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

[pbehn]

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

Steve
There are estimated to be up to 25,000 slaves in UK now. They occasionally get free and appear in the press, many of their "owners" have diplomatic immunity.

 

[stona]

Steve
There are estimated to be up to 25,000 slaves in UK now. They occasionally get free and appear in the press, many of their "owners" have diplomatic immunity.

Sadly true.

Cheers

Steve

 

[pbehn]

Sadly true.

Cheers

Steve

Our politicians would rather blather about events 300 years ago than confront the reality that people are housed in Mayfair mansions as slaves, the WC stadiums built in view of the whole world are being built by people living and dying as slaves, easier to wring hands and apologise for the past than do something.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

This is all too coincidental for me! I just discovered that I have at least two ancestors (and maybe more) who owned slaves. My 7th great grandmother owned 4 mulatto slaves, My 3rd great grandfather owned 8 black slaves and were included as part of a purchase of a villa in Puerto Rico. By today's standards I could condemn this but will refuse to take responsibility for the social norms that existed 160+ years ago. I will not hide this in my family history and would tell any bleeding heart to p!ss up a rope if the word 'reparation' was even mumbled to me, unlike this @sshole,

 

[mikewint]

Slavery??? No way....
The Allied powers had decided at the highest level (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) to repudiate the Geneva Conventions, especially after the extinction of a German government able to negotiate with the Red Cross. (The Soviet Union, of course, had never signed the Geneva Conventions in the first place.)
Under the Geneva Conventions, POWs are to be sent home within months of the end of the war. The Allies instead decided to hold prisoner many POWs. To side-step the Geneva Convention the POWs had been redesignated as "disarmed enemy forces" and were used as slave laborers, providing "labor reparations" to rebuild the damage inflicted by Nazi aggression in the west. In the spring of 1945, the US held 3.4 million German POWs and Britain held 2,150,000 . According to the International Red Cross these men were divided up amongst the various allied nations to provide these "reparations". The demands of France for "labor reparations" were considered especially compelling. After screening the POWs, releasing the old men and boys of the "Volkssturm," and detaining Nazis for prosecution, the USA transferred 740,000 of the remainder (including some of those shipped back to Europe from the USA) to France. By August of 1946 the United States held 140,000 (US Occupation Zone) 680,000 were still held in France, 30,000 in Italy, 14,000 in Belgium, Yugoslavia 80,000, Belgium 48,000, Czechoslovakia 45,000, Luxembourg 4,000, Holland 1,300 and Great Britain held 460,000 German slaves. The Soviet Union had captured 4,000,000 - 5,000,000 German soldiers and civilians who disappeared into the USSR.
An outraged International Red Cross organization stated: "The United States, Britain and France, nearly a year after peace are violating International Red Cross agreements they solemnly signed in 1929. Thousands of former German soldiers are being used in the hazardous work of clearing minefields, sweeping sea mines and razing shattered buildings in spite of the fact that the Geneva Convention expressly forbids employing prisoners 'in any dangerous labor or in the transport of any material used in warfare.'
The Western nations sent their last German POWs home in 1948 (often under US pressure), while the Soviets kept theirs as late as 1956.

 

[parsifal]

This is the article that probably best discusses the issue of post war PoWs.

U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948

very disturbing, but the more outlandish claims relating to numbers at least, in the US care that died is pretty comprehensively debunked.

For Britain, 450000 ex-PoWs were held without their consent until mid-1947. They returned to Germany by the end of the year, 25000 promptly emigrated back and close to 200000 voluntarily returned 1948-52 on paid temporary work visas.

undoubtedly a form of slavery and to the allied shame as a result, but not in the same league of mistreatment as the Nazis. even the Soviets come up better in this regard. in terms of raw numbers the Nazis had put to death over 70-90% of the polish and soviet PoWs in their care, according to other articles Ive seen. For the germans captured at Stalingrad, the mortality rate was higher, but the post war bag of PoWs suffered losses of under 50% to the end of 1955. Attrocities by the Soviets are horrific, for example they used ex-PoWs in dangerous uranium mines and also mine clearance work, but they still don't compare to the magnitude and viciousness of mistreatment meted out by the nazis.

