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Fugitive Nazis

Yithian

Parish Watch
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I consider this a gap in my knowledge - i had assumed the last Nazis on the run had either succumbed to hunters or age but it seems not:

SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Alois Brunner - Eichmann's second in command - was a key figure in the planning and execution of the Final Solution, the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II. He actively participated in the mass murder and was often sent by Eichmann as a trouble shooter to areas such as France to expedite the killings.

Alois Brunner bears direct responsibility for the deportation to Nazi death camps of 128,500 Jewish men, women and children from Austria, Greece, France, and Slovakia.

The arrest and conviction of Alois Brunner remains the top priority of leading Nazi hunters and war investigators but Brunner has successfully eluded justice. During his many years hiding out reportedly in an apartment on Haddad Street in the Syrian capital of Damascus, he openly assisted the Syrians in establishing their own secret police.

Despite Syria's claims that he's either dead or gone, many believe the former SS Hauptsturmfuhrer is still there, well out of justice's reach as he lives comfortably into his ninth decade.

The Syrian authorities have covered and continue to cover Alois Brunner and he may never pay for his crimes. Germany, Austria, Slovakia, France and Poland currently seek his extradition, but the Syrians have been totally uncooperative in response to all these requests.

There are still many, perhaps thousands, of Nazi war criminals at large in the world - this is the story of one of them ... [MORE]

http://www.auschwitz.dk/Brunner/Default.htm

It seems he's living in Syria:
http://philippos.mpa.gr/gr/other/brunner/en/

And has even spoken with the press:

"I first heard about gas chambers after the end of the war," says Alois Brunner, the "most wanted Nazi war criminal" still at large.

Following the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, SS Captain Brunner directed the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, through which large numbers of Jews migrated to foreign countries.

The man known as "Eichmann's right hand" later organized deportations of Jews from Berlin, France, Slovakia and Greece to ghettos and camps in eastern Europe.

Since the 1950s he has been living in exile in Damascus, Syria, under the name of "Georg Fischer." Letter bomb attacks in 1961 and 1980 cost him one eye and the fingers of his left hand. Bodyguards constantly protect Brunner, who is now 76 or 77 years old; West Germany, Austria and France have asked for his extradition....[MORE]
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p123_Weber.html
 
There are still a few at large, although i'm sure many of them would have succumbed to old age by now.

I would have thought that the biggest one still on the run would have been Heinrich 'Gestapo' Muller who was head of the Gestapo and attended the Wansee conference where Heydrich and the SS battered out the 'Final Solution.' He disapeared after the war and, as far as I know, was never captured.

The other would have been Martin Borman but a skeleton found in Berlin a few years ago seems to correspond to his dental records.

It was known that someone high up in the party was passisng information to the Soviets. Since the war both of these men have been claimed to be that 'mole' and after the war, again according to rumour, both were relocated to Russia.

But most of the rest are a motly collection of SS men, Einzat-gruppen troop and camp attendants. Was there not someone from Edinburgh A couple of years ago that was to have been put on trial for war crimes.

You're right. It is a fascinating subject. I believe the Wiestenthal Foundation still has an active list of people they wish to locate even after all these years.
 
I have to be honest, I can't see the point. Firstly, the defendants would be so changed with age, that I would seriously doubt any kind of identification. And secondly, well, War Crimes Trials have always left me feeling rather uncomfortable. After all, if we're going to judge the losers, they should have the right to judge us as well. And I don't remember many war crimes trials being brought against the Allies, although I'm sure of at least one that was called for.

And just where do you draw the line of 'obeying orders'? I'd have thought we've all seen enough reality TV and psychological experiments to realise that it really doesn't take much to turn Mr. or Ms. Average into a psychopathic bully.
 
Ravenstone said:
...War Crimes Trials have always left me feeling rather uncomfortable. After all, if we're going to judge the losers, they should have the right to judge us as well. And I don't remember many war crimes trials being brought against the Allies, although I'm sure of at least one that was called for.

You're right that no side in any war can ever rightly claim to have come through the other side with its virtue immaculate and unsullied. However, wouldn't the decision not to apprehend and prosecute those who have commited crimes against humanity, simply because we might find ourselves counter-accused, itself be an act of abject moral poverty?

Personally I would hound the bastards to the end of their days and then dig them up just to make sure.
 
It's a very real concern and one that the Nuremburg trial failed to address.

