Not just Germans. Lots of Frenchmen and Alsatians too! Some had to wait until 1956.
When you fight literal Nazis and still can’t come away looking like the good guys.
The only mistake was releasing them
This. We weren’t harsh or thorough enough at eradicating Nazis. The collaborators, the sympathizers, the cowards who changed their names to escape. Now we’re living with the consequences.
Just because they were soldiers doesnt mean they were nazis. A lot of them were drafted and at the end of the war even teenagers were sent to the frontline because all the other young men were already fighting or dead.
If a soldier was part of the SS or SA, he was a nazi.
Deserting is always an option, and the most ethical one
That isnt without risks itself and it might not have been practically possible in some cases.
Would you desert if your family gets sent to a concentration camp when the army finds out?
Deserting is always an option, and the most ethical one
If you were caught deserting you were killed. And your family often killed as well.
If you were called to conscript and failed to appear. SS would visit your home. You either went with them or was killed… or your family killed. It may be the most “ethical” in your eyes… but these decisions are hard and come with a lot of strife and pain.
Source: First hand account from a conscripted German. Aka my grandfather, who was lucky enough to be conscripted in the very end of the war and DID manage to get a way with desertion only due to that luck. I have family which accounts were documented of the SS killing them for even mentioning that the SS did something inhumane ( a great-uncle of mine).
After like… 1944? they also conscripted people to the SS
Post war Nazi career paths
Get job (allies) 😀
Get job (Soviets) 💀
On another note I just had a thought about the German scientists who fled the Reich pre WW2 due to prosecution and the German scientists who were employed post WW2. Did they ever meet and work on projects together lmao.
“Hey Albert, I didn’t know you were in Princeton, too!”
“Remember that time you hunted me and my family, wanting to execute us through forced labor? Haha, good times. Those sure were the good ol days.”
“And we just laughed and laughed…”
And if you were a Nazi who was “employed” by the Soviet Union you were most likely not a scientist
How the hell do you figure that? They were the only ones who would be of any worth.
You are literally commenting on a post about 500 000 German prisoners of war in forced labour camps… r u stoopid?
So we doing nazi apologia now? Who cares how many nazis died lmao
Clearly not enough, seeing how
the fourth reichWest Germany actually had more nazis in its government after WW2 than during it.Wehrmacht was not a Nazi organisation. Members were free to join the party but they were not under any obligation. The SS was an explicitly Nazi army but completely separate from the Wehrmacht.
German people were compelled to ‘support the troops’ in the same way that Americans are compelled to support their many illegal invasions of sovereign territory. The British continue to build and operate colonial era warships. The main difference is they were on the winning side, lmao, etc.
Literal Nazi apologia? Upvoted on Lemmy.world? Color me shocked!
Yeah,I really don’t care how many Nazis got worked to death after that they did, it’s a shame they let so many of them right back into the west german government afterwards.
Wonder what the world would look like today if Germany had been thoroughly purged of Nazism, rather than a slap on the wrists.
It would have been really funny if they had given like Austria or half of Germany to be “Israel” on top of actually removing the Nazis
Funny and probably would have dramatically changed the world stage as it exists today.
Wild that they let some nazis survive. Hope they at least put them to good use for labor as reparations.
In the capitalist countries they were given cushy leadership positions instead lmao as you’d expect
“German military personnel” were also known as Nazis.
I see no problem here, sucks to suck, should have thought of the consequences when they took up arms for a nation who was liquidating every Jewish man, woman, and child they could stick on cattle cars and gas to death.
Agreed fuck Nazis.
But also fuck those who mistreat their POWs.
USSR had a chance to take the high road and instead commited pseudo-genocide in Ukraine and killed millions of their own citizens in gulag.
Nice, double genocide theory.
Take the high road? As in let all the Nazis fuck off to Argentina?
7/10 Nazis killed were at the hands of the red army. We have the soviets to thank for ending WWII and curbing German Nazism, plain as. They literally saved the world.
