Retribution against Germans after the war,graphic,not for everone (1 Viewer)

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This is my number two from the above post. The German people did nothing to oppose Hitler. I know of/have read of several resistance groups with in Germany but let's begin with about the 1,700 Jews who survived in Berlin, and the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 non-Jewish Germans who actively hid them.
The Edelweiss Pirates
A group of ex-Hitler Youth, the Edelweiss Pirates began organizing right before the outbreak of World War II. Mostly comprised of teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18, they had no central leader and were only loosely affiliated with the groups in other cities—sometimes, the only common factor was the Edelweiss flower badge which they all wore. As the war dragged on, the Edelweiss Pirates performed increasingly dangerous tasks, including sabotage against German railways and aiding Jews fleeing from the Nazis. German reprisals were varied, depending on the severity of the crime, but many were sent to camps or prisons, with some even being executed.
The Swing Kids
Mainly based in the city of Hamburg, the Swing Kids began as a counterculture group to Nazism. They were youth who enjoyed American swing music, something the Nazis detested. Though not very political at the beginning, the Swing Kids were said to have begun spreading the truth heard from the Allies to German citizens. (However, most of their protests seemed to be in the form of petty crime or vandalism.) In addition, many of the group members began to non-violently protest other aspects of Nazi rule, with some even going on to join other more political groups like the White Rose. After 1941, the Nazis began to crack down on the swing clubs, sending many of the children to concentration camps.
Johann George Elser
Normally a footnote in the history of Hitler and Nazism, Johann George Elser was one of many men who tried to assassinate Hitler. However, Elser is part of a select group of people who tried to do it alone. Every year, the Nazis would meet at the Beer Hall Putsch, to commemorate the failed overthrow of the German government that landed a younger Hitler in jail. Elser knew this and used it to his advantage. Ten months before Hitler was going to give his annual speech on November 8, 1939, Elser began scouting out the area. For months, Elser worked, hollowing out a stone pillar behind where Hitler would stand, so a bomb could be placed inside of it. He created a timer that would last for 144 hours and set it for 9:20 PM on November 8,right in the middle of Hitler's speech. Unfortunately, Hitler changed his plans at the last minute because of weather problems and ended 30 minutes early, escaping unharmed. Elser was arrested and imprisoned until April 1945, when he was executed.
The European Union
The original European Union was a group of anti-fascist Germans who despised Nazism and what it had done to their country. Founded in Berlin in 1939, the group began under the leadership of Robert Havemann, a chemist, and Georg Groscurth, a doctor. The European Union produced many leaflets during the war, as well as providing aid and information to Allied Forces and those hunted by the Nazis. However, they never actively tried to take down the government because they felt it would collapse on its own. What they wanted to do was create a unified, socialist Europe. Paul Hatschek, one of the leading members, was captured by the Gestapo in 1943 and ratted out nearly every person in the group, with at least 15 of them being killed.
The White Rose
Only operating for a short time between June 1942 and February 1943, the White Rose was a non-violent group, mostly made up of intellectuals, who distributed pamphlets and used graffiti to try and sway public opinion against the Nazis. The group was led by a group of 20-year-olds who had become disillusioned with what Hitler had turned Germany into. (Many of the leaders were ex-Hitler Youth.) The White Rose became quite popular, especially among college students, and various offshoots popped up in different towns. Three of the founders, Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, were eventually betrayed to the Nazis by a janitor at their university and executed on February 22, 1943. Afterward, the White Rose movement fell apart, though almost no one else was caught.
The Solf Circle
The Solf Circle was an informal group of intellectuals who were against Nazism. Established by Johanna Solf, the widow of a German ambassador, the group would routinely meet to discuss their plans to aid the Jews (Solf and her daughter helped hide a number of Jews and assisted their escape from the country). On September 10, 1943 at a birthday party for Elisabeth von Thadden (a famous Protestant headmistress at a nearby school), a secret Gestapo agent was unknowingly invited by one of the members and he reported their actions. Nearly everyone was rounded up, arrested, tried, and executed.
The Catholic Church
Not Pope Pius XII, whose track record is spotty and controversial but rather, certain Catholic priests in Germany, who vociferously fought against, among other things, the T4 program (the so-called "euthanasia program"). Aided by the fact that nearly half of all Germans were Catholic, the Church was able to effectively convince Hitler to abandon the project because he feared having to fight them while he was fighting a war on two fronts.
The Rosenstrasse Protest
A singular event, perpetrated because of the deportation of thousands of Jewish men who were married to non-Jewish women, the Rosenstrasse protest was one of the largest public displays against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. For over a week in early 1943, the women peacefully marched in protest against their husbands' deportation. Seemingly faced with death each night at the hands of the guards they marched in front of, they persisted, until Hitler released the prisoners, even those already sent to Auschwitz. No one was punished, and almost all of the men survived the war.
Kreisau Circle
Established and led by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, and Adam von Trott zu Solz, the Kreisau Circle was stationed at Moltke's estate. Said to be one of the main centers of the German resistance movement, their goal was to figure out how to establish a peaceful, Christian Germany, after the war was lost. (For them, it was difficult to reconcile their hatred toward Hitler and the Nazis and their patriotic love for Germany.) The group was known for spreading information to the Allies, as well as other resistance groups within Germany. Later in the war, some of the members were involved in a failed assassination of Adolf Hitler and many of the Kreisau Circle were arrested and executed, even those who had no part in the coup attempt.
Red Orchestra
This name applies to both Soviet and German espionage programs such as the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group, which was created in 1936. Named after Harro Schulze-Boysen (the Luftwaffe staff officer who founded it) and his friends, one of their goals was to gather intelligence for the Allies and help those hunted by the Nazis to get to freedom. However, their primary goal was to incite civil disobedience by distributing a number of leaflets, as well as causing the Nazis grief through the specter of subversion groups. In 1942, after Gestapo agents intercepted some of their radio transmissions, nearly all of the members of the group were arrested and executed.

