Did Hitler give permission to soldiers if they urgently needed to go home?


 You know, many people get the wrong idea about the way Hitler treated his men. I've read a lot of the accounts from that time only and the truth is really quite dark.In the early years, around 1939 it wasn't too bad. If a soldier's father died or if there was a bad emergency back home they could get special leave. But don't get the impression that Hitler was being a nice man. He just recalled how the German army crumbled in the First World War because the men became depressed. He gave them leave, just to prevent them from revolting.


But everything went sour after a great defeat at Stalingrad in 1943. When the war in Russia got ugly, the kindness was completely stopped. Hitler essentially abolished all vacations. He did not care if German cities were being blown to the ground by the bombs. If a soldier requested to go home because his house was destroyed or his wife got hurt, they called him a coward.


By the end, it was pure terror. There were military police referred to as Chain Dogs who searched everywhere. If they caught a man travelling without a stamped pass, they didn't have a trial. They just hanged him from a bridge with a sign on his breast calling him a traitor. The only way many of those boys got home was a home shot getting shot just enough to go to a hospital. It was a terrible time.

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