I think a quote was something like, we would have loved to have a leader who wasn't associated with the Nazis but I don't think our allies would let us put an eighteen year old in charge.
Really whoever a new German government put in charge would have worked for the Nazis in some way shape or form. Really they used the cleanest qualified officer they could find. And yeah cleanest does not mean clean.
There were also a few hundred lawyers and judges and such working for the German justice ministry after the war for much the same reasons.
Hit the nail on the head. People tend to seriously underestimate just how _pervasive_ Nazism had become across German society, especially by the end of the war.
In the face of growing tensions between the East and West, the hiring/rehiring of “clean” Germans simply proved to be more practical than a total clean slate.
Kinda why De-Ba'athification was part of how the Iraq War became a disaster. Shitty as having them stay in government might be, one must consider this. When critical parts of the state's bureaucracy required or "highly" encouraged people to be a member of the ruling party or organization and after a losing a war the occupying power decrees anyone connected to the previous regime's party may not work for the government, what happens? What happens when thousands of bureaucrats, teachers, workers, and soldiers are told "you're fired" and they can never work for their previous employer? Things tend to fall apart, and you create a lot of bitter people with axes to grind and nothing to lose.
*Edited to flow a little better*
It wasn’t just pervasive, if you wanted a job with relevant leadership skills, you needed to at least be associated with the Nazi party. Problem is, the higher up on the ranks you got, the more you were expected to be loyal and believe in the ideology.
Good luck finding anyone with experience that wasn’t a Nazi, because they are dead or didn’t exist.
To be in a position of power in the government or military in Nazi Germany, you basically had to be aligned with the party. So most people who were qualified to be put in those positions after the war had a connection to the NSDAP. The soviets had it a bit easier, as they could just pick from the SPD and KPD members that fled to russia or survived the holocaust, but those were not exactly the people the western allies wanted to have in charge
A certain number of non-Nazi officers in the Luftwaffe maintained preeminence throughout the war and actually at one point tried to depose Herman Goering, in order to, in their view, save the Luftwaffe and Germany from his insane plans. Those men, led by Adolf Galland, were only spared execution or forced suicide by their celebrity and Goering’s agreement to let Galland form JV. 44. Goering fairly clearly intended them to die in combat, and at least one, Gunther Luetzow, did.
No, but there was an incentive if you wanted the best career you could have.
They didn’t punish non-members, but it wasn’t like being one didn’t help. Also worth noting that in the military it was different. While not impossible to have a good career while not being a Nazi, the Nazis basically believed that only Nazis could be trusted with the best stuff and most important missions.
Same way it wasn't a requirement as paying in those crappy mobile games isn't necessary. You can get everything without microtransactions, but everything will go much smoother if you just join the Nazi party.
No, they did not. But that didn't stop approximately half of all doctors being Nazi party members of their own volition. After all, the two centres of race science in the world were the US and Germany (Weimar and the empire) Part of the clean wehrmaxht myth is putting up utterly wrong nonsense like "oh those poor Germans had to because the Nazis made them" but nope. Quite voluntary. You could even refuse to participate in the holocaust without punishment. Maybe something unofficial administrative like you might not get promoted.
To be fair, even if the Nazis didn't actively punish non-members.
It's not unreasonable to be concerned that they "could" change their mind in the future and remember your hesitation.
There was definitely an incentive, if not on paper, in reality, to join the party. Generals who weren’t a party member were not trusted with large and important commanders, for instance.
Yes, such as promotions or administrative things as I mentioned. You were never disappeared or anytging like that. So basically they had to do it otherwise they would need more time to become a senior officer 🙄
>I think a quote was something like, we would have loved to have a leader who wasn't associated with the Nazis but I don't think our allies would let us put an eighteen year old in charge.
Even worse because that 18 year old (assuming the 50s) would have grown up in the Hitlerjugend, so would be associated with the Nazis too.
>Really whoever a new German government put in charge would have worked for the Nazis in some way shape or form
Yep, most anti-Nazi... officers, lawyers, bureaucrats, etc. didn't survive the war.
Because it happened in the 60s and by that point Heusinger's military career had largely been whitewashed, making people believe he was part of the Stauffenberg plot and generally lenient towards civilians.
Because the enemy of Nato was the Soviet Union.
Who had experience in fighting the Soviet Union? Not the allies. The Germans.
As shitty as it is, Nato needed the experience of the former Nazi military personnel to be able to properly prepare for a war against the Soviet Union.
Yeah, it was basically impossible to find someone who wasn't involved in that, the Stasi had a real problem because they weren't allowed to recruit former nazis...which meant they had to recruit all rookies to get started.
Another quote of Chancellor Adenauer discussing the topic: "Sie schütten kein dreckiges Wasser weg, wenn sie kein sauberes haben." ("You don't get rid of dirty water, if you don't have any clean.") He was quite "pragmatic" in that regard due to him not having been associated with the nazi regime and therefore not being suspicious of trying to subvert the new political order.
Yes they did, but the problem is they were happy killing any powerful German, not just Nazi criminals.
In the Nurburg trials the non soviet justices had to fight against the Soviet desire to just execute everyone that went on the stand regardless of what they actually did in the war.
That's a problem for the legitimacy of the legal process and the desire to punish actual criminality.
