Inglourious Basterds: A German Fantasy, Not a ‘Jewish’ One
Ordinary Germans
There is a lovely fiction that ordinary Germans just did their duty and were not deeply enmeshed in the Nazi virus. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Germans knew what was going on and anyone who spent any time in the occupied territories was all to aware of the Rheich’s policy towards untermentchen. Poland and Russia were lawless zones in which unspeakable barbarism was common daily practice. From slave labor to death for the slightest infraction, no one should ever think the Wehrmacht was somehow immune from giving immoral orders and carrying them out as ruthlessly and as viciously as the SS. From shelling cities and civilian areas to shooting prisoners, selecting Jews and rolling over evacuating civilians in the path of their armored columns, Hitler decreed that the Russian war would be fought like no other war and it was.
The Wehrmacht never went to the extreme’s of the SS so the decision to prosecute on a case by case basis. For those who think the Wehrmacht were the boy scouts, I have only 2 words for you: Kurt Waldheim.
Postwar democratic Germany has redeemed itself in many ways. Like all societies, it has its flaws but they are decent citizens now. But, if they ever go fascist again, I would nuke them in a heartbeat.
