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40 Fascinating Facts About the Relatives of Nazis After WWII

Khalid Elhassan March 14, 2019 24 min

25. Wachter’s Son Spent His Life Trying to Paint Him as a ‘Good Nazi’

Otto von Wachter was a monster, but at home, he had been a loving parent. His son Horst von Wachter had fond memories of his childhood and father, and spent much of his life trying to clear his name. In interviews with a variety of media sources, Horst claimed his father was an unwilling cog in the Nazi machine, that he had never been an antisemite, and that he had opposed the Nazis’ racial beliefs of Aryan supremacy. Documentary evidence debunked all of Horst’s claims, but he continues to believe that his father was a “Good Nazi”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.