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It can be fun working abroad.
I know I do it all the time
Incidentally whilst it is true that a significant percentage of the German electorate (which didn't include children) voted for the NSDAP it would be wrong to think that it gained power in a normal way. It was a revolution and in 1933/34 alone nearly 200,000 opponents of the regime found themselves in one of the many concentration camps. This was under the guise of so called 'protective custody' and many were released after a short period and a good beating by the SA (the SS gained control of the camps later, but that's another story). Not all though, and some of this initial intake would go on to die in the camps when they became much more lethal, a few years later.
Cheers
Steve
Wow...
So lets get this straight then. The 3 year old twin kids of a drunk driver who killed someone are guilty because of association as well. But it is only a "diminished responsibility".
That is your logic...
No, they are not. You cannot apply the tests applicable to the war crimes tribunals to a civil matter. And in a civil matter, it depends entirely on the wording of that nations criminal code. in my country there would be no case for those children to answer. For other countries thats a matter for those countries. in 1945, in Germany, many of the crimes under the international code were not crimes under the National German code. That issue alone had to be dealt with before any german national guilty or suspected of a crime could be brought to justice. .
Its not my logic. It is the logic that underpins the Nuremberg trials. The alternatives were either shoot or imprison an arbitrary number of germans as Stalin wanted, and enslavement of the remainder, something the Soviets did in their zone anyway....or let everyone go free without trial.
Getting war criminals to trial, with a degree of fairness in that system required tricky legal footwork. Basically an entirely new code needed to be adopted and agreed upon by the victorious allies, all of whom had vastly different legal systems and perogatives. This was the only way to bring the perpetrators to international justice, sidestepping the argument of superior orders and the internal german legal code applicable at the time.
There is nothing hard about this if you think about it. There is no comparison to what you are trying to accuse me of, and what im actually saying. I dont think there is anything more i can do to help you understand how the justice system was made to be served in 1945. I get the feeling you dont want to know either. I believe you think it all so unfair, so, Im open to any suggestion you believe might work better given the legal complexities facing the allies in 1945. Id be interested to hear how you would have made it work.
As ive stated just about every time youve commented on this, war guilt was established by nationality, on the basis of what that nation did. By its own written confession, Germany admitted war guilt, and even though that confession was extracted under the highest duress, I think Im on safe ground to say it was a fair confession in what it established. That doesnt mean all the nationals of germany are necessarily guilty of anything else, just that they are a national of a nation that itself was guilty of waging an aggressive war.
I find the concept of a nation being guilty of war crimes about as sensible as Detroit being found guilty of rioting. If the invasion of Iraq is declared a war crime, Britain could be found guilty, despite 2 million protesting against it and almost nobody supporting it.
Careful though, you might be called out as bad as a holocaust denier...
I agree to an extent that you can not blame a whole population simply because there are innocence regardless of what a piece of paper in a post war trial says. Having said that though, the German govt represented the German people and in those regards the national was guilty.
Churchill had more reason than most to whip up hate, from what I remember he was very careful to make it clear that The UK and commonwealth were at war to get rid of Hitler and his Nazi regime which was in government.
.You still have not explained how any of that makes a child guilty, or how it is justified what happened to them.
Don't bother and answer though. I won't be reading.
Over and out..
I'll just say that the trials for war crimes were arranged and carried out by the victors. It was the victors who decided what did and didn't constitute a war crime. There is a reason why no indictment of any defendant at Nuremberg made any mention of bombing for example. There was nothing like a supposedly impartial body as exists today. Had the Germans prevailed who knows who might have ended up in front of a panel of judges selected by the Nazi regime, rather than those of The US, UK, France and the USSR.
Cheers
Steve
It was political expediency, a certain number had to be executed to satisfy public outrage, sufficient put on trial to remove the most senior nazis left to allow Germany to rebuild, of course if the nazis were valuable and could build a rocket for example they stopped being so evil. Just being a nazi was not sufficient, even if the nazis as a group were collectively and in most cases individually guilty, they couldn't all be found guilty and executed as it would need a system like they had just uncovered.
I'll just say that the trials for war crimes were arranged and carried out by the victors. It was the victors who decided what did and didn't constitute a war crime. There is a reason why no indictment of any defendant at Nuremberg made any mention of bombing for example. There was nothing like a supposedly impartial body as exists today. Had the Germans prevailed who knows who might have ended up in front of a panel of judges selected by the Nazi regime, rather than those of The US, UK, France and the USSR.
Cheers
Steve
Now with that I agree. The whole Nuremberg process was deeply flawed, but something had to be seen to be done. In the end it served a purpose but any idea that this was somehow the victorious allies dispensing Justice (with a capital J) is ridiculous.
I don't believe inculpating a relative few national leaders, government officials, functionaries and soldiers was necessary to exculpate the German nation as a whole because I don't believe that the German nation ever needed such exhonoration. I think in that we may have differing views.
Cheers
Steve
At last someone with a meaningful critique of the Nuremberg process.
Nuremberg was a whole bunch of compromises and imperfections. It was far from perfect, but it was better than any of the realistic alternatives.
Critics of the Nuremberg trials argue that the charges against the defendants were only defined as "crimes" after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of "victors' justice". The alleged double standards associated with putative victor's justice are also evident from the indictment of German defendants for conspiracy to commit aggression against Poland in 1939, while no one from the Soviet Union was charged for being part of the same conspiracy. As Biddiss observed at the time, "the Nuremberg Trial continues to haunt us. ... It is a question also of the weaknesses and strengths of the proceedings themselves.