Nice whitewashing of russian crimes with buzzwords
So it your mind there’s no middle ground between letting every Nazi go off scot free and murdering a third of your prisoners of war indiscriminately?
They deserved to go on trial. Not be indiscriminately worked to death.
They did almost all the fighting, at a horrific cost.
That said, fuck Putin.
Would love to live in a world which is as black and white as you think it is. Germans “recruited” from countries they conquered en masse. You got an option to serve or have you and your family be killed. Thinking “500 thousand people, all nazis” is plain wrong. Thinking “all of those that died in gulags past WW2 are nazis” is plain wrong. Especially with the war starting in 39’ with the Nazi - Soviet invasion of Poland and the following elimination of anyone who was in any position of opposing the soviets.
Germans “recruited” from countries they conquered en masse.
Can we take a moment to throw up thoughts and prayers for this brave Victim of Communism in his crusade to eradicate the Soviet menace from his native soil?
Thinking “500 thousand people, all nazis” is plain wrong. Thinking “all of those that died in gulags past WW2 are nazis” is plain wrong.
Its so crazy to phrase it this way, because Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) held by Nazi Germany and primarily in the custody of the German Army were starved and subjected to deadly conditions. Of nearly six million who were captured, around three million died during their imprisonment. . The ratio of dead Soviet POWs to German POWs was 6:1. What makes the Germans so uniquely sympathetic?
It should be noted that many of these German POWs were taken from concentration camps full of Soviet POWs in turn. One might think that perhaps, what goes around will come around. But instead, we’re expected to pretend the Waffen-SS and their auxiliaries were these sweet innocent lambs caught in the teeth of a horrible war.
Even setting aside the knee-jerk “Maybe the Nazis were the bad guys” western response, you’ve got kinda squeeze your eyes shut from 1941 to 1945 and pretend the next couple of years was just Soviets being innately cruel for no discernible reason, rather than on a rip-roaring rampage of (kinda justified) revenge.
Both things can be wrong at the same time
While there is a lot of argument (in both directions) on the culpability of the average german soldier to the Nazis: The way you punish that is through trials. I hear Nuremburg had a few of those.
This was russia abducting enemy combatants and using them as slave labor for a decade. And, like most of stalin’s purges and enslavements, had very little to do with whatever crimes the slaves were accused of.
There is no argument about the culpability of the Wehrmacht.
Organisation ≠ person.
Lots of Wermacht soldiers did horrible things, and should have gone to trial for them. Lots of other Wermacht soldiers were forced and did not want the role. Maybe they even surrendered at the first chance they got, and this is what happened to them, died in labour camps.
The vast majority of POW captures were in the final year of the war, when it was teenagers and middle aged people who were quickly trained and sent to the front lines, in many places.
Yup.
It is not an exoneration of the average soldier. A lot did some really heinous shit… like all soldiers in all wars. But a lot were also just there because they were drafted and had no choice. And that is what investigations are for.
People like the black and white of “You wore a uniform, you are pure evil”. And governments ESPECIALLY love that and a lot of media has been funded to specifically reinforce that so it is super easy to Other the other guys (We have always been at war with Eastasia and all that). But when you actually think things through? What is the difference between a conscript terrified in their bunk at night and a civillian who gleefully makes shells and tanks in a factory?
All of which is kind of moot. Because, to reference the great dril: You do not “gotta hand it to them” to ISIS, Nazi German, or Stalin and his cronies in the USSR.
The vast majority of POW captures were in the final year of the war, when it was teenagers and middle aged people who were quickly trained and sent to the front lines, in many places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)
High-ranking fascists and Nazis who escaped from Europe via the ratlines after World War II: Ante Pavelić, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele
:-/
More the opposite. The teenagers and war-wounded were forced to fight until the bitter end, buying time for the senior officers to surrender or flee. The POWs that were captured were bureaucrats and administrators, central to the functioning of the German industrial war machine but never responsible for pulling a trigger on the front lines. The surrendered or went underground en mass only after their children and grandchildren had been fed as cannon fodder into the maw of the encroaching American and Russian armies.
