Chile Forum

el puelche wrote:. . . . my guy was up to something but don't know him well enough to get the nitty/gritty..yet. . . .

Well, there's not much time left! Pretty much everyone save those who merely marched and shot is now at least eighty years old. The last German officer I know from the period just turned eighty-nine, I think -- and he ended the war as only a major.

Vicki Lansen wrote:. . . . I would suspect he would more than likely slip into a gentleman farmer life, or with sufficient funds, set up in a little town, in a little house with a little garden and live a quiet life. If he came with some substantial money, it's possible he found a way to move around...Chile, Argentina, and other South American countries with the help of others who had paved the way, not to mention a possible "wink and nod" from various government officials.

Someone knows.

My thoughts, exactly -- on all counts.

All this talk reminded me that in the late 60’s I met a man who had supposedly been a member of the Graf Spee crew. He owned a machine shop in Rosario, Argentina. I remember distinctly that he had a terribly bad attitude towards people in general, and apparently he lived openly with his reputation of being a former Nazi and was taken as somewhat of an oddity by his neighbors.

It would have been interesting, Z., to have heard this ex-sailor's reminiscences of German life before and during Nazi rule. As a seaman on the Graf Spee, though, I doubt he committed extraditible atrocity.

I have, somewhere, a set of black-and-white snapshots given my father, while a cadet during the Second World War, by a member of the American naval attaché's office at Montevideo, showing the German warship riding at anchor, then . . . slowly . . . sinking, sinking. No sign of any ship around to take off the sailors; perhaps they all went ashore beforehand.

The German military brass pretty much hated the n azis, at least at first (and then of course after). The military leadership came from the upper class, families with "royal" history, big landowners, local leaders, all of whom tended to hate the n azis and communists. The n azis tended to come more from the worker and farmer classes with a lot of low lifes and criminals among them.

The military leadership thought of the n azis as streetfighting punks who were undisciplined and worthless, while the military thought themselves to be in control of the baddest army in the history of the world, and they wanted a chance to use it against Stalin.

The n azis had to infiltrate the German military and it took them some time, I doubt they ever had complete loyalty and control. Don't think that all German veterans were n azis and don't judge all Germans by the perverts in n azi uniforms. I hope they find the guy and send him to trial, even if he is in his 90's.

RWS, I don’t think this guy was the type to get into detail about anything with anybody, and I was a teenager and not particularly interested in that part of history. I never spoke to him, and most of what I knew about him was second-hand from the man with whom I went to this guy’s shop to pick up a piece of machinery. He used to live in the same barrio and knew him but moved to my town where I started working for him. All I remember about this German guy was that he wore a leather cap and spoke with a weird accent.

Sky...Just curious, why the n space azi thing in your post? n azis isn't a banned word, I don't think.

skyl4rk wrote:Don't think that all German veterans were n azis and don't judge all Germans by the perverts in n azi uniforms.

Ten years ago I had the fortune (or misfortune) of knowing an old lady who was in the N azi Youth. She had some disturbing stories. Stories of being stopped by a German officer and forced to watch as Polish men were shot in the street because the resistance had killed a N azi soldier. (You're a German, you should be proud of this.). One Pole who begged because his infant was upstairs, and his wife wouldn't be home until the night.

In a way it was interesting to have that kind of first-hand connection to things I'd read about. Disturbing in other ways. She came from a privileged family. Her maiden name was Von Hapsberg. After the war she went to Argentina, and then to the US in the '60s. She passed away in 2002. She wasn't at peace with herself.

Mark

I haven't been on in a day or two so I missed a little of the backlash my post caused. I think that my initial posting (with the slavery reparations bit) was a reference to the eternal victim aspect of the WW2 Jewish population and the ongoing, seemingly eternal hunt for the last Dollar, Deutsch mark and/or Nazi.
We've already discussed this subject I know, along with the (I believe it was RWS's) observation that the communists made Hitler look like a "talented amateur" in the genocide stakes.
I guess my biggest irritation is the front page news aspect that anything pertaining to these subjects takes on. This could be due to the proliferation of Jewish people in the news and entertainment media, I don't know. What I do know is that it's fully 60 years since the end of WW2 yet we are still treated to quarterly feature films referencing the Nazis and their victims, my daughter is subject to a school field trip to a Holocaust Memorial Museum and here we are, discussing alleged horrors that took place 60 plus years ago, why? Because we are constantly reminded of these happenings and urged to "never forget". A bit like the Brits shouldn't forget the murders of their officers and civilians in a terrorist bombing of a hotel a mere 55 yrs ago ? No, this is taboo as I've suggested before, it's 60 yrs and this is getting old. that's all.
I do however appreciate the Patagonia aspect and that part is worthy of discussion, along with the colorful characters EP and Zorro are describing.
Donning asbestos socks....

Mikie.O..you know I'm not throwing flames. Surely. I was saying that slavery rep. and tracking down living murder suspects are not the same. I realize it is tiresome and many people are "get over it". I was just saying, it's not the same, and anyone living who is a suspect in a hideous crime should not ever rely on societies tiring of the quest for justice. As far as your daughter and her school trips, I would hope that my grandson, and great grandson might be reminded of the Holocost and not just that, but slavery, and the decimation of the Indians, and all of the other so-called noble conquests that societies perpetrated Darfur, Iraq, Vietnam, WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Civil War, all of it important history. The difference being the immense human suffering of civilians for no other reason than race, religion and disability in exterminating people during the 40's in Europe.

I don't have my torch out, never did MikieO. It just didn't seem like a good analogy, and I said so.

Vicki

MikieO wrote:. . . . a reference to the eternal victim aspect of the WW2 Jewish population and the ongoing, seemingly eternal hunt for the last Dollar, Deutsch mark and/or Nazi.
. . . . it's fully 60 years since the end of WW2 yet we are still treated to quarterly feature films referencing the Nazis and their victims, my daughter is subject to a school field trip to a Holocaust Memorial Museum and here we are, discussing alleged horrors that took place 60 plus years ago, why? Because we are constantly reminded of these happenings and urged to "never forget". A bit like the Brits shouldn't forget the murders of their officers and civilians in a terrorist bombing of a hotel a mere 55 yrs ago ? No, this is taboo ....

First, a disclaimer: I've relatives and dear friends who are Jewish, and I do think that the Fascist and Nazi treatment of Jews simply because they were Jews was damnable. Fascist and Nazi treatment of other people, whether or not it was because of the groups they belonged to, was equally damnable.

But I agree with Mikie -- or, at least, with what I believe him to be saying and implying: what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: equal treatment. The bombing of a hotel in Jerusalem and the mass murder of an entire village of men, women, children, and even dogs (the latter, simply because of the group the inhabitants belonged to) was equally contemptible; why, then, do we never hear of these terrorist acts, even when the perpetrator is chosen head of the state erected upon the blood and suffering of the dead?

And what of that once-daunting, now cant phrase, "never again"? "Never again" tolerate such mass murder? Well, then, why did we stand by while the Cambodian communists killed a quarter or a third of their own people? We knew what was happening, but neither the West nor Israel did anything. Or when Idi Amin killed and tortured? Or while the Sudanese and Zimbabwean governments do the same today? Double standards, indeed.

That said, I'm hopeful that Dr. Heim is found and tried. No punishment without certainty of wrong-doing (according to at least one online source, his actions during his two months at Mauthausen were not proveably evil -- apparently, some, at least, of the stories readable elsewhere may have been created out of whole cloth, perhaps on the theory that any ex-Nazi had to have committed crimes; I wonder if the same theory is applied to ex-Communists, ex-Fascists, ex- . . . well, enough).