One of the controversys at Nuremburg concerned the murder of 100 000 polish officers and men which the Russians wanted the Germans tried for. Unfortuantely it seems it was the Russians themselves that were responsible. The whole thng was pretty much just brushed under the table to avoid embarresment.

Another issue that was raised conerned Grand Admiral Donitz whom the allies were trying to find guilty of war crimes due to his command of the U-boat war. Those charges were later dropped when it was revealved that, in fact, the Germans had fought a cleaner Submarine war than the allies had.

A lot of it comes down to other, more complicated factors; The bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima etc. Were they ligitamate war aims or vengeance? Can they be seem in the same light as the cold blooded planning of the Holocaust? Personally I don't think it's a question that will ever be answered.

It is a difficult topic and one that swings around a lot due to politics, memory, society etc. I think I would agree with Spook on this point though. The fact is that there are still a lot of people around who directly suffered at the hands of the Nazis and they deserve justice for what happened to them.

A very good book which covers the whole thing, moral implications and all is 'Nuremburg - Infamy on trial' by Joseph E Perisco. Although it leaves many questions unanswered it does go someway to covering the concerns raised here.
 
Of course, I agree that anyone guilty of crimes against humanity deserves punishment. I just wouldn't be too sure of accusing someone after 60 years, because, no matter what happens, no-one's memory is that good, and obviously people change their looks with time. I would not be certain of accuracy. Certainly nowhere near certain enough to hang anyone.

The thing is, you can't just punish anyone who was a Nazi. Anymore than you can punish someone who was SS (although my dad disagrees on this point - it's his contention that anyone in the SS should have been shot) because how do you tell who was doing it because it gave them kicks, and who was doing it 'because everyone else was', or because they thought it was the right thing to do at the time, or because they were scared not to, or any other reason than pops up.

Thing is, generals DID say no to Hitler and get away with it. Rommel did, anyway. He didn't lose favour because he refused to permit the Commando ruling. He got shouted out for withdrawing, but that was about it. He may have lost favour, but it didn't actually cost him anything.

I don't know. I just think of whathisname's experiement with the prisoners and guards. It doesn't take much to turn any of us into murderous psychos. And Nazi Germany was just the same experiment on a much larger scale, to my mind.

There are obvious contenders for a hemp fandango, of course. Obvious psychos. Goerring was setting himself up to take over after Hitler; he thought he would be allowed to negotiate the surrender, then get back to politics. Scary thought.

Everything I read on the Nuremberg trials makes me feel uncomfortable. Not for a second suggesting everyone was pure as the driven snow, not by a long chalk. But it doesn't somehow seem fair that the losers are tried by the winners.

It's like the recent calls for the Queen to apologise for Dresden. Why? It was war. They bombed us; we bombed them. There's no need to dig any further into the hows and whys. And the whole Dresden/Coventry etc thing, well, it just best left alone without being constantly picked at. Mind you, that's going off on a tangent a bit. Sorry.

I've read about the hunting of Eichmann. I'm not saying it wasn't justified, but, taken out of context, the notion of another country's secret police abducting a civilian from a total different country, putting them on trial and executing them - it's a bit uncomfortable. That's all. Can't really describe it any other way.

Hmm...bit of a rambling post without any real points there. :oops:
 
Rommel actually did lose out in the end, ?Ravenstone. He was implicated in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and was given the choice of being arrested and brought to trial in disgrace and no doubt executed or committing suicide, given a hero's funeral and the guarantee that his family would not suffer in any way (unlike the families of most of the other conspirators).

There is also the question of whether it's worthwhile bringing any of these nazis to justice after all these years. Any survivors would probably be pathetic old men by now. I know that, in some cases, their crimes were terrible but, apart from satisfying public sensbilities, what purpose would it serve imprisoning any that were caught?

Carole
 
Yes, but Rommel's suicide wasn't anything to do with his disobeying orders. He was implicated (through a chief of staff, or secretary, or somesuch, if I remember correctly) in the assassination plot, and giving him the option of suicide served the purpose of allowing him an honourable death, and giving the Nazi Party another reason for a big pomp and circumstance show.

But then, he was always very popular with the people. It may be that was more to do with why he got away with some things.

I'm with you on your post. Executing the surviving Nazi elite at the end of the Second World War can be excuses as preventative measures to stop the regime arising again. Executing them 60 years later, well....
 