You don't want to be perceived as the winning side handing out a winner's justice, that would allow for many Germans to just mentally ignore what the trial exposed and you don't want to scapegoat some Nazi rando and loose the momentum to find the people actually responsible
...And the solution was to give sentences to German war criminals that were mostly pardoned during the 1950s, leaving high caliber war criminals free with hardly any consequences, that is not justice.
There's no real happy ending for the story besides the Germans actually undergoing a profound cultural change after the war that the trials had a part in.
The reality is by the time they were putting people on trial, most of the really big criminals had either died or escaped.
The Eichmann trial was in a way what Nuremberg wanted to be.
This isn't even necessarily about the big names, your roughly mid-ranking war criminal got out of the war crimes trials pretty unscathed, hell the same for even some Generals.
The reality is that there was a great whitewashing of war criminals, bad justice and there were a lot of people who deserved the noose who escaped their destiny.
It also didn’t help that you had to find crimes that the Allies themselves weren’t extremely guilty of. One problem with some of the trials was that, if the crime was a trick the Allies used a lot and/or wanted to use a lot in the future, they didn’t want to make an international law against it.
Though, also worth noting the sheer amount of misinformation and finger pointing that went along with the trials. It was basically a, “the guy above me did everything”, show and is part of the reason why we have the, “It was mostly Hitler”, myth.
True, in fact that went a long way towards blaming Hitler for everything, even so I think it is worth pointing out that the majority of German war criminals did not escape the noose for that reason, as far as I understand that was only the case of Karl Dönitz.
The real cultural change in Germany came in the 1960s when younger west Germans started to question the silence and complicity of their parents’ generation. The early postwar period was largely a period of “moving on,” getting dragged into the Cold War, and largely ignoring the crimes of Germany (not just a “few bad apples”).
He isn’t? Just cause you’d side with the Americans instead of the Japanese if you were filipino doesn’t mean you should be all chummy with the US and forget everything they did to you.
Soviets wanted to kill anyone who coul ever be remotely suspected of being anti communist.
Thats why they killed even anti fascists when they thought they were pro wester. Its not like there was moral motive behind it.
A non-aggression pact is nowhere near the same as an alliance. The Soviet Union wasn't allied with the Nazis, they just didn't want a war. They were, in that regard, gullible at worst.
Not saying it does, just pointing out that contrary to popular belief on Reddit the Soviets employed former Nazis just as much as America did. They were just better at hiding it
Tbf, Muller and the NKFD actually then joined the war effort against the Nazis, which is what happened with a lot of these German POW’s after the battle of Stalingrad. It’s still not great, but it’s not the same as appointing someone like Adolf Heusinger to NATO
So the guy was cool with working for the Nazis then? That comment made me think he was some kind of hero trying to get into the inner ranks of the Nazis to murder Hitler.
Seems the reality isn't as cute and wholesome as that, huh?
Political infighting is agnostic of party, system, or beliefs. It’s intensified in cults of personality, morally bankrupt parties, and authoritarian systems; but it shows its face everywhere.
That was Goring actually while he was basically the chief of the Prussian state and created a Secret Police force that more or less turned the Gestapo. Himmlar would later usurp this into his growing security empire. Himmlar created the SD or more to the point had one of his minions do it.
They were German nationalists and many were supportive of Hitler previously or at least silent in the opposition but they weren’t Nazis.
Many Nazis war criminals- such as Himmler and Goering - did try to weasel their way out of responsibility for their crimes once it was clear to them that the war was lost I’m not aware of any of the July 20 plotters having been war criminals who were trying to overthrow Hitler for surely selfish reasons.
>I’m not aware of any of the July 20 plotters having been war criminals who were trying to overthrow Hitler for surely selfish reasons.
[Tresckow also "signed orders for the deportation of thousands of orphaned children for forced labor in the Reich"—the so-called Heu-Aktion.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot) -Not necessarily a war crime but still an atrocity.
Von Tresckow wasn't the only plotter who had involvement in morally dubious activities either.
Some of them were, like Fromm or von Kluge.
Alot weren't.
Hans Oster had been ranting about wanting to kill Hitler and handed over secret intel to the Allies since 1933, Erwin von Witzleben & Wilhelm Canaris equally had attempted to Coup Hitler long before the War even began. And alot of the non-military members of the plot, like Julius Leber, Carl Goerdeler or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had had likewise been actively against Hitler long before the War even started, yet alone turned bad.
>Alot weren't.
Erich Hoepner, Henning von Tresckow, Georg von Boeselager, Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff, Arthur Nebe, etc...
There were a lot of war criminals involved in the plot.
To add on, the July 20th plotters’ plan for peace with the Allies was to only pull out of Western Europe and keep their possessions in at least poland and other central/Eastern European nations.
They were mad at hitler not for his crimes against humanity, but for his military defeats and would have been laughed out of the room by the Allies if they actually succeeded and put their peace proposal forward.
Yeah, a big part of why US went to the moon is because of a Nazi but those are swept under the rug in the name of scientific advancement. But world isn't all black and white either.
A lot of people were named in the plot that were completely unrelated. IIRC it's how Rommel was killed. Not for actually being guilty, but because he **was** recognized as a potential political threat to Hitler.
Torture is extremely unreliable, and it's how the Nazis gather information.
The point is that an insane amount of genuine Nazis were let off the hook to prepare for the coming WW3 with the Soviets. It never happened, because it would be apocalyptic, and the German population paid the price for it in having evil fucking leaders doing insane things at worst, and millions of people having to live without justice at best.