In the US proper, treatment of the estimated 540000 prisoners held in the continental US continued until 1947. kramers studies into this group suggest a firm but fair treatment in the post war period . About 45000 elected to stay in the US after being offered repatriation in 1947. in a very small number of cases, it has been pretty conclusively shown that the US military engaged in serious torture of these detainees, though Im not sure if that was during the war or after. the torture is described as "serious" to "severe' in the reports ive seen .

French treatment was fairly shocking, and was commented upon by US prosecutor Jackson in his letter to Truman December 1946 (or'45?). This letter led to the French pullout of the IMTs, and at the height of their mistreatment, about 2000 per month were being lost. all up losses of german PoWs under western allied care 1945-8 was 56000, for a group numbering about 5.5 million men. that's a mortality rate of just over 1%. that's a bit lower than the mortality rate being experienced in Germany itself in that same period.

There was definately mistreatment occurring in the west in this period, particularly by the French, but it is arguable as to just how bad it actually was.

 

[meatloaf109]

(Disclaimer. I injured my back at work today and am on pain meds)
The very idea of "Rules of War" makes me want to vomit. No mercy was shown in ancient times. Kill. Rape. Enslave. Steal.
Consider this, the reasons for war are,
1) I want what you have... Simple enough. Selfishness and greed.
2) You don't believe in the same deity as I do, and mine says you must die. A little more complex, but still boils down to selfishness and greed, with a dash of ignorance.
3), well there is no 3, unless you concur with the idea espoused in the movie "Gettysburg" when Col. Chamberlain states, "We are an Army to set other men free." Noble, if true. Contemporary evidence suggests that this opinion was in the minority throughout the first years of the Civil war.
As a species we have slaughtered each other for greed, selfishness, and ignorance with no end in sight. Innocent people suffer, both in war and in peace. The unknowing working class person, while a citizen of a country, has no more responsibility for the actions of the rulers than does a blade of grass in that country. Yet they often suffer for the actions of the rulers.
The Nazis were bad, no rational human being disputes that, but the actions of fanatics on either side in a war provides no excuse for crimes against innocents. To suggest that all of a population share a collective guilt for the actions of the rulers is wrong and propagates even more hate and misunderstanding.

 

[parsifal]

Im going to refer to your good self as Attila in future.....

 

[parsifal]

The problem is that the mistakes of the few have always affected the lives of the many.

And we are at the same juncture as we started. Nuremberg, ensured that only the "leadership" was prosecuted....those most responsible. Nuremberg, targeted no more than 10000, had 580 (ish) lined up for prosecution and actually tried 179, of which about 100 were actually punished. compare that to the 100000+ that Stalin wanted, inevitably that would mean otherwise innocent people being hurt even more. or in some ways the even more grotesque proposals put forward by Churchill.

People keep saying they agree with the Nazis being punished. Then they qualify that by saying they don't want group or collective guilt, and seem to say Nuremberg was a form of collective punishment.

There are so many inconsistencies with that positioning its not funny. In no particular order....there were over 5 million registered members of the nazi party. Does that mean 5 million convictions, or five million summary executions? Most of those 5 million were nothing worse than the local postman wanting to keep his job. That's never going to work.

Collective guilt. again, most people want the main perpetrators punished. That, by definition requires some kind of due process, in which the basic rights to a free trial, and a set of rules would apply. what rules????????? If the nazi regime's rules are allowed to stand as valid, the bad guys are guilty of nothing and walk scot free. That needs to be soaked up and accepted in this circular never ending debate. someone please tell me how they are going to respect basic human rights AND get the bad guys, and get past this enormous legal obstacle without breaking a few eggs and declaring the entire German legal system as invalid 1933-45, because it was serving a regime whose whole existence was bent on acting unlawfully.