Your quote from wikipedia doesn’t corroborate your claim. Prisoners of war were in large majority soldiers, and not bureaucrats.
Yes, these soldiers fighting on the front did exactly that, they bought time for the Nazi regime. If the soldiers were aware of that, who knows. But the average soldier that became a POW has little to do with the high ranking bureaucrats who escaped through the rat lines.
In fact, while the soviet union, was murdering ordinary soldiers in its labour camps it was already offering amnesty and intelligence agency roles to many former high ranking Nazis.
Prisoners of war were in large majority soldiers, and not bureaucrats.
They were military personal. And the military is flush with bureaucrats.
But the average soldier that became a POW has little to do with the high ranking bureaucrats who escaped through the rat lines.
Nuremberg Defense ass response.
Yes the military are flush with bureaucrats, but bureaucrats tend not to be on the front lines, where most POW are captured.
The Nuremberg trials were specifically the trial of 22 of the most high ranking Nazis. Specifically bureaucrats.
Fuck them. They could have chosen to die, with honor.
Would you say they were just following orders?
I hate to break it to yall what those nazis were doing before they were imprisoned.
I think most people here are aware of the mass genocide and countless atrocities commited by the nazi regime. I just wanted to shine the light on an atrocity (violated human rights, and the original 1864 geneva convention) commited by the soviet union.
My grandfather was one of these Russian POW. He was 15 years old. Conscripted and sent to the front without a choice.
He said, he only survived the camp because he met his uncle there. That’s about all he was willing to talk about it.
In the first war years my greatgrandfather (his father) spent 3 years in prison because he spoke not favorably about the Nazi regime. No trial, no visits, no information. Everything he owned, including his business was expropriated by the Nazis.
He was supposed to be moved to a camp but then was suddenly released without any information and conscripted into the army.Neither of them had any choice. Mere soldiers, the ones in the trenches, generally didn’t.
People were executed for refusing military service and after that they sent your whole family into a camp for “Sittenhaft” (kin collective punishment).The SS and SA who were responsible for unbelievable atrocities were only a part of the German military. They were the “elite” units.
People were executed for refusing military service and after that they sent your whole family into a camp for “Sittenhaft” (kin collective punishment).
And this is how they force conscripted men willing to die for their principles. You may be willing to die for your principles, but a principled person probably isn’t willing to let their wife and kid slowly starve to death in a Nazi forced labor camp. The Nazis were pure evil.
So, just like the “orcs” that Western liberals love to dehumanize, approve of war crimes against, and cheer for the brutal drone deaths of as they lose each of their limbs over the course of an hour? The ones I see them cheering for the brutalization of every day?
After all, they’re the invaders.
Well, during the war ukraine has no choice but to kill the russian soldiers if they want to win.
But I think that ukraine treats POW fairly well and if the war ends they probably wouldnt force them to work in Gulag conditions.
Fuck Putin. Hopefully he’ll get what he deserves, soon. At the hands of his oligarchs.
What?
They’re probably talking about modern Russia.
This. Half of this thread is such an absurdly cruel and stupid oversimplification.
Just to make sure: I’m not trying to defend the nazis - the zealots that died as pows got what they deserved. But a lot of the common people never had a choice. It’s mostly the lower income classes that had less of a choice as well. Just meat that got send to the fronlines. I guess I just don’t get why people delight in their fates out of all the people/“nazis” they could hate on.
That’s an EXTREME oversimplification of history.
interesting, I wonder where that source comes from 🤔
Erich Maschke Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges Bielefeld, E. und W. Gieseking, 1962-1974 Vol 15 p. 207
interesting, I wonder who Erich Maschke is 🤔
Interesting! we’re just taking Nazi lies at face value now, it would seem.
