Retribution against Germans after the war,graphic,not for everone

[parsifal]

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.

Au contraire! At least for the claim that the Nuremberg IMT had no effect. In itself it was a special international military tribunal set up for a specific purpose. It proved an effective vehicle in the delivery of justice under the circumstances confronting it, but the relms of international politics and the desires to preserve nations sovereign rights are powerful countervailing forces. It would be more than 50 years after the last Nuremberg trials before anything like it would be formed, under the auspices of the UN (Nuremberg was not part of the UN mandate). In the meantime the Nuremberg IMT established some enduring principlas and established precedents about how International justice needs to be configured. The following is a very brief summary

The Tribunal is celebrated for establishing that (quoted from Heller, Kevin Jon (2011). The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-923233-8.) "crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced."

Nuremberg and its subsidiary trials served as a direct model for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East which tried Japanese officials for crimes against peace and against humanity. It also served as the model for the Eichmann trial and for present-day courts at The Hague, for trying crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, and at Arusha, for trying the people responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. In the modern format under the ICC ther have been 29 current convictions and 9 ongoing major investigations that I know of.

From Heller again...."The Nuremberg trials had a great influence on the development of international criminal law. The Conclusions of the Nuremberg trials served as models for:

The Genocide Convention, 1948.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
The Nuremberg Principles, 1950.
The on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, at the similarly named convention in 1968.
The Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 1949; its supplementary protocols, 1977.
The International Law Commission, acting on the request of the United Nations General Assembly, produced in 1950 the report Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II]). This enshrines the Nuremberg Principles as the basis of the UNs efforts to apply Internationals controls on war crimes and the conduct of war.

The influence of the tribunal can also be seen in the formation of the permanent international criminal court, and the drafting of international criminal codes, later prepared by the International Law Commission.

The tribunals were wound up with much unfinished business, which I think is to our great shame, but I do think the stability and harmony of Germany, and the way that most European disputes are resolved these days,, owes in part, a great debt to the conduct of those trials. When in 1990 (ish) the cold war came to an end, there werent massive disputes abput the old borders with Poland, though of course there are always exceptions

IMHO Grand Admiral Dönitz should not have been convicted on the evidence, nor Julius Streicher, whose main crime was that of being repulsive

.

Dont know too much about the latter, but Donitz had four indictments to face, of which the most famous being that he prosecuted unrestricted warfare in contravention to the international convertions of the sea. He was convicted of this crime, appropriately,. but the IMT imposed no penalty in relation to this charge, after the testimony of Nimitz (legal opinion is that the "Nimitz defence" was based on a false premise. basically it is not a valid defence to arguer "he was doing it why cant I?"). He was however found guilty on the other charges levelled at him, which namely were

Permitting Hitler's Commando Order of 18 October 1942 to remain in full force when he became commander-in-chief of the Navy, and to that extent responsibility for that crime. His defence was that the Order excluded men captured in naval warfare, and that the order had not been acted upon by any men under his command. His defence failed because he knowingly maintained the order, , in modified form orders were issued to the Uboats to deliberately target defenceless survivors in the water and in lifeboats and men were so excuted because of it (according to the Russians) , after taking office as head of state (the latter I dont believe, but the former is well documented)
Knowing that 12,000 involuntary foreign workers were working in the shipyards, and doing nothing to stop it. There should be no debate about this charge.
Advice in 1945 when Hitler asked Dönitz whether the Geneva Convention should be denounced. Hitler's motives were twofold. The first was, reprisals could be taken against Western Allied prisoners of war; second, it would deter German forces from surrendering to the Western Allies (as was happening on the Eastern Front where the Geneva Convention was in abeyance). Instead of arguing the conventions should never be denounced, Dönitz suggested it was not currently expedient to do so, so the court found against him on this issue; but as the Convention was not denounced by Germany, and British prisoners in camps under Dönitz's jurisdiction were treated strictly according to the Convention, the Court considered these mitigating circumstances. Still a breach of the law was found to have occurred. His reduced sentence of 10 years was, in my opinion appropriate to the crimes he had committed.