People need bogey-men but people also like to see bogey-men captured and destroyed ... to feel "safe".

Some crimes are so heinous that justice and moral right demands that the criminals be caught and punished, whatever the time scale. However, is locking a 90 year old man up "for the rest of his life" justice or even fair punishment? I mean, it isn't going to change the criminals behavior, it's long past that. And it isn't going to deter other psychotic madmen from using a brutal regime to fulfil their own ends, is it?

I admit to being troubled and undecided on this issue. The lives of the tortured and murdered cry out for vengence - but is vengence a good basis for law?
 
Egan said:
One of the controversys at Nuremburg concerned the murder of 100 000 polish officers and men which the Russians wanted the Germans tried for. Unfortuantely it seems it was the Russians themselves that were responsible. The whole thng was pretty much just brushed under the table to avoid embarresment.

The original indictment regarding the Katyn massacre cited 925 deaths. This was increased just before the trial to 11 000. It wasn't until the mid 90's that a Russian official admitted that almost 23 000 Polish officers had been murdered at Katyn.

The Russians hypocrisy was compounded by the fact that they along with the Americans were the most vociferous proponents of war crimes trials. The British were worried that it would be extremely difficult to make what often amounted to very vague and general charges stick against individuals and that the entire project could collapse in chaos. Churchill with his usual pragmatism had originally wanted all Nazis simply shot out of hand.

To compound the Soviets hypocrisy even more is the fact that even if the Nazis had been responsible for Katyn, the massacres took place when they were allies of the Soviet Union.

At the time I would have been with Ravenstone's dad and Churchill.

I understand the objections based on the practicality of trying to prosecute individuals after such long periods of time but I don't see why there should be any moral reservations about the pursuit of old men when they by their actions have denied the luxury of old age to so many others.

In 1992 Serbs murdered hundreds of men, women and children, slitting their throats and throwing them into the Drina at Visgerad. At what point exactly do we decide that those men with their butchers knives on that bridge over the Drina are "too old" to prosecute? Are we all exonerated from all responsibility for our life's actions when we qualify for a bus pass?

I agree that it's a complex and uncomfortable subject and that the pursuit and prosecution of war criminals is a flawed and haphazard process but as I said before I think it would exhibit utter moral cowardice to shun the issue because it’s a difficult one.
 
Spook said:
Egan said:
One of the controversys at Nuremburg concerned the murder of 100 000 polish officers and men which the Russians wanted the Germans tried for. Unfortuantely it seems it was the Russians themselves that were responsible. The whole thng was pretty much just brushed under the table to avoid embarresment.

The original indictment regarding the Katyn massacre cited 925 deaths. This was increased just before the trial to 11 000. It wasn't until the mid 90's that a Russian official admitted that almost 23 000 Polish officers had been murdered at Katyn.

Oops, you're right. I meant 10 000, not 100 000. :oops:

As for memory not being good enough 60 years on the be reliable in a prosecution, well I don't know about that. I've heard plenty of stories about peope in exactly this situation being able to identify former guards and Death squad members many, many years later. I think one such incident took place recently but I can't for the life of me remember the source, I'm afraid. it may have been in Canada?
 
Spook said:
In 1992 Serbs murdered hundreds of men, women and children, slitting their throats and throwing them into the Drina at Visgerad. At what point exactly do we decide that those men with their butchers knives on that bridge over the Drina are "too old" to prosecute? Are we all exonerated from all responsibility for our life's actions when we qualify for a bus pass?

If I slit your throat, and no-one finds me guilty for another forty years, then no. Because I am a murderer - no getting away from it. But if I've been told for the past 20 years that you're not human, that it's not murder, that I'm doing what is right for the people; and if there's 50 of Me and 100 of You, and we slit your throats because we've been told it's the right thing to do. That's still murder, but who's guilty?

If We're soldiers and We're told You are the enemy, and We've been given orders, how many of Me can stand up to the people giving those orders? It's not even a question of whether We think we can get away with it; it's not easy to argue with a superior officer, when he's just passing orders down the line, and so on.

The officer sorting people out into the who will live and who will die lines at a concentration camp is, quite simply, following orders. If he goes further and uses his position as a way to beat people's brains out, or test how many people a single bullet can kill, then he's going rather beyond just obeying orders. If he's drunk out of his head (which a lot of the Einsatzgruppen forces were) it makes it all a bit easier to follow unpleasant orders.

