theparsonski said:
The most interesting one.
EDIT: Actually, atrocities they commited before the war would be good, stuff like the extermination of disabled people in the mental hospitals etc.
Actually, to be honest, I don't know too much of what the vague fucked-upness went on, beyond the eugenics programs. Though I think the Japanese were a lot worse in this respect.
Anyway, I'll briefly wax lyrical about Wilhelm Bittrich. Probably the most vocal of the dissenting voices towards the end of the war who managed to survive not so much Allied efforts to defeat him but the Nazi Party's efforts to bring him in to trial. He used every trick in the book to prevent his own return to Berlin where he knew (from July 1944 onwards as by this time he had made clear his disgust with OKW) he'd be promptly arrested. He was an ardent Nazi, but only from a military perspective, and despised the cultural/racial ideology under the belief that it would demean the military establishment.
Testimony from Albert Speer proved Bittrich held contempt for party functionaries, upon finding out that a group had executed captured British paras during/after the Battle of Arnhem, he was beside himself with fury, especially after he had sanctioned a ceasefire between his own chief medical officer and Colonel Walker of 1st British Para Div. However, he was powerless to apprehend the party functionaries, who promptly made themselves scarce, because Walter Harzer (whose men had been appropriated for the execution, but whether or not they actually carried it out, I don't know) was similarly pissed off, and even less forgiving than his corps commander.
A similar incident concerns the execution of French Resistance operatives by troops under his command. What the prosecution at his post-war trial conveniently left out was that he instantly opened an inquiry (he didn't have the jurisdiction to start a court-martial) into it and would've completed proceedings against the culprits were it not for the meddling of the Gestapo.
One of a kind, Bittrich... though I'm sure people will contrive reasons to villify him nonetheless... *shrug*
