The Indian and the American: A War Story

My uncle lived around Fruita, Colorado in the late '70s and early '80s.  Coming back to California around 1982, I met him in person for the first time as a young teenager.  I was into WWII and the Nazis fascinated me, with U-boats being my main focus after seeing the film Das Boot.  Anything Kriegsmarine was on my radar...I had a whole library dedicated to the topic.  U-boats Under the Swastika, U-boats Offshore, U-boat Commander, these were a few of the titles on my bookshelf.  While other kids were listening to Heavy Metal, my friends and I were scheming on how we could raise some "heavy metal" from the bottom of the sea to have a German submarine of our own.  As the years past, different historical topics grabbed my interest like the American Civil War, the American West, the Revolution, and Elizabethan England, but WWII and the Nazis continued to fascinate, and frankly, to frighten me with the ease in which Germany went from an advanced civilization to a degenerate fascist state in the blink of an eye.  

Uncle Wendell told me a story about a Nazi soldier that has stayed with me.  When he shared it, I was around thirteen, and just recently surprised my uncle by reminding him of the tale that I never forgot...about an Indian and an American.  I don't know the gentleman's name, and my uncle surely has forgotten it.  He was Native American, an Indian who had served as a paratrooper during the War.  He more than likely jumped into France on D-Day and fought his way across Europe in one of the Airborne Divisions.  When uncle Wendell knew him he was in bad shape.  Like many Native American men, he was ravaged by alcoholism, thrown aside as just another drunk Indian, a blight on society, forgotten by those who cheered a few short decades before.  I'm sure he had a million stories, this is the one I heard...

While fighting his way towards Nazi Germany, the Indian and his squad captured a group of German soldiers.  I don't know if they were regular army, Wehrmacht, or if they were SS.  More than likely they were regular German army soldiers seeing the handwriting on the wall and surrendering before giving their lives in a lost cause.  Surprisingly, one of the Germans spoke perfect American English.  Intrigued, the American paratroopers asked him how he knew the language so well.  He told them he was an American who had been in Germany before the War started, and once it had begun, he could no longer return to the United States.  He said he was forced to join and fight by the Germans, and that's how he came to be standing in front of a group of American paratroopers, and an American Indian.  

Who knows if that was the truth, maybe it was, who knows.  He probably expected his fellow American captors to have sympathy and understanding once he reveled he was one of them..  There was no sympathy.  The American traitor in a German uniform was shot dead.  Maybe my uncle's friend pulled the trigger, maybe all of the squad pumped lead into the Nazi.  Either way, it's an example of what happened if you were found on the wrong side of history.  

American soldiers did in fact execute German prisoners of war when captured,  the Germans were guilty of the same, so shooting a fellow American caught in enemy uniform is not a stretch, but the fact that an American was caught fighting for the Nazis in the first place is extremely intriguing.  The fact that this story comes from a Native American who was a paratrooper in WWII makes the story even more awesome and more plausible.  I do not doubt it.  There are a handful of known instances where Americans fought or served with the Nazis, but most of the documentation that might show more was destroyed by the flames of war.  How many Americans fought for Germany?  We will probably never know for sure.  I would bet its more than we would expect.