What happened to German General Heinz Guderian after World War II ended?

 

It is natural to assume that Heinz Guderian also known as the Father of Blitzkrieg would be executed or sent to prison after the year 1945. However the truth of the matter was very different.

At the time he gave his surrender to the Americans at May 1945 he was not being regarded as a war criminal. The U.S Army Historical Division instead utilized his expertise in a research group three years. Guderian had the experience, and they desired to know how to struggle with the Soviets. Poland and the USSR wanted to extradite him to stand trial on his activities in the Eastern Front but the U.S. declined to allow that and continued keeping him as a protectorate.

He did not retire into silence and in 1948, after release. He authored and released his memoir, Panzer Leader that gained a lot of popularity in the West. Had you listened to the assertion that the normal German army had not participated in the holocaust Guderian helped to propagate the notion. He propagated himself as an average soldier who hardly supported Hitler yet kept silent about the fact that he was a subject of numerous gifts of loyalty by the Führer and was faithful up to the end.

During his old age he became an advisor, behind the scenes on the creation of the Bundeswehr in West Germany. He collaborated with such British historians as Liddell Hart to make history view him as a misunderstood genius rather than a Nazi collaborator. He passed away in 1954 in Bavaria and had been able to make a transition as a war general to a Cold War consulting military officer without ever being charged, not even in a civilian court.

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