General Eisenhower, a war criminal?

[gumboot]

Eisenhower did the right thing.

What has Eisenhower got to do with it?

 

[gumboot]

Nope. Not even the divisional commander can be considered a war criminal because no one ordered the summary shootings.

This is an important distinction - In the west from late 44 onwwards German commanders were issued with written orders not to take prisioners. There is not equivelient order on the American side. So if POWs were shot illegally, the responsiblity lays with the ranking officer at the time, not after the fact

This is not entirely correct. The Yamashita standard established that a commanding officer can be found guilty if soldiers under their command commit war crimes, even if they are unaware of it.

It's important to remember that the laws of armed conflict are applied quite differently to criminal law, in that circumstance has an enormous impact on guilt. I think the report's recommendation that the Battalion commander be court martialled was fair - he was a senior officer and was on site at the camp itself, even if not present during the shootings.

 

[gumboot]

And as far as I'm concerned, since the Führerprinzip, anti-semitism and sheer dictatorialness of the non-Waffen part of the SS were well-known to everyone who joined, then all those who joined the non-Waffen SS prior to 1945 deserved a death sentence.

As I've already pointed out, from 1942 onwards there was no "non-Waffen SS". More importantly, from 1944 onwards SS soldiers were rotated from combat units to Concentration Camp units. Thus any soldier who joined any SS unit at any point could have found themself overseeing a camp at liberation.

It is the allied attitude of fair trial, non arbitrary execution, justice, and so forth that distinguished us from the Nazis.

It was our value for these things that defined us. Breaching these values should have been severely punished, because it undermined the entire reason we were fighting the war.

May I ask, how do you feel about the terrorist being held in Guantanamo Bay? We should just torture and execute them right? They're terrorist scum so they get what they deserve. And if anyone happens to be innocent, well they should have known better than to be hanging out in Afghanistan. Right?

The fact that we are putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial, while his people behead people for propaganda is how I know I'm with the good guys, and they're the bad guys.

Likewise, the fact that in WW2 we treated POWs with dignity and respect and we put suspected criminals on trial, while they starved prisoners and routinely executed prisoners on site is how I know my country was on the good guys' side and they were the bad guys.

Righteousness is not a god-given status. It is defined by the actions we take. It's a knife's edge, and taking the wrong action pushes us towards evil.

 

[gumboot]

Is the idea that people ought to be tried before they're sentenced really that controversial?

I think the sick and terrifying lesson taught by Nazi Germany, and confirmed by the Milgram Experiment and Stanford Prison Experiment, is that it really could happen anywhere. The majority of people really are Nazis underneath it all. They just need the right justification.

Without going to those extremes, how many people would actually stand up to protect the rights of free speech for someone whom they strongly disagreed with.

The answer is tragically few.

Nazi Germany was a horrific lesson to the west. It was a warning. You either adhere completely to the values of freedom in all circumstances or you risk damnation.

It's a lesson that precious few have actually learned.

 

[applecorped]

I think the sick and terrifying lesson taught by Nazi Germany, and confirmed by the Milgram Experiment and Stanford Prison Experiment, is that it really could happen anywhere. The majority of people really are Nazis underneath it all. They just need the right justification.

Without going to those extremes, how many people would actually stand up to protect the rights of free speech for someone whom they strongly disagreed with.

The answer is tragically few.

Nazi Germany was a horrific lesson to the west. It was a warning. You either adhere completely to the values of freedom in all circumstances or you risk damnation.

It's a lesson that precious few have actually learned.

So, over 3 billion people are Nazis underneath it all?

 

[applecorped]

You just made Magz's day.

 

[Foolmewunz]

So, over 3 billion people are Nazis underneath it all?

Understanding that many people have these tendencies within in them, and that that potential can be exploited by proper manipulation to produce either obedient servants to the cause or abject Nazis, is quite different from saying that they're Nazis underneath.

Coincidentally, one of the more appealing (as in interesting to ponder) controversies about Shaw's original play (not the Hiller directed movie) The Man in the Glass Booth, is one of the topics that is being discussed here; the liberated turned barbaric, in some instances, in the immediate period following their liberation. (Per the plot, it's the reason for Goldman's charade.)

The more controversial aspect of that play, though, is what Andrew is alluding to. The premise being that anyone, being annointed as the chosen by as dynamic and charismatic a figure as Hitler, may very well have followed him to the gates of Hell, as the German populace did.

 

[Gurdur]

... More importantly, from 1944 onwards SS soldiers were rotated from combat units to Concentration Camp units.

No skin off my nose. Then we can change it to: Anyone who voluntarily joined the SS overall previous to 1945 and after 1939 deserved at the very least a very long prison sentence, and better still a death sentence, along with all the higher Nazi judiciary -- the judiciary never saw action either, but certainly deserved death in most cases. Certainly, at Dachau the inmates recognized certain guards, so they were not aall rotated out by all means on that fateful day.

It is the allied attitude of fair trial, non arbitrary execution, justice, and so forth that distinguished us from the Nazis. It was our value for these things that defined us.

Really? Goodness. I guess you can't be talking about the Russians then, even though they were part of the Allies. And whether or not the Allies would have won WW2 without the Russians .... can o' worms. Or IOW, you seem to be talking in artificial extremes, and worse still, terrible strawmen later on here. I guess you can't be talking about the French Resistance, or the Polish Resistance, or the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Jews either, since a fair few of all of those did some killing with no formal trial beforehand.

May I ask, how do you feel about the terrorist being held in Guantanamo Bay?

Which particular one? You do mean singular, don't you? Or not?

In any case, Guantanamo Bay has absolutely no relevance at all to the Dachau incident.