Oh stop it! You are just as bad as a holocaust denier!














Just kidding my friend. ;)
 
how many germans were indicted for being found guilty of collective war guilt?

The country was stigmatised by it but no-one, in a legal sense was ever punished under the tribunals because of it.

Collective guilt was needed as a precursor to the unique legal system that was introduced in 1945. Without the indictment of collective guilt against the entire nation, it was possible to argue the existing laws of the german system pre-surrender were valid, did not require suspension and could be relied upon to prosecute the Nazi war criminals. they would have escaped successful prosecution unless the state criminal system under which they operated could be somehow suspended, and further an international legal system could be argued to be in place at the time that the crimes were committed. The only way that Jackson could see of making both presumptions work was to somehow defeat or nullify the german legal system as it existed before 1945. He believed the only way that could be achieved was to indict the entire country.

Without the successful application of the collective war guilt concepts, there would not have been any opportunity to prosecute any german national. I hate to use this word, but it was essentially a legal tool of convenience to allow the real work to be undertaken. truth be known, a lot of legal minds, including me are uncomfortable with some of the concepts behind it, but I support it because it was necessary to do so, or allow alternative far less satisfactory to run their course.

There is every bit of relevance of this discussion to what we are meant to be talking about. The original discussion is about the injustice of retribution. I have no problem with that. But in the absence of a workable legal framework to try the real guilty individuals, the alternative was either to allow even greater (and state sanctioned) arbitrary retribution as suggested by both Stalin and Churchill, or let the criminals off scot free. I believe Jackson when he (by inference) states they had no choice other than demolish the pre-existing German legal code and argue the application the pre-existence of a notional pre-existing legally binding code at the time those crimes were committed. You could not, at that time apply legitimately a legal code retrospectively. That was the greatest weakness of the Nuremberg principles. They had to argue firstly that the german code of itself was broken, and then, secondly, that in the absence of a viable legal code at a national level, a legally enforceable (and unwritten) international code could be applied. Neither of those presumptions were a given before the tribunals. neither had any hope of success unless it could be shown that in a legal sense Germany was a broken (failed?) state at the times the crimes were committed.

ill say it again. if anyone has a better legal concept as to how to implement some system or code under which the war criminals of Germany could be brought to justice, and thereby defuse further retributional punishments against innocent people, id love to know. as a person with legal training I sure as hell don't know of any other way. my opinion, Jackson was a brilliant attorney that found a way to avoid a massacre. he should be feted by the german people for that, instead the legal system he devised is castigated for it. I draw my own conclusions from that.
 
It would be wrong to suggest that the euthanasia programme ( Operation T-4, after the address of its headquarters in a villa at Tiergartenstrasse 4) stopped in the summer of 1941. At this time around 80,000 people had been murdered in carbon monxide gas chambers, "the unique invention of Nazi Germany" in the words of Henry Friedlander. The killings did continue, but more discretely inside smaller local asylums.
The expertise of the schemes originators, Dr Karl Brandt, Phillip Bouhler, Drs Mennecke, Steinmeyer, Prof. Heyde and many others was not lost.
From the summer of 1940 Dachau was designated as the collecting camp for sick and unproductive prisoners within the KL system, the so called 'Musulmanner'. Despite many deaths this decision turned Dachau into a place which dented Himmler's own vision of a KL when he visited in January 1941. Something had to be done. Some local Camp SS had taken to murdering sick and weak prisoners on an ad hoc basis but Himmler now turned to the T-4 killing experts. He met with Bouhler and Viktor Brack (who had once worked as Himmler's driver) in January 1941 to discuss how the euthanasia programme could be extended into his camps. Himmler could trust the T-4 officials many of whom were SS veterans, transferred from Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald to the T-4 programme in late 1939. Things moved fast. There was another meeting with Brack on 28th March followed by an official approval, probably from Hitler himself, after which Drs Mennecke and Steinmeyer set to work in Sachsenhausen.
Quotas of those to be murdered were sent to the camps and the local Camp SS sent candidates (ballastexistenzen , roughly dead weights) for selection by the doctors. If selected they would be 'withdrawn from service', another Nazi euphemism for murder. This is the origin of the infamous selections most will be familiar with from later in the war,usually associated with the 'final sulution' to the Jewish problem. The T-4 doctors visited Sachsenhausen (April '41) Buchenwald (June and November-December '41) Mauthausen (June-July '41) Dachau (September '41) Ravensbruck (November '41 and January '42) Gross-Rosen (January '42) Flossenburg (March'42) and Neuengamme (April '42). About a dozen T-4 doctors were involved.
All this was kept secret even from the prisoners themselves. The pretence that the doctors had come to treat, not murder, the sick was rigorously maintained. Relatives even received bogus death certificates. Rudolph Gottschalk, a prisoner clerk at the Buchenwald infirmary was asked to prepare such certificates. When he asked what he should give as a cause of death he was given a medical dictionary and told to pick one out. The German bureaucracy worked well. The operation in the camps was known as 'Action 14f13' but only the Camp SS would have recognised the prefix '14f' which always referred to the death of prisoners.
It did start to creak under pressure. Some found out what was happening from SS men who, despite a pledge, couldn't hold their tongues. Doctors became over worked, the killing couldn't be done quick enough. In one week at Ravensbruck, Mennecke signed 850 death forms including for the first time many women. These prisoners were murdered outside the camp at Bernberg and Mennecke wrote that he was proud of what he and his colleagues had achieved.

