It doesn’t sound like an easy case to weigh to my ears, assuming the information given is accurate. When will we begin hunting down any and all soviet soldiers who happened to be stationed at the Gulags during Stalin’s reign of terror? How about Vietnamese, Chinese or Cambodians? When does justice come to them?
It seems this man is guilty mostly of cowardice, and in a regime like the Nazis, especially being at the end and seeing it’s history, it’s not too difficult to excuse one trying to avoid being the proud nail that gets hammered down or yanked out even if you don’t like the board you’re in.
I’m also of the opinion that one of the greatest crimes of the Nazi leadership was the systematic brainwashing of the youth via control of the schools and media. Something like what’s happening today but taken to it’s logical conclusion. To say this 17 year old raised in the Reich was fully competent to make a conscious decision at that time is to erase some of the culpability of the leadership by nullifying the effectiveness of their propaganda and control. There’s a problem with saying the Nazis were evil for brainwashing the next generation and at the same time saying one of those victims was fully capable of acting within a correct moral framework. Those two things can’t both be true.
Excellent post!