> Wow we sure threw that one out the window with the covid 19 vaccine didn't we?
No, we have not.
Also, it's completely asinine to compare voluntary vaccination by an incredibly safe vaccine in the middle of a pandemic that claimed millions of lives, with forced medical experiments often resulting in deaths.
yeah, i'm going to need you to prove that statement by showing me the standard 10-12 year safety studies available for those "incredibly safe" mRNA vaccines.
In some countries vaccination was planned to not be voluntary. This was the case in Austria, with a government stipulated mandate.[1] The situation changed rapidly, but just pointing out that vaccination against COVID was not always planned to be voluntary, especially as the OP mentioned his employer was mandating it.
You can quit your job if you want to stay infectious. There's absolutely nothing controversial in requiring vaccinations as a condition for employment.
> Wow we sure threw that one out the window with the covid 19 vaccine didn't we?
I don't consent to breathing in the virus particles of someone who increased their chances of getting infected, or increased the viral load they carried around, because they refused the vaccine. Ultimately you need some way to balance people's rights whenever they are conflicting. Your right to refuse the vaccine vs my right to not die due to your ignorance.
It's not just about me, it's about protecting the rights of any people you interact with, such as shopkeepers. In my opinion, their right to not get Covid supersedes your right to avoid the vaccine. If you are totally hermetic, then sure, I think it would be wrong to force you to be vaccinated, but it's hard to design policy with such granular carveouts without it becoming a bureaucratic mess.
> Wow we sure threw that one out the window with the covid 19 vaccine didn't we?
Wow amazing how a post about Nazis on trial immediately surfaces people who had no decency to take a jab to literally help the world fight a global deadly threat.
I recently reread The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which was written a long, long time ago. But the author had paid his dues by reading all this, when it was a lot harder to get at than it is now.
In the version I read, he starts it off taking about how the Nazi archives are currently sitting in storage in New York. He advocates mimeographing them before returning them to the (West) Germans.
The Nuremberg Trials were fascinating. While I think many of the individuals leading the tribunal were trying to do a good job in the tradition of their respective nations' legal frameworks, the victorious allies could really not see eye to eye on what was a fair measure of retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, etc. So my take is that largely all legal norms were discarded or violated, and the tribunal had to reach sentences and conclusions that were politically and diplomatically acceptable for the US, UK, France, and the USSR (not to mention a dozen or more other nations relying on the four victorious major powers in the immediate aftermath of the war).
I'd be very curious to see what people recommend since I think it's very important to consider how the victors behaved at the end of the war. I studied some details about Nuremberg while in law school, from an Anglo American legal point of view, and then I spent a lot of time on wikipedia learning the historical background of the individuals involved.
I've posted a top level comment as I felt it was worth it, but the last surviving prosecutor passed away April 2023 and wrote multiple inspiring works on the topic. Lookup Ben Ferencz' 'Parting Words' . While the book doesn't spend its entire time on the trial, it discusses the difficulties of holding people accountable for war crimes (even today).
The movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) is the classic summary. It's a docu-drama, but reasonably accurate. All the big stars of the day, from Spencer Tracy to Judy Garland. William Shatner has a minor role.
Weren't they in the process of committing some as these trials were ongoing? I don't think there's a reliable number, but certainly 6 figure and likely 7 figure death tolls for ethnic Germans due to postwar resettlements etc.
> all the major powers had committed similar atrocities in their own pasts
The Soviets for sure, but are you really arguing that the US and UK (and Empire) were operating on the same industrial level?
Incidents that come to mind for me would include the Bengal famine, and it was terrible, but it wasn't the systematic and controlled killing at which the Soviets and Nazis became so expert.
The very idea of non-whites as sub-humans to be exploited was almost universal in Europe. The genocide of indigenous people, human experiments, eugenics, the whole process of colonization, any number of massacres.
The Brits invented the modern concentration camp during the Boer War, see also the Opium Wars. The Philippines War, Banana Wars,
Nobody is a saint, it seems to be the story of 'civilization'.
These sorts of ordeals (not that there have been many of them) truly fascinate me - especially with regard to the decisions on 'appropriate' retributive justice. As a student growing up in South Africa we were often asked to compare the objectives and results of the Nuremburg trials alongside the Truth and Reconciliation Comission at the fall of Apartheid. The TRC allowed those accused (on both sides), to come forward and provide an honest recounting of their crimes to the court and family of the victim, and receive amnesty in return.
Especially given that I'm of a generation born near the end of Apartheid, we grew up with the "badge of honour" mentality around the TRC. But almost 30 years later, many of the victims of these crimes are left feeling like the perpetrators got off scott-free, for an often half-recounting of the event and not much more. It's not uncommon to hear references to Nuremburg when discussing the more henoius crimes described - for example, a doctor performing the sorts of acts those at Nuremburg were tried for, who was recently discovered to be a family GP in one of the Nation's capitals, quietly continuing his life. However, it's not an opinion I would say is particularly strong in those who have it, nor too commonly discussed - but it's an interesting weighing up of "an appropriate justice which would please all participants was difficult, or impossible to decide", versus "it's incredible that the participants and organisers were able to come to a decision that did what it said on the box, mostly".
