94 year old Former Auschwitz guard on trial in Germany

Irish Guitarist

This is the same kind of revisionist history that has people comfortably sitting at their keyboard criticising the last pope for being a Nazi when in fact he was a scared child who joined the Hitler Youth because it was required by law.

It's easy to sit at your keyboard saying how you'd tell Hitler to fuck off with himself.

esforum

good man, avoid the subject completely.

I suppose we should drop this case and ignore the victim as well?

http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/gardai-could-quiz-90-year-7865560

arybvtcw0eolkf

Sand wrote: »

TBH, I'd think under the right circumstances, most human beings including yourself would join a prestigious unit and kill defenceless human beings. .

Its very easy to get people to go to war, to commit awful deeds in time of war and yes its easy to get them to kill innocent people.

You use propaganda to belittle your intended victims, to show they're vermin and a threat to national interests. You ridicule the peace makers, lock them up, attack their homes, families and businesses.

When those young men go off to war you threat them like celebrities when they return on leave, on sick leave or at the end of their tour ~ you shower them with medals, thank them for their service. Applaud their deeds at the theatre, give them free passes to shows, let them skip ques in cafes and bars etc.

It worked in WWII and its working today in the USA.

Hans Bricks

A wounded frontline soldier who took up guard duties ? War crimes ? This all seems very vindictive. You'd swear he was the inspiration for Ralph Fiennes character in Schindler's List. Dare I say it, I think unless another one of the senior boys in Brazil or Argentina is uncovered, let it go.

A_Sober_Paddy

The_Valeyard wrote: »

I dont think the time matters. He helped facilitate the mass murder of thousands.

Granted, but what about the allies who knew about it and did nothing until they started to worry about being possible invaded

Bobthefireman

A_Sober_Paddy wrote: »

Granted, but what about the allies who knew about it and did nothing until they started to worry about being possible invaded

But 'what about'.............

Jimoslimos

timthumbni wrote: »

Deleted User wrote: »

Can we also see the trials of the many surviving British soldiers and officials who, in the dying days of the British Empire between 1952 and 1960 presided over the internment of a million Kenyans, and the deaths of up to 100,000 of them, in the euphemastically named "enclosed villages" and the mass executions following farsical British colonial "trials" of thousands more (heavily tortured) Kenyans?

Like hell we will.

How did they get away with it?

Major Off topic alert.... lol.

Off topic you say...

timthumbni wrote: »

No doubt the British Labour Party will be campaigning for his release.

kowloon

MarkY91 wrote: »

In your opinion, which historical events is worse?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZYQluJW-dM

end of the road

CrabRevolution wrote: »

What is the other 99% of the justice that you reckon the jews deserve? They were given a carte blanch to colonise Palestine and boot the locals out, and are allowed brush off any criticism of their various crimes and atrocities against the Palestinians by simply bringing up anti semitism and the holocaust. If the jews are getting "justice" it was the Palestinians who suffered it.

On top of that, unlike pretty much any genocide or massacre in history Germany has paid billions of euros worth of reparations to Israel, as well as supplying billions of euros worth of military equipment for free, along with selling heavily discounted equipment.

exactly. israel has got more then enough from germany. in fact, they shouldn't have got anything from germany considering they didn't exist until a few years after the war ended. any reperations should have been paid to the families of those killed. when does germany have to stop paying anything to israel?

as for this 94 year old, the only reason he should be on trial is for commiting a crime. not for this "make an example" bs which is only political /doing something to be seen to be doing something bull.

esforum

A_Sober_Paddy wrote: »

Granted, but what about the allies who knew about it and did nothing until they started to worry about being possible invaded

you think NOT invading a country and stopping them is as culpable as voluntarily joining a paramilitary force within the country and participating?

Eugene Norman wrote: »

It's a crap morality that wants a 17 year old in Aushwitch who wasn't involved in killing in jail at 94, while leaving the much younger perpetrators of much more recent mass killings (often by the west) free.

what 17 year old? He didnt even join the SS until he was 18. He was 20 when he saw the camp

Hans Bricks wrote: »

A wounded frontline soldier who took up guard duties ? War crimes ? This all seems very vindictive. You'd swear he was the inspiration for Ralph Fiennes character in Schindler's List. Dare I say it, I think unless another one of the senior boys in Brazil or Argentina is uncovered, let it go.

he wasnt a soldier anymore than the blueshirts were members of the defence forces here

Perhaps he was on duty in 1944

Mesrine65

bilston wrote: »

I'm not aware of any members of the Wehrmacht being prosecuted for invading France or Poland.