If there is a better way of addressing all these competing and conflicting demands, Im all ears.

 

[Marcel]

The problem is that the mistakes of the few have always affected the lives of the many.

And we are at the same juncture as we started. Nuremberg, ensured that only the "leadership" was prosecuted....those most responsible. Nuremberg, targeted no more than 10000, had 580 (ish) lined up for prosecution and actually tried 179, of which about 100 were actually punished. compare that to the 100000+ that Stalin wanted, inevitably that would mean otherwise innocent people being hurt even more. or in some ways the even more grotesque proposals put forward by Churchill.

People keep saying they agree with the Nazis being punished. Then they qualify that by saying they don't want group or collective guilt, and seem to say Nuremberg was a form of collective punishment.

There are so many inconsistencies with that positioning its not funny. In no particular order....there were over 5 million registered members of the nazi party. Does that mean 5 million convictions, or five million summary executions? Most of those 5 million were nothing worse than the local postman wanting to keep his job. That's never going to work.

Collective guilt. again, most people want the main perpetrators punished. That, by definition requires some kind of due process, in which the basic rights to a free trial, and a set of rules would apply. what rules????????? If the nazi regime's rules are allowed to stand as valid, the bad guys are guilty of nothing and walk scot free. That needs to be soaked up and accepted in this circular never ending debate. someone please tell me how they are going to respect basic human rights AND get the bad guys, and get past this enormous legal obstacle without breaking a few eggs and declaring the entire German legal system as invalid 1933-45, because it was serving a regime whose whole existence was bent on acting unlawfully.

If there is a better way of addressing all these competing and conflicting demands, Im all ears.

Parsifal, I don't nothing about law stuff and I'm pretty sure I'm missing something. Could you explain in short to me the following for my understanding?

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

So I don't understand the connection between collective guilt and punishing the guilty ones. If I understand you correctly, in order to overrule the laws in Germany during the Nazi rules (which would make them legally innocent) you have to make the whole state unlawful. That I understand. But does that automatically mean that every individual in that state is guilty and can be hold responsible? Maybe I am interpreting this word 'collective guilt' wrongly?

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Parsifal, I don't nothing about law stuff and I'm pretty sure I'm missing something. Could you explain in short to me the following for my understanding?




So I don't understand the connection between collective guilt and punishing the guilty ones. If I understand you correctly, in order to overrule the laws in Germany during the Nazi rules (which would make them legally innocent) you have to make the whole state unlawful. That I understand. But does that automatically mean that every individual in that state is guilty and can be hold responsible? Maybe I am interpreting this word 'collective guilt' wrongly?

No it does not. Only if someone chooses to do so...

 

[stona]

Not every individual is guilty but no individual could justify their actions by using the laws of the Nazi regime.

Steve

 

[parsifal]

So I don't understand the connection between collective guilt and punishing the guilty ones. If I understand you correctly, in order to overrule the laws in Germany during the Nazi rules (which would make them legally innocent) you have to make the whole state unlawful. That I understand. But does that automatically mean that every individual in that state is guilty and can be hold responsible? Maybe I am interpreting this word 'collective guilt' wrongly?

This stuff had never been tried before in history. So hang on and I will do my best to explain the concepts.

The defeated Germany in 1945 was not part of a new empire (with the exception of the Soviets who did view it that way), it was an occupied nation who had been defeated on the field of battle and had surrendered unconditionally, meaning they accepted any terms that were placed on them. One of the terms imposed on the germans when they signed the surrender document was that they accepted the full blame for the war, and that they had embarked on a war of aggression. It was, in effect a signed confession by the nation. And not able to be revoked or challenged except by a return to battle.

