They are wearing stahlhelms again and doing torchlit parades in front of the leader. Do they not know this is a very bad aesthetic for them, does the Red Army need to roll into Berlin again since they obviously didn't learn their lesson from last time.
The USSR was not Germany. It is not just the similarity, its that it is Germany. Germany should be obligated to get as far away from any evocation. They dont need a military even, so why have the most functional helmets, ones which the Nazis pioneered. Plus even if it was only americans and canadians, which I think is a silly assumption, that's still valid.
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Ties are not easily recognized with Churchill, the Stahlhelm is pretty iconic. And yeah I know they come from ww1, they replace the goofy but lovable Pickelhaube. Also pretty sure those guards worse M1 helmets, not Stahlhelms, though the west german military did copy them but call them stahlhelm.
The point is Germany can just.....not use helmets like that for marches. I don't really think german martial traditions and style have any value or are worthy of respect. They shouldn't have a military, and if they are gonna have one, the uniforms and traditions should shy entirely away from anything even remotely connected to the nazis. "oh everyone else uses them" ok cool, everyone else is not Germany. It is the same shit with the Finns and the swastika on their airforce. That symbol predates the nazis by thousands of years and I am fine with say....the Basque liberation movements using a stylized version of it. but if Germany tried using it in even an innocuous way, I would say that's wrong.
Oh and "used across Europe" is hardly a defense, yeah we know what continuity there is in NATO and when the conversation involves nazis, best to avoid the association