eeee... He should be punished, the apology thing is just his last hour apology to God and less so to humanity, he’s looking at judgement from Above and is a bit scared. No excuses for him, but I don’t blame every rank and file Nazi anymore than every rank and file Soviet or even Khmer Rouge, anymore than I hold some thing against every Southern Confederate. Most Confederates were great people, rank and file. In fact, if the South won the Civil War (war between the States) there would be no slavery today, that was going to end no matter who won the war. Now if the NAZIs won, who were Socialists, that would have been a big problem. But most rank and file didn’t know all the bad stuff going on, they probably knew some mass murdering was going on but not at the levels that was later found. Most were just patriots and many anti-communists. Now if you were part of a camp mass-murdering Jews then you must be executed for that. It is worse than a “crime”. But I don’t blame every Nazi. Sorry. I guess I will have to apologize, too. So, sorry for saying not all Nazis were bad. Many were. Those who did the murders need to die for their deeds. But let’s not act like everyone needs to die. Anyway, you can only execute so many and you start to run out of bullets. You, yourself, might turn into a Nazi after too many bullets. Just shoot the guy, but don’t make your entire day just about that.
Well, conveniently in Germany there was a distinction between being a Nazi, and being a soldier in the German army.
I do blame every Nazi, but not every German soldier. You could not have been a member of the Nazi party and not have enthusiastically cheered at Hitler’s commitment to killing the Jews. That was the basis of the enterprise. That was the evil that they united against. Little Jewish children in Poland had to be exterminated. And your rank and file Nazi, whether they had specific knowledge of the processes and procedures, was fully on board with the sentiment.
AND THEN after the war, they melted back into society, accepted the gifts of the Marshall plan and the NATO defense. And now he’s sorry, 70 odd years later.
So your politicized rationalization cut very little ice with me.