U-864 is finally being raised!

Originally Posted by Letum

What part of their country do you think they where fighting for?
They certainly didn't fight for the freedom loving, peaceful or humane part.

The allies fought for those parts of Germany, not the German army.

The men entombed in U864 fought for much less desirable aspects of Germany. That
makes them human and does not lessen the tragedy of their death, but it does not
bring them any honor, glory or righteousness.

Unluckily I have to correct you here. The allies did not fight for any german or german group/part, no matter if Nazi or the numerous but small and isolated german resistance groups. Despite parts of these groups trying to get in contact with the allies, they never really gave them any hope. Chruchill was actually afraid of Hitler beeing killed for this would have ment a possible compromise in the allied war goals, the unconditional surrender of Germany. You also may want to check the Morgenthau Plan, which upon it's release caused great uproar in Germany and was one reason why the german soldiers fought on to the very bitter end even in the west.

As to the problem at hand, if military honors or not, that's a difficult question. Modern day Germany has a problem with military per se. There are no heroes in todays german military, up until 2009 there weren't even any "fallen" soldiers in the Bundeswehr, just "accidently killed" ones. The reinistatement of the iron cross was declined for some ugly new medal without any reputation or feel of achievement to it. Within such an environment honoring any soldiers from WW2 is very difficult, unless they were proven members of some anti Hitler/Nazi Organisation. Even I am not yet quite sure how to deal with this. On the one hand these ppl more often then not just fought to protect (by all they knew) their country. Many many soldiers nevertheless sympathized with the NAZI regime. The U_boat arm at the start was the least NAZI brand of arms for sure, but that changed from 43 onwards when the old crews were send to the bottom and new recuits were mostly die hard nazi fanatics. It's not a question of black and white, but lots and lots of different shades of grey. Some ppl certainly deserve propper honoring, some certainly do not. And it's not always clear how to decide that.