A long post, but a little insight into the early camp system. Everyone knew about the camps, whatever they might later have claimed. Almost all believed that they housed asocial elements who were better off in there. Virtually nobody outside those indoctrinated into the T-4 programme or within the Camp SS aware of Action 14f13 knew about the extension of the euthanasia programme into the camps, the first step towards the Jewish holocaust. Most victims of this first phase were not Jewish. The group most likely to be murdered were those classed as asocial.

To hold the German people responsible for a scheme developed by a dozen men and implemented by a couple of thousand more, in secret, in concentration camps seems unfair. The reason the T-4 doctors were moved to Action 14f13 in the camps was because the growing public knowledge of the original T-4 programme had caused its official suspension and actually forced it 'underground'.

Steve
 
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Collective guild is a lame excuse for crimes against humanity. I am very much surprised that anyone can use that argument seriously to warrant crimes against humanity. There is never a justification for rape and murder. And one should never call that justice. The horrible images in the clip in the starting post shows that the victors were hardly better that the loosers. It makes you wonder who really the moral victor was.
Collective guilt is a dangerous thing. Hatred is wrong. As long as hatred exists, we'll have war one way or the other.
 
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I agree , but what you see in the opening piece isnt "collective guilt". Its murder. Its what you get when you take the lawful out of the law. If you do, you dont have lawful, you have awful......

However collective guilt used in a lawful sense can be useful. The final solution architects were acting lawfully in 1941, under German law applicable at the time. If german law had been allowed to remain legitimate in 1945, it was not possible to prosecute those same men. So what do you do? Take them out and shoot them regardless? Punishment without a fair trial? No thanks. That makes us as bad as the Nazis.

Sometimes in law bad things are needed in order to achieve a greater good. Lining people up and shooting them without trial, is about the worst outcome that you can subject your legal system to. It probably wont survive. If we had summarily shot the Nazi criminals, why cant we shoot our own for similar crimes, why cant we shoot anyone for any thing? Finding that an entire legal system was at fault so that some of the animals of the war could be dealt justice makes me uneasy, but I think worth it if the criminals responsible for the genocide are able to be brought to trial. It meant, however to get those people to trial some rather unpleasant necessities had to be endured.

On a different note, its a sad fact that most Nazis deserving of criminal proceedings escaped justice altogether. OSS estimates at the time suggested about 10000 Germans needed to be brought to trial. In all, from 1945 to 1949, when the last trial was terminated, incomplete, 579 had been slated or captured and were awaiting trial. 189 faced justice (the remaining detainees were simply released without trial in 1949, and some of these were significant players), of which about 36 faced the death penalty, some of which were commuted. Some of the estimated 10000 remained in Germany, a few others hid in various places in Europe (skorzeny was a potato farmer in Ireland for example), but some thousands escaped mostly to Sth America. The chief organisers of the Sth American ratlines were Rudel, Skorzeny and Gehlen. The most significant Nazi who evaded trial in my opinion was Mengele. In 1960 Eichmann was kidnapped and placed on trial. He was excecuted by the Israelis, not under UN control, but still using the Nuremberg principles. After hiding in plain sight for 40 years in France Claus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon was finally arrested by the French police and placed on trial. He was considered untouchable before then.

Significant numbers who should have faced trial were spirited away by the allies and the Soviets because of what they knew. Werner Von Braun probably should have at least been questioned, but never was.
 
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Hg
I agree , but what you see in the opening piece isnt "collective guilt". Its murder. Its what you get when you take the lawful out of the law. If you do, you dont have lawful, you have awful......

However collective guilt used in a lawful sense can be useful. The final solution architects were acting lawfully in 1941, under German law applicable at the time. If german law had been allowed to remain legitimate in 1945, it was not possible to prosecute those same men. So what do you do? Take them out and shoot them regardless? Punishment without a fair trial? No thanks. That makes us as bad as the Nazis.