 

[mikewint]

Again I do not dispute the horrors committed by the Nazi or that punishment was required but I do question the instrument chosen and the farce using Law to cloak it in and I am not alone in that assessment.
IMHO the Nuremberg trials were organized not to dispense impartial justice, but for political purposes. Sir Norman Birkett, British alternate judge at the Nuremberg Tribunal, explained in a private letter in April 1946 that "the trial is only in form a judicial process and its main importance is political."
Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor and a former US Attorney General, declared that the Nuremberg Tribunal "is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations" against Germany. He added that the Tribunal "is not bound by the procedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitutional system ..."
Judge Iola T. Nikitchenko, who presided at the Tribunal's solemn opening session, was a vice-chairman of the supreme court of the USSR before and after his service at Nuremberg. In August 1936 he had been a judge at the infamous Moscow show trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev. At a joint planning conference shortly before the Nuremberg Tribunal convened, Nikitchenko bluntly explained the Soviet view of the enterprise:
We are dealing here with the chief war criminals who have already been convicted and whose conviction has been already announced by both the Moscow and Yalta declarations by the heads of the Allied governments... The whole idea is to secure quick and just punishment for the crime...
The fact that the Nazi leaders are criminals has already been established. The task of the Tribunal is only to determine the measure of guilt of each particular person and mete out the necessary punishment -- the sentences.
Some of the Americans who participated in the Nuremberg trials became disillusioned with the entire business. One of the few to make public his feelings was Charles F. Wennerstrum, an Iowa Supreme Court justice who served as presiding judge in the Nuremberg trial of German generals. "If I had known seven months ago what I know today, I would never have come here," he declared immediately after sentences were pronounced. "The high ideals announced as the motives for creating these tribunals have not been evident," he added.
Wennerstrum went on to state: "The entire atmosphere here is unwholesome ... Lawyers, clerks, interpreters and researchers were employed who became Americans only in recent years, whose backgrounds were imbedded in Europe's hatreds and prejudices." He criticized the one-sided handling of evidence. "Most of the evidence in the trials was documentary, selected from the large tonnage of captured records. The selection was made by the prosecution. The defense had access only to those documents which the prosecution considered material to the case." He concluded that "the trials were to have convinced the Germans of the guilt of their leaders. They convinced the Germans merely that their leaders lost the war to tough conquerors." Wennerstrum left Nuremberg "with a feeling that justice has been denied."
America's leading jurist was dismayed by the Nuremberg process. US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone remarked with irritation: "Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas." In a private letter he wrote: "... I wonder how some of those who preside at the trials would justify some of the acts of their own governments if they were placed in the status of the accused." On another occasion Stone specifically wondered "whether, under this new Nuremberg doctrine of international law, if we had been defeated, the victors could plausibly assert that our supplying Britain with fifty destroyers in 1940 was an act of aggression ..."
In Congress, US Representative Lawrence H. Smith of Wisconsin declared: "The Nuremberg trials are so repugnant to the Anglo-Saxon principles of justice that we must forever be ashamed of that page in our history ... The Nuremberg farce represents a revenge policy at its worst." Another Congressman, John Rankin of Mississippi, stated: "As a representative of the American people I desire to say that what is taking place in Nuremberg, Germany, is a disgrace to the United States...
Probably the most courageous condemnation was by US Senator Robert A. Taft, widely regarded as the "conscience of the Republican party." At considerable risk to his political career, he denounced the Nuremberg enterprise in an October 1946 speech. "The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice," he said. Taft went on:
About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice. The hanging of the eleven men convicted will be a blot on the American record which we will long regret. In these trials we have accepted the Russian idea of the purpose of trials -- government policy and not justice -- with little relation to Anglo-Saxon heritage. By clothing policy in the forms of legal procedure, we many discredit the whole idea of justice in Europe for years to come.
Milton R. Konvitz, a Jewish specialist of law and public administration who taught at New York University, warned at the time that the Nuremberg Tribunal "defies many of the most basic assumptions of the judicial process." He went on: "Our policy with respect to the Nazis is consistent with neither international law nor our own State Department's policy... The Nuremberg trial constitutes a real threat to the basic conceptions of justice which it has taken mankind thousands of years to establish."
In conducting the Nuremberg trials, the Allied governments themselves violated international law. For one thing, their treatment of the German defendants and the military prisoners who testified violated articles 56, 58 and others of the Geneva Convention of July 1929. Justice -- as opposed to vengeance -- is a standard that is applied impartially. At Nuremberg, though, standards of "justice" applied only to the vanquished. The four powers that sat in judgment were themselves guilty of many of the very crimes they accused the German leaders of committing. Chief US prosecutor Robert Jackson privately acknowledged in a letter to President Truman that the Allies:
have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of German prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them for forced labor in France. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest.
In violation of the first Nuremberg count of "planning, preparation, initiating or waging a war of aggression," the Soviet Union attacked Finland in December 1939 (and was expelled from the League of Nations as a result). A few months later the Red Army invaded Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and ruthlessly incorporated them into the Soviet Union. The postwar French government violated international law and the Nuremberg charge of "maltreatment of prisoners of war" by employing large numbers of German prisoners of war as forced laborers in France. In 1945 the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union jointly agreed to the brutal deportation of more than ten million Germans from their ancient homes in eastern and central Europe, a violation of the Nuremberg count of "deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population."
While Allied prosecutors charged the defendants with a "crime against peace" in planning the German invasion of Norway in 1940, the British government eventually had to admit that Britain and France were themselves guilty of the same "crime" in preparing a military invasion of Norway, code-named "Stratford," before the German move. And in August 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union jointly invaded and occupied Iran, a neutral nation.
At the end of the war Eisenhower ordered that German prisoners in American military custody were no longer to be treated according to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. This violation of international law removed masses of Germans from the protection of the International Red Cross (ICRC), and condemned hundreds of thousands of them to slow death by starvation and disease.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Mike, which in turn brings us back to the original discussion, which the Nürnberg Trials have nothing to do with. A nations guilt does not make everyone guilty and gives 0, Zero, Nada, Zilch justification for "retribution" crimes against innocent people. Regardless of someones 70 year old hatred.