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

esforum

Mesrine65 wrote: »

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

That doesnt address the comment made at all, that refers to war crimes, not invading France and Poland which is what was stated.

B_Wayne

KingBrian2 wrote: »

I knew you would answer that. These people are old men.

alan partridge aha wrote: »

I honestly believe they shouldn't be having this trial, the man is 94 years of age.

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

This is the same kind of revisionist history that has people comfortably sitting at their keyboard criticising the last pope for being a Nazi when in fact he was a scared child who joined the Hitler Youth because it was required by law.

It's easy to sit at your keyboard saying how you'd tell Hitler to fuck off with himself.

It was not mandatory to join the SS... He made the choice to join the SS, a political militarised wing of the Nazi party, so just following orders doesn't exactly fly. Specific wings of the Nazi party were classified as criminal organisations by the Nuremberg trials, this included high command, leaders of party, the SS and Gestapo..

They were groups that were incredibly powerful in contrast to the average civilian and were not remotely comparable to the average low ranking soldier. Putting this man on trial is not revisionism. Prosecuting these individuals is based on the finding of the trials. Do I feel sympathy for him because he's 94? Nope, feeling bad does not reverse his decision to be complicit at time.

Skylinehead

bilston wrote: »

No, just the ones who committed war crimes.

I'm not aware of any members of the Wehrmacht being prosecuted for invading France or Poland.

Keitel, Goering, Jodl? They were all charged with waging wars of aggression at Nuremberg.

jony_dols

I remember reading a piece last year in the Sunday Times Magazine regarding the last survivors of the Armenian genocide, an est. 1.5 M were systematically murdered by the Turks. Most of those that managed to survive, never got to return home...Where were they're reparations, memorials, Nuremberg-esque show trials, outpourings of international sympathy? Up until 1990's they're were plenty of victims & culprits still alive...yet most people have never even heard of it.

Instead we get a bottom-of-the-bottom wrung, 94-year old ex-soldier, getting blamed for the horrors of the Holocaust, just because he happens to be the last schmuck standing. It's like saying that a security guard at an Apple store, holds as much sway regarding Apple's business strategy, as Tim Cook

KingBrian2

esforum wrote: »

hors****. Millions of Germans did NOT join the SS, many helped Jews.

Being a coward or a sheep or a mix of both is not a defence.

He did what he did, his motives are irelevent, he acted in a certain manner.

If theres insufficient evidence that he faciliatated the slaughter then he will be found innocent.

the arguements that just because we dont convict everyone is also rubbish, theres people that get away with crimes, doesnt mean we stop chasing criminals.

And being in the SS is not the same as a Marine in Iraq. The US are not taking part in genocide of a people nor, and I fail to understand why I need to repeat this again, were the SS a military unit. They were a paramilitary unit of the Nazi party.

I would also appreciate it if people could advise what age and time limits they feel should apply. How long can you dodge jail before its considered ok to ignore your crimes and arent we also constantly saying the justice system needs to consider the victim above the offender?

SS is more comparable to the CIA than the Marine. They had powers to behave as the saw fit. SS officers took control of the battlefield like no other force. They even hired insurgent groups from across Europe. So their atrocities are well known across the land.

esforum

KingBrian2 wrote: »

SS is more comparable to the CIA than the Marine. They had powers to behave as the saw fit. SS officers took control of the battlefield like no other force. They even hired insurgent groups from across Europe. So their atrocities are well known across the land.

for the second time, why are you quoting me when you state this? I am well aware that the SS were not soldiers.

CIA qould be a bad fit, the IRA would actually be a good comparison. Imagine SF getting power and then turning around and making the IRA legal and powerful in mainstream society while telling the military and Gardai that they are now top dogs

KingBrian2

esforum wrote: »

for the second time, why are you quoting me when you state this? I am well aware that the SS were not soldiers.

CIA qould be a bad fit, the IRA would actually be a good comparison. Imagine SF getting power and then turning around and making the IRA legal and powerful in mainstream society while telling the military and Gardai that they are now top dogs

CIA is a similar version of the Gestapo. A quasi terrorist organization and the IRA would be up there as well.