Sometimes in law bad things are needed in order to achieve a greater good. Lining people up and shooting them without trial, is about the worst outcome that you can subject your legal system to. It probably wont survive. If we had summarily shot the Nazi criminals, why cant we shoot our own for similar crimes, why cant we shoot anyone for any thing? Finding that an entire legal system was at fault so that some of the animals of the war could be dealt justice makes me uneasy, but I think worth it if the criminals responsible for the genocide are able to be brought to trial. It meant, however to get those people to trial some rather unpleasant necessities had to be endured

Parcifal the mistake you make in this thread is this thread is not about legal things. It is about real humans and reality. The fact your posts seem to suggest that you agree with the actions in the film because "they are all guilty" is the reason why this whole discussion errupted. Also the fact that you are still angry with the Germans. Maybe because were closer to Germany many in Europe are much more forgiving, although our countries were the ones that really suffered. I think we realised there would be a future after the war and the Germans would take part in that. Hatred would only endanger our own future. This is different when you live on the other side of the globe, I guess.

To give you a story. My grandfather was in the resistance. He suffered much from the Nazi's and lost all his friends in Mauthausen. After the war he never wanted to go along with with the collective guild. He was angry with his son-in-law (my father) for using the word "moffen" for Germans, ths being the call-names name for Germans. After the war he build friendship with Germans and often went on vacation there. He had all the reasons to hate them but didn't. Why then should we be angry with the Germans, while we never were there in person.

Still, when we play soccer against the Germans, Adler will be my Archenemy for 90 minutes :D
 
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how many germans were indicted for being found guilty of collective war guilt?

The country was stigmatised by it but no-one, in a legal sense was ever punished under the tribunals because of it.

Collective guilt was needed as a precursor to the unique legal system that was introduced in 1945. Without the indictment of collective guilt against the entire nation, it was possible to argue the existing laws of the german system pre-surrender were valid, did not require suspension and could be relied upon to prosecute the Nazi war criminals. they would have escaped successful prosecution unless the state criminal system under which they operated could be somehow suspended, and further an international legal system could be argued to be in place at the time that the crimes were committed. The only way that Jackson could see of making both presumptions work was to somehow defeat or nullify the german legal system as it existed before 1945. He believed the only way that could be achieved was to indict the entire country.

Without the successful application of the collective war guilt concepts, there would not have been any opportunity to prosecute any german national. I hate to use this word, but it was essentially a legal tool of convenience to allow the real work to be undertaken. truth be known, a lot of legal minds, including me are uncomfortable with some of the concepts behind it, but I support it because it was necessary to do so, or allow alternative far less satisfactory to run their course.

There is every bit of relevance of this discussion to what we are meant to be talking about. The original discussion is about the injustice of retribution. I have no problem with that. But in the absence of a workable legal framework to try the real guilty individuals, the alternative was either to allow even greater (and state sanctioned) arbitrary retribution as suggested by both Stalin and Churchill, or let the criminals off scot free. I believe Jackson when he (by inference) states they had no choice other than demolish the pre-existing German legal code and argue the application the pre-existence of a notional pre-existing legally binding code at the time those crimes were committed. You could not, at that time apply legitimately a legal code retrospectively. That was the greatest weakness of the Nuremberg principles. They had to argue firstly that the german code of itself was broken, and then, secondly, that in the absence of a viable legal code at a national level, a legally enforceable (and unwritten) international code could be applied. Neither of those presumptions were a given before the tribunals. neither had any hope of success unless it could be shown that in a legal sense Germany was a broken (failed?) state at the times the crimes were committed.

ill say it again. if anyone has a better legal concept as to how to implement some system or code under which the war criminals of Germany could be brought to justice, and thereby defuse further retributional punishments against innocent people, id love to know. as a person with legal training I sure as hell don't know of any other way. my opinion, Jackson was a brilliant attorney that found a way to avoid a massacre. he should be feted by the german people for that, instead the legal system he devised is castigated for it. I draw my own conclusions from that.

All of the above I am sure is true but it is a construction.

The allies knew they were going to win long before they did. The discussions about what to do after the end of the war started long before it actually did. There was a need for justice. Justice for the people killed tortured and robbed by the Nazis. But also justice for Europe.

Nurenburg was a show trial. In a show trial the victors decide in advance what the outcome is. The laws used and the verdicts reached were as the trials were meant to be. There was never any doubt that a clever lawyer was going to get Goering freed on a technicality. If all of the people put on trial had been shot instead of arrested only legal purists would have complained bearing in mind the feelings in 1945. However as others have pointed out not everyone was convicted of all charges, if they were it would be seen that justice was purely in the hands of the victor and that a German or other axis member could never get a fair trial. I believe the structure and practice of the trials achieved its aim of bringing some order and punishing the very guilty, if in a war that means anything, but the legal arguments justify what was agreed to be done in advance.

