3 ms·
According to the wikipedia article you link to, your summary of Spiedel's life misses an important point. I think the US did recruit Iraqi defectors. > Speidel
by iudqnolq 6y ago
According to the wikipedia article you link to, your summary of Spiedel's life misses an important point. I think the US did recruit Iraqi defectors.
> Speidel joined the German Army in 1914, fought in the First World War, and stayed with the Army as a career soldier after the war. He served as chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944. Speidel participated in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, and he was tasked with recruiting Rommel for the resistance. After the plot failed he was arrested by the Gestapo. At the end of the war, he escaped from Nazi prison and went into hiding. He was the only major member of the 20 July Plot to survive the war.
- paganel 6y agoI saw that, but by July 1944 the Wehrmacht had been directly responsible for millions of civilian deaths on the Eastern Front (less so in the West because the Allies had just landed in Normandy), this guy (and his other coup colleagues) were just unlucky because they went for the king and missed him. That doesn't absolve any of them of the war's atrocities of which the institution they worked for was directly responsible (among many others in the Nazi regime, of course).
- iudqnolq 6y agoI agree he's morally reprehensible. I was just saying that similar people in Iraq (Iraqis who participated in the Iraqi govt while it committed war crimes) who defected were treated similarly.