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Wehrmacht soldiers at an intersection in the Russian town of Feodosia, Crimea. A soldier standing near a tree is armed with a Soviet automatic SVT rifle, in the center - two others with MG-34 machine gun.

Feodosia, Crimea

Rudolf Hoess, WW1 hero, early Nazi murderer and, as Commandant, the man who made Auschwitz what it was, preparing to face death on the scaffold.  A strange man in some ways.  Hoess was, in his time, a brave and effective Imperial Army NCO, a Nazi thug, and a superb organizer of the Auschwitz abomination.  At the same time, his postwar statements and writings suggest an extraordinary weak character.  Whether Hannah Arent's  comment regarding the "banality of evil" really sums up such persons is distinctly debatable; it seems much more complicated than that.  Best regards, JR.