I was particularly interested to see suggestions of a TRC (based on South Africa's own) introduced to deal with the after-effects of the 'Troubles' in Ireland, England and Northern Ireland - and it appeared to be a strong "NO" from all sides, which I found fascinating as it did not seem driven only by a need for appropriate retributive justice, but rather (in my opinon) seemed driven by the belief that we have the ability to draw finer lines as a group, and need not polarize our decisions between harsh, message-sending retribution and amnesty for participation.
All that being said I couldn't tell you which pick given the choice, but it certainly feels hopeful reflecting on just how much care in group decision making and inclusive participation has been displayed in the past in such events.
I think that one of the concerns about a TRC in NI is/was that both sides saw the future opportunity for justice within the existing or likely to exist legal framework. A TRC would have nullified that and many people felt that the state actors (in particular) should not be allowed to evade potential accountability.
I know not much at all about South Africa but what you describe puts me in mind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb's_paradox - the world will be better off if powerful criminals believe that they can give up their power and still live consequence-free. Then at least they have the option of giving up power and everyone might benefit.
If they think they'll be given the Gaddafi treatment [0] then the rational thing for powerful monsters to do is go down swinging.
It is better to have systems to punish crimes, but it is also important to have meaningful amnesty even at the expense of fairness.
And yet, all the sentences were laughably short. Organizing the worst mass slaughter in human history got most of its architects and functionaries less time than driving a getaway car for a convenience store robbery in Florida would.
And then most of them were paroled less than half way through their sentences.
People who plead guilty and pledged loyalty to the new government were given light sentences. People who plead innocent were executed. The results could hardly be called inexplicable.
And of those that were, most of the ones who fought the charges weren't convicted, or were convicted of far lesser charges. Only a few got death sentences.
... For instance, the industrialists that bankrolled the Nazis, ran their factories with slave labour, and made posion gas for exterminating Jews and other victims of fascism got 2 to 7 years, with most of them being acquitted.
Of the four death sentences handed out in the SS trials, only one was actually carried out. None of them, including the people who got life sentences actually served more than 10 years!
If this is victor's justice, the victors did a shit job of actually punishing the losers.
Thats not incorrect. The idea that people working for companies making basic supplies are guilty of murder for what their own government did with said supplies without their knowledge is so absurd that by your own admission they were not even tried. But that makes the trials of people who were fair? How about you directly enumerate the rights they were or were not afforded to determine if their trials were fair.
I would beg to differ. The industrial magnates of this German era where all well aware of what their supplies were going towards: A 'total war' that didn't stop at exterminating anybody considered inferior.
Each individual case is certainly difficult but there is a line where you can and should be tried as an employee for participating in something which violates laws and or ethical boundaries. And this doesn't apply only to the manufacturing of something like Zyklon B nerve gas.
Do you expect the executives of Raytheon and Lockheed to be put on trial if they lose a war too? You don't want to open that can of worms. Living by the sword is for soldiers and military, not for the civilian government. In the past, royalty who lost a battle were treated well and ransomed precisely to prevent blowback when the shoe is on the other foot.
If the US starts a six-year war of extermination against Jews and Slavs and Roma and others, killing 30 million people, I think more than the executives of Raytheon should stand to lose their heads, but it would be a good start.
It certainly wouldn't help their case if they also used slave labour, and bankrolled the fringe party that went ahead to seize power, and unleash that horror upon the world.
'Just following orders' isn't a valid defense for a lieutenant, and it absolutely isn't a viable defense for a general. Or for someone like Krupp.
Firstly, Zyklon B is not “nerve gas” its cyanide that was manufactured as an insecticide to disinfect lice. If you have proof that the employees making it had knowledge of its use as a murder weapon please present it. Otherwise you are just going on a witch hunt to enact vengeance on people just for being German.
As a German I am a bit saddened that you are coming to defend some of the most murderous tools of mass annihilation.
Zyklon A (the predecessor product) was banned after the first world war due to its use as a weapon in the war.
And Bruno Tesch - the inventor of Zyklon B - was executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS for use on humans (at least according to Wikipedia).
In essence, the people in Germany knew very well what their leadership was doing and they supported it. Too few were ever held accountable.
This is not about vengeance (there isn't such a concept in the modern justice systems, right?). It is about accountability for your own atrocities. Germans grow up learning this in the hope it can prevent another event like the Holocaust.
This kind of accountability extends to everyone. Even scientists in the trenches who participate developing those technologies that might be misused.
Once again you just keep asserting things without any evidence and in its place attack anyone who asks for it as “defending murderers” as if that is a foregone conclusion. This is the logic of charlatans and liars my friend. Think a bit harder about why you believe these things and if it is evidence and not emotion share it with me please.
> The idea that people working for companies making basic supplies are guilty of murder for what their own government did with said supplies without their knowledge is so absurd
Ok. Can anyone name an industrialist and present evidence that he thought people were being murdered with his company’s products? If not this is just mindless lashing out at powerless Germans for losing the war.
Versaille played a role, the Nazi's used, and the reparations, for propaganda. WW1 and WW2 were different so, as in WW1 a lot less genozide happened. What was very convinient for both, Allies and Axis, was the coming cold war. It allowed them to quickly forego the necessary clean-up work of Germany, an ugly and lengthy thing, and just go and use former Nazis to continue the "good fight against Communism".
That the Allies choose the Marshall over the Morgenthau plan was a good call so, even if the former would have worked as well including a complete purge of Nazis from Germany.