 

[parsifal]

Again I do not dispute the horrors committed by the Nazi or that punishment was required but I do question the instrument chosen and the farce using Law to cloak it in and I am not alone in that assessment

.

So what solution do you think would have been better?

These were the realistic options available

Stalin: Summarily execute without 50-100000 of the german leadership, and about the same number of army officers, without trial. permanent occupation of Germany by foreign powers. to a large extent this is what happened in the Soviet occupied zone.
Churchill: Advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles (an ancient provision of the british constitution), being dissuaded from this only by talks with US and Soviet leaders later in the war . An Act of Attainder is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without a trial. As with attainder resulting from the normal judicial process, the effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person's civil rights, most notably the right to own property (and thus pass it on to heirs), the right to a title of nobility, and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself. Bills of attainder were passed in England between about 1300 and 1800 and resulted in the executions of a number of notable historical figures.

The use of these bills by Parliament eventually fell into disfavour due to the obvious potential for abuse and the violation of several legal principles, most importantly the separation of powers, the right to due process, and the precept that a law should address a particular form of behaviour rather than a specific individual or group. For these reasons, bills of attainder are expressly banned by the United States Constitution of 1789 as well as by the constitutions of all 50 US states.

Roosevelt: Initially advocated the de-industrialization of Germany under the Morgenthau Plan
France: Not as clear, but as far as I can tell, the French advocated the full and permanent dismemberment of Germany in much the same way as it was after the Napoleonic wars

There really were no other other options. Speaking in December 1946 Geoffrey Lawrence (Chief Judge for the British at Nuremberg) wrote:

"There were, I suppose, three possible courses: to let the atrocities which had been committed go unpunished; to put the perpetrators to death or punish them by executive action; or to try them. Which was it to be? Was it possible to let such atrocities go unpunished? Could France, could Russia, could Holland, Belgium, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Poland or Yugoslavia be expected to consent to such a course? ... It will be remembered that after the first world war alleged criminals were handed over to be tried by Germany, and what a farce that was! The majority got off and such sentences as were inflicted were derisory and were soon remitted"

Moreover, the Nazis had made arrangements that would, on the basis of the law as it existed virtually impossible to put them to trial. They expected that the allies would either have to summarily execute them, or let them go. they were counting on the latter, but the former was still okay, since it would at least hand their cause a moral victory of sorts.