K-9

karma_ wrote: »

None of what you describe happened, at all. There's a thread next door to this one about the Ukrainian SS Galacian unit. Something like 7000 of it's members were relocated to Britain post war because the Allied powers didn;t want to send them back to the USSR in case they were persecuted, essentially protecting them.

Many other veterans like I said ended up in mainstream German political parties.

They did indeed, some in the police and intelligence services too.

Others went onto big jobs in East Germany. Imagine that, a Nazi and the Stasi in one lifetime.

I don't know, prosecuting a 94 year old just seems strange.

K-9

Sand wrote: »

Just on this point - a lot of Germans (and other nationalities - the holocaust was an international effort with volunteers from the Atlantic to the Urals) post war did point to their fear that if they rebelled against their service that they or their families would be targeted and reprisals would be carried out. There is however almost no occurrences of this ever happening. If anything, the Nazis recognised the evil acts they were carrying out were monstrous, they rationalised them as necessary to 'save' future generations and were if anything sympathetic to those who could not 'bear the burden'.

I referenced a case of a Wehrmacht driver who not only rescued Jews in Latvia but drove them back and forth in his army truck to meetings with the local resistance who were smuggling them out of the country. Now, when caught he was tried and executed for 'treason' but his family were completely unharmed, and he was even allowed to write a letter to his wife apologising to her, saying that she ought to know that with his big heart he couldn't not help people who were so desperate.

The terrifying thing from the holocaust and the nazi era is not that Germany 'went mad' or that there is something particularly bloodythirsty or evil about Germans. That's too easy - its that humans are generally 'followers'. Just like bullying the quiet kid in school, it suddenly became socially acceptable to murder and kill entire groups in WW2 Germany. And human beings fell into line for pretty much the same reason that no one stands up to the bully in school. People take their cues from their leaders - the very few who stand against the tide are sometimes heroes but they are very definitely different. Ex-Nazis might claim they feared for their own lives or the lives of their families, but what they really feared was being excluded by the group. The vast majority of human beings will do anything to avoid being outside the group.

You see the same story with pretty much every brutality, though the scale varies - if you look at war crimes carried out by military units in Afghanistan and Iraq, the root cause in small units is always the NCOs permitting or even encouraging those acts of brutality and the lower ranks trying to impress the NCOs by being brutal enough.

You only have to look at Hillsborough this week to see what a small group, indoctrinated in a certain way of thinking, can do. A small lie or cover up suddenly takes on a life of its own.

Dyr

I remember reading years ago that, under german law, being a guard in one of the camps made you automatically guilty of murder and if you tried to contest that you would aslo be guilty of holocaust denial and you're lawyer may also be guilty of holocaust denial and be imprisoned

Seems mental.

Junkyard Tom

He should be tried in court at least. Whether or not he serves a custodial sentence, if convicted, is another matter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16QMQXIjYVU

SnakePlissken

String him up by his wrinkled balls. Millions were deprived the opportunity for a life as long as his due to men of his ilk.

ThinkProgress

There's lots of people that should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, not just the nazis....

Henry Kissinger, dick Cheney, anyone involved in dropping the atomic bombs on innocent civilians in japan... Etc etc

Whatever sadist dreamt up x-factor, reality TV etc. :P You could go on and on.

Avatar MIA

SnakePlissken wrote: »

String him up by his wrinkled balls. Millions were deprived the opportunity for a life as long as his due to men of his ilk.

Did you click your heels together after finishing that sentence?

SnakePlissken

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Did you click your heels together after finishing that sentence?

Yes

Wibbs

SnakePlissken wrote: »

String him up by his wrinkled balls. Millions were deprived the opportunity for a life as long as his due to men of his ilk.

You do know it's that revenge mentality of the mob aimed at a group that led humanity down that path in the first place? And will again.

And what about all the industrialists that bankrolled the Nazi's inside and outside of Germany? Vanishingly few of them ever came to trial, never mind justice. What about the remarkably little known story of what happened to Germany in the immediate post war world? Nearly one million German men that were alive when hostilities ceased never came home. Yes that figure is not a typo(the vanquished weren't given POW status so weren't covered under the Geneva convention for a start and it was a year later before the Red Cross were even allowed visit detainment camps and what they saw appalled them). Pretty much every German woman and girl from 9 to 90 was raped, many were slaughtered afterwards. Mothers were witnessed lining up to throw themselves off bridges into the rivers below dragging their kids with them. Thats before we get to the levels of starvation that post war blind eyes were turned to. Did Germany "deserve" punishment? Arguably yes, but equally arguably they suffered it back then.

