Breath of Freedom, a documentary airing Monday, reminds us that the world is sometimes a bizarre place, one in which a country can fight a war abroad as the champion of freedom and democracy, while enshrining their opposites in law and practice.

But there is something hopeful in the program, too. The two-hour television special is the story of black American veterans who experienced greater freedom while serving in Germany than theyd had in the U.S., and came back determined to change circumstances at home, playing significant roles in the modern civil-rights movement.

The story is told in film clips and interviews through the experiences of Americans and Germans, black, white and mixed race, including retired King County Superior Court Judge Charles Johnson, who served during the occupation.

Hosea Williams, a close associate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s, was a sergeant in a unit that fought under Gen. George Patton. Williams earned a Purple Heart after being severely injured in a Nazi bombing raid, but he wasnt safe at home after the war.

He was still in uniform traveling home after the war when he drank water from a bus-station fountain reserved for whites. An angry crowd beat him so badly they thought he was dead and called a hearse. He was just barely alive, but had to be driven past white hospitals to a veterans hospital more than 100 miles away where he was hospitalized for a month.

Nothing about that makes sense, but it wasnt just a matter of a few people behaving badly, it was part of the systematic subjugation of black Americans rooted in laws those veterans would help change.

Johnson, who grew up in Arkansas, joined the Army in 1948 and served almost four years in a segregated unit in Germany. While he was there, he had a German girlfriend with whom he traveled all around the country. It opened a whole new world to him, he says in the documentary, but when he came home, he returned alone.

I asked him about that last week and he said, She wanted to come here, but I knew I couldnt live that kind of life here in the United States. Its something you just didnt let yourself think about because you knew it couldnt work here. Interracial marriage was banned in most states until the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling in 1967.

The Germans hadnt suddenly given up the racist ideas that led to death camps, but the power equation was different. Johnson said Germans didnt always like seeing him and his friends dating German women, but they had to tolerate it.

Johnson came home with a mission, to get a law degree and get out of Arkansas. While he was finishing college after the war, he told a professor he wanted to attend law school and was looking for a place where hed be able to get a job. The professor had earned a Ph.D. from the University of Washington while working nights at the post office.

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WWII soldiers experience abroad fed freedom fight back home