It’s on a LW community, what did you expect lmao
To be fair, OP is also a blahaj user. Lemmy.world’s issues aren’t exclusive to Lemmy.world users.
How did that shitstain live through 1982?
It says in the article, “West Germany.”
Thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive answer.
In case you’re being sarcastic, West Germany was not de-Nazified to any real extent, the Western Powers were extremely lenient on punishing Nazis in general.
I’m not sure which German you expect to have conducted this research other than a former Nazi, seeing as basically everyone left was a former Nazi. And I don’t see how you can just dismiss the government report as Nazi lies when even the Soviets report a figure of 350 thousand dead.
Source on the 350 thousand figure?
Quite literally the first paragraph of the article:
According to Soviet records 381,067 German Wehrmacht POWs died in NKVD camps (356,700 German nationals and 24,367 from other nations).
Or in more detail lower down in the section titled Soviet statistics:
According to Russian historian Grigori F. Krivosheev, Soviet NKVD figures list 2,733,739 German “Wehrmacht” POWs (Военнопленные из войск вермахта) taken with 381,067 having died in captivity.
I can dismiss it as Nazi lies because it is false information published by a lifelong Nazi party devotee and propagandist. that’s literally what those words mean. Of course the West German government commissioned a lifelong devoted Nazi propagandist for this report, nearly 80% of the post-war West German government were former Nazi officials. you should take everything they say, especially figures about the soviet union, with a gigantic mountain of salt, because it is Nazi propaganda.
So your definite stance is that it’s outright false information and Nazi propaganda that the number is 30% higher than the one the Soviets themselves put out?
Love posting nazi propaganda
Won’t shed a tear
My mother worked in Germany in the late 60s (We are Norwegian) and her boss’ (and life long friend of the family) husband was 16 when he was literally drafted from HJ to the SS in early 45. He was a good jugend and it was an “honor” and such BS. But having spent all his childhood in nazi Germany he knew nothing else. He was captured by the Russians in Czechoslovakia and spent 5 years as a POW and the only reason he made it as far as becoming a POW was his age and because the SS NCOs made sure he didn’t get the SS serial number tattoo since he was so young.
God knows how he manages to survive, but I never knew him to not eat every morsel of food on his plate, and he never talked about his experience.
I shed no tears for Nazis, but I do shed tears for the duped and the “innocents” of any conflict.
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Well yeah. Stalin was at least as evil as Hitler, he just executed his enemies (real or perceived) - Jews included - via gulags. TBH the only practical difference between them was their core ideologies and which ones were sides with the Allies when the war ended.
My grandfather jumped down from the train that was supposed to bring him to a gulag (he was a soldier (vehicle driver) in ww2, just like all other German males at that time) with six others and walked 800 000 km home over many nights (at daytime they’d be seen and captured to be brought to a gulag, which basically equalled death), before dawn broke they always went to a farm and asked if they could hide there for the day (the farmers were very friendly despite having been enemies not long ago (enemies in wars usually exist on a political level, but not on a personal one), most didn’t reject them and let them sleep, usually also gave them something to eat and if they were lucky something to take with them for the next night).
He was the only one who arrived back home, all others either were captured or died.
There he went to the American zone since he had heard his chances for survival were best there. They threw him into a pit (went a few meters down, he broke his arm from falling down), gave him some stray, water and bread (apart from the bread basically like many animals are kept). After eight years (including frequent physical and psychological torture (= for example telling him to lay off all clothes and stand at a wall, pointing a gun at him telling him it’s time to die like once per month)) he was so ill that they expected him to die within a few days so they set him free so he could visit his wife and children one last time.
He recovered and lived to become 90 years old.
Just because one side was very bad it doesn’t mean the other sides were angels. I’m not defending the Nazis in any way, but I’m sure there were many cases such as his. And he didn’t do anything special as far as I know, didn’t have a high rank or anything, he just was a normal vehicle driver in his country’s army.
Edit: Another example: https://lemmy.world/comment/12283788