That's all forgotten in the afterglow of victory, even today with the benefit of distance and hindsight. Without the "benefit" of the new Soviet threat and the cold war Germany's people would have suffered even more. Then it was useful to rebuild Germany as a bulwark against the Reds. Indeed the Holocaust as we know it today was ignored, even buried as a history because of this new expediency. It wasn't until the late 50's before a chap by the name of Raul Hilberg approached it as scholarship and he had a hell of a time getting it recognised and it wasn't until the 1970's before it was more widely known a story. If you talked to folks who had lived through/witnessed the war Belsen was the abomination, Dachau was far less known. In the West anyway.

Now the Holocaust is a sacred cow, political football, handy stick to wield on a few sides, fodder for the crawthumper and waters get muddied. The aforementioned Belsen a classic example. Witness statements considered historically valid claim they saw gas chambers at Belsen, a few even said they were put in them and reprieved, yet as all actual records from all sides show Belsen was never an extermination camp and had no gas chambers. However to publicly mention that in Germany today could get you in trouble even have you up on charges. Look at the political shítestorm in our neighbour over Red Ken's musings on the Nazi's and Zionism. I think him an awful muppet, but there is quite the bit of debatable truth to it. From the pages of the United States Holocaust Museum itself: Assigned to a section dealing with Zionist activities, Eichmann negotiated with Zionist functionaries and made an inspection tour of Palestine in 1937; his efforts to promote a "Zionist emigration of Jews from Germany by all [available] means" served him well in preparing him for his future activities. Before the "Final Solution" Israel reborn in what was then Palestine was one solution the Nazis considered quite a bit, as was shipping the Jewish population to Madagascar. Yep, crazy nuttery alright.

Should we ever forget the many millions that were slaughtered in that madness? Hell no. But we shouldn't be constantly raking over it time and time again. The Chinese had the right idea with regard to the horrors the Japanese rained on them. Record it, remember it, punish the ringleaders at the time and move the hell on.

SEPT 23 1989

Not forgetting all those patriotic German scientists who developed the rockets that reigned down on UK city's murdering tens of thousands of people

No courtrooms for them only nice jobs in NASA HQ putting the USA on the moon

Samaris

Wibbs wrote: »

Should we ever forget the many millions that were slaughtered in that madness? Hell no. But we shouldn't be constantly raking over it time and time again. The Chinese had the right idea with regard to the horrors the Japanese rained on them. Record it, remember it, punish the ringleaders at the time and move the hell on.

Humans being humans, the Chinese in general still don't like Japan much. The Rape of Nanking is (from my admittedly limited knowledge) still something brought up in much the same tones of historical hate as the holocaust is in this part of the world. We weren't part of it, so we just don't hear as much about it.
__

Separate to the above, I've lurked this thread the last couple of days. Nazi Germany is a phenomenon that very much lives in Western minds because Germany was..frankly, "one of us", part of Europe and not that long ago. I see a lot of silly talk nowadays of the Nazis being pure evil, which I honestly think is a way for people to distance themselves from the idea that ordinary people and a modern country could go this route, which is a dangerous and cowardly line of thought.

The last few survivors of that time are dying, the ringleaders are in general long since dead. It's very hard for us to really know what things were like back then. Contemporary records and books suggest that children were being indoctrinated into Nazi ideals against the wishes of their parents - actually removed from homes into more "ideal" homes (with Nazi caregivers to teach them their ways). There was a lot of suspicion against people who might not agree with the Nazi ways and they lived in constant fear of arrest.

Against this backdrop, it's really no surprise that young men and women were expected to join one of the many Nazi forces, SS, Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, and serve. They didn't really have much choice as to where they were sent at that point.

I suppose my main point is that he was a young man sent into an indescribably horrible job. He knew it at the time and was obviously unhappy with it since he requested to be moved elsewhere several times. There's no suggestion that he was anything more than just -there-. Let him live the last few years of his life out. Chasing up the last few Nazis, the lower rungs who were just "there" seems only vindictive.

