I don't think the reference to Pauer-Studer and Vellema's Konrad Morgen: the Conscience of a Nazi Judge adds much to the case against revisionism.
You've read the book, then?
The authors are two philosophy professors who state, according to your link, that "We have found Morgen to be a largely reliable witness of his wartime activities." This refers to a judge whom I have quoted giving false testimony at Nuremberg.
Again, so what? The post I made in this forum was based Pauer-Studer and Velleman's on archival research
on Morgen's wartime activities, matters not altered by his postwar testimony. He made some errors in his wartime testimony (and not only about Auschwitz to be sure) and he crafted that testimony, as Ivanesca posted, to present the SS in the best possible light he could.
It is a serious matter for a judge to commit perjury.
Just out of curiosity, where did Morgen perjure himself?
Let us assume that Morgen perjured himself after the war, for the sake of argument: LeoMajor posted that
during the war Morgen, exemplifying SS legal precepts, separated out crimes according to the group identity of victims, in keeping with the concept of special law for non-Germans. My post focused on this point. I didn't quote, but could have, from a wartime document written by Morgen (February 1942) that relates to this issue. Here is what Morgen found in a case involving an accusation of excessive force against a German policeman stationed in occupied Galicia:
During the occupation of Galicia, Hauptmann of the Schutzpolizei Paul Kleesattel was guilty of continually assaulting Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians of both sexes. He used his riding crop and his hand, and instructed his subordinates to strike them. The reason for these assaults was generally minor, and they were occasionally due to excessive drinking by the accused.
. . . First, let me note that in the eastern territories generally it is necessary to rule with a stronger and rougher hand. Thus - when the end calls for it - the criminal law in force is not taken into account.
Disobedience and disrespect are mainly punished with corporal penalties by uniformed personnel on the spot. Public prosecutors, police, and security officers cannot handle native populations of foreign races without the application of the utmost force, including as a means of extracting confessions. . . .
In addition, there is among our men a widespread mental attitude to the effect that the eastern region, as an area for future German immigration, is to be freed up for the Germans through the extirpation (Ausrottung) and annihilation (Vernichtung) of the native population, and that the population is therefore to be tolerated as a currently necessary evil and treated as such.
Given this situation and this mental attitude, transgressions and excesses in the use of bodily force are quite understandable. . . . Combatting this with penal provision is pointless. . . .
For this reason, the SS- and Police Judiciary in adjudicating cases of this kind has taken the approach of intervening in a legal way against such misdemeanors and crimes only when the accused manifests by his act severe character flaws that make him intolerable to the German Volksgemeineschaft. Thus, for example, if assaults degenerate into sadistic tortures, or sexual motives play a role - and here the law is to be applied ruthlessly - when the victim is German by nationality or race, or has citizenship in an allied state.
The SS- and Police Judiciary is there to preserve the purity of our own ranks, not to protect the rights (Rechtsgüter) of an enemy people. . . .
. . . From a political point-of-view, it strikes me as debatable whether, in such a transitional period [implementation of German rule in Galicia, a period of unrest], measures of terror, even if they were clearly arbitrary in a particular case, might nevertheless be for the time being politically proper in the end. Nevertheless, instituting legal investigations into them strikes me as unwise. There is too great a danger that the troops will become confused. . . .
This finding, however, speaks to the point under discussion, which was not Morgen's postwar testimony, but differential rather law under the Nazis.
Here are my thoughts about Pauer-Studer and Velleman's coverage of the SS legal approach to the East under Nazified legal precepts:
1. Conquest of the East and subjugation of its residents required, in SS thinking, draconian rule including physical violence against inhabitants of the East on a daily basis and for minor issues.
2. In the SS view, law was to be applied unequally, on the basis of a racial hierarchy, with legal standards for Germans not extensible to non-Germans, who were to be judged without the force of the criminal law but rather as subjects of German conquest and rule; in addition, the rule of law should be largely suspended in the "eastern regions" with regard to the local population.
3. Offenses were classified in part by who the victim is, rather than what act a person committed, that is, according to the racial or national identity of the victim, with protections for German and allied victims. The native inhabitants of the East, other than Germans and their allies, are "an enemy people" to be treated harshly - with terror, even arbitrary terror, permissible on the ground that it furthers Germany's long-term objectives in the East.
