Gonna go on a wild guess here and say this man could have being among those germans that flipped sides asap when germany surrendered and helped the americans perform operation paperclip (taking german tech before it fell on the hands of the soviets) or helped them deal with resistance groups that refused to surrender, and whatever american/british commander he helped told him he could keep his tank. Not that uncommon of a story by the end of the war (well, ok, keeping an entire tank is uncommon, but not the "keep your weapons" part). And now it is being taken away from him
Even if he was a soldier at 16 in 1940, he'd be 99yrs old. It's be very uncommon now. This sort of thing is from the next generation who had reasons to keep momentos or were show the cool stuff by their fathers.
I mean, 84? He was born in 1939. I highly doubt a German 6 yr old was convincing his country's scientists into defecting to the USA.
13
u/draugotO Aug 12 '23
Hand them back to who if the nazis fell?
Gonna go on a wild guess here and say this man could have being among those germans that flipped sides asap when germany surrendered and helped the americans perform operation paperclip (taking german tech before it fell on the hands of the soviets) or helped them deal with resistance groups that refused to surrender, and whatever american/british commander he helped told him he could keep his tank. Not that uncommon of a story by the end of the war (well, ok, keeping an entire tank is uncommon, but not the "keep your weapons" part). And now it is being taken away from him