Wibbs

Samaris wrote: »

I suppose my main point is that he was a young man sent into an indescribably horrible job. He knew it at the time and was obviously unhappy with it since he requested to be moved elsewhere several times. There's no suggestion that he was anything more than just -there-. Let him live the last few years of his life out. Chasing up the last few Nazis, the lower rungs who were just "there" seems only vindictive.

QFT.

Dyr

Samaris wrote: »

Separate to the above, I've lurked this thread the last couple of days. Nazi Germany is a phenomenon that very much lives in Western minds because Germany was..frankly, "one of us", part of Europe and not that long ago

Nah the Germans just made the big mistake of committing their atrocities against their fellow white europeans and in particular against an ethnic group that had formidable resources and influence.

If they'd stuck to darkies there would never have been an uproar.

Days and Days

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Not forgetting all those patriotic German scientists who developed the rockets that reigned down on UK city's murdering tens of thousands of people

No courtrooms for them only nice jobs in NASA HQ putting the USA on the moon

The Russians did not get their hands on them either which was an added bonus for Uncle Sam.

Skylinehead

Days and Days wrote: »

The Russians did not get their hands on them either which was an added bonus for Uncle Sam.

The Soviets got a lot of the German scientists after the war, mostly aimed at developing their own nuclear weapons.

karma_

Days and Days wrote: »

The Russians did not get their hands on them either which was an added bonus for Uncle Sam.

Skylinehead wrote: »

The Soviets got a lot of the German scientists after the war, mostly aimed at developing their own nuclear weapons.

Both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union went full crazy rampaging through Germany post war to grab as many of 'anyone' they thought would be useful to them.

That's what makes it so distasteful to call prosecuting a former guard in 2016 justice, what a joke.

tiger55

What choice did this man have? Refuse orders and join the inmates?

Capt'n Midnight

He could have asked for a transfer. AFAIK it was easily done.

Six million Jews were killed during WWII by the Germans and their allies, another six million non-Jews were also killed. The Soviet Union and it's constituent nations lost roughly twenty million during the war as did China.

A lot of Japanese also got off Scott Free.


Six million died in the Second Congo War.
How many would have died had Stalin killed off 60,000 (or 59,000) German officers at the end of the war ?

tiger55

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

He could have asked for a transfer. AFAIK it was easily done.

Transfer to where? The eastern front? That would have been a death sentence.

12Phase

tiger55 wrote: »

What choice did this man have? Refuse orders and join the inmates?

The only option you'd have really.

If I were aware of what was going on in a camp like that I honestly think I would take the consequences of refusing to have any part in it, even if that meant being shot.

There's absolutely no way, even if threatened with death or torture I could do that. It just goes against every fibre of me being human.

That's where I don't understand this 'following orders' agreement. I can't get my head around that excuse at all.

As for the rape, torture and attacks by members of the victors' armies, that was an absolute disgrace too and shouldn't have happened. It doesn't excuse or in anyway dilute the death camps though.

If you've actually ever been to one of those places, you just leave wondering about humanity and whether we'll even survive as a species at all or just wipe ourselves out in a fit of similar mass psychopathic behaviour. It's not like it's the only example of vicious 'ethnic cleansing' either. It's just one of the most extreme.

Honestly it is the most disgusting and disturbing place I've ever set foot. I'm still not over it and I was only a tourist...

tiger55

12Phase wrote: »

tiger55 wrote: »

What choice did this man have? Refuse orders and join the inmates?

The only option you'd have really.

If I were aware of what was going on in a camp like that I honestly think I would take the consequences of refusing to have any part in it, even if that meant being shot.

There's absolutely no way, even if threatened with death or torture I could do that. It just goes against every fibre of me being human.

That's where I don't understand this 'following orders' agreement. I can't get my head around that excuse at all.

As for the rape, torture and attacks by members of the victors' armies, that was an absolute disgrace too and shouldn't have happened. It doesn't excuse or in anyway dilute the death camps though.

If you've actually ever been to one of those places, you just leave wondering about humanity and whether we'll even survive as a species at all or just wipe ourselves out in a fit of similar mass psychopathic behaviour.

Honestly it is the most disgusting and disturbing places I've ever set foot. I'm still not over it and I was only a tourist...

I am sure you would.

Easy for you to say such things from the comfort of the internet.

Get a grip.