We might argue the morals and worth of that confession, but they are the starting point for the recovery actually. The alternative would be to continue to fight until every individual in Germany chose to surrender or fight till they died. I should add that in war, individuals dont fight wars, nations do, but conversely the nation is its people. This is all theoretical stuff , it didnt happen this way, but its tied in with the concept of the pre-eminance of the state over individual rights. its what allows an abstract concept, like a nation to rule over you, make laws to restrict you activities, make you pay taxes fight on its behalf, suffer its justice and the punishments that it chooses to mete out on its population. Armies dont make war, they are the instrument of the nation for making war. They do what they are told, and the nation (its people) tell its army how it wishes to fight and whom it wishes to fight, and for what reason it wishes to fight. Of course the reality is that armies often rebel from its nation master (the state) and often try an impose its will on its people by trying to take over the nation (through a coup). History records that the Nazis attempted a coup, lost the ringleaders given light sentences, came back and were voted into power, to rule thereafter by emergency provisions. But on the face of it a legitimate govt of Germany, recognized internationally as the legitimate govt (legitimate govt is defined as "a government generally acknowledged as being in control of a nation and representing the intrests and wishes of its people and deserving formal recognition, which is symbolized by the exchange of diplomats between that government and the governments of other countries"). It is the representative of its people, by installation of that regime as its leadership, the german people, whether they realized it or not were saying "these guys are us. Everything they do is what we, collectively wish to happen". In a democracy there are laws , like a constitution that place limits on the leadership, and install a series of checks and balances designed to ensure that the govt retains the true interests of its people and protects their rights in its decisions. The system separates the functions of the lawmakers, the executive and the law administration to try and ensure that there was a not a corruption of state power over the rights of the individual. This was almost immediately repudiated by Hitler...he hated democracy and its principals). This failed in Nazi Germany, all power was vested in one man, who then re-delegated that power, but only in the interests of what he deemed to be appropriate. All individual rights were suspended, all opposition quashed and all basic human rights disregarded. All because the many, in the beginning, believed in him and supported him.

Because the nation is the people and the govt is the representative of the peoples wishes (Hitler said "I am the state", which is just such a loaded statement), international law had to establish that the state represented those wishes. There are two ways might want to interpret the next bit. First alternative is that the state policy did not represent the wishes of the people. If so the conclusion is that the people carrying out the wishes of the state were not carrying out the wishes of its people, and the state therefore had no mandate to make laws, mete out punishments or administer policies. That makes the whole govt apparatus illegal , or without authority, and is a very dangerous concept. it means that every govt official would be guilt of a crime. Its a theoretical position only never been tested, but ive read about it....

The second way of interpretation (which the pathway followed by the IMTs) is that certain unwritten norms and standards applied to govt conduct and that criminality applies to individuals who execute the wishes of the state still applies because in the background a higher law, based on generally accepted common laws, like it being unlawful to commit murder even on behalf of the state, if that state was acting unlawfully itself, still apply (it is not necessary to do this in the current form of international law, but it took more than 50 years to get to that modified state of law. In 1945, it was crucial to establish the basic ciminality of the entire German state). This meant that the state of Germany (which ultimately was its people, not just the apparatus meaning its legislature, its legal system and its executive...which in reality was just Hitler) was a failure and that state therefore, by its very existence was unlawful in the way that it existed. This is the hard bit though. Hitler was not the state, despite his rhetoric. The state was the German people. They had entrusted their interests in one man, and of that they were guilty. They commissioned him, and he turned out to be a criminal. But the actions of that one man, Hitler, because they had given him power in the first place, made them still responsible for the crimes that state (Hitler) committed in his name.

Thats the collective guilt element. Its messy and clunky and questionable, but from there the Nuremberg principles ensured that this concept of collective guilt did not result in collective punishment. It enabled the IMTs to argue that individuals despite undertaking things in the name of the state could be held individually responsible for their own criminality, and that the measure of that criminality was not the warped legal system in force at the time within Germany. Overarching that national code of laws was a greater law, the so called Nuremberg principals....another weak point of the theory. Another way to describe this is to say the laws of the time were unlawful, "ultra vires" is the latin term (literally "beyond the powers" as opposed to "Intra Vires" "within the posers" ) ...,.of the state.