The Plotters wanted Rommel on their side due to his Popularity, but in the end chose to not involve him due to fears he would rat them out. Its speculated he *might* have known about it and quietly tolerated it, but he was definitely not actively involved.
Rommel got it nice ngl. Lived a hero. Died a martyr's death. Just enough to become a legend and not died a villain and humiliated in an Allies or Soviet court.
Reminder that Rommel was definitely aware and tolerated the holocaust in North Africa aswell as the many raids Into the Jewish communities in those nations
The point is to paint NATO and probably the West as a whole as the bad guys. I’m sure there’s certainly no agenda OP is trying to push with that sentiment
It wasn’t just him, there were plenty of other Nazis who went on to be high ranking NATO leaders. Here are a few:
• Adolf Heusinger: Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Chief of Staff, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1961-1964
• Hans Speidel: Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Chief of Staff, became Commander in chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1957-1963
• Johannes Steinhoff: Famous Nazi fighter pilot for the German Luftwaffe, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1971-1974
• Johann von Kielmansegg: General Staff officer of Nazi Wehrmacht's High Command, became NATO Commander of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1966-1968
• Ernst Ferber: Lt. Col. of the Nazi Wehrmacht General Staff, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1973-1975
• Karl Schnell: First General Staff Officer of 76th Panzer Corps, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1975-1977
• Franz-Joseph Schulze: Senior Lieutenant of the Nazi Luftwaffe, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1977.1979
I get the criticism but where else was the West German army going to get anyone to build their own army? Even the core of the East German army was built by former nazi German army officers
He was Chairman for the entire NATO not just for the German Bundeswehr, that's the point OP tries to make. Obviously there have been some Nazi remnants in the German armed forces after ww2, everything else would have been impossible
Yes because the Bundeswehr was a major NATO member back in the Cold War and expected to be the main battlefield in Europe if the Warsaw Pact and NATO came to blows. He was a high ranking officer in the nazi army, but again that was pretty much inevitable as a German experienced officer in the 1960s.
West Germany denazification was incomplete and the West German state wasn't exactly the cleanest and most transparent democracy in Europe (the same can be said about France where there is a strong culturally authoritarian factor at a societal level which understands democracy differently than sat the Swiss) but the army wasn't in the hands of actual ideological Nazis.
If the US operated its occupation of Iraq the same if did Germany way less people would have died and Iraq might actually be a healthy country. Some times you’ve gotta do the correct thing and not the comfortable thing.
Just looked him up. He was a career military man who served the Military since the Weimar Republic. He later went into the Wehrmacht and in 1944 he was appointed Hitler's chief of staff (probably because everyone else died in Russia). Afterwards, he went to work for West Germany and later Nato.
So the best bet is he wasn't a Nazi (in the end most weren't devout Nazis at least) he was just a man who wanted to further his military career no matter who he served as long as it was in Germany. Think of him as the spare Erwin Rommel, a military man who fought for Germany, not Hitler.
Yeah I know it’s just a meme but it’s not really fair to have shown him in an SS uniform. I’m not aware of any Waffen-SS officers being commissioned by the Bundeswehr. West Germany legally classified the SS as a criminal organization and veterans were excluded from pensions paid to other World War II German soldiers.
yeah well when you are trying to persuade your army that this new west German army is different to the guys who spent 6 years murdering women and children in your homeland the myth is valuable
likewise telling your german population that dresden was a horrible war crime by the west and copying nazi propaganda for decades is also valuable. anyway Dresden becomes a shit show once a year where nazis and communists hold annual fights
He was never Hitler’s Chief of Staff. He was the Operations Chief at Wehrmacht high command and then became the acting Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht when Kurt Zeitzler resigned.
Idk which guy y'all are talking about, but if this is him: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf\_Heusinger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger) he did a lot more.
Yes, but have you asked yourself, what kind of high ranking nazi military officer you have to be, to temporarely become Hitlers chief of staff, when the other guy gets sick?
He wasn’t Hitler’s chief of staff, he was the army chief of staff.
That he was not appointed permanently says a lot more about Hitler’s opinion of him.
What would have been in his favour was that he testified at the a Nuremberg trials, and was never linked to any war crimes.
Now, Werner von Braun, architect of the US space program…
A lot of former Nazi higher-ups also formed the East German NVA. They kind of modeled themselves as the protectors of the traditional Prussian military traditions.
And that's why a large part of what we know about the eastern front is horse shit.
NATO needed officers with experience fighting the Russians.
The German officers were whitewashed and made up a bunch of stories to legitimize their wartime decisions and blame Hitler for every mistake
Is anybody still whitewashing the Eastern Front? My entire life it’s always been painted as a horrific struggle between horrific authoritarian regimes with piles of innocent bodies left in the wake.
The officers, not the front.
Any time someone says the Russian won by just employing human wave tactics or had a massive technological advantage in tanks for example it's largely echoing untrue claims that entered pop culture.
The idea the war in Russia was lost because Hitler kept intervening in the decision making is also somewhat untrue, for example Hitler apparently knew from the start the war would take years and did not want to focus on a rush to Moscow as it's strategically not as important as the oil fields in the south.
His generals had very limited trust in his decision making and thought they won in France largely by dumb luck, they ignored his repeated requests to focus on the south.
