When Order 66 was issued, Chancellor Palpatine bypassed Republic Military Command and
directly contacted Clone Commanders to give the directive, making most non-clone Admirals
and Generals unaware of what their troopers were doing until after the fact.
So how did they react to the Clones turning on the Jedi and wiping nearly all of them
out? For most of the non-clone Republic Admirals,
Generals, and Officers, their reactions to Order 66
came out of indifference. Many came to believe in the Empire’s tales of a Jedi rebellion
or were more concerned with their own military careers
to not get mixed up with the politics of the mystic
order that they knew little about outside of their service in the Clone Wars as generals.
Quite a few were happy to hear of the Jedi’s destruction, mainly due to the fact that there
were many cases of by the book Republic admirals
and commanders butting heads with their Jedi general counterparts, so hearing they were
no longer going to be a nuisance toward their operations came as a sign of relief.
Others were satisfied in learning how the Empire gave their personal records of
accomplishments of the Jedi during the Clone Wars, with many former republic admirals and
commanders being proclaimed as heroes for battles and campaigns that had been instead
achieved by the destroyed Jedi. But not all of the admirals and officers felt
this way, with a handful privately coming to terms that
it was the Jedi that were betrayed, and that the Empire was the one that had taken over
the Republic.
Most that held these views were smart enough to keep them secret, as they heard of stories
of those who spoke out were known for being thrown
out of the military, arrested for treason, and
possibly even killed. A large gathering of these former Republic officers came to see
this firsthand during the early days of the Empire,
when the gathered men were greeted by Emperor Palpatine and the newly constructed Darth
Vader. While Palpatine was clarifying the story of
the Jedi attack on him, one of the officers spoke out,
proclaiming his disbelief in such a terrible act being committed by the Jedi.
As the officer continued to challenge the Emperor’s claims, he was swiftly executed
by Darth Vader after being force choked and slammed
toward the ground in front of all the other officers.
Installing fear into the rest and cementing the notion the Empire did not tolerate any
disobedience from its soldiers, most of the others came to obey their new rulers without
question, with a majority becoming more concerned with climbing up the new imperial hierarchy
than fighting the believed lies of the Empire on the Jedi Order.
While a large chunk of the admirals and officers got into their place in serving the Empire
without question, a handful of other officers were known to go behind Palpatine’s back
when it came to hunting Jedi survivors.
One of these officers was Commander Teron, who saw the honorable actions of the Jedi
firsthand during the Clone Wars. He came to discover surviving Jedi Master K’Kruhk,
along with a few others and a small group of younglings.
Teron came to actually call upon K’Kruhk and met
the Jedi privately. At first K’Kruhk confronted Teron on Order
66 and why the Jedi were betrayed. Teron defended himself, explaining how the order was given
by the highest authority of the government and that
he and the other commanders were unaware of it until only after it took place.
He continued to explain how there were others like him within the Imperial military that
held similar sympathies, but were all afraid of
speaking out knowing their lives would be at risk.
Nonetheless, Teron admitted to becoming hopeful after learning that K’Kruhk had a group
of younglings with him, understanding that the
future of the Jedi Order had not been fully erased.
Following that, Teron came to aid K’Kruhk and the other survivors by providing them
goods with his own salary, as well as making sure no
Imperial eyes came near their hideout inside an
ancient, abandoned Jedi Temple. Teron was not the only one who knew of their
existence however, as his old war colleague Captain Denimoor was also aware of them. And
just like Teron, Denimoor also had served under K’Kruhk in the Clone Wars and had
come to respect the Jedi, so much so, that he even
lied to one of Darth Vader’s personal aides when asked if there were any reports of Jedi
near the systems he patrolled in his Star Destroyer.
The fates of either Teron and Denimoor are currently unknown, but they likely both defected
to the Rebel Alliance 2 decades later, along
with most of the other Imperials who held strong
sympathies toward the Jedi Order and didn’t trust the Empire’s propaganda of their betrayal
during the Clone Wars.