Boxer Max Schmeling (1930’s). Schmeling was the first man to defeat Joe Louis. Slandered in the American press as a Nazi posterboy, Schmeling in fact refused to fire his Jewish manager and would shelter two Jewish teenagers during Kristallnacht.
by HallowedAndHarrowed
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There’s a story or joke I read about a famous German orchestra conductor (Furtwängler? Knappertsbusch? I forgot who it was):
After a concert a boy approached him and asked him for an autograph. He graciously gave it to him, whereupon the boy asked if he could have three more. The composer was intrigued and asked if the boy was such a huge fan of him. Who replied “oh no, not at all, but for four Furtwänglers I can get one Schmeling.”
Of course he was slandered in the American press. It’s the American press.
He also joined Goering’s Fallschirmtruppe (for which, given the time, he must have volunteered) and took part in the landing on Crete in May 1941.
He was a Gefreiter with FschJgRgt.3 and was injured or wounded during the landing. There is a photograph of him being taken by two comrades to the dressing station set up by 1./FschSanAbt.7, located at Agia prison.
Nothing is ever black and white.