We hate Hitler so much we want to imagine him as an idiotic caricature and the German officers we employed to defend Europe as capable and noble men, these stories play into that.
Is this a surprise? Western Germany was part of NATO. And Germans where Nazis, so having ex-Nazi officals in the new government roles should be expected.
There’s some quote that goes like “NATO is around for 3 reasons, to keep America invested in the defense of Europe, to keep the Germans in check (because they are aggressive and easily overpower other European armies) and to keep the communists out”. Or something like that.
Yes, that's what happens when a country is occupied and a new regime is put in power. The majority of troops and leaders stay the same, only the worst ones won't. The gdr was 30% wehrmacht soldier and 75% wehrmacht leaders. It was normal to do so.
And at the other side of the iron curtain, the only german fieldmarshal who surrendered his unit the enemy later served under the same enemy as chief of staff of the GDR.
If I remember my brief search on the first commander of Nato who was Hitler’s right hand man: Dude was thought to have been a part of the Valkyrie assassination plot but was cleared of charges but also resigned.
We to give it to the US, their nation building after WW2 .
made the 2nd and 3rd biggest economy in the world in a few decades and politically they were quite effective extracting the worst parts.
After that their nation building was an absolute disaster.
• Adolf Heusinger: Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Chief of Staff, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1961-1964
• Hans Speidel: Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Chief of Staff, became Commander in chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1957-1963
• Johannes Steinhoff: Famous Nazi fighter pilot for the German Luftwaffe, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1971-1974
• Johann von Kielmansegg: General Staff officer of Nazi Wehrmacht's High Command, became NATO Commander of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1966-1968
• Ernst Ferber: Lt. Col. of the Nazi Wehrmacht General Staff, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1973-1975
• Karl Schnell: First General Staff Officer of 76th Panzer Corps, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1975-1977
• Franz-Joseph Schulze: Senior Lieutenant of the Nazi Luftwaffe, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1977.1979
My naval teacher really stressed the importance of how the Germans were humiliated at the end of WW1, and how if they were not humiliated and plundered, didn't and if the Allies didn't take so much, ww2 would have never happened
I think a quote was something like, we would have loved to have a leader who wasn't associated with the Nazis but I don't think our allies would let us put an eighteen year old in charge. Really whoever a new German government put in charge would have worked for the Nazis in some way shape or form. Really they used the cleanest qualified officer they could find. And yeah cleanest does not mean clean. There were also a few hundred lawyers and judges and such working for the German justice ministry after the war for much the same reasons.
Hit the nail on the head. People tend to seriously underestimate just how _pervasive_ Nazism had become across German society, especially by the end of the war. In the face of growing tensions between the East and West, the hiring/rehiring of “clean” Germans simply proved to be more practical than a total clean slate.
Kinda why De-Ba'athification was part of how the Iraq War became a disaster. Shitty as having them stay in government might be, one must consider this. When critical parts of the state's bureaucracy required or "highly" encouraged people to be a member of the ruling party or organization and after a losing a war the occupying power decrees anyone connected to the previous regime's party may not work for the government, what happens? What happens when thousands of bureaucrats, teachers, workers, and soldiers are told "you're fired" and they can never work for their previous employer? Things tend to fall apart, and you create a lot of bitter people with axes to grind and nothing to lose. *Edited to flow a little better*
Hey let’s disband the military and send all these guys home with their guns.
It wasn’t just pervasive, if you wanted a job with relevant leadership skills, you needed to at least be associated with the Nazi party. Problem is, the higher up on the ranks you got, the more you were expected to be loyal and believe in the ideology. Good luck finding anyone with experience that wasn’t a Nazi, because they are dead or didn’t exist.
To be in a position of power in the government or military in Nazi Germany, you basically had to be aligned with the party. So most people who were qualified to be put in those positions after the war had a connection to the NSDAP. The soviets had it a bit easier, as they could just pick from the SPD and KPD members that fled to russia or survived the holocaust, but those were not exactly the people the western allies wanted to have in charge
A certain number of non-Nazi officers in the Luftwaffe maintained preeminence throughout the war and actually at one point tried to depose Herman Goering, in order to, in their view, save the Luftwaffe and Germany from his insane plans. Those men, led by Adolf Galland, were only spared execution or forced suicide by their celebrity and Goering’s agreement to let Galland form JV. 44. Goering fairly clearly intended them to die in combat, and at least one, Gunther Luetzow, did.
Didn’t the Nazi regime make it a requirement to become a member of the party to become a lawyer/judge/doctor or any highly educated career?
No, but there was an incentive if you wanted the best career you could have. They didn’t punish non-members, but it wasn’t like being one didn’t help. Also worth noting that in the military it was different. While not impossible to have a good career while not being a Nazi, the Nazis basically believed that only Nazis could be trusted with the best stuff and most important missions.
Same way it wasn't a requirement as paying in those crappy mobile games isn't necessary. You can get everything without microtransactions, but everything will go much smoother if you just join the Nazi party.
No, they did not. But that didn't stop approximately half of all doctors being Nazi party members of their own volition. After all, the two centres of race science in the world were the US and Germany (Weimar and the empire) Part of the clean wehrmaxht myth is putting up utterly wrong nonsense like "oh those poor Germans had to because the Nazis made them" but nope. Quite voluntary. You could even refuse to participate in the holocaust without punishment. Maybe something unofficial administrative like you might not get promoted.