 

[mikewint]

Chris, you are correct, we/I have wandered afield here though IMHO the mindset of the allies towards the German PEOPLE as a whole was to hold them ALL accountable and that attitude was also evident in the Nuremberg trials. The idea of "collective guilt" and thus "collective retribution" was well in place before the war's end.
This poster and other posters like it were distributed in occupied Germany in the summer of 1945, immediately after World War II. There was an Allied directive to Allied press agencies stating that the goal of these publications was to convince the German population of their collective guilt.
My best translation:
These crimes: your fault! In twelve years of the Nazi criminals millions of Europeans have been tortured and murdered. Men, women and children were rushed from Hitler's henchmen brutalized and tortured to death simply because they were Jews, Czechs, Russians, Poles or French. You quietly watched and condoned. In the battle hardened soldiers of the Allies could not hide their disgust and outrage in the face of the gassed and charred and emaciated bodies of the victims in the concentration camps. In Buchenwald camp by German reports 50,000 people were burned, shot, hanged. In Dachau, American soldiers found 50 wagons with rotting corpses. Since the beginning of this year, 10 000 people there died of their tortures. British troops found in Belsen torture chambers, incinerators, gallows and Auspeit-research piles. 30,000 people have been killed there. In Gardelegen, Nordhausen, Ohrdruf, Erla, Mauthausen, Vaihingen were countless forced / trafficked political prisoners and an inferno, as it has never seen in world history, as a victim! You have watched idly. Why have you not a word of protest, with no outcry roused the German conscience? This is your big debt - you are responsible for this horrible crime!
1) Freight cars loaded with dead bodies were discovered by American troops at Dachau.
2) Layers of corpses stacked like firewood were found by American troops in the Dachau concentration camp. The blood flowed across the floor when the soldiers arrived.
3) The inmate of the Dachau shame-camp was found emaciated and hollow-eyed with hunger by the American soldiers.
4) Part of 1000 corpses found in a pit, which were found by British and American soldiers during the liberation of the camp.
5) American soldiers inspect an abomination camp where the burned bodies of Nazi victims are piled up.
6) Charred bodies of political prisoners who have been harassed by SS troops in the Dachau death camp.

7) An inmate of the Dachau camp viewed the bodies of his comrades, the victims were brutalized by SS troops. The Nazis poured gasoline over the bodies and burned them.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Chris, you are correct, we/I have wandered afield here though IMHO the mindset of the allies towards the German PEOPLE as a whole was to hold them ALL accountable and that attitude was also evident in the Nuremberg trials. The idea of "collective guilt" and thus "collective retribution" was well in place before the war's end.
This poster and other posters like it were distributed in occupied Germany in the summer of 1945, immediately after World War II. There was an Allied directive to Allied press agencies stating that the goal of these publications was to convince the German population of their collective guilt.
My best translation:
These crimes: your fault! In twelve years of the Nazi criminals millions of Europeans have been tortured and murdered. Men, women and children were rushed from Hitler's henchmen brutalized and tortured to death simply because they were Jews, Czechs, Russians, Poles or French. You quietly watched and condoned. In the battle hardened soldiers of the Allies could not hide their disgust and outrage in the face of the gassed and charred and emaciated bodies of the victims in the concentration camps. In Buchenwald camp by German reports 50,000 people were burned, shot, hanged. In Dachau, American soldiers found 50 wagons with rotting corpses. Since the beginning of this year, 10 000 people there died of their tortures. British troops found in Belsen torture chambers, incinerators, gallows and Auspeit-research piles. 30,000 people have been killed there. In Gardelegen, Nordhausen, Ohrdruf, Erla, Mauthausen, Vaihingen were countless forced / trafficked political prisoners and an inferno, as it has never seen in world history, as a victim! You have watched idly. Why have you not a word of protest, with no outcry roused the German conscience? This is your big debt - you are responsible for this horrible crime!
1) Freight cars loaded with dead bodies were discovered by American troops at Dachau.
2) Layers of corpses stacked like firewood were found by American troops in the Dachau concentration camp. The blood flowed across the floor when the soldiers arrived.
3) The inmate of the Dachau shame-camp was found emaciated and hollow-eyed with hunger by the American soldiers.
4) Part of 1000 corpses found in a pit, which were found by British and American soldiers during the liberation of the camp.
5) American soldiers inspect an abomination camp where the burned bodies of Nazi victims are piled up.
6) Charred bodies of political prisoners who have been harassed by SS troops in the Dachau death camp.

