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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Marcel said:Still, when we play soccer against the Germans, Adler will be my Archenemy for 90 minutes
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).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.
I think it is critical that this is clear. I would have been disappointed if it would have been any other way.The last thing I am about is agreeing with the murders taking place in that film.
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
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.