Hitler's last bodyguard gives up on fan mail

bearfan

Ancient Mariner
I have read about this guy before (mainly in the book The Bunker), amazing he is still alive, if I am not mistaken, is not Rudow near where the bunker was/kinda still is


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110126/od_ ... yguard_odd



BERLIN (Reuters) – More than 65 years after World War Two, Adolf Hitler's last surviving bodyguard says that he can no longer respond to the continuous deluge of fan mail he receives from around the world, because of his advanced age.

Rochus Misch is 93 and uses a walking frame to move around his apartment. He told the Berliner Kurier tabloid that, with most of the letters he receives asking for autographs, it was "no longer possible" to reply because of his age.

"They (letters) come from Korea, from Knoxville, Tennessee, from Finland and Iceland -- and not one has a bad word to say," said Misch, who is believed to be the last man alive to have seen Hitler and other top-ranking Nazis in the flesh.

In the past Misch used to send fans autographed copies of wartime photos of himself in a neatly pressed SS uniform. Now the incoming fan mail, including letters and packages, piles up in his flat in south Berlin's leafy Rudow neighborhood.

Misch also served as Hitler's telephone operator and courier. His memoirs, "The Last Witness," were published in 2008 in Germany and are in the works to become a feature film.
 
Well, it doesn't say anything about what he believes here, but he was literally a flunkie. If we executed every person who fought for Hitler in that sort of capacity - or even every member of the SS - there'd have been a lot less Germans. And an intellectually bankrupt world.
 
The guy was basically the switchboard operator/courier/member of the bodyguard ... not a policy maker.
 
bearfan said:
is not Rudow near where the bunker was/kinda still is

Depends on how you define "near". Rudow is approximately 15 km from the location of the bunker. It's still part of Berlin, but you're crossing half of the city from one spot to the other. By Berlin standards, it's pretty far.

Mega said:
I can live with that.

Thanks, you just executed my grandparents.
 
Really? Damn.
I can do alot with powers like that.



No really now, your grandparents fought for hitler?
How does that make you feel?
 
Mega said:
No really now, your grandparents fought for hitler?
How does that make you feel?

Like virtually every other German out there. LooseCannon is inaccurate: If you executed every person who fought for Hitler, there would be almost no Germans left at all. No, I'm not happy about it. Nobody is. Everybody likes to tell themselves that their grandparents got drafted and they had no choice but to fight. And while that is undeniably true - they were forced to fight - it is just as undeniable that most Germans at some point started believing in what they fought for. Everybody likes to believe that their grandparents were an exception, but deep down inside, most know that isn't true. People get deluded every day, and Hitler was a master deluder.

I knew my grandparents as the people they were after the war. I remember how my grandfather was torn between the knowledge and disgust of what happened, and his nostalgia for his youth. He lost everything he had in the war, including his home. He went on to raise five intelligent kids, who are as far from being nazis as you can be. They put him on trial in their youth, just like everybody put their parents on trial back then. He was part of a generation that lived in shame and guilt, and he knew that nothing he could do would make what happened undone. All he could do is give his utmost that things like this would never happen again. When German troops joined NATO forces in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, he was heartbroken. His most desperate wish was that there would never again be a war.

I understand that you have a different point of view on things as an Israeli, Mega. Just like everybody who is not a German has a different point of view on it. As far as you are concerned, everybody who supported Hitler's Germany might as well rot in hell. I think that having to disown your entire youth and seeing where those things you put all your belief in led you and others is a sort of hell. Sure, people went on to live happy and wealthy lives after the war, but just how happy can you be if you can't look back at your past in pride and wist? If you can't teach your children morality, and have to raise them to live with shame? Call these luxury problems if you like, but just try to imagine what it is like for a nation to try and reconstruct itself and regain an identity under the mark of Auschwitz, a mark which they put on themselves and can never remove.

So, how does it make me feel that my grandparents fought for Hitler? Angry, sad, ashamed and strangely normal.
 
Hey, you have dumbass people all over the world, not just here.

Anyway, well, I guess that is true. I've been to Germany, I met some great people, and I gues they have "nazi roots". But of course it's still hard to accept that.

I always hear about how my lat grandfather's father was killed, just before he and his family escaped to Israel, and how my other grandparents came here with nothing. I guess that the third generation of the other side has some problems as well.
I'm can't say I'm sorry about my comment though, I do wish death upon every nazi who supported Hitler all the way, I don't think that will ever change.
 
Mega said:
Anyway, well, I guess that is true. I've been to Germany, I met some great people, and I gues they have "nazi roots". But of course it's still hard to accept that.

I don't see how that is hard to accept. The people you've met aren't nazis, are they? Are they in any way responsible for the sins of their fathers and forefathers? Do they need to be forgiven for something they didn't do?

I'm can't say I'm sorry about my comment though, I do wish death upon every nazi who supported Hitler all the way, I don't think that will ever change.

Can you elaborate on what you mean with "all the way"?
 
No, they can't be blamed.

And what do I mean? Well, I guess that people who were loyal to him, who believed in his idioligy and still do, even if they say they regret it. War criminals.
 
The war was over 66 fucking years ago. Germany have gone through decades of guilt and shame for what the Nazis did. I really think those who are worse off today, are those who still can't move on. If there are any surviving people today who were really convinced Nazis, and committed bad things during the war - leave it be. People who still are demanding revenge today, are those who are most likely to cause new conflicts. Today's Germany has fuck all to do with the Third Reich. It's history. I'm not saying we should forget history, we should never do that, but at some point we have to let it be history and nothing else. History that we can learn from.
 
Yeah, Germany today is a completely different country, that's true.

But still. Israel's moto in every holocaust memorial day is "we won't forget, we won't forgive".
I think it speaks for itself.
 
Why should we forgive the ones who killd 6 million of our people? I has nothing to do with revenge. Some things can't be forgiven.
 
Those people are not alive today, though ... it wasn't "Germany" who did this, but Germans that are dead. Germany should be forgiven, not the actual executioners.

And how can justice be done today? By punishing people who did not take part in the Holocaust?

By the way - do you know what the Nazis used as one of their main arguments for their aggressive politics? Justice for Versailles. They played on the feeling many Germans had that Germany had been unfairly treated after World War 1. If one can learn from history, it shows us that being obsessed about payback, revenge (or call it justice if you like) leads to new aggression and new conflicts.
 
Sigh.

Fine, What do you want? I don't have anything against germany itself, "justice" (not really in quotes) can never be achieved. Doesn't mean I can just let it go as if it was nothing.
 
Then why the HELL do you write stuff like this:

Mega said:
I can live with that.

Would more people have survived the Holocaust? Would it bring back any of the victims? No.

On one hand you write that you've got nothing against Germany itself, on the other hand you say you wouldn't mind if a lot more Germans had been killed. That's "a life for a life" thinking, and that doesn't do any good. Of course you can't "let it go as if it was nothing", but yours, mine and every other human being's duty is to LEARN from those atrocities.
 
Back
Top