Considering how re-education is viewed as a success regarding Puyi, I am curious about the general view regarding General Friedrich Paulus. Considering his status as a German general until his capture, his later pro-Soviet sentiments are something unexpected and intriguing to me. So would his denouncement of his former country and contributions to the early GDR absolve him somewhat, or is he still one to be denounced due to his past?
I think that anyone can change and that everyone is turned into a monster in some way by capitalism. Horrifying experiments were performed on people in Puyi’s name. I would say that the guy was about as bad as most Nazis.
I don’t really know anything about this specific case, though. Can you recommend some sources?
Basically, Paulus was the leading general during the Battle of Stalingrad, from which he was captured and held as a POW. Most sources that I have seen state that he did not really alter his views until 1944 (after the assassination attempt on Hitler), when he vocally condemned the Nazis and joined the National Committee for a Free Germany. According to the Jewish Virtual Library for example, Paulus called for “German officers to disobey Hitler’s orders…Hitler ordered that Paulus’ entire family should be imprisoned in a concentration camp”. Ultimately, his condemnation of the Nazis did also guarantee his return back to the GDR in 1953, 2 years earlier than other POWs.
As for his pro-Soviet sentiments, I probably could have worded that slightly better. Most of his sentiments seemed not so much pro-Soviet as more pro-peaceful unification without interference by the United States. While I don’t like referring to Wikipedia much, it does provide quotes that show how Paulus advocated for both reconciliation between East and West and the re-unification of Germany (to me, it seems similar to Stalin’s Plan from 1952 for German re-unification). But he largely, he played more of a role as a historian rather than a politician until he died in 1957. I’ll link some sources below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Paulus#After_Stalingrad_and_postwar https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/friedrich-paulus
