John McMahon
2 min readJul 30, 2021

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You skipped Albert Speer? He kept the German war machine way beyond the point where it should have collapsed, but he was suave and apologetic and escaped the noose. I would also add the 80 million or so Germans that actually put these people in power, and actually conducted the war and the Holocaust. The idea that they were manipulated by evil men like these only flies so far. In the Soviet Union and other totalitarian states, citizens were kept in a state of terror so they would toe the line. That strategy simply wasn't needed in National Socialist Germany. The Gestapo didn't have to root out treason because they got more calls from patriotic snitches than they could handle. Most of the secret police were deployed to conquered countries because they weren't needed in Germany. The organized resistance to the Nazi regime was pathetic, and isolated. British intelligence couldn't get agents in Germany. There were no strikes or riots, even as starvation set in and people were working seven days a week for the war effort, while being bombed by the RAF by night and the USAAF by day. The plot by German officers to blow up Hitler was by Prussian aristocrats who were about to see land that had been in the hands of their families for 800 years fall into the hands of the Red Army. People in Italy were ecstatic when the British and Americans inveded their country. They sacked Mussolini before the Allies arrived on the mainland. The Germans fought to the bitter end. They tried to blow up every bridge in their own country.

Germany had a well educated population, the best universities, the best engineers, and culturally they were the equal of France and the UK in Europe. The men discussed here did not drag or fool them into doing what they did. They bear a unique responsibility for aiding and abetting the maniacs sitting on the dais in the picture that illustrates the article.

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