|
Re: Most Representative Luftwaffe Pilot?
Sorry chaps I just don't buy this 'they were just decent blokes like our boys' stuff.
Most Germans under the age of 20 in 1939 had over 6 years of service in Nazi political youth movements of some sort especially those who had glider training. Nazism wound it's evil coils around the the very fabric of German life, books, education, radio, voluntary organisations etc etc there was no way anybody escape it's all-pervasive influence. Most of the Luftwaffe was heavily indoctrinated from the top downwards this only began to crack as the true nature of Nazism began to become evident, and only then when defeat and the falibility of Hitler was plain for all to see.
What an individual serving in the Luftwaffe may have privately believed and thought in 1944-5 bore little relationship to the politically charged war-machine of the victorious Luftwaffe of 1939-40. Stripped of Nazism then any human being can call themselves decent and honorable, but first we had to strip them of it!! Let's never forget here on this forum, that the Luftwaffe and its men were the tool of a cruel evil regime intent on the subdugation of the civilised world who thought nothing of the murder of millions of individuals and the enslavement of whole nations. The fact that a number of Luftwaffe units and individuals behaved with humanity and respect does not redeem the monsterous barbarity of the organisation as a whole.
Sorry about the rant but .........
I still favour Lutzow, I gather he turned away from Nazism, as did Molders I believe, sad they both died for its cause....
|