SteyrAUG
05-12-17, 02:59
Figured I'd get some of the hijack out of the other threads.
Oskar Schindler was a member of the nazi party (NSDAP) and decided to help people rather than continue to get rich. He was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1963. He died on 9 October 1974 in Hildesheim, Germany, and was buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the only member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way.
There was the German officer in "The Pianist" who we must assume is a real person, who may or may not have been a member of the NSDAP.
John Rabe was a NSDAP member who is best known for his efforts to stop the atrocities of the Japanese army during the Nanking Occupation and his work to protect and help the Chinese civilians during the event. The Nanking Safety Zone, which he helped to establish, sheltered approximately 200,000 Chinese people from slaughter during the massacre.
Wernher von Braun was a member of the NSDAP and we'd have never made it to the moon without him. We should keep in mind if you had any political aspirations and ideas of advancement in Germany at the time you pretty much had to join the party, they even ran the post office which was nationalized. Braun did benefit from slave labor but I think we wanted to go to the moon really, really badly so it was mostly overlooked.
There were also dozens of other rocket scientists, physicists and similar types involved in advanced weapons programs for the Nazi's and we pretty much gave them a pass (see: paperclip) in exchange for their data and work. This is pretty tame compared to the deal we cut with those in charge of Unit 731 in Manchuria.
We should also remember when it comes to the SS there were several branches, the waffen SS, the SD and the Gestapo for example. While many people assert that the Waffen SS is fundamentally no different from the Wehrmacht that isn't completely true. They were known to engage in atrocities from time to time such as the Malmedy massacre by the 1st SS Panzer Division, 1944, Belgium.
It's true that there are members of the Waffen SS who never engaged in such acts and even entire units who never participated in such actions, but it is disingenuous to suggest none of them ever did and they were just another branch of the military.
And there are countless stories of individuals and even small groups who helped save victims who were being persecuted by the NSDAP. Indeed the first concentration camp at Dachau was designed to hold Germans who objected to the actions of the nazi leadership, including the treatment of jews, gypsies, slavs and other undesirables.
As Heydrich himself lamented at Wanssee "Every German seems to know at least one good jew." So there you have it, even in a totalitarian state such as Hitlers Germany where helping "enemies of the state" could actually get you killed, there were still people who decided they couldn't stand by and do nothing and even members of the party were willing to risk their lives to help people they determined were innocent.
Of course the big problem is for every Oskar Schindler there was a Joseph Mengele who not only killed victims in camps but engaged in truly sadistic medical experiments with his human subjects. And there were legions of the Allgemeine SS who were absolutely devoted to the mandate of Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich and were represented by the SS-Totenkopfverbände which managed the concentration camps and other units like the Einsatzgruppen which functioned as death squads when the military invaded new territory.
And it is those guys who generally give the nazis and the SS a bad name, despite the Schindlers, Rabes and other "good Germans" who happen to be members of the NSDAP for whatever reason.
Oskar Schindler was a member of the nazi party (NSDAP) and decided to help people rather than continue to get rich. He was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1963. He died on 9 October 1974 in Hildesheim, Germany, and was buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the only member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way.
There was the German officer in "The Pianist" who we must assume is a real person, who may or may not have been a member of the NSDAP.
John Rabe was a NSDAP member who is best known for his efforts to stop the atrocities of the Japanese army during the Nanking Occupation and his work to protect and help the Chinese civilians during the event. The Nanking Safety Zone, which he helped to establish, sheltered approximately 200,000 Chinese people from slaughter during the massacre.
Wernher von Braun was a member of the NSDAP and we'd have never made it to the moon without him. We should keep in mind if you had any political aspirations and ideas of advancement in Germany at the time you pretty much had to join the party, they even ran the post office which was nationalized. Braun did benefit from slave labor but I think we wanted to go to the moon really, really badly so it was mostly overlooked.
There were also dozens of other rocket scientists, physicists and similar types involved in advanced weapons programs for the Nazi's and we pretty much gave them a pass (see: paperclip) in exchange for their data and work. This is pretty tame compared to the deal we cut with those in charge of Unit 731 in Manchuria.
We should also remember when it comes to the SS there were several branches, the waffen SS, the SD and the Gestapo for example. While many people assert that the Waffen SS is fundamentally no different from the Wehrmacht that isn't completely true. They were known to engage in atrocities from time to time such as the Malmedy massacre by the 1st SS Panzer Division, 1944, Belgium.
It's true that there are members of the Waffen SS who never engaged in such acts and even entire units who never participated in such actions, but it is disingenuous to suggest none of them ever did and they were just another branch of the military.
And there are countless stories of individuals and even small groups who helped save victims who were being persecuted by the NSDAP. Indeed the first concentration camp at Dachau was designed to hold Germans who objected to the actions of the nazi leadership, including the treatment of jews, gypsies, slavs and other undesirables.
As Heydrich himself lamented at Wanssee "Every German seems to know at least one good jew." So there you have it, even in a totalitarian state such as Hitlers Germany where helping "enemies of the state" could actually get you killed, there were still people who decided they couldn't stand by and do nothing and even members of the party were willing to risk their lives to help people they determined were innocent.
Of course the big problem is for every Oskar Schindler there was a Joseph Mengele who not only killed victims in camps but engaged in truly sadistic medical experiments with his human subjects. And there were legions of the Allgemeine SS who were absolutely devoted to the mandate of Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich and were represented by the SS-Totenkopfverbände which managed the concentration camps and other units like the Einsatzgruppen which functioned as death squads when the military invaded new territory.
And it is those guys who generally give the nazis and the SS a bad name, despite the Schindlers, Rabes and other "good Germans" who happen to be members of the NSDAP for whatever reason.