Личные воспоминания о событиях из немецкого танка в битве под Сталинградом (Часть V)

[onb2017]

Часть I Часть II Часть III Часть IV

На подступах к Сталинграду

Мы все надеялись, что лето 1942-го будет для нас грандиозным. Мы пытались зажать Красную Армию в клещи, но русские всегда отступали. Мы думали, что это было оттого, что они были трусы, но вскоре поняли, что это не так.
В районе Донбасса мы вошли в город, где было много заводов. По

Comments

[matrixmann]

You know what occurs to me to that part?
Well, probably foreigners won't know...
That's why it's a shame why German authorities come around the corner these days and drag 90-years-olds before court for alleged war crimes they did as young people in WWII, who may not even know anymore what you want from them because they suffer from old age dementia, who were only small entities in a huge killing machine and nobody with a really meaningful position, and they try to orchestrate themselves over it in public like they're the big Nazi hunters these days.
And, while that, they even ignore sentences that were already done in the GDR for that just because it's a state whose penal system they don't recognize.

Back then, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, when even the bigger fish were still alive who really had a decision-making position, they all let them run around freely, even letting them go to pension with all full political, social and state honors and everything.
If it wasn't for the international Nazi-hunters who were private investigators paid by wealthy families who once fled abroad, then nobody tried to punish a former Nazi for a war crime in West Germany. And even those, they tried to sabotage their work 'cause each case could turn into something that makes bigger circles. Brings some higher officials of that time down that were dearly needed by the post-war system (and the Americans).

With all of these really important figures gone, now since the millennium they keep looking out for old people with skeletons in their closet - people, who were there on the battlefield and in the facilities, but what could they have done? And, above all, even if in their range of power, what could a young lad have done in their position, who always heard the shit he's doing is all legitmate and correct?

It's fucking shabby what the West German state does there. As they had the possibility to hunt Nazis, they practiced Colic over a lost war (and maybe dreamed of opening the shit up again and finally winning what's "theirs" in their view) and even protected these butchers from being punished for what they've done without remorse.
But now, with nearly all people gone who saw the war themselves, there they come around the corner, acting big and risking a fat lip, and they do court processes against almost or above-90-year-olds who can't put up seriours resistance anymore anyway and where it's even highly questionable if they still see the day of their verdict and didn't die before during the lawsuit.
And then it's even also figures who later grasped what they have done. They also pull them before the court.

Shabby, from the front to the back and back...

(West) Germany, the state who left its Nazi-past behind? Forget it! Not the West German state.

[onb2017]

I don't quite know the part about the Eastern Germany but I think the nazis should be prosecuted for crimes even if they are 90. Maybe it should be equal for both.

[matrixmann]

In the East, they had a process called "denazification" (Entnazifizierung) which the West didn't have.
At least I would think so - people they could find and prove to be guilty of war crimes, they sentenced them to whatever punishment (depending on the things they've done) and then gone with it. If someone was rather a small ant in the big colony, then he might have received a sentence of years and jail and if he survived it, he was a regular citizen again, he paid for his sins. Maybe with the restriction of not ever entering public offices.

There's a case around here in the local area, the man is over 90 years old, he sat a few years in jail for his deeds in the 50s, sentenced by the GDR state, that was what he got, and now the West German state who recognizes barely any paper written the GDR comes around the corner and wants to sentence the man again. Mind you, they had more than two and a half decades of time before to do this. The didn't do it before and now they try to orchestrate them like they're doing something virtuous...
Core point how this can be is because in the West German state you can only be sentenced once for a crime, but this man wasn't sentenced by the judiciary of West Germany, so this judiciary regards him as "not sentenced" for his crimes back then.

People higher in the hierarchy, those they needed for the building up of the state, I fear, they let them be for a while still as they just knew where each brick in the state lies if you know what I mean. Not because it was fun to them or they liked to do it, but because they were in need of their services as "system managers", as people to guide them where everything is from the former German state.
Think there was something in the case of the famous shooting of student Benno Ohnesorg - the policeman who did it was a Stasi-worker around this time episode, but there are also things implying that he could have been a Nazi, or at least someone who still "made profit" out of the way of raising that was common in those times. He was obsessive with guns and uniforms, even gave his 10-year-old kid a gun as a birthday present and took him to shooting practice when he went. Things that actually only Nazis did around that time with that firm conviction.
So, just for giving a possible example.