Personally, I do not see the attraction of brutalizing the weak and helpless, let alone raping young women or girls and leaving bastards all over a foreign nation.
Being a 3rd Gen German American living in the 60's, I met all types. I once had the dubious pleasure at age 9 of having a middle-aged fellow tell me how grand it was to be in the SS.
" . . . ah! und ze uniform! Strong, young, virile, handsome. . .blond(!) Ah! You would have been a God! Ze women would all go vit you. You had any woman you vanted."
. . . but of course he was never actually in ze SS and he only knew this from friends, and he spent ze entire war in Berlin, because he was . . . not able to go. Blah! Blah! Blah!
What is bizarre is that this was almost verbatim the speech Roschmann gives Miller at the end of The Odessa File. I'd say my guy had just lifted it from the book, but Odessa File didn't come out until 1972 and I was hearing this bunk in the mid-60s. I can only speculate that this guy and the author, Forsythe, got it from the same source. I find that even 50 years on to be rather terrifying.
Just as an aside: I also bumped into a group of "Vikings" having a regional conclave back in 1996. I was bowhunting a private campground, and the owner mentioned he had a party coming in. They seemed like fairly nice people. I brought in a button buck that I'd arrowed mid-morning and got hailed as the mighty hunter, and spent some time with them drinking coffee and such. I suppose everyone has to have a hobby.
