Comments by "Big Blue" (@bigblue6917) on "Georg Gärtner, the last German POW in America." video.

@thatsnodildo1974 Many regular army units took part in war crimes as did many individual. There was an incident in Poland just after the invasion when a German soldier was shot. Many locals were rounded up and executed but it was an accidental shooting by a fellow German soldier. The same thing happened in WW1 during the invasion of Belgium. The usual excuse was that they were ordered to it and were afraid of what would happen if they refused. One German soldier who did refuse was returned to his unit and nothing happened to him. In another incident a German tank commander stopped an SS man who was assaulting a civilian. It did effect his promotions and medals but that's all.
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Not so much the one that got away. More the one who did not want to go home. I did come across a story of an America POW, an airman, in Germany who escaped during the war but never made it back to Britain. At this time there were many Allied air raids on German cities and it was assumed he had died in one of them. But some years after the war was over he was found still in Germany still alive. Because he was not an officer he had been part of a work detail at a local farm. The farmer had been on the Eastern Front, though I think he had been killed out there. Anyway this airman and the widow started a relationship and when he escaped she hid him at her farm. After the war they lived together for sometime until it came to light who he really was. What happened to him I do not know, but I hope they managed to stay together.
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