Guard terminal

I was interested to read of the recent death, at the grand old age of 96, one of Hitler's two personal guards, drawn from the SS, a guard who spent quality time more or less sleeping across the Führer's bedroom threshold, rather in the manner of the guards of kings of old. It seems that after 9 years in a Soviet prisoner of war camp - presumably pretty grim - he was reunited with his wife in Germany, bought a shop and, it seems, lived happily ever after, unrepentant. Hitler, it also seems, was kind to both his dogs and his servants.

All of which I find rather puzzling. How can such a person just quietly pick up and get on with his life - which is what one supposes he must have done, making it all the way to 96? How could he have shut out all the hate focused on his former master? One is not necessarily a war criminal for having served closely with one who clearly was, but one is equally clearly tainted by association. Surely there needs to be more to it than saying to oneself - and anyone else who cares to ask - that 'I was following orders. What Hitler might or might not have done as a public person was no concern of mine'?

And then there is Burkhard Nachtigall, the (ghost) biographer of the guard and publicist, named for the nightingale of all things. A chap born in 1968 - a time when many young people in Germany were in revolt, in part about the veil which had been drawn over the past of their parents - who went on to what looks like a successful career in sports media rights. What is he doing spending quality time with such a person? Does there need to be more to it than a desire to make a few bob out of an old man with a dodgy but salable past? His company's web site at http://www.teleonemedia.com was far too slow to bother with so I did not learn much there.

But some months ago I read a book called 'The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind', written by a psychoanalyst called Daniel Pick and puffed in one of the occasional newsletters of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, although I must have picked it up from the TLS or the NYRB. As far as I can recall, I found it interesting mainly for its description of the way in which psychoanalysts made headway during the second world war, headway towards their pre-eminence in the fifties. But it was primarily about the efforts during that war of psychologists in general and psychoanalysts in particular to understand the Nazi mind, in particular that of Rudolf Hess, who had fallen into their hands. I must take another look to see if it throws any light on the present question.