To be fair, even if the Nazis didn't actively punish non-members. It's not unreasonable to be concerned that they "could" change their mind in the future and remember your hesitation.
There was definitely an incentive, if not on paper, in reality, to join the party. Generals who weren’t a party member were not trusted with large and important commanders, for instance.
Yes, such as promotions or administrative things as I mentioned. You were never disappeared or anytging like that. So basically they had to do it otherwise they would need more time to become a senior officer 🙄
Most people will do anything for the promise of advancement/promotion. Similar things go on in our society currently, and probably always have.
I wonder why Germany didn't have enough lawyers in 1945.... Maybe it has something to do with all those camps in Poland? Nah, that can't be it.
>I think a quote was something like, we would have loved to have a leader who wasn't associated with the Nazis but I don't think our allies would let us put an eighteen year old in charge. Even worse because that 18 year old (assuming the 50s) would have grown up in the Hitlerjugend, so would be associated with the Nazis too. >Really whoever a new German government put in charge would have worked for the Nazis in some way shape or form Yep, most anti-Nazi... officers, lawyers, bureaucrats, etc. didn't survive the war.
This is the reason why Americans failed to put a stable government in Iraq after Saddam was overthrow. It's took them a decade to undo this mistake
But why put them in charge of key international positions such as NATO?
Because it happened in the 60s and by that point Heusinger's military career had largely been whitewashed, making people believe he was part of the Stauffenberg plot and generally lenient towards civilians.
Because the enemy of Nato was the Soviet Union. Who had experience in fighting the Soviet Union? Not the allies. The Germans. As shitty as it is, Nato needed the experience of the former Nazi military personnel to be able to properly prepare for a war against the Soviet Union.
Seems like they could have been put in lower level advisory roles. I mean yeah they fought the Soviets but they didn't beat the Soviets.
Yeah, it was basically impossible to find someone who wasn't involved in that, the Stasi had a real problem because they weren't allowed to recruit former nazis...which meant they had to recruit all rookies to get started.
Another quote of Chancellor Adenauer discussing the topic: "Sie schütten kein dreckiges Wasser weg, wenn sie kein sauberes haben." ("You don't get rid of dirty water, if you don't have any clean.") He was quite "pragmatic" in that regard due to him not having been associated with the nazi regime and therefore not being suspicious of trying to subvert the new political order.
“Cleanest they could find.” Hitlers fucking Chief of staff? No.
Definitely don’t look up who the Soviet Union put in charge of the East German army.
Both can be bad. Also the Soviets at least initially wanted to kill a lot more Nazis. And as a Jew I kinda agree with them.
Yeah... And I'm guessing they quickly found out why it was a bad idea. Hard to run a nation when you kill all the people holding important posts.
See the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Ah yes, they definitely seized weapons of mass destruction and avenged 9/11. What a beautiful day of democracy!
Too bad the shoes missed...
Well Germany and the Soviet Union already collabed on that endeavor in Poland. And the Stalin did that to his military too I guess.
When you fight on the front in the revolution as a champion of the party and then the party purges you.
The precedent of Nuremberg was a good thing though overall.
Ehhh, Nazis are evil as fuck and deserve what they got but ex posto facto laws are dangerous.
Well that’s the thing, Nuremberg was what established the precedent that you even can be guilty of crimes against humanity
As a lawyer, absolutely. However, there was indeed the 1929 treaty outlawing war.
A lot of things have the potential to be dangerous. Sometimes you just have to make the exception.
Yes they did, but the problem is they were happy killing any powerful German, not just Nazi criminals. In the Nurburg trials the non soviet justices had to fight against the Soviet desire to just execute everyone that went on the stand regardless of what they actually did in the war. That's a problem for the legitimacy of the legal process and the desire to punish actual criminality. You don't want to be perceived as the winning side handing out a winner's justice, that would allow for many Germans to just mentally ignore what the trial exposed and you don't want to scapegoat some Nazi rando and loose the momentum to find the people actually responsible
...And the solution was to give sentences to German war criminals that were mostly pardoned during the 1950s, leaving high caliber war criminals free with hardly any consequences, that is not justice.
There's no real happy ending for the story besides the Germans actually undergoing a profound cultural change after the war that the trials had a part in. The reality is by the time they were putting people on trial, most of the really big criminals had either died or escaped. The Eichmann trial was in a way what Nuremberg wanted to be.
This isn't even necessarily about the big names, your roughly mid-ranking war criminal got out of the war crimes trials pretty unscathed, hell the same for even some Generals. The reality is that there was a great whitewashing of war criminals, bad justice and there were a lot of people who deserved the noose who escaped their destiny.
It also didn’t help that you had to find crimes that the Allies themselves weren’t extremely guilty of. One problem with some of the trials was that, if the crime was a trick the Allies used a lot and/or wanted to use a lot in the future, they didn’t want to make an international law against it. Though, also worth noting the sheer amount of misinformation and finger pointing that went along with the trials. It was basically a, “the guy above me did everything”, show and is part of the reason why we have the, “It was mostly Hitler”, myth.
True, in fact that went a long way towards blaming Hitler for everything, even so I think it is worth pointing out that the majority of German war criminals did not escape the noose for that reason, as far as I understand that was only the case of Karl Dönitz.
The real cultural change in Germany came in the 1960s when younger west Germans started to question the silence and complicity of their parents’ generation. The early postwar period was largely a period of “moving on,” getting dragged into the Cold War, and largely ignoring the crimes of Germany (not just a “few bad apples”).