In English Law you cannot claim ignorance of a law as a defence but you cannot be convicted of a law that did not exist when you committed it and when convicted your sentence is that stated at the time of the crime.
 
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Collective guild is a lame excuse for crimes against humanity. I am very much surprised that anyone can use that argument seriously to warrant crimes against humanity. There is never a justification for rape and murder. And one should never call that justice. The horrible images in the clip in the starting post shows that the victors were hardly better that the loosers. It makes you wonder who really the moral victor was.
Collective guilt is a dangerous thing. Hatred is wrong. As long as hatred exists, we'll have war one way or the other.

Thank you my friend.
 
Hg

Parcifal the mistake you make in this thread is this thread is not about legal things. It is about real humans and reality. The fact your posts seem to suggest that you agree with the actions in the film because "they are all guilty" is the reason why this whole discussion errupted. Also the fact that you are still angry with the Germans. Maybe because were closer to Germany many in Europe are much more forgiving, although our countries were the ones that really suffered. I think we realised there would be a future after the war and the Germans would take part in that. Hatred would only endanger our own future. This is different when you live on the other side of the globe, I guess.

To give you a story. My grandfather was in the resistance. He suffered much from the Nazi's and lost all his friends in Mauthausen. After the war he never wanted to go along with with the collective guild. He was angry with his son-in-law (my father) for using the word "moffen" for Germans, ths being the call-names name for Germans. After the war he build friendship with Germans and often went on vacation there. He had all the reasons to hate them but didn't. Why then should we be angry with the Germans, while we never were there in person.

Well said, and I agree! Which is why I said the Nurnberg Trial has nothing to do with the argument. Nobody was saying that it was not the right thing. No one was saying that Germany was not guilty of the things that happened in that war. It however at no point made an innocent child or person or woman who worked in a farm field to feed her children guilty of anything that would justify being raped, murdered or tortured.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and the fact that one person has no sympathy for an innocent child or person regardless of what side their country was on (especially when all of Europe and the World where victims of the Nazis if you want to be honest about it) is very disturbing. Aren't we supposed to be better than the evil we where fighting?

Marcel said:
Still, when we play soccer against the Germans, Adler will be my Archenemy for 90 minutes :D

I would not have it any other way! It is way too fun!:lol:
 
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The last thing I am about is agreeing with the murders taking place in that film. And to an extent the linkage between what happens there and what im talking about is tenuous but in my opinion if you think it through it has every connection.

If I can just jot down the reactions, and the self talk that I have in no particular order when I see that video, it is

1) Feelings; anger, frustration, shock, sorrow. crime, powerless ness, anarchy, vengeance, politics, application of the Stalinist retribution model needs to be halted.
2) what to do/how to react.....legal process essential, deal with problems that can be solved, acknowledge those that cannot, don't get hung up on untouchable elements (like the Russians). always forward movement, stay on the front foot. Due process important. significant legal barriers, especially in 1945, don't allow process to degenerate to retributive justice. Punishment for the murderers important
3) failings and shortcomings. the Russians, the allies, cold war, economics, reconstruction, social healing all work to prevent or diminish the pursuit of justice. Is justice that important.....no peace possible until justice is done
4) important to stay focussed. what is really important......context
5) moral arguments are dangerous and emotive don't solve anything. Be outcome driven.
6) examination and standards of evidence how to deal with that
7) why couldn't the Nuremberg process be extended in 1945 and improved above what it ended up being. imperfect model, but best available at the time. brilliant response to difficult problem. some justice better than no justice. problems of bias and incompleteness self evident
 
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The allies knew they were going to win long before they did. The discussions about what to do after the end of the war started long before it actually did. There was a need for justice. Justice for the people killed tortured and robbed by the Nazis. But also justice for Europe.
Actually there was a great deal of dispute about what they were going to do. There were probably three or four leading contenders. Morganthau wanted to reduce the whole population to subsistence, but that was pretty quickly rejected. the French (I think) wanted to break up the german state. Britain wanted to simply round up the ring leaders and shoot a few without trial, maybe amounting to a few hundred, and break up the General Staff again. Roosevelt at first supported the Morganthau plan, but overriding that sentiment, the Americans just wanted to get out of Germany as soon as they could after surrender. immediately after the surrender, Patton wanted to rearm the Germans and continue the fight against the Russians. Of all the national positioning, the US views were the least practical, and the desire to pursue a lasting peace by achieving a just outcome slowly gained traction. It was under the so-called 'London Declaration' in which the issue of genocide and crimes against humanity wasn't even the focus of debate that the early forms of the tribunals and principals to be applied began to be tackled (The London Declration was an Inter-Allied Declaration Against Acts of Dispossession Committed in Territories Under Enemy Occupation or Control, better known as the London Declaration). The measure declared that the allies would no longer recognize the transfer of property in occupied countries even if it appeared legal. The allies were aware that the Nazis were forcing people in occupied countries to sell or transfer their property to them under force. Up until this date the Nazis had painstakingly created the illusion that such transfers were legal. this illusion of legality forced the Allies to co-operate to find ways to deconstruct that illusion, and the exercise from that point adopted an increasingly legally driven exercise compared to the initial political responses that drove the initial attempts. The makeup of the tribunal, the principals that it was to work under the emphasis on process, how to sidestep the enormous legal hurdles that were by now very evident, did not reach a consensus agreement until late 1944 (it may have been 1945).