If a doctor is given complete carte blanche to pursue whatever medical experiements he wishes, whether they will be useful or not; how many do you think would baulk? For how long? When other people are doing Nasty Things, getting away with it, and actually profitting from it, how long will it take for others to follow?

The point I'm trying to make is, it's much much harder to go against the flow than we would like to believe. We would all like to believe that if we'd lived in Nazi Germany (on anywhere else with the same agenda) we would have refused to take part, and we would have rebelled. Unfortunately, the truth is the vast majority of us would have done exactly what they wanted us to do. It's human nature.

That's the fascinating things about the Third Reich. It took normal, everyday people, people just like you and me, and turned them into murderous bastards. Which is a very uncomfortable conclusion, and that's what makes me uncomfortable with the notion of War Crimes. I can't shake the notion that War Crimes are only Crimes if you're on the losing side.
 
Very well put, Ravenstone, it does make me think. :(
 
I suspect that most people unless they where exceptional would as ravenstone has said follow orders and fit in.
seriously if you where in a position to get a cushy job who wouldn't be in that line? i'm certain i would be.

as to war crimes losing seems to be one factor as does doing something so publicly that no cover up is possible is.
 
As a descendant of a Katyn victim I have to say that I'd be more than happy to see the perpetrators tried and punished no matter how old they are which I think is the crux of the matter. If it affected you then you want justice/vengence (delete as applicable). If it didn't affect you then you are less likely to see it as that big a deal.

I know a number of WW2 veterans who visited Belsen immediatly after the war and even days after it's liberation. Everyone of them would not have a single problem with pulling the trigger on anyone who was involved in the Holocaust, even today.
 
Ravenstone said:
I can't shake the notion that War Crimes are only Crimes if you're on the losing side.

That's another way of saying "it ain't a crime if you don't get caught" which is equally as relevant to all other forms of crime from mugging to murder as it is to war crimes. And of course to all intents and purposes it's true.

I actually agree with most of what Ravenstone says but I don't think that any of the points raised negate the legitimacy of war crimes tribunals.

In the circumstances that occured in WW2 Germany we may have acted in similar ways to those who face prosecution. Okay. Well being a fairly average human being like all other average human beings there are undoubtedly circumstances in which I could become a murderer. Does the fact that I have the potential to kill mean that no-one else should ever be prosecuted for actually killing? It strikes me that if we were to abrogate our moral judgement simply because we fear our own potential then all laws become unworkable and irrelevant.
 
I knew people who liberated concentration camps. In those circumstances, I would have no problem pulling the trigger. The bit in Schindler's List that they didn't show was the hanging of an unpopular guard as soon as control shifted to the prisoners.

I've no problem with revenge or justice. I just like it called that. I don't like it wrapped up in pink tape and called Law. If the Nazi leaders had been lined up against a wall and shot, I don't think I would be arguing. I'm arguing against the principle of War Crimes Trials, not because the atrocities commited aren't Crimes, but because the motives behind them are not those of a typical murder trial. Different pressures are at work. Just like there is a difference between a soldier and a murderer. And I'm not interested in all the state sanctioned murder arguments like Ian Brady is fond of spouting. There IS a difference between a soldier and a murderer, but in a War Crimes Trial, it seems the line is blurred.

Some definite actions in time of war are crimes. There is no getting away from that. But how do you differentiate between following orders and cold blooded murder? And war crimes are war crimes, regardless of whether you're the winner or the loser, surely? So why weren't any war crimes trials brought against the Allies? Were we really white as driven snow? Or maybe just not quite as bad as the Axis?

Secondly, there are plenty of cases where mothers have wrongly identified their own children after a space of 10-20 years. Some people do change significantly as they get older. And there is always plastic surgery (unless I've seen Boys from Brazil too many times ;) )
 
Ravenstone said:
I'm arguing against the principle of War Crimes Trials, not because the atrocities commited aren't Crimes, but because the motives behind them are not those of a typical murder trial.

Are you saying there should be no attempt to seek justice for the victims of war crimes after the act?

Undoubtedly in times of war the lines between right and wrong become blurred but equally undoubtedly there are certain crimes which go well beyond anything that can be excused by the fog of war or the heat of the moment.

