he hated Nazism, but he was drafted and those who refused the draft were sent to concentration camps. Thus he had no choice but to go to the front against the soviets, where he sabatoged his platoons machine gun Then surrendered without resistance.
This is a True story according to his diary.
Yeh I don't really get the arguments of Nazi soldiers just "doing what they were told" like sure for some they were probably more heavily monitored or feared being caught for sabotage/etc but for a lot of the average troop, put in the bare minimum and surrender without a fight. If they put you to run a concentration camp, minimize all forms of abuse that you're able to. Being forced to doesn't forgive going above and beyond, just the bare minimum needed to survive.
The camps were run by volunteers
Never heard that before but if true then all of those fuckers are completely unforgivable unless they can show evidence they were threatened to volunteer.
No the Nazis were very accommodating to transfer requests out as they only wanted true believers running the camps
Which makes a lot of sense. You can't have people with empathy running the concentration camps, there would be far too much sabotage.
So yeah, obviously fuck every single concentration camp staff.
My understanding is that most war refusers weren't treated particularly harshly. Like the idea that you'd be shot on the spot if you refused to do warcrimes just is not true.