Nurenburg was a show trial. In a show trial the victors decide in advance what the outcome is. The laws used and the verdicts reached were as the trials were meant to be. There was never any doubt that a clever lawyer was going to get Goering freed on a technicality. If all of the people put on trial had been shot instead of arrested only legal purists would have complained bearing in mind the feelings in 1945.

The justice meted out would not pass a legal test of impartiality in the modern sense. and that's something Ive acknowledged previously. But it was also about as good in terms of fairness as it could be in 1945 and given the widely separated national interests underpinning it. but it was more fair than any of the other viable alternatives.

The outcomes of the trials were anything but predictable. that's one thing I don't agree with. sure goring was always going to get a hangmans noose. But the others were far more random. Of the original 24 defendants in the 1st round 3 were acquitted, 6 were given prison sentences and 14 were executed. Dontiz and Speer could have expected a bullet if the trials were rigged. Instead they both r4ceived light to moderate sentences.

Of the 179 convicted, only about 40 were sentenced to death and several of these were commuted. nearly 70 were acquitted

However as others have pointed out not everyone was convicted of all charges, if they were it would be seen that justice was purely in the hands of the victor and that a German or other axis member could never get a fair trial. I believe the structure and practice of the trials achieved its aim of bringing some order and punishing the very guilty, if in a war that means anything, but the legal arguments justify what was agreed to be done in advance.

There was little, if any agreement about what to do at a political level, with stalin worrying about a continuation of the allied advances into the newly conquered territories in the East, and the west worrying pretty much the same in reverse. it essentially degenerated into a kind of Mexican stand off with the details worked out by the respective legal teams. There is no evidence as far as im aware that verdicts were pre-determined.

After the initial 1st level trials, relations broke down. both the french and Russians retired from the process as the Cold war set in and the French did what the French always do....sulk. The british continued to participate but the trials reverted to the US courts martial formats and procedures, though the principals laid down remained in place. to that extent the trials were rigged because they were based on questionable precedents, but at least plausible precedents that have since been modified, but more or less retained under the ICC and re main valid. For example, it is still invalid to apply a "superior orders" defence as the various defendants from the Balkans and Africa have found.

In English Law you cannot claim ignorance of a law as a defence but you cannot be convicted of a law that did not exist when you committed it and when convicted your sentence is that stated at the time of the crime.

Actually, you can, as the various terrorists held at the moment are finding, and in our country as various illegal immigrants are also finding. it depends on the terms of the nations concerned constitutions as to the extent they can be held without trial and the extent they can prosecuted under retrospective legislation
 
The last thing I am about is agreeing with the murders taking place in that film.
I think it is critical that this is clear. I would have been disappointed if it would have been any other way.

To me it seems like this discussion ran on two levels. The first on personal level about atrocities against individuals, which is, as I understood, the intention of the topic starter. The second is about justice and the Neurenburg trials. This whole discussion has been a confusing mix of these two levels and I fully understand the emotional response that it provoked. The connection between the film and the Neurenburg process is there, but not very obvious. I think an academic discussion about legal justice should belong in a different thread, but that is my opinion. Ah, well, it's the danger of the internet. Communicating only in a textual way tends to provoke misunderstandings...
 
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It emotional personal and irrationsl. I sure as hell did my bit towards all of those, so no Im not clean as the driven snow in this. The attack dog in me clicked on and from there...well...you know
 
Which of these two sentences would you write:

1. The Nazis had plans to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.

2. The Germans had plans to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.

Nazis and Germans are not always interchangeable words, in either direction.

Cheers

Steve
 
Clearly the first, but that isnt the whole issue.I would rewrite number 1 to say, "The Nazis had plans to subjugate Europe and annihilate anyone who opposed them, and needed and received the support of Germans to do so".

From that position comes what we might refer to as the "failed state" (failed in the sense of moral bankruptcy) and from there, the ability to apply "international codes" that suspend or override the existing body of law at the time. This was something that had never been tried in history ever, and in attempting it, the architects were mindful of the failed attempts at war crimes justice in the last war, with the so called "Leipzig courts", a near total farce.

At Nuremberg, Jackson installed a number of checks and balances to try and avoid the excess of ordinary Germans being hauled before the IMT simply because they had been patriotic Germans. To be brought before the commission, a German had to be shown to be a member of one of the 5 or 6 (I think that was the number) of declared "illegal organisations" . There were about 6 million members of the Nazi Party, one of the banned organizations, so there were plenty of people to investigate potentially.

