] In August of the same year, on Blomberg's initiative and that of the Ministeramt chief General Walther von Reichenau, the entire military took the Hitler oath, an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht
The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.
Sorry, my bad. I assumed if you blame innocent people you'd also blame people who were actually responsible.
> The German army adopted Nazi symbols and swore an oath to hitler.
And forced hundreds of thousands of innocent people from occupied countries to join it. Many of which escaped as soon as it was possible and fought against them when they could.
That's just divisive rhetoric. Nothing of the sort is happening.
The end goal is to paint the Holocaust as simply one of many historical genocides,
Except it isn't. You may think it's the goal that some people have. But that doesn't mean it is their goal.
And anyway there's no need to "paint" the situation that way because it has been a known and obvious historical point all along.
The simple fact is that there have been countless genocides throughout history. The genocide of European Jewry was definitely among the largest, and was quite distinctive in certain ways.
But unfortunately it was by no means unique, or even a true outlier.
This is just basic history.
But if you think I do, well, that can't be helped I guess.
You leftists never learn.
In any case you are in explicit violation of site guidelines. Recommend you stop.
Surely not.
Try this excersise: Define "Nazi" and then see whether every German WWII soldier fits the definition.
Additional excersise: Define it that way that no Allied soldier fits the definition.
Then check whether the definition makes any sense as a political distinction.
I never came across one.
“soldier collected ancient coins as a hobby or perhaps exchanged or acquired them during his military movements” is an interesting way to describe stolen war goods.
The subsequent occupation by the Russian Red Army music less so…
Presumably not true for Jews. However pogroms were occurring pre-occupation, so maybe it’s much of a muchness once you’re being eradicated.
I already mentioned in another comment that Romania wasn't "under German occupation", but this bit I'm quoting here is also false.
Germany theoretically paid Romania but in practice it defaulted in most/all payments, so that Romanians got nothing for their oil. It was a major problem that eroded public support for the Axis and made poverty worse in Romania. Again, not something that helped Romanians regard the Germans "fondly".
that's not correct. Romania was an independent country, with a king, government, etc. Romania was allied to Germany, and there was a German presence, but the Germans did not exercise any power. In fact, there was a "palace coup" that switch alliances in 1944.
About the coup: it took place on Aug 23, 1944. The Red Army already took all of Moldovan and was gunning for the Carpathian Mountains. The German front broke yet again. That was the end of German influence in Romania: at the end of September 1944 Arab was ‘eliberated’ by the Red Army.
Romania was, at least theoretically, an ally of Germany, so (non-Jewish) Romanians got treated better than conquered nations like Poles, who were Slavic and thus lower on the racial totem pole.
Romania was an Axis ally under a fascist dictator, Antonescu, and was not under German occupation. Why would Germans steal or loot from a willing ally? Romanian troops participated with around 280,000 to 380,000 Jewish deaths to the Holocaust. I suppose Jews in Romania don't remember their German "allies" too fondly.
> The subsequent occupation by the Russian Red Army music less so…
The Soviet (not Russian) Red Army was indeed brutal with former Axis allies. It shouldn't come as a surprise that siding with Nazi Germany was retroactively a terrible choice.
Instead they had to suck it up and march East into Russia proper.
Romanian troops took part, willingly, of Nazi death squad actions.
Furthermore, Jews in Romania didn't remember the Germans "fondly".
Simply put: there's a huge difference between being outright conquered, occupied, and subject to the control of a puppet regime (like Poland, Ukraine, Greece), and the local regime proactively deciding to form an alliance (as did the governments of Hungary, Finland, and Romania). Even if that decision was made under a considerable degree of duress.
That's just the basic storyline of the war. And it's all I have time for. But trust me, just take another look at the basic event chronology and you'll easily see why.
You wrote your initial comment stating a patent falsehood: that Romania was "basically under German occupation". It was under nothing of the sort. Their fascist dictatorship eagerly helped the Germans and it's officially considered part of the Axis (just not one of the major three powers).
> (like for example what you wrote about the Einsatzngruppen troops)
Romanian troops participated in the Odessa massacre and, as one of the Axis nations other than Germany most involved on the Eastern Front, participated in Einsatzkommando actions.
And the point still stands: Romanian Jews certainly don't remember the Germans "fondly".
This isn't intended to be a dig at the archaeology blog (pun intended) but it's just something that reminded me of this shift.
All of the witnesses to the war are dead, so we’re now doing the equivalent of “Dur dur, my great grand cousin from Mississippi was standing up for their heritage” (as opposed to having been drafted to defend an aristocrat’s ability to own humans) treatment.
Now we’ll start hearing about central and Northern Europeans who were defending themselves from godless communists and woke French aggressors. The “just following orders” excuse is not necessary, as those folks are questioning whether anything happened that required that defense.
Yes but it would be accruate to describe all US soldiers as defenders of republican democracy, specifically that outlined in the US constitution. Defending the constitution is the heart of the oath. If that constitution was altered, as is can legally be, then all active US soldiers would become supporters of whatever form of government is described therein. Not being a member of a paticular party does not free a soldier from being described as a supporter of the government they serve.
This is not just theoretical. Many US soldiers refused to recognize Obama as legitimate. Those soldiers were shown the door. A similar transition will occur in a few weeks.
The whole big point of the Holocaust that everyone was supposed to have learned is that not only did one not have to be a "Nazi" (or even particularly sympathize with the regime or its ideology) in order to be an active or passive collaborator.
All you had to do was keep your head down, and do what you were told.
It's like saying that CCP soldiers can't be called CCP because they might not necessarily hold communist ideologies themselves.
It is amazing what a bomb does to the surounding landscape. /s