I'm sure you're able to tell the difference between the guilt of Germany's government and various other collaborators in terms of starting and prosecuting WWI, and what they did prior to, and during WWII.
If Versailles went too far in punishing the country, Nuremberg went nowhere near far enough in punishing the Nazis involved. And if bringing Nazis to justice is 'humiliating the country', I would suggest that country should consider disentangling itself from them.
Tying your national identity to those monsters is not a good look.
Those monsters took a crushed Germany and turned her into an economical, technological and military power house capable of waging war against the world. Would you "disentangle" yourself from something like that? Remember, they were once popular.
It's a mistake to think you're not crushing a nation's pride and self-respect by exacting vengeance against your monsters. Their restraint was wise and showed they learned valuable lessons.
It's not exactly what you are asking, but the tribunal wasn't even internally consistent. Look at Albert Speer. He wasn't executed and was about as high in the Nazi organisation as one could rise. Uniquely, he accepted (some) responsibility but other than that, the ruling is not very consistent.
Where it suited the U.S. Cold War objectives, they turned a blind eye to certain individuals, notably scientists. Hoping to deprive the Soviets of scientific expertise in rocket design and various topics related to nuclear weapons, the U.S. created an extra-judicial pathway that bypassed prosecution for some.
SS Sturmbannführer Wehrner von Braun almost certainly knew of forced labour used in the V2 program but rose to prominence in NASA with no reckoning of his past.
The book “Operation Paperclip” delved into this and other examples.
>SS Sturmbannführer Wehrner von Braun almost certainly knew of forced labour used in the V2 program but rose to prominence in NASA with no reckoning of his past.
And the US knew of the slave labor used by Belgium in Congo to extract uranium for the nuclear weapons program which killed dozens to hundreds of Congolese but for some reason we never talk about that as it's always "hey, don't look over there, look at the evil Nazis instead".
> The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.
You can't have a fair trial when the prosecution gets to admit whatever evidence it wants, including evidence that would normally be inadmissable (eg. Hearsay, admissions made through coercion or torture, etc). The tribunal was effectively a show trial, and in my opinion they should have just dispensed with the theater and carried out the predetermined punishments.
I think labeling it a "show trial" goes too far. Three of the original defendants (Fritzsche, von Papen, and Schacht) were acquitted; and Doenitz was spared the death penalty for his unrestricted submarine warfare orders because similar orders were issued by the victorious Allies. I doubt a full-on show trial would have been as just or merciful.
Another example is that the crimes for which various Nazis were tried were not codified to be crimes in any legal document at the tim. Bombing civilians etc was not, as such, banned by any international law, nor were genocide, concentration camps etc, and indeed the Allies did at times similar things themselves.
So although the Nuremberg trials were fashioned as a court of law and followed legal-esque principles, there was no written law or could follow; it simply didn't exist.
Hence, the tribunal was considered by some lawyers to be a mockery of court. The verdicts were effectively known ahead of time and no laws could really be cited, no legal process to follow.
That said, I'm not sure what would be a better alternative.
One of the main points against the validity of the Trials is that some of the most high profile defendants confessed to things that were either not true or greatly exaggerated versions of the truth. E.g. Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, confessed to having murdered three million people there, whereas in reality the number could not have been much more than 1 million.
Perhaps writing a book about hate (i.e.: how some people should be bred out of the population) that sets very hateful events in motion is a good criteria to establish when someone deserves criticism.
It's true, the cleansing of the American west and propaganda like Birth of a Nation should be understood as prototypes for fascism. Hitler makes the connection himself:
[1]
> Hitler frequently compared the German war for Lebensraum (living space) in ‘the East’ to the colonial wars waged by the nineteenth century’s Euro-American great powers. The Slavic world, he believed, had to be conquered and colonized and its population vanquished. Completion of this ‘colonizing mission’ inevitably demanded the destruction of the ‘natives’, as a result of methods similar to those used in the conquest of the ‘American West’. In a monologue to his close associates, Hitler declared, ‘There is only one duty: to Germanize [“the East”] by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.’ He also compared the quelling of partisan resistance in the ‘Wild East’ to ‘the struggle in North America against the Red Indians’. According to his understanding, the American ‘Nordics’ had colonized ‘the West’ after they had ‘shot down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand’.‘Here in the [E]ast’, Hitler predicted, ‘a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America.’
Or you can read Patton's diaries from 1945, which might as well be Goebbels' with the way he rants about Jews, Bolsheviks, and Jewish Bolsheviks. An American cowboy indeed!
Stanford has already acknowledged the ugly views of its founder and stopped honoring him. Posting a battle-cry like this on a story that is only tangentially about the history of Stanford seems likely to hijack discussion.
"It questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid the war at all costs but were forced into action by Adolf Hitler's aggression. It consists largely of official government transcripts, newspaper articles, and other documents from the time, with Baker only occasionally interjecting commentary. Baker cites documents that suggest that the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom were provoking Germany and Japan into war and had ulterior motives for participating."
The reviews are less than stellar: "Historian Noel Malcolm described it as a "strangely childish book"[3] and journalist William Grimes in The New York Times as a "self-important, hand-wringing, moral mess of a book."[4] Christopher Hitchens accused Baker of ahistoricism and wrote that numerous passages in the book served as a reminder of how "fatuous the pacifist position can sound, or indeed can be."
