What could a mere soldier, under orders from his superiors in the Nazi regime, do about it? The Nazis executed their deserters.......
Cases of war efforts that developed into horrors when the bystanders came under coercion, shouldn’t be treated the same way as those who were in some wise free to go.
If we ask heroics of one under pain of death, oughtn’t we ask heroics of all?
And note they never asked who prayed to God. Shouldn’t that count in a physical coercion situation?
The Japan approach of America worked a lot better. By all means however drastic suppress the revolt, but then forgive. Would anybody even be thinking of Nazis today if they hadn’t kept getting forced into the news? Could this prolonged revenge quest be helping, not hurting, the Nazi meme?
Crimes are defined under a civilized society. Wars, when civilization has been lost. This was war.
Understand how ya feel except that SS selection was a grueling process to join and remain .... It wasn’t a standard Mk 1, Mod 0 grunt outfit. This bastard and his death head wearing brethren were volunteers in SS-Totenkopfverbände ....they knew going in what their mission was. All murdering trash are “sorry” when caught ..... no excuses in my opinion.
It will be bad precedent for the military when enlisted men have to make decisions about whether orders are lawful.
It would depend on how “hard-core” he was. There would still be survivors who would remember that. And from the way he himself makes it seem, he was pretty brutal.
He could have accepted his own death.