> Gautam pointed documentation that showed that a > guard who refused to work > in the death camp was not punished; he was merely > reassigned.
Stein in his book on the Waffen SS discusses this as well, in context of placing the Waffen SS with the cupability in the Holocaust. There have been a few documented cases where German soldiers have refused what we would call today "illegal" orders -- shootings of prisoners and Jews in the Soviet Union. These soldiers were not directly punished (in terms of military law). Sonja's point about desertion is true. In just about every military at the time (and possibly today as well), the penalty for desertion was Death by Firing Squad. It was rarely enforced in the US Army (except for a few "examples" late in the war -- there's a story of a deserter living in a French forest for some time hunting deer with his M1 rifle), but was strictly enforced in the German army. > But, Nazi Germany was not really a totalitarian > regime. Damon pointed out > they were not really fully mobilized until '43 or > '44. To expand on this, theres a lot of evidence that suggests that Germany didn't become a "police state" until sometime in 1944. Before that time the German government didn't interfere in the personal lives of "normal" Germans. Damon. ===== ------------------------------------------------------------ Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: ------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now. http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