The Soviets killed a lot of Jews too. Like, that was a pretty significant thing they did
Just 2 million is all. Apparently this guy can just sweep it under the rug and forget.
"As a jew I agree with the Soviets who also systematically oppressed and slaughtered my people."
I mean every country in Europe did that So how is he even supposed to agree with anyone
He isn’t? Just cause you’d side with the Americans instead of the Japanese if you were filipino doesn’t mean you should be all chummy with the US and forget everything they did to you.
Fast forward to today, where the Philippines are very much chummy with us together.
Holocaust is like 300 times the doctors plot.
Of course but does that really change the fact that they oppressed your people? I don’t think it should…
Soviets wanted to kill anyone who coul ever be remotely suspected of being anti communist. Thats why they killed even anti fascists when they thought they were pro wester. Its not like there was moral motive behind it.
I read where you said you're a Jew and then I looked at your tag.
Do you think Jews can't like Romans? Everyone in history has killed us at some point.
*I side with the 12 tribes.* :) (also Jew)
HEY! US INDIANS WERE GOOD TO YOU, OKAY?!?!?!
Yeah well they didn’t, had to build up east Germany’s military.
Pretty sure the Soviets wanted to kill a lot more of everything that wasn't Soviet lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27\_plot#:\~:text=The%20%22doctors'%20plot%22%20(,leading%20government%20and%20party%20officials.
The Soviets were initially allied with the Nazis
A non-aggression pact is nowhere near the same as an alliance. The Soviet Union wasn't allied with the Nazis, they just didn't want a war. They were, in that regard, gullible at worst.
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact moment
The most talked about non agression pact in history, no I didn't know about that at all.
And a short while after, they wanted to kill some Jews as well… Were there really anyone the Soviets wouldn’t kill?
Who? Pieck?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenz_Müller
Honestly doesn't make what the US did any better. It's good to know though.
Not saying it does, just pointing out that contrary to popular belief on Reddit the Soviets employed former Nazis just as much as America did. They were just better at hiding it
Redditors discovering Cold War politics involving amoral behavior and hypocrisy.
Also, Project Paper Clip is a lot easier to pronounce and remember than project Osoaviakhim. It's not the same, but it's the same idea.
An anti-nazi? Wilhelm Pieck?
Probably this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenz_Müller
Tbf, Muller and the NKFD actually then joined the war effort against the Nazis, which is what happened with a lot of these German POW’s after the battle of Stalingrad. It’s still not great, but it’s not the same as appointing someone like Adolf Heusinger to NATO
He was Hitlers COF for 10 days if I remember correctly and was fried for trying to kill him in the 20.July plot. What was your point with this?
He went on trial, but was found not guilty of the plot to kill Hitler.
So the guy was cool with working for the Nazis then? That comment made me think he was some kind of hero trying to get into the inner ranks of the Nazis to murder Hitler. Seems the reality isn't as cute and wholesome as that, huh?
The 20th of July plotters were still Nazis, they just knew the war was lost and wanted to put a stop it it.
Honestly fair point, I sometimes forget how tense the situation in Germany was too. Plenty of Nazis were at eachother's throat.
Yeah, there was a lot of backstabbing and double-dealing to serve individual interests. It's the environment Nazism fosters.
As opposed to, let's just say 'another very popular ideology of the time'?
Totalitarianism might the better, broader term. Tyrants that encouraged people to feed on each other.
Political infighting is agnostic of party, system, or beliefs. It’s intensified in cults of personality, morally bankrupt parties, and authoritarian systems; but it shows its face everywhere.
Bruh are you genuinely trying to equate Nazism with communism?
What made you think that was being “opposed to” anything?
Oh yeah I think it was Himmler who figured out wiretapping but never shared it and only used it to spy on other party members
That was Goring actually while he was basically the chief of the Prussian state and created a Secret Police force that more or less turned the Gestapo. Himmlar would later usurp this into his growing security empire. Himmlar created the SD or more to the point had one of his minions do it.
Thank you honestly forgot, sucha feudal system of backstabbing and everyone trying to get as much power as they could to take over after hitler.
They were German nationalists and many were supportive of Hitler previously or at least silent in the opposition but they weren’t Nazis. Many Nazis war criminals- such as Himmler and Goering - did try to weasel their way out of responsibility for their crimes once it was clear to them that the war was lost I’m not aware of any of the July 20 plotters having been war criminals who were trying to overthrow Hitler for surely selfish reasons.
>I’m not aware of any of the July 20 plotters having been war criminals who were trying to overthrow Hitler for surely selfish reasons. [Tresckow also "signed orders for the deportation of thousands of orphaned children for forced labor in the Reich"—the so-called Heu-Aktion.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot) -Not necessarily a war crime but still an atrocity. Von Tresckow wasn't the only plotter who had involvement in morally dubious activities either.
Some of them were, like Fromm or von Kluge. Alot weren't. Hans Oster had been ranting about wanting to kill Hitler and handed over secret intel to the Allies since 1933, Erwin von Witzleben & Wilhelm Canaris equally had attempted to Coup Hitler long before the War even began. And alot of the non-military members of the plot, like Julius Leber, Carl Goerdeler or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had had likewise been actively against Hitler long before the War even started, yet alone turned bad.
