After 12 years of some of the most effective anti Jewish and anti Slavic racial indoctrination at the hands of the Nazi regime, it is almost a miracle that any German was willing or able to even see beyond Hitler’s racial madness, and given the all powerful secret police, the Gestapo, much less speak out against it. Indeed, any German military officer who didn’t at least pay lip service to Hitler’s vision probably faced at least difficulties in remaining in the military, not to mention the possibility of investigation or arrest by the all powerful Gestapo or Special Security Police. Let us also keep in mind that eliminationist anti Semitism and other distasteful forms of eugenics was widespread even in America and other non German European nations. And yet, senior German officers like Stauffenberg dared, for their own reasons, to risk their lives and their families lives to assassinate Hitler. And not to discount their sacrifice, they indeed paid the highest price for their daring. This is not to justify anti Semitism, or the fact that the German officer corps was riddled with it, but it hardly diminishes the truly heroic deed that this group of Germans tried to carry out. And by the way, if one wishes to accuse any military of failing to save Jewish lives, then one can justifiably accuse the American and British Air Forces for failing to bomb the Auschwitz rail lines as early as 1942. Those pilots and their political and military commanders had nothing to fear from bombing those lines, and yet they didn’t take any action at all because they couldn’t have cared less about Jewish lives either.