4. Those in the uniformed services of the Third Reich were to be afforded leeway to determine the application of corporal force and infliction of violence on subject people and to be given benefit of legal doubt in cases involving violence against "native populations."
5. Legal judgments of German men stationed in the East should reflect, as well as the special situation in the East (its subjugation for use by Germany), the "mental attitude" and training of these men. The situation/goals of the Third Reich in the East and the mental outlook of Germans stationed there trump the law and rights of subject peoples - in fact, the law itself should advance the German cause and the German race and not offer protection to peoples identified for subjugation by the Germans.
6. The East belongs to Germany and that which advances German settlement there is to be protected by the justice system; genocidal measures against the native population are in keeping with this goal and on their face legitimate - those Germans involved in genocidal actions in keeping the Third Reich policies and goals are to be protected by the courts. The native population is itself undesirable and is only temporarily accepted "as a currently necessary evil" whose existence contradicts the long-term goals for Eastern settlement by Germans.
7. Acts of excessive terror and violence against native people in the East in the pursuit of the German policy of genocide and resettlement should not even be investigated by legal authorities, with any discipline left up to the agencies themselves.
8. The occupation agents of Germany nonetheless can, however, commit punishable offenses - but only by taking actions that do not advance the Volk's interests but their own, which are against the German national community's interest, or which demonstrate perverse individual will and self-gratification. Such transgressions are against Germany - not the rights of local people; excessive violence against locals is, at the same time, understandable and not deserving of punishment of the transgressor.
Morgen's reasoning in 1942 was very similar on key points to the reasoning of the SS court in the Taubner case.
Pauer-Studer and Velleman in fact discuss SS legal theory and make a point of its departure from the norm expressed in the maxim nulla poena sine lege (no crime or punishment without a law). The definition of crime, under SS theory, expanded to cover that which was deemed by a judge, and ultimately the Führer, to threaten the national community ("the sound perception of the Volk"). In this conception, judges were to investigate the will and the inner character of the accused (to determine Lebensführungs-Schuld, or "conduct-of-life guilt") and to punish certain actions whether or not a law existed to make them illegal.
Perhaps you will now explain to us how Morgen's misremembering details of Auschwitz relates to the question my post dealt with.
The authors focus seems to be on moral questions rather than historical inquiry.
So, you've read the book then - and can tell us that it doesn't review or quote from archival materials, explore legal concepts, etc?
The line you're taking here is a strawman - it seems to avoid the implications of the earlier posts - as I didn't focus on the authors' evaluation of Morgen, or his postwar testimony, but on what they show his wartime activity to have been.
the shortcomings of philosophers as historians
What are the shortcomings of Pauer-Studer and Velleman on the question at hand? You've not provided any so your "shoe on other foot" claim is empty.
I don't see any substantial discussion of the Monowitz "gaffe" in your links, though it is mentioned. The main point for revisionism seems to be that Morgen is not a reliable witness and the attribution of motives to explain his "errors" involve an element of speculation.
You apparently missed that both Ivanesca and I have said that Morgen tailored his testimony to present the SS in the best light and that his testimony needs to be assessed accordingly. (I wrote a paragraph on the Monowitz gaffe in the Morgen thread I linked to, but, really, it is far afield from what we were discussing here, which, to remind you again, was Nazi special law.)
I gather that the main English work on the application of German legal concepts to the occupied East is Diemut Majer's Non-Germans" under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939-1945. This costs around £40/$60 and I have limited resources of time and money. However, I will bear it in mind if the discussion of the legal basis of German actions continues here. My experience is that such works contain valuable work alongside an uncritical acceptance of the accepted overall narrative of inexplicable German evil under Hitler that distorts their understanding of documents at the fringe of their area of direct competence.
Nick Terry will be better able to say whether Majer's book is the main English language book on this topic. It is the best one I've read.
I recognize that my reply to you has the defect of actually sticking to the matter at hand and not throwing in side issues and innuendo. I plan to keep to this method nonetheless. That said, I am all for a discussion of Morgen's postwar testimony - just not in a way that sidetracks from a different issue that’s under discussion.