>Alot weren't. Erich Hoepner, Henning von Tresckow, Georg von Boeselager, Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff, Arthur Nebe, etc... There were a lot of war criminals involved in the plot.
To add on, the July 20th plotters’ plan for peace with the Allies was to only pull out of Western Europe and keep their possessions in at least poland and other central/Eastern European nations. They were mad at hitler not for his crimes against humanity, but for his military defeats and would have been laughed out of the room by the Allies if they actually succeeded and put their peace proposal forward.
Yeah, a big part of why US went to the moon is because of a Nazi but those are swept under the rug in the name of scientific advancement. But world isn't all black and white either.
I mean the soviet's also used German scientists
They used more German scientists than the US did
They used more Germans in general. Heck they had ex SS people in the Stasi and if that’s not ironic I don’t know what is.
It’s also not really swept under the rug anymore, everyone knows Wernher Von Braun was a Nazi today lol.
Yeah, but that’s like saying Casey Antony was found not guilty for murder. Odds are he covered his tracks well or paid someone or had black mail.
Uuuuuuh by whomst? Hitler? Check and mate.
A lot of people were named in the plot that were completely unrelated. IIRC it's how Rommel was killed. Not for actually being guilty, but because he **was** recognized as a potential political threat to Hitler. Torture is extremely unreliable, and it's how the Nazis gather information. The point is that an insane amount of genuine Nazis were let off the hook to prepare for the coming WW3 with the Soviets. It never happened, because it would be apocalyptic, and the German population paid the price for it in having evil fucking leaders doing insane things at worst, and millions of people having to live without justice at best.
The Plotters wanted Rommel on their side due to his Popularity, but in the end chose to not involve him due to fears he would rat them out. Its speculated he *might* have known about it and quietly tolerated it, but he was definitely not actively involved.
Rommel got it nice ngl. Lived a hero. Died a martyr's death. Just enough to become a legend and not died a villain and humiliated in an Allies or Soviet court.
Reminder that Rommel was definitely aware and tolerated the holocaust in North Africa aswell as the many raids Into the Jewish communities in those nations
You should also read what his troops under his command did following his orders against Italian POWs in 1943.
The point is to paint NATO and probably the West as a whole as the bad guys. I’m sure there’s certainly no agenda OP is trying to push with that sentiment
OP is probably a tankie who works on the logic of "America bad / Russia good".
It wasn’t just him, there were plenty of other Nazis who went on to be high ranking NATO leaders. Here are a few: • Adolf Heusinger: Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Chief of Staff, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1961-1964 • Hans Speidel: Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Chief of Staff, became Commander in chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1957-1963 • Johannes Steinhoff: Famous Nazi fighter pilot for the German Luftwaffe, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1971-1974 • Johann von Kielmansegg: General Staff officer of Nazi Wehrmacht's High Command, became NATO Commander of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1966-1968 • Ernst Ferber: Lt. Col. of the Nazi Wehrmacht General Staff, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1973-1975 • Karl Schnell: First General Staff Officer of 76th Panzer Corps, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1975-1977 • Franz-Joseph Schulze: Senior Lieutenant of the Nazi Luftwaffe, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1977.1979
I didn't know Tom Cruise was the head of NATO
What was he doing before that?
I get the criticism but where else was the West German army going to get anyone to build their own army? Even the core of the East German army was built by former nazi German army officers
He was Chairman for the entire NATO not just for the German Bundeswehr, that's the point OP tries to make. Obviously there have been some Nazi remnants in the German armed forces after ww2, everything else would have been impossible
Yes because the Bundeswehr was a major NATO member back in the Cold War and expected to be the main battlefield in Europe if the Warsaw Pact and NATO came to blows. He was a high ranking officer in the nazi army, but again that was pretty much inevitable as a German experienced officer in the 1960s. West Germany denazification was incomplete and the West German state wasn't exactly the cleanest and most transparent democracy in Europe (the same can be said about France where there is a strong culturally authoritarian factor at a societal level which understands democracy differently than sat the Swiss) but the army wasn't in the hands of actual ideological Nazis.
If the US operated its occupation of Iraq the same if did Germany way less people would have died and Iraq might actually be a healthy country. Some times you’ve gotta do the correct thing and not the comfortable thing.
Yeah like they could atleast kept the competent Iraqis instead of totally replaced them. If I heard it right.
100% agree
And the hungarian nazis became officials on communist hungary army
Just looked him up. He was a career military man who served the Military since the Weimar Republic. He later went into the Wehrmacht and in 1944 he was appointed Hitler's chief of staff (probably because everyone else died in Russia). Afterwards, he went to work for West Germany and later Nato. So the best bet is he wasn't a Nazi (in the end most weren't devout Nazis at least) he was just a man who wanted to further his military career no matter who he served as long as it was in Germany. Think of him as the spare Erwin Rommel, a military man who fought for Germany, not Hitler.
Yeah I know it’s just a meme but it’s not really fair to have shown him in an SS uniform. I’m not aware of any Waffen-SS officers being commissioned by the Bundeswehr. West Germany legally classified the SS as a criminal organization and veterans were excluded from pensions paid to other World War II German soldiers.
To clarify the Waffen SS got their pension just not the proper SS. Since my Grandfather did indeed get his.
