Killing innocent people is normal for us, in terms of lessons. I don’t know about you but for me, it’s a mandatory lesson. I have done that in many lives so I’m honestly more concerned that I’m not guilty at all. I also worked for Nazi Germany but to me, it was like fulfilling a duty not to the regime but to the country. From my perspective, I felt that I was in service for Deutschland.
One thing you need to note is that I did kill the ‘undesirable’ people during the earlier part of my career but I begged my superiors that I didn’t want to be involved in this anymore. I wasn’t doing it out of sympathy or anything because I didn’t really care but I felt that it was wasteful to make a polyglot like me into a killing machine when I was better off as a spy. Come on, besides German, I was also fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech and Russian. Do you know how ridiculous it is for someone who can speak so many languages to kill people when he could be involved in espionage instead? That was my frustration back then. I was used to being a murderer anyway. Currently, whether I support violence or not, it depends on the situation. Sometimes, it is the answer if other means to solve the situation fail.
To me, Nazi Germany wasn’t the most evil regime. It’s evil, yes, but not the worst. During the 20th century, there’s other very evil regimes, worse than Nazi Germany. They made us Germans look like boy scouts(not angels though). Be glad that at least we didn’t torture people in public or anything. Not saying that using gas chambers is good but it spares the victims most of the trauma compared to getting raped and/tortured, forced to die a painful death either way. I mean, generally speaking. Some of the Nazis’ victims still died in agony but the victims of those regimes just suffered more, in my opinion. In case you’re curious, I was lowkey talking about the Ustaše, Soviets and Japanese. I witnessed Japanese soldiers raping a Chinese woman in public when I went to China for a few days. It was enough to make even Germans disgusted.
With that being said, don’t feel too guilty, especially if you were a soldier who wasn’t really involved in the atrocities. What happened to the victims wasn’t your fault at all. This happened because the leaders were really good at brainwashing us. If your past life self was born somewhere in the 1910s or later, then the brainwashing would be more effective because it was part of the education system for me when I was in high school. While I was a teenager, I believed the Nazis naïvely and I needed a denazification just so that I could fit in with the Western Allies after I defected in 1945.
I’m more angry than I’m guilty over being involved in the atrocities. The Nazi leaders tricked me into doing this when I couldn’t have done them otherwise! Unlike Sophie Scholl, I didn’t see through the propaganda. We were about the same age(well I was 2 years older) but unlike her, I believed in the ideology and found it attractive, mainly because of the anti-communist part. I was a wealthy person and something I learnt from History class is that Hitler used the anti-communist sentiment to rise to power. I was played. The only groups of people the Nazis hated but I didn’t were the Slavs and people of colour but that’s another story for another day.
Your philosophy professor was right. Just live in the present. Don’t focus too much in the past. For me, I’m focusing on making a YouTube video and I want it to be perfect. Something like that. Just think in present and future, not in past. I mean, you can’t change the past but you can change the present and future. Don’t let your past drag you down and just stay strong.
Ps. I’m sorry if my reply seems like a rant, that wasn’t my intention.
