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]

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.