To go back to the bridge over the Drina. The men who slit the throats of hundreds of unarmed civilians were members of a volunteer militia. They were not required to even be where they were - they chose to be there. The people they killed were unarmed and constituted no present or future military threat. Instead of shooting their victims they chose to butcher them with knives - presumably because it gave them some sort of visceral pleasure. When they killed entire families they made sure to murder the children first so their parents would have to watch.

At some point those men had stopped being soldiers and had instead became murderers. The subject might be complex but I can see no reason why a court shouldn't try to decide if, when and where those men crossed that line. And if it can be done for a recent conflict like the one in Bosnia I don't see why it shouldn't be done for earlier wars.
 
Interrogations by Richard Overy is really worth reading if anyone is interested in this subject. It goes into the setting up of the Nuremburg trials and uses the original transcripts of their interrogations to illustrate the mindset of the Nazi elite.

Ravenstone - I think you might enjoy Jonathan Glover's Humanity - A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. It covers a lot which is relevant to what's been discussed on this thread. It sounds a bit dry but it's not at all - I think it's one of the best books I've ever read on any subject.

The Real Odessa by Uki Goni concerns the export of Nazi war criminals to South America and the misery they brought with them. What sticks in my mind about this book is the repulsive self-pity that these men and women exuded - despite all they had done and all they represented they still couldn't understand why much of Europe wanted them dead or didn't want them at all.
 
Spook said:
Interrogations by Richard Overy is really worth reading if anyone is interested in this subject. It goes into the setting up of the Nuremburg trials and uses the original transcripts of their interrogations to illustrate the mindset of the Nazi elite.

Funnily enough, this is in my To Read pile. I also have Telford Taylor's The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, which is rather dry and dusty. There's also Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. This tells the story of a unit of ordinary, middle-aged reserve Policemen, most of which had never fired a shot at a person before, were ordered to liquidate a Jewish village; which they did with little hesitation.

Hitler's Willing Executioners is something I found particularly unreadable, as the author's obvious hatred for anyone and anything German makes the whole thing pointless. He basically argues that the German people were geneticaly disposed to anti-Semitism, and genocide. Doesn't quite manage to convince me.


Are you saying there should be no attempt to seek justice for the victims of war crimes after the act?

No. I'm saying there's a difference between Justice and the Law. Nuremberg applied criminal law in a retrospective fashion. It was applying the law of an invading/victorious country. After all, the Nazi government had legalised its murders. That doesn't make them right. It just makes them legal in their own eyes. So what Nuremberg was, in effect, was a moral judgment.

As I said earlier, some War Criminals were obvious. They butchered, and tortured, personally. Heydrich, had he survived, should have hanged. Mengele should have hanged. But once you get past the obvious ones, where do you distinguish between obeying orders, peer pressure, brainwashing, and psychopathy?

Did Mengele go on to murder others after his escape? Did Eichmann? So all we're talking about is revenge and justice. Fine. As I said, I have no problem with either of those.

Nuremberg was rather a farce anyway, as some people hanged who should have, and some didn't who should have; people did not appear to be judged according to the same standards.

It is not an easy topic to discuss. I seem to be coming across as defending mass murderers, which is not my intention.

I suppose really it depends how you define War Crimes. Then again, that's not what I mean either.

If someone is ordered to deliver 2,000 to somewhere, and knows that once they arrive there, they will be massacred. If waiting for those 2,000 are 50 soldiers with machine guns under orders to cut them down. That's a war crime. But who do you hold responsible? The ones doing the driving? The soldiers with the guns?

There were many complaints made to Hitler, Heydrich, Goebbels etc, that Einsatzgruppen duty was turning their fine young Aryan men into drunken, depressive, psychopaths. Which was not their intention. They wanted to instill in their troops the notion that what they were doing was for the good of the Fatherland. They (said they) understood that it 'appeared' they were shooting innocents, but it was a short, sharp shock, like removing a plaster from a wound, and after a short while, it would no longer be necessary and they could all settle down.

It must be nigh on impossible to distinguish different types of guilt in that scenario. In my mind, the real guilt lies at the top, with the government. And they all, pretty much, paid for it. Which is right and proper. The others, well, I suppose that's a matter for each individual case.

I'd still wonder at the accuracy of identifying someone 60 years older than when you last saw them. Unless they've still got their SS tattoos, which is unlikely.
 
How many Japanese were ever prosecuted for war crimes?

