There is an argument happening on Twitter right now with regard to a woman claiming her grandfather, a German soldier in 1940, was shot for refusing to report on his Jewish friends. She further claims that this was uncovered by the family in the 1980s.
I have my suspicions that she could very well be reporting a falsehood in good faith, since this appears to be in the category of family legend. I'm also inclined to wonder if this can be regarded as the strain of WWII history that tries to cast everyday Germans as equal victims of Nazism.
But what I'm wondering about is the prevalence of punishing German rank and file soldiers for sympathizing with Jews, real or imagined.
I've read Browning, so I know that it was widely recognized that the SS had very real psychological trouble serving as direct kill squads, and that it was general practice to try to accommodate that reality.
But was refusal by a soldier to turn in Jews given the same leniency? Or was that something that common soldiers could expect to be shot for?
To quote Christopher Browning, “No German Defense Attorney has ever proven that Germans suffered negative consequences for refusing to kill Jews”. Do note that Browning has also done a lot of work charting the Post War West German Justice system’s record of leniency towards former Nazis on trial. In other words, the game was already rigged in their favor but Nazis and their sympathizers didn’t even bother with that excuse, instead using convoluted loopholes (German Criminal code states that “Murder” requires Base motives, so they all generally claimed that they were “gentle” while killing) or technicalities (Accessory to Murder, which was and is far more common than Murder charges, or Manslaughter, had 15 year Statute of Limitations starting in 1945, and were only extended later).
The German researchers Nietzel and Welzer took it even further. They cited the case of Przemysl where a sympathetic Wehrmacht Commander had his Men threaten the SS with Machine Guns to stop them from massacring Jews working for them, by claiming there was a state of emergency that gave them authority to do so. They were able to save 300 or so Jews until the SOE was lifted, in which the SS continued their killing actions. There was also the similar case of Byekaya Tserkov/Bila Tserkva in Ukraine, where the Wehrmacht Command led by Colonel Helmuth Groscurth obstructed the SS’s attempts to kill Jewish Orphan Children. Neither resulted in any repercussions.
The reverse was true. Both Regular German Soldiers and SS Men actually had a tendency to volunteer or participate in Mass killing actions. We have photos of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes because Soldiers took “souvenir” photos of their escapades, not unlike how people today take selfies. The SS and Wehrmacht Leadership actually had to step in and rein in their behavior, and both SS Obergruppenfuhrer/Lt. General Kruger and Army Chief of Staff Woehler issued orders prohibiting both Photography and Participation in Massacres. One should always mention the case of SS Lieutenant Max Taubner, who was tried for participating in another Unit’s massacre of Jews and for taking Souvenir photos of Said massacre.
I’m not sure about that Lady’s claims, but it’s not likely Germans were shot for refusing to inform on hidden Jews. Nazis punished ppl for Treason (July 20 plotters) or Desertion, but if so and so didn’t want to kill Jews they just sent in someone else to do it and gave the refuser a reprimand.
Sources: Christopher Browning; Ordinary Men
Sonke Nietzel, Harald Welzer, Soldaten.