Eighty-one years ago today, American troops rolled into Wolfratshausen, Bavaria, to take control of the village as World War II came to an end in Southern Germany.

My father and aunt were 8 and 11, and an American Soldier took their pictures. Grandma — living out the war in the “safety” of Wolfratshausen, after she and the kids were bombed out of Berlin in 1943 — was a naturalized US citizen who spoke English. Connecting with the invading American soldiers, and gleaning a few benefits (communications with her sister, stateside; arranging for the soldiers to receive care packages from her; getting food) was easily arranged.

And as this entry in her scrapbook notes, she immediately began planning to return to the US — doing so in November of 1946.

The war seems so long ago, and yet so close… as I’m now sixty, eighty years ago seems like nothing. I do remember, when I was 8 or 9 years old, being called a Nazi by a neighborhood friend as we played basketball on the rough asphalt court in a gully behind our house.

I thought, back then, “That’s ridiculous. The war is ancient history.” That was 1973, when the war was only 28 years in our rear view mirror. I assume his parents knew my Dad was German, and… well. guilt by association, right? Even though Dad was only 8 at the end of the war.

But here I sit, 81 years after these pictures were taken. A first generation American. Actually born a dual-citizen US/German, though I only confirmed that in 2020.

It’s not that long ago, and as we know, from the continuing reverberations of our own Civil War buffeting this country, the fallout of a fascist regime that ruined a nation, supported by zealously loyal, economically desperate, frightened countrymen lingers, too.