7) An inmate of the Dachau camp viewed the bodies of his comrades, the victims were brutalized by SS troops. The Nazis poured gasoline over the bodies and burned them.

See I have no problem with collective guilt per say. Germany was guilty. My whole stance is just that a nations guilt does not equal violence, rape, murder and beatings to individual people that are innocent. Their nation is guilty, and as a whole that makes the population guilty in a victor/loser or political way, but there are still people innocent of crimes themselves (especially children). The Nuernberg Trials have nothing to do with that or make it justifiable. That really was the heart of the discussion, the Nuernberg Trial discussion was a side topic that quite honestly was a side note.

As for the collective guilt, unfortunately there are ignorant people today that still do that. My wife gets it all the time. She has been told she should feel shame for what happened and that it was her fault. He parents where not even born during WW2, so these ignorant people can kiss my ass. I wish my wife would sometimes not take the high ground and tell them to **** off. She just smiles and walks away.

 

[parsifal]

There should be no shame for any German who remained within the law. Much less any German not even born at the time. A patriotic german who remained within the law (not the law of the land as it existed 1933-45, rather the application of the law as set down under the Nuremberg principles....that incidentally is one of the weak points of Nuremberg), there certainly should not be any punishment for people simply because they were germans. The judgement made against Donitz is very illustrative in this regard. Donitz was guilty of unrestricted warfare, and a conviction against him was so recorded. But the circumstances he found himself in 1939-45 fully justified that type of warfare, and that explains why, despite having a conviction recorded against him, he received no penalty for it.

The problem is this. If you don't apply standards of international law to the defendants of 1945, you don't have a case. if the laws of 1933-45 were not somehow suspended, these guys are not guilty of anything. The only way to suspend the legal system of hitlers time was to destroy it. the only way to destroy it was to show the whole state to be unlawful, and that unfortunately has a very distasteful spin off. the nation is the people, and by applying the war guilt clauses in 1945, it effectively indicted every man, woman and child in Germany. from that point, nothing happened to the vast majority of germans, but still the stigma remains, to this day.

The atrocities we see in that opening piece have nothing to do with the Nuremberg application of collective guilt, and it was to avoid those sorts of scenes being played out that the IMTs were set up . unfortunately, all too often people bent on revenge took the law into their own hands.

 

[Marcel]

As for the collective guilt, unfortunately there are ignorant people today that still do that. My wife gets it all the time. She has been told she should feel shame for what happened and that it was her fault. He parents where not even born during WW2, so these ignorant people can kiss my ass. I wish my wife would sometimes not take the high ground and tell them to **** off. She just smiles and walks away.

Ah Chris, here in the Netherlands, I was accused being guilty for slavery trading which happened about 300 years ago. When does that stop? Which brings me to another question, we now have trials running where people from Suriname want righteousness for this slave trading which 'affected their lives' and want to have money from the government. Apart from the fact that many of them live on our social security and are able to buy iphones, cars, have a nice house, all provided by the Dutch government, where does this 'collective guilt' stop? When do you stop being angry with people? What does a nation have to do to redeem themselves? For me 'collective guilt' is all theoretical BS. It is a way to simplify the complex reality and also give yourself an easy way to find a target for your frustration. This being used in the Neurenburg Trial only shows the shortcomings of the legal system in my opinion.

Why being 'angry with the Germans after 70+ years? Unfortunately not everyone is as great a man as my grandfather....

