none of the High Command got away with it.
If only that were true
Johann von Kielmansegg, General Staff officer to the High Command of the Wehrmacht, 1942-44, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1967-68.
Some more names I found:
– Sturmführer Dr. Eberhard Taubert worked with Goebbels in the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda where he was responsible for designing the yellow badge for Jews. After the war, he eventually became an adviser to ex-Nazi Franz Josef Strauss, German Minister of Defence from 1956-62, and was assigned by Strauss to NATO’s “Psychological Warfare Department” .
– Nazi Admiral and U-Boat commander Friedrich Guggenberger, whose U-boat sank 17 allied ships, later served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the NATO command Armed Forces North (AFNORTH) 1968-72.
– Johannes Steinhoff, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot, was made Chairman of the NATO Military Committee 1971-74, holding other NATO positions prior to that.
– Ernst Ferber, a major in the Wehrmacht, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1973-75.
– Karl Schnell, First General Staff officer of the LXXVI Panzer Corps, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1975-77.
– Franz Joseph Schulze, Chief of the Third Battery of the Flak Storm Regiment 241, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1977-79.
– Ferdinand von Senger und Etterline, Lieutenant of the 24th Panzer Division of the German Sixth Army, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe, 1979-83.
And this is all just NATO not to mind other positions of power such as:
— West German Chief of Staff Hans Globke, Globke drafted the legal commentary on the 1935 Nuremberg laws, legalising the exclusion of Jews from public life, the theft of their assets and opening the door to their eventual murder. It was Globke’s idea to put a “J” in every Jewish citizen’s identity papers, alongside their new middle names: “Israel” for men, “Sara” for women. Globke’s fingerprints were also on laws outlawing “racial disgrace” – relations between Jews and “Aryans”. After the war, Globke confessed that he knew all about the Shoah, the industrialised murder of European Jews.
— Kurt Georg Kiesinger, served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 to 21 October 1969. Before he became chancellor, he served as Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg from 1958 to 1966 and as President of the Bundesrat from 1962 to 1963. He was chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1967 to 1971. In 1940 he was appointed to the broadcast policy department of the Foreign Office by Joachim von Ribbentrop, and became deputy head of the broadcasting and propaganda departments in 1942.
— The brutal Butcher of Lyon, notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie spent the Second World War torturing children and sending whole families to the death camps. But when the conflict ended, the Gestapo captain didn’t face instant arrest and swift justice. Instead, the US allowed him to start a new life as a CIA spy, smuggling him into Bolivia where he helped hunt and kill the revolutionary Che Guevara among other atrocities.
— General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army’s intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S. and successfully maintained his intelligence network (it ultimately became the West German BND) even though he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals.
And also on Eichmann specifically:
Former Nazis from across the board were systematically parachuted into positions of power across the western world specially in west Germany and in America to fight the communists. You can plug your ears all you like but that’s the reality.
In 1957, 77% of the ministry’s senior officials were former Nazis, which, according to the study, was a higher proportion that during Hitler’s Third Reich government, which existed from 1933 to 1945.
The fascist old-boys network closed ranks, enabling its members to shield each other from justice, the study found – helping explain why so few Nazi war criminals ever went to prison. “The Nazi-era lawyers went on to cover up old injustice rather than to uncover it and thereby created new injustice,” said Heiko Maas, Germany’s justice minister, who presented the report Monday.
Most of the history you know given I’m assuming you’re European or American given your insistence on this fantasy likely comes directly from
Franz Halder
German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942. During World War II, he directed the planning and implementation of Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Halder became instrumental in the radicalisation of warfare on the Eastern Front. He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order (issued on 6 June 1941) and the Barbarossa Decree (signed on 13 May 1941) that allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason without fear of later prosecution, leading to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign. After the war, he had a decisive role in the development of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
After World War II Halder served as a lead consultant for the US Army Historical Division. He oversaw the writing of over 2,500 historical documents by 700 former German officers, whom he instructed to remove material detrimental to the image of the German armed forces. Halder used his influence to foster a false history of the German-Soviet conflict in which the German army fought a “noble war” and which denied its war crimes. The US Army overlooked Halder’s apologia because Halder’s group was providing military insights on the Soviet Union that it deemed important in the light of the Cold War. Halder succeeded in his aim of exonerating the German Army: first with the US military, then amongst widening circles of politicians and eventually in American popular culture. In 1961, he was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award,