I honestly thought it was well known that the US in particular wanted a war with Japan but domestic politics prevented outright aggression.
Instead, IIRC, the US blockaded oil deliveries to Japan to the extent that the Japanese economy was within a month or so of collapsing. The Japanese - who had been invading other asian countries - were left with little choice but to attack the US to stop the blockades.
My understanding is that the US goal was to avoid Japanese hegemony in Asia. Certainly, the idea that the Japanese attack was a “surprise” was a convenient myth. The form of the attack, maybe, but not the expectation.
I don’t have references handy. This is just from memory.
My understanding was that there was a strong appetite to attack Japan in the US government, but that there was no domestic support, so US goals had to be achieved using other means. I might be wrong about this, but that's what I recall.
As far as I can see, there is very little to compare that situation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
From what I gather, Japan's attack did come as a surprise. The two parties were at odds, but not to the point that a war was an immediate concern.
No doubt some in the government wanted to attack, no different than you could find who want to attack Iran in today's government, but it's not the US government's position. FDR was definitely more interested in getting involved internationally, but the Republicans were staunchly isolationist.
The comparison to Russia and Ukraine is there. Russia preemptively attacked Ukraine because it wanted to prevent NATO from getting a foothold in it's sphere of influence. Japan considering the Pacific Ocean and namely the resources in South East Asian there's, so preemptively attacked the US to prevent it from opposing it's control over the Pacific.
They were except for their nominee running against FDR in 1940. His interventionist stance (and otherwise complete lack of political experience) made FDRs victory all but assured.
I’m not sure how you have a base so aligned on a topic that gives them an excellent chance on defeating the incumbent nominate a political nobody who holds a dissenting opinion. The same nobody who went on to serve in FDRs administration.
They had also accepted Soviet insistence that only Axis aggression was covered by the new court - otherwise the Soviet authorities would have been in the dock as well for carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/20...
> Everyone in the court was issued with headphones to allow them to hear the charges being read in their native language, but the accused showed little interest.
They were probably already resigned to the idea that they would be executed and thought there was little point in trying to pay attention and defend themselves. Most of them wished they were already dead.
> The British Government wanted to shoot the leaders once they were caught and formally identified - but the Soviet Union and US favoured a legal process.
It's ironic how the British wanted to resort to such uncivilized methods as summary execution without trial, while the Soviet preferred a legal path.
Is it actually ironic? Weren’t the soviets well-known for show trials? That is, were they arguing for a legal process or a legitimising one? I don’t know the reason for the British preference but I do feel there are arguments for it, e.g. if such a tribunal was expected to have predetermined results, why associate your legitimate legal system with it.
Not only that, there was agreement among the allies on which war criminals would be turned over to whom for punishment. So the USSR might have preferred a trial since those who committed the worst offenses in the USSR would be turned over to them instead of being shot by the British.
A good example are the Cossacks that fought on the side of the Axis. Although they were taken as POWs by the US and UK, they were put on trains and shipped back to the USSR to their eventual deaths.
That's what people believe. It took quite a whilemlonger for German POWs in the USSR tonreturn, butvthe Adenauer government ultimately srtuckna deal, and they returned. By the way, the survival rate of those POWs wasn't that bad neither. Especially given the overall situation of the USSR at the time.
The alliance failed from day 1 since they were also supposed to declare war on the soviets and not just Germany since they were supposed to protect the integrity of Poland which was violated by both Germany and Russia.
The last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials passed away on April 7, 2023 at the age of 103. It was Ben Ferencz' first case after he learned of the Eastern fronts 'Nazi death squad' (Einsatzgruppen). All other tribunal prosecutors were committed to other cases when he described the atrocities to his superior, so he took the case on himself. It both validates the top comment of allies not seeing eye to eye, but also how understaffed and underprepared the tribunal was.
He later helped start the Hague and dedicated his life acting as a voice for the voiceless due to war crimes and genocides.
Despite the horrors he witnessed, Ben was a beam of light for all around him. I highly recommend his works. Especially "Parting Words: 9 Lessons for a Remarkable Life"
His sort-of blog[1] is also fascinating, documenting stories from childhood until retirement and beyond. He travelled through Switzerland by bartering sugar (a rare commodity after war, but he had bags of them from the US army mess halls) for Swiss francs ... and missed his boat home[2]!
The Nuremberg case is a very interesting precedent. First of all, the Nuremberg trials—of all the tribunals that have taken place, from then until today—it is, I think, the most serious by far. But, nevertheless, it was very seriously flawed. And it was recognized to be. When Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor, wrote about it, he recognized that it was flawed, and it was so for a number of fundamental reasons. For one thing, the Nazi war criminals were being tried for crimes that had not yet been declared to be crimes. So, it was ex post facto. ‘We’re now declaring these things you did to be crimes.’ That is already questionable.
There is plenty more absurdity. like this bit:
Secondly, the choice of what was considered a crime was based on a very explicit criterion, namely, denial of the principle of universality. In other words, something was called a crime at Nuremberg if they did it and we didn’t do it.
So, for example, the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on—those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defense a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved. And that’s the way it ran through. Now, that’s a very serious flaw. Nevertheless, of all the tribunals, that’s the most serious one.
so, props to the new site and Stanford and crew for hinting at the absurdity of the trial, but i think they should do much more than hint. alas, calling every US President (and their many underlings) war criminals would probably not win Stanford many fans in the circles of power.