1. The Dachau incident occured on the very first day of liberation of Dachau, and only on that day, when incoming American soldiers were horrified to see conditions and the stacks of the inmates' bodies in Dachau.
   .
2. Moreover, some of the guards fired on the American troops.
   .
3. All actions on that day can be seen as being "in the heat of the moment". Any legal trial of those concerned would have had to take the actions been in the heat of the moment into account, or be a complete travesty of justice.
   .
4. Moreover, the number of guards who died that day may be as few as 30; the figure of 300 -- 100x as many -- is the typically-inflated figure often given by neonazis. It is no surprise that MaGZ, who hates Jews and blacks, should seek legitimacy for the Nazis by attacking Eisenhower about something that was none of Eisenhower's personal fault at all, using grossly inflated figures.

None of the above bears the slightest similarity or relevance to Guantanamo Bay.

But I would still be happy to discuss Guantanamo Bay with you. But on another thread; it has zero relevance here.

We should just torture and execute them right?

Speak for yourself; if you want to try pretending that's my attitude here, you have a real re-think to do.

They're terrorist scum so they get what they deserve.

They are? Not proven in all cases. They do? Stop with the hyperbole and see above.

 

[Gurdur]

What has Eisenhower got to do with it?

My mistake. It was General Patton who did the right thing, in dismissing all charges.

 

[Sunni Man]

My mistake. It was General Patton who did the right thing, in dismissing all charges.

How is letting off murderers with No charges the right thing to do?

 

[lordofwaffles]

I think the short of it is shooting any surrendered persons is wrong, and is a war crime.

I find Magz however, to be ridiculous in general, let alone his assertions in this thread.

sunni man too. How does it feel to cling so tightly to a roundly crushed lie, only to sustain and justify your hatred? Your neutral stance is more a strong, even desperate desire to only have your side of the case presented, without any opposition. You live in a world only lit by candles, defined only by the monsters that you see in the shadows, and the lies you speak to keep you company. It is people like you that will ensure the middle east remains behind the rest of the world.

However, with the immorality of shooting what, by all save the most daft accounts, was a handful of people established, I'm really not too concerned. The scum Magz seems to worship so devoutly did more to destroy the German people than any other force in history. The degenerate filth that ran the Nazi party deserved so much worse than shooting.

I have no sympathy for camp guards. Some may have not been bad people. But neither were the people they sent to their deaths, the GIs/Allied/Russian soldiers who died dismantling the perverse empire Hitler built, and the countless civilians who were just killed out of hand. That a few of them were killed by outraged soldiers, is unfortunate. But that moment of weakness pales to transparent in front of the crimes of the party those guards loyally served.

 

[Nick Terry]

This is not entirely correct. The Yamashita standard established that a commanding officer can be found guilty if soldiers under their command commit war crimes, even if they are unaware of it.

It's important to remember that the laws of armed conflict are applied quite differently to criminal law, in that circumstance has an enormous impact on guilt. I think the report's recommendation that the Battalion commander be court martialled was fair - he was a senior officer and was on site at the camp itself, even if not present during the shootings.

Recent war crimes jurisprudence as well as the experience of the European trials in the 1940s would support my original statement. Command responsibility certainly would apply to the senior officer on-site, but not at higher level. The Yamashita case is particularly contentious and contradicted by the judgements in the NMT trials, which took a different line. Senior commanders must set a tone or issue basic guidelines which lead to their subordinates being more likely to commit atrocities, not merely have the bad luck to preside over one company out of 1,000 that happens to be commanded by a lieutenant going off the reservation spontaneously and as a one-off.

The case with e.g. Abu Ghraib is arguably different, since the entire chain of command conspired to create the environment where the Geneva Convention was ignored, and orders came from on high making this so. In the end, the responsible commanders all had their careers killed.

 

[dudalb]

Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick!

Could this conversation get any more absurd? Kindly don't feed the trolls.

Anybody comparing allied misdeeds with what Nazi Germany is either a troll,totally ignorant of history, or one of these fools who will take up any dumb opinion if it makes him look daring and edgy.

 

[Gregory]

Anybody comparing allied misdeeds with what Nazi Germany is either a troll,totally ignorant of history, or one of these fools who will take up any dumb opinion if it makes him look daring and edgy.

Believing that people should be given fair trials is "daring and edgy," huh?

 

[Nogbad]

Anybody comparing allied misdeeds with what Nazi Germany is either a troll,totally ignorant of history, or one of these fools who will take up any dumb opinion if it makes him look daring and edgy.

MaGZ ticks lots of those boxes.

Nevertheless, isolated instances of murder are still murder - they are not excused because a psycho serial killer has clocked up hundreds of kills and is therefore exponentially worse.

The Russians did some pretty awful things to German women and children on the Eastern front but were not required to stand trial. Historically this is not surprising - I cannot think of any instances where the victors put themselves in the dock - although Bomber Harris did get quietly shunted off to the obscure side of life.

 

[Sunni Man]

It has always amazed me that this is a skeptics forum. Yet when it comes to the Holocaust. The people here want NO debate or discussion.
The standard version of the Holocaust is set in stone and doubting of the "official" version is forbidden.

 

[SDC]

Sunni man, there is no reason for you to be hostile to Eisenhower. He was not Jewish. Many Jews have German-appearing surnames, granted, but he was not one.

 

[Sunni Man]

Sunni man, there is no reason for you to be hostile to Eisenhower. He was not Jewish. Many Jews have German-appearing surnames, granted, but he was not one.

Once again, I am Not against the Jews. They are a very inventive and clever people.

It's the Zionists that I oppose.

 

[applecorped]

Once again, I am Not against the Jews. They are a very inventive and clever people.

It's the Zionists that I oppose.

The Zionists are even more clever and inventive!

 

[Sunni Man]

The Zionists are even more clever and inventive!

No they are just sadistic and pure evil!!