Not sure RIP is the proper sentiment here. No way he didn't know about the Holocaust. Notable merely for the chapter in history it closes.
“I lived with him for five years. We were the closest people who worked with him … we were always there. Hitler was never without us day and night.” And yet he didn't know about the holocaust...give me a ****ing break...
I don't feel anything about him either way. He was a functionary with no real influence on Hitler's decisions; and whatever you think about specific leaders I don't believe any expects them to not have bodyguards. It's clear his denial indicates a loyalty to Hitler and possibly his ideas: or just blind patriotism. He's obviously lying about not knowing anything about the Holocaust; but the same could probably have been said for any industrial, transport or governmental professional, or a large portion of the German people.
He is going to join Hitler doing this... <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eZQw6KuNKqs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
So ze Germans never put him on trial after he returned from the Soviet Union? I know he didn't work in the concentration camps but come on, it's still Hitler's bodyguard. Some charge of accessory or something could have been placed on him. The guy just served his nine years in the Soviet and returned to Berlin to live his life huh. Nice.
There was such a mess and a mass of Germans (and Deutschvolk, people of German ancestry living in nearby countries for generations before the war) sent back into the various occupied areas of Germany, with (initially) four different governments, that yeah, it was kind of live and let (barely) live in a lot of cases. EDIT: and in this case, he probably came back to east berlin, DDR land, Soviet puppetry, so why would they put a guy on trial who had been released by the USSR, if you see what I mean? I was just reading (in the new book Savage Continent) that 1/3 of all Germans captured by the Red Army ended up dead. That's one million soldiers and civilians, killed or starved in captivity. So it seems natural that if someone survived that, they could just come back to their (completely ruined and divided) country and try to live a life. (A captured German had about a 100x better chance of surviving with the Americans than the Russians. Just incredible.) I don't feel one ounce of sympathy for this turd -- that's not my point -- but the post-WWII era is pretty fascinating.
always love reading stuff about WWII. anyone ever see the movie downfall? der untergang (in German) is a movie about Hitler's last days when the red army was closing in on Berlin,much like what is depicted above. good movie, though everyone rips off the angry Hitler video parodies from it.
Oooooookay....... I was going to say, 9 years in a Russian gulag was definitely no picnic. By some accounts, they were as bad as the German concentration camps. I'm surprised he survived, frankly. Especially if they knew who he was. When the Americans and Russians were racing towards Berlin, the German people (and what was left of the soldiers) were praying that America would get there first. They knew what they were in for if the Russians got there first. Suffice to say all the refugees were traveling West, not East....
I found this article to be fascinating. Just to be able to see a glimpse of the human side of Hitler to me is very interesting.
Yeah, Eisenhower wanted nothing of a race to Berlin and he stopped at the Elbe river. And you know, there were refugees going all kinds of directions. You're right about most of the *German* refugees, but then there were all these prisoners liberated from the work camps and concentration camps, and sometimes home was to the *east*, come what may... The i-witness accounts, of both the streams of refugees and the Red Army, paint it like something out of The Road Warrior.
Indeed. People tend to label Hitler a monster, demon, devil, etc. But we must always remember: he was a man. A human being, much like many others. Too much power, too many misguided ideals, too much racism, etc. made him a genocidal tyrant. But still and all: he was only a man.