Chomsky has proven to be a rather biased observer in the "yeahbutwhatabout" game. Which is saying something, considering his ethnic heritage and the fact that we're talking about Nazis.
If he and Kissinger were on fire and I only had one glass of water, I'd drink it.
I don't want to derail the thread by getting into that; you can ask people from Ukraine to Cambodia to Indonesia to Latin America about the real-world effects of his brand of realpolitik. He's a big fan of placating dictators and invaders by ceding other peoples' territory to them.
When war comes to your doorstep, yes, not being a warmonger is a bad thing. Bullies understand only force and violence. They will not listen to reason, and they will not return the favor after you come to their aid. Kissinger, who spent his youth being bullied by real, live Nazis, should have understood that.
And when your cause is just, you need to be able to count on help from friendly Western democracies, not debates over how much of your country should be turned over to your attacker.
You’re being downvoted, but I’ll say this as someone who would be on Chomsky’s side if he bothered to even be on his own damn side… yeah, I’d drink the water too.
Exactly, they both talk a good game (as do the downvoters, no doubt), but when it comes time to live up to their ideals they always seem to have pressing business elsewhere.
See also Roger Waters, who wouldn't get any from me either.
In just and fair world, yes. In the real world we live in, not so much.
Examples of action nobody was tried for, Axis or Allies: Strategic terror bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, unrestricted submarine warfare.
I can’t say whether they should have, but I can say that part of the reason international law is a joke among friends is that it was designed such that this would be the question.
The US committed atrocities in the war, and it also took extreme measures in the war which shouldn’t be judged as harshly. But we don’t have a meaningful framework to reconcile those because reconciling them is intentionally excluded from the framework.
This is so true, we humans are the worst. Those who may hate CRT here in the states about slavery are really going to be upset when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan discussions filter down to the state political levels.
European colonization ended in the 1950s to 1960s, and it is seen as something bad. A full analysis will propably have to wait until the last colonial "masters" died of old age... And yes, how the colonies were treated has to be properly addressed. I do have the impression so, that all but the most die hard nationalists actually agree that colonialism was a bad thing.
The Nuremberg Trials weren't perfect. One notable example was Albert Speer, Hitler's Architect and part of his inner circle who got away with a 20 year sentence (before moving to London where he died years later) by claiming to not know anything about the Final Solution. He got away with this by basically being a "gentleman" without their being a smoking gun. It was a classic "he's one of us".
But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country. I mean there are neo-Nazi elements in Germany today but they're really fringe elements. If anything they're far less fringe in the United States now (fun fact: the United States had a lot of Nazi sympathizers eg the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden).
This is where we went wrong with the Civil War: we failed to cull the slave-owning class when such attitudes needed to be snuffed out entirely. I mean Emancipation came with compensating the slave owners rather than the slaves themselves. Lincoln's assassination was really unfortunate here too just because of who his VP was: a Confederate sympathizer who, among other things, pardoned all the secessionists and rebels.
I really wonder if we'd snuffed out the slave owning class and compensated the former slaves where we'd be today. Slavery economics simply moved to the prison system and forced labor.Segregation persisted for another century and the echoes of all that still exist today.
But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country.
Denazification was an entirely different process. The Nuremberg trials were for the very top leaders (and only a handful). The apparatus of the Nazi government never went to trial, they went through a Denazification process that was abandoned pretty quickly.
There are numerous examples of relatively high level Nazi's being a part of the new German government. The best example is Reinhard Gehlen who led the build up of West Germanys entire intelligence agency. Numerous Nazi officers ended up in high ranking positions in the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) and in high ranking political positions.
You're not wrong. Classic example: Adolf Neusinger [1] who went from the Nazi High Command to Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. Von Braun was another well-documented example.
We just differ on what "de-Nazification" means. It's partly about cutting the head off the snake but also making a public spectacle of it, laying Germany's war crimes bare for all the world to see, especially ordinary Germans. The Nuremberg Trials weren't solely responsible for this but they provided a key focal point.
Imagine if we'd cut the head off the Confederate snake in the same way.
Stalin once proposed during one of the Allied conferences to take and execute 50,000 German officers after the war. Since the Nazis kept detailed documentation about who did what, I think one could have easily found 50,000 SS and Wehrmacht members that committed war crimes severe enough to do so. Part of me thinks that should have happened, way to many Nazi scumbags got away to hold positions of power in the BRD.
I can accept a parallel between the systems in which slavery and nazism are tolerated.
But it seems an important difference, in judging the participants, whether those systems were inherited from hundreds of years of precedent, or newly-built by the current perpetrators.
> But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country.
Um what?! You seem to know very little about post-war bureaurcats in West Germany. They failed completely at de-nazifying then country.
Example, the first secret service (Organisation Gehlen, precursor to BND) was headed by a Wehrmacht general. The CIA put him there and didn't care. He was useful against the Soviets.
Even the first chancellor (Adenauer) eas basically blind on the right eye.
The East was much more effective in de-nazifying, sometimes a little too eager even. (And Adenauer refused to accept even the existence of the East German state. Surprise.)
I agree that nowhere near enough Nazi war criminals were tried, after all there were records proofing whom those were.