At Nuremberg, Jackson deviated from this path here and there. Inclusion of Alfred Krupp in the initial main trials had been advocated, but had to be dropped because he just failed to meet the necessary criteria for indictment. There was never any recorded verdict, he just was released, only to be re-arrested in 1947 along with 11 other Krupp executives, and indicted on slightly different charges, under a US court jurisdiction. The charges became

1. Crimes against peace by participating in the planning and waging of wars of aggression and wars in violation of international treaties;
2. Crimes against humanity by participating in the plundering, devastation, and exploitation of occupied countries;
3. Crimes against humanity by participating in the murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, and use for slave labor of civilians who came under German control, German nationals, and prisoners of war;
4. Participating in a common plan or conspiracy to commit crimes against peace.

Charges 1 and 4 were soon dropped, but Krupp was convicted on items 2 and 3, justifiably so. He received an 11 year sentence for his part, one of the other 11 was acquitted, the others received gaol time ranging from 1 to 6 years. Krupp also had a sizable portion of his estate confiscated.
 
Above is an illustration of one of the deepest flaws in the Nuremberg process. That of tailoring the charges, which in fact amounts to making up legislation, to fit a potential defendant.

The Germans mostly did support the war once it began, but that does not equate to supporting the annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe or anybody who opposed their government's plans for a European empire.

It takes an acute moral compass to be aware of the results of inaction. I remember the story told by a prominent member of the Dutch resistance. After the German (not Nazi) occupation of his country a sort of census was carried out. One of the questions asked whether the responder had any Jewish grand parents. The man in question could truthfully have answered 'no'. He chose not to answer the question as, by doing so, he believed he would be contributing to the discrimination (this is long before the annihilation) of his fellow Dutch who happened to be Jewish. How many of us would have even thought to do the same thing?

Cheers

Steve
 
The rules of evidence applicable to the IMT courts were different to those we would normally apply in our current court system, enabling a degree of "double jeopardy" to be applied to cases. This was because the defendants often had state apparatus of the regime they could call on extensively to cover their tracks and sometimes many of the victims were dead. From a legal perspective that makes me uncomfortable, but I can understand it and reluctantly condone it. It was entirely consistent with the rules set up for the conduct of the IMTs to apply relaxed rules of evidence (and by extension allow application of double jeopardy)

Remember, that only those Germans that fit the narrow criteria were brought before the courts.

Krupp was initially charged the same as the 1st gp of defendants, namely:

1) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
2) Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
3) War crimes
4) Crimes against humanity

These were innappropriate charges to be laid against Krupp, and jackson knew it, but his stubbornnes meant he was initially indicted anyway. Krupp was guilty of other things which were brought against him. Of the four charges brought against him, he was acquitted of two, but the two most serious ones he was appropriately found guilty of. For Krupp it was a flawed process, brought about by the inner personality failings of Jackson, the chief US prosecutor, but it was still the right outcome eventually. My opinion is that Krupp was not over punished. It was innappropriate to lump him in with the likes of Bormann and Goring. Real Nazi he was not. But he did knowingly use slave labour and participate in their mistreatment for his own personal gain.

No one who just supported the Nazis, and did their duty as a German but did nothing else wrong was ever convicted of anything. People who were suspected of doing other things were subjected to trial, and in a few instances were subjected to double jeopardy rules. As I pointed out above, I think that reasonable given the very strong efforts many of them made to cover their tracks. And the evidence of the relatively fair outcomes is reflected in the proportions of acquittals and reduced sentences that were handed out.

I am reasonably comfortable that most ordinary German were not affected directly by the trials, moreover, most germans accepted that a cleansing process of their society had to occur. Thats an opinion, of course, but seems reasonable. Many Germans resented the stigma that went with being branded as solely responsible for the aggressive and destructive war. That resentment continues. Understandable I admit, but as ive pointed out repeatedly, a necessary step in the legal process, and the legal process was essential to avoid further retributions by the likes of Stalin (which he did anyway on his own). If you want my personal opinion, i think it is appropriate to lay war blame at the feet of germany, and has been pointed out, no one here is really questioning that here, though it often is in other places.

What I object to is that the process was terminated incomplete. There were many serious, big time players who escaped scot free, and we as the victorious allies have only ourselves to blame for that. we abrogated our responsibilities to serve our own self interests.
 
What I object to is that the process was terminated incomplete. There were many serious, big time players who escaped scot free, and we as the victorious allies have only ourselves to blame for that. we abrogated our responsibilities to serve our own self interests.

I agree with that. I've just been looking at some of the perpetrators of some of the grossest crimes ever committed against humanity, the architects and operatives of "des Einsatzes Reinhardt" (as they are spelt in the original German documents).
I am still wondering how a man like Franz Stangl was able to escape the Americans, pass through the Middle East to South America, never even bothering to use an alias, even registering under his own name with the Austrian consulate in Sao Paulo and remain free and unmolested until 1967. Then his arrest was due to the persistence of Wiesenthal and not the Austrian or German governments, the former of which had belatedly issued a warrant for his arrest in 1961 and done precisely nothing to enact it. Remember he was registered under his own name with one of its consulates.

There are hundreds of equally culpable men, and some women, not all Germans, who got away with it.