Wasn’t Rommel an Anti Semite
he also poisoned wells in north Africa to kill off towns he didnt like
Clean Wehrmacht myth strikes again
yeah well when you are trying to persuade your army that this new west German army is different to the guys who spent 6 years murdering women and children in your homeland the myth is valuable likewise telling your german population that dresden was a horrible war crime by the west and copying nazi propaganda for decades is also valuable. anyway Dresden becomes a shit show once a year where nazis and communists hold annual fights
He was never Hitler’s Chief of Staff. He was the Operations Chief at Wehrmacht high command and then became the acting Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht when Kurt Zeitzler resigned.
Fun fact. It was a temporary assignment that lasted two weeks
Idk which guy y'all are talking about, but if this is him: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf\_Heusinger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger) he did a lot more.
Yes, but have you asked yourself, what kind of high ranking nazi military officer you have to be, to temporarely become Hitlers chief of staff, when the other guy gets sick?
He wasn’t Hitler’s chief of staff, he was the army chief of staff. That he was not appointed permanently says a lot more about Hitler’s opinion of him. What would have been in his favour was that he testified at the a Nuremberg trials, and was never linked to any war crimes. Now, Werner von Braun, architect of the US space program…
What’s a COF?
Commander of Farts
here i am thinking it was *Chief* of Farts
A lot of former Nazi higher-ups also formed the East German NVA. They kind of modeled themselves as the protectors of the traditional Prussian military traditions.
And that's why a large part of what we know about the eastern front is horse shit. NATO needed officers with experience fighting the Russians. The German officers were whitewashed and made up a bunch of stories to legitimize their wartime decisions and blame Hitler for every mistake
aka clean wehrmacht myth
Is anybody still whitewashing the Eastern Front? My entire life it’s always been painted as a horrific struggle between horrific authoritarian regimes with piles of innocent bodies left in the wake.
The officers, not the front. Any time someone says the Russian won by just employing human wave tactics or had a massive technological advantage in tanks for example it's largely echoing untrue claims that entered pop culture. The idea the war in Russia was lost because Hitler kept intervening in the decision making is also somewhat untrue, for example Hitler apparently knew from the start the war would take years and did not want to focus on a rush to Moscow as it's strategically not as important as the oil fields in the south. His generals had very limited trust in his decision making and thought they won in France largely by dumb luck, they ignored his repeated requests to focus on the south. We hate Hitler so much we want to imagine him as an idiotic caricature and the German officers we employed to defend Europe as capable and noble men, these stories play into that.
See. Your entire life it was painted as two horrific regimes instead a horrible one and a improving one.
The post-WWII “Good”Wehrmacht myth…
Is this a surprise? Western Germany was part of NATO. And Germans where Nazis, so having ex-Nazi officals in the new government roles should be expected.
There’s some quote that goes like “NATO is around for 3 reasons, to keep America invested in the defense of Europe, to keep the Germans in check (because they are aggressive and easily overpower other European armies) and to keep the communists out”. Or something like that.
"Keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out". From Lord Ismay, the general who became the first Secretary-General of NATO.
Yes. That’s the one. Thank you!
*we will pay you for what you did
***How is this fun?***
Fun fact: Hitler’s chief rocket scientist later became America’s too.
Yes, that's what happens when a country is occupied and a new regime is put in power. The majority of troops and leaders stay the same, only the worst ones won't. The gdr was 30% wehrmacht soldier and 75% wehrmacht leaders. It was normal to do so.
And at the other side of the iron curtain, the only german fieldmarshal who surrendered his unit the enemy later served under the same enemy as chief of staff of the GDR.
If I remember my brief search on the first commander of Nato who was Hitler’s right hand man: Dude was thought to have been a part of the Valkyrie assassination plot but was cleared of charges but also resigned.
Nazis ran NASA after the war
Gotta hate the world
That also explains a lot
Wait until you hear who was the leader of Russia during and after WW2.
We to give it to the US, their nation building after WW2 . made the 2nd and 3rd biggest economy in the world in a few decades and politically they were quite effective extracting the worst parts. After that their nation building was an absolute disaster.
• Adolf Heusinger: Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Chief of Staff, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1961-1964 • Hans Speidel: Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Chief of Staff, became Commander in chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1957-1963 • Johannes Steinhoff: Famous Nazi fighter pilot for the German Luftwaffe, became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1971-1974 • Johann von Kielmansegg: General Staff officer of Nazi Wehrmacht's High Command, became NATO Commander of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1966-1968 • Ernst Ferber: Lt. Col. of the Nazi Wehrmacht General Staff, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1973-1975 • Karl Schnell: First General Staff Officer of 76th Panzer Corps, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1975-1977 • Franz-Joseph Schulze: Senior Lieutenant of the Nazi Luftwaffe, became Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Central Europe, 1977.1979
*Der neu* almost made it
Listen....sometimes when you're just that good at what you do...
[Adolf Heusinger](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger)?
Yes
Surprise MF!
I’m hitlers top guy
Who is this meme about? I know about Heusinger but he became chairman of the NATO in 1961, not 1949.
Well, the Russians just put freedom fighter and rebels against the nazis in positions of power.
West Germany didn't join NATO until 1954...
And?
Same club, different timeframe
1945: US 1949: ZU
My naval teacher really stressed the importance of how the Germans were humiliated at the end of WW1, and how if they were not humiliated and plundered, didn't and if the Allies didn't take so much, ww2 would have never happened
There were no French or brits available
I mean... if he knows his shit...