Not enough, I suspect.
 
We have a thread somewhere covering the likes of Nanking and the activities of Unit 731. If memory serves, there were Japanese war crimes trials, but a number of notable offenders were taken into the service of the American military (especially if they had been connected with the biological weapons research projects).
 
Alexius said:
We have a thread somewhere covering the likes of Nanking and the activities of Unit 731. If memory serves, there were Japanese war crimes trials, but a number of notable offenders were taken into the service of the American military (especially if they had been connected with the biological weapons research projects).

Certainly Ishii the head doctor of Unit 731 was taken by the Americans for his knowledge of Biological agents and the weaponising thereof though.
 
Well, quite. My Dad is quite fond of saying that the only war criminals they hung at Nuremberg were the ones who weren't any use to them.

I started reading, quite by chance, Guido Knopp's SS : A Warning From History. His introduction made pretty much the same points that have been made in this thread. Quite coincidental, I thought.
 
Ravenstone said:
Well, quite. My Dad is quite fond of saying that the only war criminals they hung at Nuremberg were the ones who weren't any use to them.

Project Paperclip anyone?
 
This don't really add anything in a intellectual way but a chap i talked to a couple of week ago told me the story of his family in WW2 and Jap prison camps came up and their liberation... His uncle had been captured and put in some hell hole camp in the jungle and after some months his unit was the one to liberate the same camp.... finding the awful treatment that his brother had received the guys father asked his brother to point out who was the "biggest bastard" among st the guards...march the one pointed out into the jungle and "gut him".... which i think betrays a great deal of self control... probably more than i would have had, i fear i would have killed all the guards without thought other than revenge... seeing a program on UK History about the liberation of European camps, many guards were killed out of hand, with anyone in uniform in area, others were rounded up and incarcerated in their own camps made to sort thro the remains etc... one clip casually narrated by a doctor showed the camp "orderlies/nurses" picking tho clothes etc and he remarked " we didn't give them masks and they died from diseases they caught"...."the next lot we did give masks and a few of them servived"... one wonders how one would have acted I'm sure id have been less cold than him, maybe he knew this was the way to get as many of them off this earth with least questions.... sounds sort of similar attitude to the guards tho.
 
I'll put this here:


Guard 'gave Goering suicide pill'


A former US guard says he unwittingly gave Nazi leader Hermann Goering the poison he used to commit suicide.

Goering killed himself only hours before he was scheduled to be hanged in 1946, following his conviction for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

Now Herbert Lee Stivers, who was a 19-year-old guard at the trials, says he agreed to carry "medicine" to the imprisoned Nazi air force chief.

He said he was talked into it after meeting a flirtatious local girl.

He said he met the girl in the street, and she appeared impressed by his role as a guard at the trials.

She introduced him to two men, who asked him to take messages to Goering hidden inside a fountain pen.

The third time, he said, the pen hid a pill.

"[One of the men] said it was medication and that if it worked and Goering felt better they'd send him some more," Mr Stivers told the Los Angeles Times.

He never saw the girl again after delivering the capsule.

"I guess she used me," he said.

"I would have never knowingly taken something in that I thought was going to be used to help someone cheat the gallows."

Troubled conscience

Historians have long questioned how Goering managed to evade his execution, scheduled for 15 October 1946.

The Luftwaffe head left a suicide note claiming he had had the pill during his entire 11-month war crimes trial.

An army investigation decided he must have hidden the pill on his body and in his cell.

There is no proof of Mr Stivers' story, but several historians are tempted to believe him.

Aaron Breitbart, a researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said the story "is crazy enough to be true", adding: "Nobody really knows who did it except the person who did it."

Mr Stivers, 78, a retired sheet metal worker from southern California, said he was finally convinced to go public by his daughter, to ease his conscience after nearly 60 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4247069.stm
 
having reread this thread from the start, it seems that he is the effectively the last survivor at that rank, and eventually people out for "justice" will be after the young children drafted into the defence of Berlin.
 
Ravenstone said:
I started reading, quite by chance, Guido Knopp's SS : A Warning From History.

Got it on my shelf to read as part of ongoing research for a writing project but having to take the research very slowly after getting physically nauseous on a train reading Masters of Death by Richard Rhodes about the Einsatzgruppen. While it's difficult to describe a book on this subject as 'good' or 'bad' per se is Knopp's book any 'good'?
 
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