 

[parsifal]

some of my most cherished quotes about the law:

Silent enim leges inter arma" (In war laws are silent)
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

"It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever."
― John Adams, The Portable John Adams

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
― Voltaire

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
Aristotle

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. ~Norm Crosby


A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. ~Robert Frost


This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

 

[stona]

Ah Chris, here in the Netherlands, I was accused being guilty for slavery trading which happened about 300 years ago. When does that stop? ...

We have the same thing here. Tony Blair was cajoled into a position where he expressed 'deep sorrow and regret' for Britain's role in the slave trade, but at least had the wherewithal to point out the nation's role in ending that trade.

As for reparations, a line has to be drawn. Maybe I should be looking for reparations from the people of Northern Germany and Scandinavia for the deprivations inflicted on the British by the Vikings. Certain monasteries would have substantial claims if only Cromwell and Henry VIII hadn't dissolved them
Most people in Britain came down firmly on the side of the Germans when the Greeks tried to open this can of worms recently.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Marcel]

We have the same thing here. Tony Blair was cajoled into a position where he expressed 'deep sorrow and regret' for Britain's role in the slave trade, but at least had the wherewithal to point out the nation's role in ending that trade.

As for reparations, a line has to be drawn. Maybe I should be looking for reparations from the people of Northern Germany and Scandinavia for the deprivations inflicted on the British by the Vikings. Certain monasteries would have substantial claims if only Cromwell and Henry VIII hadn't dissolved them
Most people in Britain came down firmly on the side of the Germans when the Greeks tried to open this can of worms recently.

Cheers

Steve

I blame the Romans. They killed my would-be-ancestor and now I have to do with this genetic material. As a compensation I want the Italians to give me an endless supply of fresh pizza.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Ah Chris, here in the Netherlands, I was accused being guilty for slavery trading which happened about 300 years ago. When does that stop? Which brings me to another question, we now have trials running where people from Suriname want righteousness for this slave trading which 'affected their lives' and want to have money from the government. Apart from the fact that many of them live on our social security and are able to buy iphones, cars, have a nice house, all provided by the Dutch government, where does this 'collective guilt' stop? When do you stop being angry with people? What does a nation have to do to redeem themselves? For me 'collective guilt' is all theoretical BS. It is a way to simplify the complex reality and also give yourself an easy way to find a target for your frustration. This being used in the Neurenburg Trial only shows the shortcomings of the legal system in my opinion.

Why being 'angry with the Germans after 70+ years? Unfortunately not everyone is as great a man as my grandfather....

We are going through that right now here in the US. If you are white you are racist and to blame for slavery.

 

[pbehn]

We are going through that right now here in the US. If you are white you are racist and to blame for slavery.

Stealing our thunder again, Tony Blair assures me that the British did it. All of which ignores the fact that the USA and the UK are 2 of the few nations in history to make it illegal on moral grounds, and slavery was never ever legal in England/UK, those that kept slaves did so purely because they could not because they had a legal right to.

 

[stona]

slavery was never ever legal in England/UK,

Errr, after 1833 a total of 46,000 Britons were compensated for the loss of their 'property'. It cost the government £20 million then, which is equivalent to about £17 billion today. It was the biggest bail out in British history, until 2009.

The records of the Slave Compensation Commission survive. It amounts to a census of slave ownership as of 1st August 1834. It lists those 46,000 slave owners in Britain.

The largest single beneficiary of compensation was John Gladstone, father of the future prime minister, who received £106,769 for the 2,508 slaves he owned across nine plantations. That's equivalent to £80 million today. Hardly surprising that the first speech the son, William Gladstone, made in parliament was in defence of slavery.

It gets worse. The enslaved people ultimately paid for their own manumission. They were compelled to provide 45 hours free labour per week to their former owners for 4 years after their supposed liberation.

There are important differences between the abolition of the slave trade, initially in 1807, and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act which freed about 800,000 people who were the legal property of Britain's slave owners. It wasn't until 1838 that slavery was officially abolished in British colonies, despite the earlier Act.

Despite acknowledging all that I do not feel responsible for it, nor do I feel that I owe anyone an apology.

Cheers

Steve

 

[pbehn]

Errr, after 1833 a total of 46,000 Britons were compensated for the loss of their 'property'. It cost the government £20 million then, which is equivalent to about £17 billion today. It was the biggest bail out in British history, until 2009.