The law until that time was that the sovereignty (understood in jurisprudence as the full right and power of a governing body to govern its people and order them to act as it deems necessary itself without any interference from outside sources or bodies. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme authority over some polity. It is a basic principle underlying the dominant Westphalian model of state foundation). This was to be the primary defence for most of the defendants.......the laws of superior orders. In order for that primary defence to be defeated the Nuremberg rules had to establish a greater preeminence of its rules, where the state could be shown to be acting unlawfully, and obviously so. Without that latter safeguard, anybody could have been hauled before an international court. In today's ICC arrangements its different, but in 1945, the IMTs had to set up their pre-eminance over nazi sovereignty the hard way.

Probably doesnt help, if not , just say and I will try to simplify or re-phrase

 

[parsifal]

But does that automatically mean that every individual in that state is guilty and can be hold responsible

We are all guilty of something. I was guilty of being born, not eating my sprouts (I hate sprouts to this day). The German people were guilty of something more serious, but they had no fear of being punished unless other criminality could be proven. The German people were guilty of supporting Hitler, thats it, hitler became the state, and the state committed gross acts of criminality, to the point that the state itself was acting unlawfully. Individuals then responsible for those gross acts could then be held individually responsible even though they were acting in the name of the state.

 

[mikewint]

To use terms like LAW and MORALS in any discussion is to use meaningless terms. What is LAWFUL today can become UNLAWFUL tomorrow. MORALS likewise shift in the same manner especially when you cross time and cultural barriers. Slavery was at one time both the lawful and moral (white mans burden) thing to do. In addition those who were taken as slaves were actually captured and enslaved by their own people who in turn were acting under their own set of laws and morals.
Michael posted: breaking a few eggs and declaring the entire German legal system as invalid 1933-45, because it was serving a regime whose whole existence was bent on acting unlawfully. . A wonderful thing as long as it is not YOUR eggs getting broken. One of our basic precepts in western justice is the concept of "EX POST FACTO" or simply speaking you can't make something illegal AFTER the fact. New LAW passed today: From Jan 1, 2000 anyone with more than two children will be jailed. Suddenly people who were not breaking the law at the time have been made into law-breakers and face punishment. Additionally the entire country is held accountable since they should have known having 3+ children was immoral and illegal thus facing "collective guilt" and "collective retribution"
That the US base at Guantanamo Bay is a military prison for terrorists is pretty well known. "ENHANCED INTERROGATION" is used and "due process" ignored. US citizens are doing nothing to stop these gross violations of human rights: "collective guilt" for the entire country.
Marcel posts: does that automatically mean that every individual in that state is guilty and can be hold responsible? Maybe I am interpreting this word 'collective guilt' wrongly? No you are not and Yes it does. If you, the victors, declare the entire set of laws in effect for 5 years invalid then everyone who was legally following those laws, at the time, is now a criminal and as such subject to punishment. Those same specters of "collective" raise their ugly heads and we're back to "How could you not have known" and "Why did you do nothing to stop it".
Every part of me totally rejects "collective" anything and "collective punishment" is the worst of all. Consider Germany in 1945:
The extent of physical and moral devastation in 1945 was unprecedented. For years the Western Allies had pursued an escalating strategy of carpet bombing that reached far beyond many definitions of military or industrial targeting. This air war left approximately six hundred thousand civilians dead, and wounded as many as nine hundred thousand more; more than 7 million Germans were left homeless at the end of the war (around 10 million people had been evacuated from the cities to avoid the bombings). Population transfers" from eastern Europe and the eastern parts of the Reich numbered as many as 12 million, and at least a half million ethnic Germans died or were killed in the process. More than 5 million German soldiers were killed in the war, leaving more than a million widows; the gender disparity after the war—more than two "marriageable" women for every man—was among the most significant demographic consequences of the war, which is to say nothing of the large number of fatherless or entirely orphaned children. Just one consequence of the mass rapes of German women toward and after the end of the war and of the rampant prostitution and semi prostitution born of extreme necessity, moreover, was an astoundingly high venereal disease rate among German women.
Physically to speak of Germany as a ruin in 1945 is to romanticize it. Germany was a wreck not a ruin, a rock covered landscape of disaster in which the homeless lived like mole people. Any type of housing was more than devastated. Then add in the fact that approximately 12 million ethnic Germans that had been expelled from the East with more than a million dying in the process (the flight from the East had begun well before the end of the war, as early as 1943 in many cases).
The conditions for German soldiers in Allied captivity were horrific, with severe food shortages (a Red Cross train load of food for the German POWs…whoops…Disarmed Enemy Forces had been stopped and turned around) and often inadequate or nonexistent shelter (The worst US temporary enclosures were the 16 "Rheinwiesenlager" ("Rhine meadow camps"). These were simply barb-wire enclosures out in the open, with no shelter apart from what the DEFs might dig in the ground, and nothing to sit or lie on (above the mud and puddles) apart from their own helmets and greatcoats for those who had them. This was during the spring and summer, when there was no danger of freezing; nevertheless, given Germany's cooler, wetter climate, these open barbed-wire "cages" were much more of a hardship than similar temporary expedients in North Africa and Italy. 557,000 DEFs were held from April to July 1945 in the six worst of these: Bad Kreuznach-Bretzenheim, Remagen-Sinzig, Rheinberg, Heidesheim, Wickrathberg, and Büderich . The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4,537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll might be twice this, but were skeptical of an eyewitness claim of 32,000 deaths. Of the 3 million or so German soldiers taken by the Russians at least a million died there and tens of thousands were not released until well into the 1950s. And that does not address the millions of German civilians taken as the Russians over-ran Eastern Germany.
When is enough, ENOUGH

