2023, Nov. 28th, someone asked me this-
what’s with all the nazi stuff?
I am fascinated with Wehrmacht and its Prussian military aristocracy, but I am uninterested in Nazism and disapprove it. One marshal who stands out in this respect is Fedor von Bock, who had been very close to Kaiser Wilhelm II his whole life, despite it pissed off Hitler. Ewald von Kleist treated people in the occupied Soviet zones with a lot of humanity. Later on in the war trial, Stalin pinned on him a crime called “alienation of the Soviet people from communist ideology” because he “treated the POWs too well”. Pretty hilarious if you think about it.
Many of the greatest innovative technics, including how to protect soldiers or conduct troops, came from humble background generals like Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel, who unfortunately fell victims for political struggles. I have mixed feelings for Doenitz for his technological genius and the cruelty of his strategies, but I believe Admiral Chester Nimitz of the United State navy defended him for solid reasons. Anyway, later on in the war Hitler distanced himself from the traditional military class (too many assassination attempts for this dictator’s taste), and used Walter Model heavily; it also resulted in his life being lost, in a way.
However, I do consider their blind devotion to the country, their out-dated sense of aristocratic aloofness and their inactivity during political turmoil and the SS bullshit as major moral weakness, some went as far as to consider Nazism “a chance to re-invent the crisis-ridden military class”. Walter von Reichenau was an example. But this general died under suspicious circumstances. Hitler didn’t like him too much, after all.
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