You might have a thin skin. Old soldiers (and old people in general) say outrageous things all the time. My grandpa is also a ww2 vet and busts out new offensive material every time I visit. Even the hyper educated oldsters do it. 8 years ago I went to a lecture by James Watson and he spent the whole 45 minutes making racist jokes about Asian people...
Your last sentence seems to imply that I do have a thin skin. It's possible. It's also possible that the generation of Germans that brought us Auschwitz is a disconcerting one to me and justifiably so.
Would you have lunch with Rudolf Hoss and be pleasant to him? What about a guard there? Perhaps the discomfort in me has to do with the fact that so many Germans committed atrocities and my conclusion is that I am no better. That is, in the same situation I would have done the same thing.
I could have a thin skin. By the way, my experience with men who saw combat - real combat - don't talk about it. The will tell a few anecdotes but nothing to do with combat. The ones who talk about their war experiences usually aren't the ones who actually did any fighting.
Whatever you do, don't ever visit Australia.