The records of the Slave Compensation Commission survive. It amounts to a census of slave ownership as of 1st August 1834. It lists those 46,000 slave owners in Britain.

The largest single beneficiary of compensation was John Gladstone, father of the future prime minister, who received £106,769 for the 2,508 slaves he owned across nine plantations. That's equivalent to £80 million today. Hardly surprising that the first speech the son, William Gladstone, made in parliament was in defence of slavery.

It gets worse. The enslaved people ultimately paid for their own manumission. They were compelled to provide 45 hours free labour to their former owners for 4 years after their supposed liberation.

There are important differences between the abolition of the slave trade, initially in 1807, and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act which freed about 800,000 people who were the legal property of Britain's slave owners. It wasn't until 1838 that slavery was officially abolished in British colonies, despite the earlier Act.

Despite acknowledging all that I do not feel responsible for it, nor do I feel that I owe anyone an apology.

Cheers

Steve

That was compensation for slavery outside the UK, there was never a status of "slave" within the UK. As with the opium wars some commited acts that were illegal in the country they came from (UK) and the country they demanded military support from when things went pear shaped. Not a surprise that those i power used the UK treasury to launder illegal money into the good stuff.

 

[stona]

British could own slaves, they could bring them to Britain if they wished. What do you imagine the status of the people locked up in Bristol and other ports awaiting transport to the Carribean was? The trade was triangular and Britain was at one of the angles.
Slave ownership was legal for any British subject who could afford it. What you couldn't do was enslave another British subject, which is an entirely different thing. This harks back to the foundations of western civilisations, neither the citizens of a Greek city, nor a Roman citizen could be legally enslaved (by that city state or a Roman respectively)
Cheers
Steve

 

[pbehn]

British could own slaves, they could bring them to Britain if they wished. What do you imagine the status of the people locked up in Bristol and other ports awaiting transport to the Carribean was? The trade was triangular and Britain was at one of the angles.
Slave ownership was legal for any British subject who could afford it. What you couldn't do was enslave another British subject, which is an entirely different thing. This harks back to the foundations of western civilisations, neither the citizens of a Greek city, nor a Roman citizen could be legally enslaved (by that city state or a Roman respectively)
Cheers
Steve

The first time it was tried in court it was thrown out. The case of Somerset v Stewart 1772

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart

 

[stona]

That is a very narrow judgement, and as we well know thousands of slaves passed through Britain subsequently. Even today the precedent set by such a judgement is debated. It did set a ball moving that resulted in the various Acts that eliminated both the trade in enslaved people and slavery itself over the next 30-60 years.
There had always been religious arguments against slavery. Some even made a distinction between enslaving Christians and non-Christians. Despite this the Church of England was a major owner of slaves in the West Indies, but then that's what you get with an established Church .
Cheers
Steve

 

[pbehn]

That is a very narrow judgement, and as we well know thousands of slaves passed through Britain subsequently. Even today the precedent set by such a judgement is debated. It did set a ball moving that resulted in the various Acts that eliminated both the trade in enslaved people and slavery itself over the next 30-60 years.
There had always been religious arguments against slavery. Some even made a distinction between enslaving Christians and non-Christians. Despite this the Church of England was a major owner of slaves in the West Indies, but then that's what you get with an established Church .
Cheers
Steve

Steve, I am not excusing anything or denying anything. It was well known that slaves passed in their hundreds of thousands through Bristol, Liverpool and others. I presume they had some sort of "device" like extraordinary rendition. I was just saying that keeping a slave in UK was unlawful. Slavery grew out of piracy and didnt harm anyone in UK, no one minded when people were making lots of money and there was no international law at the time covering it. Slavery like the opium trade was something that the UK drifted into without thinking because many made huge amounts of money, they wernt stupid the act of getting rid of it made them not only rich but somehow respectable.

 

[stona]

I understand, but slaves were held in the UK. Some even managed to later write accounts of the experience and how they finally freed themselves. ,Less known than 'Equiano' who was free by the time he came to Britain, was Ignatius Sancho was brought to London as a child slave in 1731 and remained one until at least 1749.
Cheers
Steve