What can you do to save the innocent?

I’ve had to step away from the site and videos for most of this year because it was beyond draining to my mental health. I came back just today and the most recent War Against Humanity is causing near tears in it’s…there’s no use in weeping for the long dead but, but Christ…

So here’s my real question, I’m not remotely interested in international legalities nor issues of personal honor nor Kantian dentological crap. I’ve always been upfront I’ve been doing this as partial research for a story I want to write. So I got my German General main character who over the course of 1942 and the beginning of 1943 has finally seen the mask of sanity finally come off. He’s now utterly convinced that whatever Lucifer did to himself to become Satan, these men he’s worked for and with have done it to themselves. They have become what he calls demons in the flesh, not possessed, but wearing human skin as is their right as human entities in the same way Lucifer can still appear as the angel of light he once was.

But this is now a charade on a spiritual level, They have given up whatever makes a human truly human to lust after their own desires. He’s not scared of the Allies, he’s not even scared of God’s wrath for helping them. He’s praying night and day God will give him some way to atone to save somebody, anybody he can.

He’s not interested in resigning: the German people are in mortal peril for all sides now, and more importantly he doesn’t want an enthusiast like von Reichenau getting his command and REALLY helping the SS do their awful things.

What could a German general do to protect civilians in his area from the ravages of the SS? In any year, any theater, as long as it doesn’t get them cashiered and put on Fuhrer’s reserve so a more willing facilitator can be found. So a general of sufficient rank pulled strings to get say Robert Dorsey disappeared to the East front under his command or some of the German soldiers sentenced to death for political offenses. Anything to staunch the flow of human sacrifice to these demons of their own ego.

Naturally being part of the German resistance is going to be a part of this, but this character is in near suicidal despair. He really wanted to free the people of Russia and couldn’t imagine the Nazis living up to their rhetoric and then even worse because…because decent people can’t imagine what their social ranks are capable of until they actually do it.

Victory no longer matters, survival for himself no longer matters, he must put right whatever he can. Assume he’s in the in between where Belorussia and Ukraine meet. Can he ‘conscript’ surviving Jewish ghettos into corvee labor for the army (making sure they aren’t worked to death), can he keep the SS out of his sector because their own counter-partisan ops make the problem WORSE.

What can he do? And don’t be flippant and say resign or retreat because that’s instant game over and any ability he has to intervene in the slaughter is gone. What can he do to save lives right now.

Nobody can save people who died nearly 80 years ago. Now there are no (at least not much) nazis in Ukraine, it is 2022, please do not spend time living in the 1940th.

In the timeline the videos were on, basically the month of October 1943. Feeding info to Hans Oster is great but it won’t save local Russians/Belorussians from the SS Florian cavalry

A warning, I know a bit what ugly are ahead to be in the videos (because it is histrory for some time) do not try to be the savior of people you can not save.

They best thing you can do is act in the present rather than dwelling in escapism about the past.

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So why condemn the Wehrmacht and say it wasn’t clean? It wasn’t, but it seems it was hardly a criminal organization insofar as none of it’s officers, even senior level ones could actually intervene when the Nazis came a knockin with murder on their minds. Not without being shitcanned. and Hitler just puts in someone more…eager.

The Wehrmacht officers help facilitate atrocities without having any means of doing anything about it short of resigning. Or trying to blow Hitler up, which the ones that did good on them. Oscar Schlendler is rightly lauded for having a means of protecting the innocent, and he used it. Von Reichenau was capable of doing better, simply by not loudly, gleefully and fully throwing his back into helping the SS brutalize the people of Russia in 1941. And for this he deserves all condemnation.

If the Military doesn’t have any means to behave better, then on what grounds can it and it’s leaders be condemned?

This is important in never forgetting: If you really cannot change the outcome, then how can you be judged for keeping your head down? if what you’re saying is true, and I’m not nearly sure it is, then the entirety of the German officer corps is in trope terms trapped in evil. And remember, the war WILL come home to Germany, the guys at the top in both the Axis and Allied camp have made sure of that. So this isn’t Nam where they can quit and their careers are ruined but their country is safe.

As I understand things, I refuse to condemn that, and I rebuke all who do. Because any condemnation under these contexts is retribution not justice. And recrimination is what makes the cycle of hate go round.

In this narrative you created your general sees that what they are doing is evil and you claim his survival does not matter.
Then he should either actively do something to stop it , make it clear to the soldiers under his command that what is going on is evil.
By going along so that the SS does not get into his sector does nothing to help.
I do not think those who are murdered by him and his troops care that they are killed by him and not the SS.
And by doing the evil work for the Nazis so good that the SS can be sent somewhere also to do their evil is not helping anyone.

So either he is cowed into doing the evil of the Nazi party or a willing accomplice.

So survival is more important that moral principles if you don’t think acting on principals makes any difference?