Well, that settles that!
Ach, fuck. Another one.
Keep it together, Quasi.;)
Q
Huh? At least in this case, he had a very understandable reason to want the guy dead.
Given his general record, it’s probably amongst his most merciful actions.
Wintertime, thanks for your very informative answer.
So blow right by “put the guy in prison” to “kill the fucker”? 
A bit of self-preservation on Hitlers part there, too.
Rommel was possibly the most admired General of the time to the German population, and to a lot of the German military hierarchy. Had he been publicly charged and brought to trial, it might have started a lot of Germans thinking – this is our best General, the hero of das Afrika Korp, and he was involved in trying to kill Hitler? Maybe things aren’t going as well as they say.
That could certainly have led to more plots against Hitler from within the military.
Many of the Nazi policies based on their racial philosophy don’t make sense. When the German army rolled into the former Soviet Union, the people greeted them with bread and salt happily as they thought they were being “liberated” from Stalin. Instead of exploiting this huge potential on the Eastern Front, the Nazi considering the Slavs among the subhumans fit for slave labor or or liquidation quickly created hatred.
A slight change here for accuracy. SOME of the people greeted the Germans this way. Not even in the areas with highest opposition to Stalin was this reaction universal.
You’re welcome, clairobscur.
I’m quite curious to know if the authors mentioned so far who supported the claim, consulted original sources (that are new to me) or if they simply cited/built on other authors without (re-)checking any first-hand documented evidence.
And again you can see the divide there: the normal German Army, Wehrmacht, didn’t mind going along with little gestures to make the peasants oppressed by the atheist communist regime happy by opening churches again and leaving the peasants alone; it was the SS Sonderkommandos following behind who treated the Slavs as subhumans, packing part of them off for slave labour in the Reich and subjugating the rest, so that they realized that joining the partisans instead of helping the Nazis was a good idea.
Still, it’s one of the specific traits of an ideology that you follow it fanatical even if it goes against common sense or is impractical, otherwise, you could just use common sense instead.
Wintertime has already given a good answer; to me, too, it sounds like a conflation/ confusion of the previous Euthanasie campaign against handicapped people because they were a drain on the resources of the Reich. Some election posters from the 30s show a “genetically healthy German family” (parents and kids) on one side and a drooling imbecile on the other, and how the family gets less money from the government to survive than the imbecile to be cared for. In the movie “La vita é bella” (Life is beautiful) at a dinnerparty, the company discusses math homework for primary schoolers, about how much ReichsMark the govt. spends on one inmate of an asylum, and how much on a normal family, and calculate how many families could benefit if the inmates no longer had to be cared for (the company discusses only if the math in those questions is too hard for primary school, and the only one appalled at the ethics of the question is the woman the protagonist is in love with). This was apparently taken from real-life examples of textbooks.
Generally, however, I don’t quite understand what’s unusual about killing your own wounded if you know a horrible, cruel enemy (esp. on the Eastern front, the Russians had both the propaganda and real events of atrocities to make mercy towards Germans they found unlikely.) is coming and it’s impossible to evacuate the wounded? I mean, the idea of "Better I kill my mate quickly and cleanly than let him suffer unspeakable horrors as captive or suffer an agonizing death at the hands of an unmerciful enemy"is not new.
My own WAG based on no evidence whatever. It makes no sense, tactically, to kill your own wounded when retreating. Leave them for the other army to worry about. Sure the Americans would have carried out triage (anybody watched MASH?) but it still would have taken resources.
A mercy kill of the wounded is not a tactical decision in the first place, but rather mercy from your comrades about what will happen to the wounded when the enemy catches them; or just watching the pain from the wounds when you know medics can’t get there / medical supplies have run out.
However, knowing that your comrade will give you a quick death rather than let you fall into the hands of the cruel enemy might be better for morale - for the men who retreat knowing that their buddies can’t be harmed, and for the men facing death or fatal wounds themselves. Obviously, it’s always a last desperate option, after all other options (evac, medical attention, a truce to let the wounded go) have been tried and failed.
It can also boost the fighting spirit of the troops if they know that in case of loosing they are dead anyway, but they won’t face a fate worse than death.
Never read anything indicating Nazis killed their own wounded. As others have noted, except for those completely immobilized, you could find use for even fairly heavy wounded soldiers in positions back home. Even in front units - apparently, there were quite a lot of one legged soldiers in tanks - even pilots with one leg were not unheard of.
Don’t forget this guy!
The story is true (or at least is in writing - I will look for a cite) BUT she was an ordinary hausfrau with two kids, not an officer’s wife. I believe the camp was Treblinka, but it might have been Belzec. In either case, not a lot of eyewitnesses survived. In the case of Belzec, two Jews survived (cf. ~500,000 killed) and Treblinka, maybe 50 (cf. 800,000 killed).
ETA: Death trains from Holland and Salonika, in particular, could appear perfectly normal with seats, bathrooms, etc.
Okay, here’s the cite: "A YEAR IN TREBLINKA", 1945, By Yankel Wiernik (an eyewitness history of Treblinka, by one of the 50 or so who survived it). The relevant portion is about half way down. Interestingly, he describes the train as coming from Germany which is another site of departure from which death trains could appear to be totally normal (cf. the Polish and central European ones).
Baby Jesus’s eye positively squints when you drop the terminal S after a non-plural possessive.
But he’s annoyed by Nazi’s most of all.
(And Nazis, regardless of apostrophication)
(He’s tickled, though, when his loyal followers make up words, especially if they’re ascribing righteousness and coolness to him).
If we’re going to be grammar, um, you-know-whats (from Wikipedia):
Baby Jesus’s tears are bitter indeed to read tripe such as that.
Just be sure your estimation of the enemy’s mercy is accurate.
I was just reading Ripples of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson this weekend. In the Battle of Okinawa, the Japanese Army tried to persuade Okinawan civilians to commit suicide as the US forces approached, to spare themselves the alleged horrors of falling into American hands.
He cites the official history of Okinawa:
What a horrible, horrible story.