Steve
 
I think that we can all agree (hopefully) that in the light of the horrors of the Second World War, in particular the Holocaust, trial and punishment of the Nazi leadership was necessary. I also think that we can also agree that the Nuremberg trials failed to impact in any way international practice, since no leader has been deterred from engaging in aggressive war or from ordering and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The international community had not succeeded to follow-up on the Nuremberg Principles, although there had been countless wars of aggression and innumerable war crimes and crimes against humanity following the Nuremberg Trials. Not only had the Trials failed as a deterrent to aggressive war, they had even failed as a deterrent against the most horrible crimes of torture and genocide.
No international criminal tribunal was ever established to adjudicate over the horrors of India-Pakistan War of 1971-73 that ended, after enormous cruelties and civilian casualties, in the emergence of the new State of Bangladesh. No international criminal tribunal ever condemned the use of prohibited chemical weapons or the massacring of child soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's. No international tribunal ever sat over Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to condemn them for their policy of genocide, although, he was placed under "house arrest" in August 1997 and died in April 1998 in the Cambodian Khmer hide out.
Only after the end of the cold war between the communist and the capitalist world was it possible to achieve consensus in the United Nations and establish two tribunals to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. One for the War in the Former Yugoslavia 1991 to 1995 (established by decision of the UN Security Council, Resolution 827) and one for the civil war in Rwanda in 1994 (S.C.Res. 935/1994).
During the trial, none of the accused admitted knowledge of the gas chambers. The prosecution had assumed, but was unable to establish, their actual knowledge; moreover, many of the accused insisted that although they were aware of the manifold anti-Jewish measures adopted by Hitler, they had not learned about exterminations until the Nuremberg trial itself.
Hans Laternser, in fact, had presented 3,186 affidavits to the Tribunal, many of them describing the measures taken by many Army Generals and Colonels to ensure the observance of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, including the prosecution by court martial of Wehrmacht soldiers who had committed crimes against the civilian population in occupied territory, as well as the disregard or non-transmittal of Hitler's illegal Commissar and Commando orders. The originals of these affidavits are found at the Peace Palace at the Hague, but not a single one of them was reproduced in the published 42-volume IMT documentation.
As to the verdicts, IMHO Grand Admiral Dönitz should not have been convicted on the evidence, nor Julius Streicher, whose main crime was that of being repulsive. Again, IMHO the Tribunal was influenced by the likelihood of a negative public reaction if Streicher got anything less than the death penalty. Mitigation in the case of Seyss-Inquart could have justified a prison sentence of twenty years instead of death, but his case was apparently not pressed forcefully enough. On the other hand, the evidence fully justified the death sentence against Jodl. The death sentence against Funk would have been appropriate, in that Speer was at least as guilty as Sauckel for the use of forced labor in the war industry and could similarly have been sent to the gallows. All sentences were submitted to the Allied Control Council for clemency; but the Control Council was a political body, not a judicial appellate court. In spite of the arguments made by defendants' lawyers, all sentences were confirmed. Goering's, Keitel's and Jodl's petitions to be shot rather than hanged were rejected.
As to the execution by hanging of the ten remaining convicts in the early hours of October 16, 1946, numerous press articles criticized the fact that apparently the drop was not long enough and that the men had not been properly tied, so that their heads struck the platform as they fell and they "died of slow strangulation" (London Star ). Reports indicated that Jodl took 18 minutes to die, Keitel 24 minutes, and that Streicher kept moaning long after the fall.
Over the dissenting vote of the Soviet judge, three of the accused were acquitted: Hans Fritzsche, Franz von Pappen and Hjalmar Schacht. After their release, they were all subjected to further penal proceedings in spite of the Ne Bis in Idem principle. The Spruchkammer in Nuremberg sentenced Fritzsche to nine years of hard labor, loss of voting, pension, and public office rights; von Pappen was sentenced by the same court to ten years in a labor camp. Similarly, Schacht was sentenced by a Stuttgart court to eight years in the Ludwigsburg labor camp; on appeal he was acquitted, but then subjected to further denazification.
At the trial, Hans Frank put his finger on perhaps the most important flaw in the trial: the double-standard or double-morality of the victors. When testifying during the trial, Frank had acknowledged the enormity of the German crimes: "a thousand years would not suffice to erase the guilt brought upon our people because of Hitler's conduct of this war". Now he rectified his prior statement: "Every possible guilt incurred by our nation has already been completely wiped out today, not only by the conduct of our wartime enemies toward our nation, and its soldiers, which has been carefully kept out of this trial, but also by the tremendous mass crimes of the most frightful sort which -- as I have now learned -- have been and still are being committed against Germans by Russians, Poles, and Czechs, especially in East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, and Sudetenland. Who shall ever judge these crimes against the German people?"
The double standard once again, if the Nazis had been convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity partly upon the specific indictment of having carried out compulsory population transfers, how will history judge the Allied prosecutors and judges whose governments were, at the very same time when the Nuremberg trials were being conducted, engaged in the process of expelling 14 million Germans from their homelands, a barbarous process which more than two million did not survive. Additionally the allied powers had agreed to use German labor as "reparations in kind" effectively reintroducing slave labor
 
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