Using that fact to what, discredit the Nürnberg trials is disengenious. Because a) they included all allies and actually tried to prosecute (the equivilant in Japan was already much more influenced by the looming Cold War) and b) a lot more, albeit still not enough, war criminals were tried in other places than Nürnberg.
I highly recommend the Adam Curtis documentary (with its own biases and short comings) “The Living Dead”. In particular this episode. Trials like these probably don't work in the way you might think they work. The goal is to establish the 1 version of history that is recorded.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08b5xvv
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 507 ms ] threadNo, we have not.
Also, it's completely asinine to compare voluntary vaccination by an incredibly safe vaccine in the middle of a pandemic that claimed millions of lives, with forced medical experiments often resulting in deaths.
yeah, i'm going to need you to prove that statement by showing me the standard 10-12 year safety studies available for those "incredibly safe" mRNA vaccines.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60155635
You can quit your job if you want to stay infectious. There's absolutely nothing controversial in requiring vaccinations as a condition for employment.
What next, road speed limits as a tool of oppression?
I don't consent to breathing in the virus particles of someone who increased their chances of getting infected, or increased the viral load they carried around, because they refused the vaccine. Ultimately you need some way to balance people's rights whenever they are conflicting. Your right to refuse the vaccine vs my right to not die due to your ignorance.
Wow amazing how a post about Nazis on trial immediately surfaces people who had no decency to take a jab to literally help the world fight a global deadly threat.
Also it is full of courtroom art/sketches from the proceedings.
0: http://web.archive.org/web/20160709210523/https://www.svobod...
The Soviets for sure, but are you really arguing that the US and UK (and Empire) were operating on the same industrial level? Incidents that come to mind for me would include the Bengal famine, and it was terrible, but it wasn't the systematic and controlled killing at which the Soviets and Nazis became so expert.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
The Brits invented the modern concentration camp during the Boer War, see also the Opium Wars. The Philippines War, Banana Wars,
Nobody is a saint, it seems to be the story of 'civilization'.
Especially given that I'm of a generation born near the end of Apartheid, we grew up with the "badge of honour" mentality around the TRC. But almost 30 years later, many of the victims of these crimes are left feeling like the perpetrators got off scott-free, for an often half-recounting of the event and not much more. It's not uncommon to hear references to Nuremburg when discussing the more henoius crimes described - for example, a doctor performing the sorts of acts those at Nuremburg were tried for, who was recently discovered to be a family GP in one of the Nation's capitals, quietly continuing his life. However, it's not an opinion I would say is particularly strong in those who have it, nor too commonly discussed - but it's an interesting weighing up of "an appropriate justice which would please all participants was difficult, or impossible to decide", versus "it's incredible that the participants and organisers were able to come to a decision that did what it said on the box, mostly".
I was particularly interested to see suggestions of a TRC (based on South Africa's own) introduced to deal with the after-effects of the 'Troubles' in Ireland, England and Northern Ireland - and it appeared to be a strong "NO" from all sides, which I found fascinating as it did not seem driven only by a need for appropriate retributive justice, but rather (in my opinon) seemed driven by the belief that we have the ability to draw finer lines as a group, and need not polarize our decisions between harsh, message-sending retribution and amnesty for participation.
All that being said I couldn't tell you which pick given the choice, but it certainly feels hopeful reflecting on just how much care in group decision making and inclusive participation has been displayed in the past in such events.
If they think they'll be given the Gaddafi treatment [0] then the rational thing for powerful monsters to do is go down swinging.
It is better to have systems to punish crimes, but it is also important to have meaningful amnesty even at the expense of fairness.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_Libya
And then most of them were paroled less than half way through their sentences.
Most of them weren't even tried.
And of those that were, most of the ones who fought the charges weren't convicted, or were convicted of far lesser charges. Only a few got death sentences.
... For instance, the industrialists that bankrolled the Nazis, ran their factories with slave labour, and made posion gas for exterminating Jews and other victims of fascism got 2 to 7 years, with most of them being acquitted.
Of the four death sentences handed out in the SS trials, only one was actually carried out. None of them, including the people who got life sentences actually served more than 10 years!
If this is victor's justice, the victors did a shit job of actually punishing the losers.
I would beg to differ. The industrial magnates of this German era where all well aware of what their supplies were going towards: A 'total war' that didn't stop at exterminating anybody considered inferior.
Each individual case is certainly difficult but there is a line where you can and should be tried as an employee for participating in something which violates laws and or ethical boundaries. And this doesn't apply only to the manufacturing of something like Zyklon B nerve gas.
It certainly wouldn't help their case if they also used slave labour, and bankrolled the fringe party that went ahead to seize power, and unleash that horror upon the world.
'Just following orders' isn't a valid defense for a lieutenant, and it absolutely isn't a viable defense for a general. Or for someone like Krupp.
Zyklon A (the predecessor product) was banned after the first world war due to its use as a weapon in the war.
And Bruno Tesch - the inventor of Zyklon B - was executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS for use on humans (at least according to Wikipedia).
In essence, the people in Germany knew very well what their leadership was doing and they supported it. Too few were ever held accountable.
This is not about vengeance (there isn't such a concept in the modern justice systems, right?). It is about accountability for your own atrocities. Germans grow up learning this in the hope it can prevent another event like the Holocaust.
This kind of accountability extends to everyone. Even scientists in the trenches who participate developing those technologies that might be misused.
