This is why "I'm just doing my job" is not an excuse when people like police officers or bureaucrats do things under orders that they know are wrong, like keeping hungry homeless people away from dumpsters or signing orders for the seizing of the assets of people who have damn near nothing left.
This guy was just doing his job too, and at the time apologists just like the apologists we have today said that what he did was right and just.
But the foresight provided by time now confirms that, no, he was a brute. A reluctant and apologetic brute? Sure. But a brute all the same. And he knew it too.
I think the Nuremberg trials established that "just following orders" is no excuse for wrongdoing.