 

[Marcel]

Thank you Parcifal. It is almost clear, will have to read it a couple of times more

We are all guilty of something. I was guilty of being born, not eating my sprouts (I hate sprouts to this day). The German people were guilty of something more serious, but they had no fear of being punished unless other criminality could be proven. The German people were guilty of supporting Hitler, thats it, hitler became the state, and the state committed gross acts of criminality, to the point that the state itself was acting unlawfully. Individuals then responsible for those gross acts could then be held individually responsible even though they were acting in the name of the state.

Okay actually it means that everyone was still responsible for their own actions, am I reading that correctly?

One objection here. Hitler never got the majority of the votes. I still have troubles with the statement that Hitler became the state because the support of the people. But this is pure theoretical as, they were not prosecuted for that, am I correct?

 

[mikewint]

Marcel, The so called LAW is not nor ever will be absolute. LAW is a plastic wiggly squirming thing that is more than willing to serve any master. As I posted earlier 44% of voting Germans had voted for Hitler. The Hitler as he had portrayed himself to be at the time. Look at your own politicians and their election to office did they all remain steadfast to their pre-election selves or did the morph into something else after the election? With the entire machinery of the state, gestapo, and SS under his control what choice did the ordinary citizen have?
Once defeated the victorious Allied nations wanted and needed to punish the Germans. There was really no direct and existing way to do that under the existing legal structure plus the concern that all would claim "Befehl ist Befehl". In 1921 Lt. Karl Neuman, a U-boat captain sunk the Dover Castle a hospital ship. Tried in Germany at the end of WWI, the Leipzig Supreme Court (then Germany's supreme court) acquitted him, accepting the defense of superior orders as a grounds to escape criminal liability. Elaborating on its decision the court had this to say in the matter of superior orders: "... that all civilized nations recognize the principle that a subordinate is covered by the orders of his superiors. This decision set the stage and as a result many accused of war crimes were acquitted on a similar defense, creating immense dissatisfaction amongst the Allies. Thus the specific removal of this defense in the August 8, 1945 London Charter of the International Military Tribunal.
A required course in Law School is: Swallowing Camels and straining at Gnats