That idea is absurd.
Are you absolutely sure you need to humiliate a nation even after you achieved total military victory?
That the Allies choose the Marshall over the Morgenthau plan was a good call so, even if the former would have worked as well including a complete purge of Nazis from Germany.
If Versailles went too far in punishing the country, Nuremberg went nowhere near far enough in punishing the Nazis involved. And if bringing Nazis to justice is 'humiliating the country', I would suggest that country should consider disentangling itself from them.
Tying your national identity to those monsters is not a good look.
It's a mistake to think you're not crushing a nation's pride and self-respect by exacting vengeance against your monsters. Their restraint was wise and showed they learned valuable lessons.
Could you give some examples?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defendants_at_the_In...
SS Sturmbannführer Wehrner von Braun almost certainly knew of forced labour used in the V2 program but rose to prominence in NASA with no reckoning of his past.
The book “Operation Paperclip” delved into this and other examples.
And the US knew of the slave labor used by Belgium in Congo to extract uranium for the nuclear weapons program which killed dozens to hundreds of Congolese but for some reason we never talk about that as it's always "hey, don't look over there, look at the evil Nazis instead".
> The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.
You can't have a fair trial when the prosecution gets to admit whatever evidence it wants, including evidence that would normally be inadmissable (eg. Hearsay, admissions made through coercion or torture, etc). The tribunal was effectively a show trial, and in my opinion they should have just dispensed with the theater and carried out the predetermined punishments.
https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/text_blocks/2749
So although the Nuremberg trials were fashioned as a court of law and followed legal-esque principles, there was no written law or could follow; it simply didn't exist.
Hence, the tribunal was considered by some lawyers to be a mockery of court. The verdicts were effectively known ahead of time and no laws could really be cited, no legal process to follow.
That said, I'm not sure what would be a better alternative.
The best we can do is prune it when it’s getting out of control.
No one had any excuses, frankly.
[1]
> Hitler frequently compared the German war for Lebensraum (living space) in ‘the East’ to the colonial wars waged by the nineteenth century’s Euro-American great powers. The Slavic world, he believed, had to be conquered and colonized and its population vanquished. Completion of this ‘colonizing mission’ inevitably demanded the destruction of the ‘natives’, as a result of methods similar to those used in the conquest of the ‘American West’. In a monologue to his close associates, Hitler declared, ‘There is only one duty: to Germanize [“the East”] by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.’ He also compared the quelling of partisan resistance in the ‘Wild East’ to ‘the struggle in North America against the Red Indians’. According to his understanding, the American ‘Nordics’ had colonized ‘the West’ after they had ‘shot down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand’.‘Here in the [E]ast’, Hitler predicted, ‘a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America.’
Or you can read Patton's diaries from 1945, which might as well be Goebbels' with the way he rants about Jews, Bolsheviks, and Jewish Bolsheviks. An American cowboy indeed!
[1] - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230307063_1
https://news.stanford.edu/2020/10/07/jordan-agassiz/
You can read the report on him, commissioned and published by Stanford, that went into making this decision:
"Reports Of The Advisory Committee On Renaming Jordan Hall And Removing The Statue Of Louis Agassiz"
https://campusnames.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/14...
Stanford has already acknowledged the ugly views of its founder and stopped honoring him. Posting a battle-cry like this on a story that is only tangentially about the history of Stanford seems likely to hijack discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Smoke
The reviews are less than stellar: "Historian Noel Malcolm described it as a "strangely childish book"[3] and journalist William Grimes in The New York Times as a "self-important, hand-wringing, moral mess of a book."[4] Christopher Hitchens accused Baker of ahistoricism and wrote that numerous passages in the book served as a reminder of how "fatuous the pacifist position can sound, or indeed can be."
Instead, IIRC, the US blockaded oil deliveries to Japan to the extent that the Japanese economy was within a month or so of collapsing. The Japanese - who had been invading other asian countries - were left with little choice but to attack the US to stop the blockades.
My understanding is that the US goal was to avoid Japanese hegemony in Asia. Certainly, the idea that the Japanese attack was a “surprise” was a convenient myth. The form of the attack, maybe, but not the expectation.
I don’t have references handy. This is just from memory.
The US blockaded oil deliveries to Japan in response to their invasion of Manchuria, and was willing to remove the blockade if Japan withdrew.
I'm not sure you could say the US "wanted" war any more than you could say Ukraine "wanted" war with Russia.
As far as I can see, there is very little to compare that situation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
No doubt some in the government wanted to attack, no different than you could find who want to attack Iran in today's government, but it's not the US government's position. FDR was definitely more interested in getting involved internationally, but the Republicans were staunchly isolationist.
The comparison to Russia and Ukraine is there. Russia preemptively attacked Ukraine because it wanted to prevent NATO from getting a foothold in it's sphere of influence. Japan considering the Pacific Ocean and namely the resources in South East Asian there's, so preemptively attacked the US to prevent it from opposing it's control over the Pacific.
They were except for their nominee running against FDR in 1940. His interventionist stance (and otherwise complete lack of political experience) made FDRs victory all but assured.
I’m not sure how you have a base so aligned on a topic that gives them an excellent chance on defeating the incumbent nominate a political nobody who holds a dissenting opinion. The same nobody who went on to serve in FDRs administration.
