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Not really, NORMAL STANDARDS, do they apply. Chris said it best. You can sit in your home today 2015 and ask "How could they do that?" Now, I do not know you at all but I do know that men/women in groups can and do things that alone they would never do and in a war you(pl) are a group and "they" are not. Mobs have little or no morality and what little they do have applies to their group not the non-human foe" As a soldier you are taught to obey orders: "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." Obviously you can refuse an order and state that it is "illegal" but that is YOUR opinion and may or may not, later on, be seen in that light. That momentary decision changes the entire course of your life. Do you take the chance? For these "family men" you mention that decision would also destroy their family.objectives both immoral and illegal by any normal standards.
A very difficult question.
Steve
Please read about the Peterloo massacre and Bloody Sunday, there were actually two bloody Sudays both involving Troops opening fire on civilians one in Derry NI 1972 in my lifetime and the other in Liverpool in 1911.
There is also a "herd mentality" that people assume in many cases, which is hard to understand.
For example, currenty, there is an effort to remove the Confederate battle flag from a state Capitol building. It has since snowballed into a "feel food" witch hunt to ban the battle flag from stores, sporting events and even an old TV show "Dukes of Hazzard" which had the Confederate battle flag painted on the roof of the Dodge Charger.
Now, if that weren't bad enough, people are now calling for the removal of Confederate Monuments, changing the names of places, townships or military bases with Confederate leader's names and most recently, the removal of a Confederate war dead cemetary
This is the herd mentality...a few people start the ball rolling and all the dumbasses jump on the bandwagon.
Quite a few on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday
- Marburg's Bloody Sunday (1919), a massacre of civilians of German ethnic origin in Maribor during the protest at the central city square
- Altona Bloody Sunday (1932), a bloody confrontation among the Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS), the police, and Communist Party (KPD) supporters in Altona, Hamburg
- Bloody Sunday (1939), (Bromberg Bloody Sunday), a massacre of civilians of German ethnic origin in Bydgoszcz, Poland, at the onset of World War II
This is the herd mentality...a few people start the ball rolling and all the dumbasses jump on the bandwagon.
It was the philosopher Hannah Arendt who argued that the atrocities of the Holocaust were not caused by psychopaths but by ordinary people placed under extraordinary pressure to conform. In actual fact, the pressure need not be extraordinary at all. In fact, it may not be experienced as pressure, but as relief. We return once again to the above, human beings are herd animals.
Well, in fact, you get a core of people perpetuating a movement and it will attract the masses. Individually, the people are most likely of average intelligence but once they fall into the stream, all common sense evaporates - leaving a dumbass behind. You can substitute "global warming"...err..."climate change" with "chemtrails", "Illuminati", "global zionist control" or "the confederate flag is the root of all racism" and you will find a common factor in the fact that people are willing to accept these "theories" or "movements" because the person next to them is. They don't have to understand what's going on, but if they think that everyone else is doing it, they feel compelled to jump aboard.They dont have to be "dumb asses" recent examples of "herding":-
Climate change scientists ignoring any data that doesnt show that burning of fossil fuels is heating the planet. despite being "scientists" they are paid for research and their research generally reflects what their clients want.
The last UK election all pollsters predicted a hung parliament because the polling companies that got different (and correct) results ignored them so they didnt appear foolish.
The whole of western liberal politicians declaring Islam is a religion of peace but offering no evidence apart from 99% of Muslims do not wear explosive vests. Since I worked in Saudi Arabia in 1985 the region has been at war, in fact it has been at war since Mohammed died and the conflict is the same Shia against Sunni. No mainstream politician on either side of the pond will say anything to contradict this obvious falsehood.
The CERN reactor in Switzerland after some deliberation "proved" the existence of the higgs bosun particle and as a result of that a huge amount of money will be spent seeking to prove the existence of other "particles" Few people understand the theory fewer still understand the statistical proof but no one will ever declare this is complete BS which has no relevance in a continent drowning in debt.
Not everyone who was a Nazi part member was a real Nazi. There was a time when you either joined or your family didn't get food. So you had the coice of joining or starving.
I've posted it in here before, but I had a very good friend whose wife was a 16 -year old German plane spotter when the war ended. Her job was one of two: 1) to sit in a tower and look for aricraft. If she saw one, she called in the position, estimatd altitude, estimated cousre and speed, and her best guess on the type; and 2) to cook for a military kitchen when she wasn't spotting.
If she had not joined the party when it was "requested," her family would not have gotten any food.
One of her guards at the time, just after the war, verified that claim himself and eventually wound up as her husband. She said her worst disobediance of orders was to leave the tower when it looked like it was going to get attacked. She went to the top of a nearby hill and continued spotting. The tower was bombed, so she was proven correct that it would be attacked. She was active for about 2 months before the war ended and was essentially a baby when Hitler was writing Mein Kampf.
Personally, I had and HAVE no trouble with her service s a cook or a plane spotter. Neither one was really a combat job. She has since passed on, but it gave me some pause for thought about the label "Nazi." When she was recruited at age 16, there was no alternative "political party" to follow and no possibility of escaping to anywhere. She was stuck where she was born and brought up, and was a product of whatever that resulted in.
No excuses, just stuck in a situation that was impossible to change at an age where taking a political stand against the way things were would bring dire consequence.
Anybody think they would have rebelled against cooking or plane spotting in lieu of a possible death sentence? It ain't exactly the same as being an SS Prison Guard.
The church that my family attended while I was a child sponsored two German families after WW2 to come to America.
4 adults and 5 children, Kurtz and Heseltine . Both men had fought in the Army, both wounded, one severe enough to be sent home mid war.
They often talked about their 3rd Reich experiences. Interesting talks, even to me as a young kid.
They were exposed to all the hazards, and temptations of any other German, but there was not one x party member among them.
My father, after fighting for 5 years, ended up in Italy fighting alongside, amongst others, the Polish Army. They had a very pragmatic view. If you were a German taken prisoner and could speak some Polish and claim to be Polish you mysteriously ceased to be a PoW but instantly became a Polish soldier. Thus Polish speaking german soldiers became articles of trade who could be 'sold' to the Polish Army in exchange for goods of unspoken origin.