Nazi Nobleman: Difference between revisions

** With minor exceptions though the British nobility from the King himself to the most piddling Younger Son, were as loyal to Britain as during any war and thus were anti-nazi by default-and left their bones on battlefields all over the world. If the Duke of Windsor is to be mentioned these also are to be mentioned.

* The heirs to both the Bourbon and Bonapartist thrones, though forbidden French citizenship (for obvious if mildly distasteful reasons) by French law, joined the Free French Foreign Legion and fought gallantly.

* Gustav Mannerheim, Field Marshal of Finland and former Czarist flunkey was an ally of convenience of the Nazis. He did not particularly like them so much as he disliked Communists.

* The military proper (as opposed to the [[Praetorian Guard|SS]]) was more sympathetic to the old traditions and had a number of old-style nobility in it who were [[Just Following Orders]]. This was a great bother to [[Adolf Hitler]] who couldn't get along without them but absolutely hated officers; partly because he had once been an enlisted man, partly because they often had minds of their own within the confines of their profession, and partly because they deflected loyalty away from ''him''.

**[[Reconstructed Trope]]: However the military in general went along with the thing including often cooperating directly with atrocities. A lot of that was from simple bribery and [[I Have Your Wife| other methods]] and of course an old-school officer that was to horrified at the whole thing would simply have done a [[The Sound of Music| Captain von Trap]] long ago and ended up gambling away the war in some [[Casablanca| neutral city]] somewhere. Moreover the number of atrocities done by the Wehrmacht is not always telling. Out of hundreds of thousands of armed adolescents, hungry, horny, and frustrated at hardship you can always find someone willing to take it out on civilians if professional standards are not enforced rigorously especially if they are actively encouraged by the regime in power. There [[Zig Zag| were in fact]] officers who made some effort to enforce [[The Laws and Customs of War]] and even one or two who managed to get written up on the Yad Vashem. [[All Germans Are Nazis| Being born between the Danube and the Rhine]], [[You Should Know This Already| does not automatically make you exceptionally evil.]] But there was more pressure to be evil on Germans in those days. And that included the Junker class.

* The German tennis player Gottfried von Cramm, despite playing Davis Cup matches for the Nazis, was did not represent the "Aryan ideal" that the Germans sought from their athletes. Von Cramm, openly opposed the Nazis' dismissal of his Jewish doubles partner Daniel Prenn from the Davis Cup team. Furthermore, he lived his life as a closeted gay man and narrowly avoided being sent to a concentration camp because of his sexuality.

* Raoul Wallenberg is the most famous Righteous Gentile. It is hard to find a Wallenberg Patent of Nobility in the other Wiki though there is at least one knighthood. However the Wallenberg's status as [[Old Money]] was so sound that it might as well have been noble.

* Basically nobles sided with either their country or their political convictions. Or followed their interests. Or just got out of the way as best they could. In other words they kind of behaved like, [[Captain Obvious|everyone else in the entire world.]] There was no inherent reason for Nazis and Nobles to gravitate toward each other. Nobles had more then enough flattery for their bloodline anyway. And they would have been biased against the idea of an erratic state that might not protect their property.