> Everyone in the court was issued with headphones to allow them to hear the charges being read in their native language, but the accused showed little interest.
They were probably already resigned to the idea that they would be executed and thought there was little point in trying to pay attention and defend themselves. Most of them wished they were already dead.
> The British Government wanted to shoot the leaders once they were caught and formally identified - but the Soviet Union and US favoured a legal process.
It's ironic how the British wanted to resort to such uncivilized methods as summary execution without trial, while the Soviet preferred a legal path.
A good example are the Cossacks that fought on the side of the Axis. Although they were taken as POWs by the US and UK, they were put on trains and shipped back to the USSR to their eventual deaths.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
again something nobody talks about.
He later helped start the Hague and dedicated his life acting as a voice for the voiceless due to war crimes and genocides.
Despite the horrors he witnessed, Ben was a beam of light for all around him. I highly recommend his works. Especially "Parting Words: 9 Lessons for a Remarkable Life"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Ferencz
[1] https://benferencz.org/stories/
[2] https://benferencz.org/stories/1943-1946/getting-home-as-a-s...
The Nuremberg trials were international. Judges came from all occupying powers.
When they were done, America rented out the courthouse and used it for America-only trials.
The initial trials were for top-tier Nazis. The subsequent trials were for mid-tier Nazis who committed especially heinous crimes.
> The IMT contributed to the definition of war crimes and the outlawing of wars of aggression.
that hints at what really happened at the tribunal. chomsky has some details:
https://chomsky.info/20070803/
There is plenty more absurdity. like this bit: so, props to the new site and Stanford and crew for hinting at the absurdity of the trial, but i think they should do much more than hint. alas, calling every US President (and their many underlings) war criminals would probably not win Stanford many fans in the circles of power.If he and Kissinger were on fire and I only had one glass of water, I'd drink it.
When war comes to your doorstep, yes, not being a warmonger is a bad thing. Bullies understand only force and violence. They will not listen to reason, and they will not return the favor after you come to their aid. Kissinger, who spent his youth being bullied by real, live Nazis, should have understood that.
And when your cause is just, you need to be able to count on help from friendly Western democracies, not debates over how much of your country should be turned over to your attacker.
that kind of whataboutism?
See also Roger Waters, who wouldn't get any from me either.
He didn't get out early because he wouldn't denounce his allegiance to Hitler, either.
Examples of action nobody was tried for, Axis or Allies: Strategic terror bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, unrestricted submarine warfare.
The US committed atrocities in the war, and it also took extreme measures in the war which shouldn’t be judged as harshly. But we don’t have a meaningful framework to reconcile those because reconciling them is intentionally excluded from the framework.
Slavery in the US ended in the 19th century.
But Nuremberg was very successful in de-Nazifying the country. I mean there are neo-Nazi elements in Germany today but they're really fringe elements. If anything they're far less fringe in the United States now (fun fact: the United States had a lot of Nazi sympathizers eg the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden).
This is where we went wrong with the Civil War: we failed to cull the slave-owning class when such attitudes needed to be snuffed out entirely. I mean Emancipation came with compensating the slave owners rather than the slaves themselves. Lincoln's assassination was really unfortunate here too just because of who his VP was: a Confederate sympathizer who, among other things, pardoned all the secessionists and rebels.
I really wonder if we'd snuffed out the slave owning class and compensated the former slaves where we'd be today. Slavery economics simply moved to the prison system and forced labor.Segregation persisted for another century and the echoes of all that still exist today.
Denazification was an entirely different process. The Nuremberg trials were for the very top leaders (and only a handful). The apparatus of the Nazi government never went to trial, they went through a Denazification process that was abandoned pretty quickly.
There are numerous examples of relatively high level Nazi's being a part of the new German government. The best example is Reinhard Gehlen who led the build up of West Germanys entire intelligence agency. Numerous Nazi officers ended up in high ranking positions in the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) and in high ranking political positions.
We just differ on what "de-Nazification" means. It's partly about cutting the head off the snake but also making a public spectacle of it, laying Germany's war crimes bare for all the world to see, especially ordinary Germans. The Nuremberg Trials weren't solely responsible for this but they provided a key focal point.
Imagine if we'd cut the head off the Confederate snake in the same way.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger
But it seems an important difference, in judging the participants, whether those systems were inherited from hundreds of years of precedent, or newly-built by the current perpetrators.
Um what?! You seem to know very little about post-war bureaurcats in West Germany. They failed completely at de-nazifying then country.
Example, the first secret service (Organisation Gehlen, precursor to BND) was headed by a Wehrmacht general. The CIA put him there and didn't care. He was useful against the Soviets.
Even the first chancellor (Adenauer) eas basically blind on the right eye.
The East was much more effective in de-nazifying, sometimes a little too eager even. (And Adenauer refused to accept even the existence of the East German state. Surprise.)
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/
International Military Tribunal: 24 accused
Nuremberg Military Tribunals (12 trials): 185 accused
Using that fact to what, discredit the Nürnberg trials is disengenious. Because a) they included all allies and actually tried to prosecute (the equivilant in Japan was already much more influenced by the looming Cold War) and b) a lot more, albeit still not enough, war criminals were tried in other places than Nürnberg.
Yes this was my point. I do not want to discredit the Nuremberg Trials, they did the right thing and they did a good job.