Capt'n Midnight

FloatingVoter wrote: »

How much is your life worth to the nearest cent ?
...
Run into any trouble with the maths, and I think you'll find the calculations were already done by the Reich - nowhere near as generous as mine.

Slave labour isn't as efficient as the paid stuff. And there's the problem of sabotage.

By removing millions of potential workers the Germans pretty much guaranteed they'd loose the war. Otherwise they'd have had higher production and free up more workers to become soldiers.

The big problem with Appeasement was that each new country taken meant resources could be used to keep Germany from going bankrupt. Had France and Britain done a deal with Russia or intervened earlier , Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Memel , Poland the German war machine would have ground to a halt earlier.

The Soviets and Romania supplied the Oil and Sweden the Steel. Removing either could have stopped the expansion.


The other way of preventing a war would be to put the fear of God into anyone tempted to start one. We still have a world where leaders can pretty much act with impunity, unless they invade a strong country and get defeated. Domestic revolutions are also a concern but in the most leaders can get away with just about anything internally as long as they stay within their boarders. ( The Arab spring would contradict this a bit but that's a whole other mess )

12Phase

tiger55 wrote: »

I am sure you would.

Easy for you to say such things from the comfort of the internet.

Get a grip.

Yeah, it's very easy. I would quite honestly get shot rather than do that. Comfort of the internet is nothing to do with it.

I very much have a grip - thank you!

Those kinds of situations obviously attract psychos into the roles and I'm sure they rise to the top of brutality is something the organisation prizes.

It's obvious in 'IS' and it's extreme brutality, it's obvious in various police brutality incidents and other abusive situations that the certain individuals end up in those scenarios where they've power to abuse because they seek out the ability to do that.

The nazi regime was run like a machine and most definitely had advanced HR management type strategy going on. I'm sure they were very capable of ensuring they picked people who were 'capable' of doing these things and and placed them in positions.

It is a very sad and disturbing reflection on human behaviour and I genuinely think that if you remove responsibility for crimes against humanity from the individual, no matter how long ago, you give people a sense of impunity and immunity from any consequences in similar situations.

Ethnic cleansing and barbarity hasn't just stopped after WWII. Plenty of it still going on, just perhaps not on the same blatantly organised industrial scale.

domrush

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

He could have asked for a transfer. AFAIK it was easily done.

Six million Jews were killed during WWII by the Germans and their allies, another six million non-Jews were also killed. The Soviet Union and it's constituent nations lost roughly twenty million during the war as did China.

A lot of Japanese also got off Scott Free.


Six million died in the Second Congo War.
How many would have died had Stalin killed off 60,000 (or 59,000) German officers at the end of the war ?

He did ask for a transfer, twice. I don't know what people expected him to do .

He didn't ask to be a camp guard, he's described it as the worst time of his life, he didn't have any part in the actual work inside the camp and he tried to get away from there and rejoin the front line twice? Do people expect him to have somehow sabotaged the camp alone and liberate every prisoner??

12Phase wrote: »

The only option you'd have really.

If I were aware of what was going on in a camp like that I honestly think I would take the consequences of refusing to have any part in it, even if that meant being shot.

There's absolutely no way, even if threatened with death or torture I could do that. It just goes against every fibre of me being human.

That's where I don't understand this 'following orders' agreement. I can't get my head around that excuse at all.

As for the rape, torture and attacks by members of the victors' armies, that was an absolute disgrace too and shouldn't have happened. It doesn't excuse or in anyway dilute the death camps though.

If you've actually ever been to one of those places, you just leave wondering about humanity and whether we'll even survive as a species at all or just wipe ourselves out in a fit of similar mass psychopathic behaviour. It's not like it's the only example of vicious 'ethnic cleansing' either. It's just one of the most extreme.

Honestly it is the most disgusting and disturbing place I've ever set foot. I'm still not over it and I was only a tourist...

You can say that if you were in this man's shoes you would have committed suicide soon as you were given the order to guard a concentration camp? The moral highground being taken by some of the people in this thread is ridiculous.

12Phase

Yup. Couldn't and wouldn't do it and I am very sure plenty did walk and face consequences as a result.

Bear in mind at least 15,000 were shot for desertion and large numbers were imprisoned and others left Germany.

Plenty of others were put on near front lines etc etc

Agent Smyth

Anybody who thinks this SS officer should not be put on trial because of his age or that he was only following orders and didn't have a choice need to educate them selves about what was really going on at that time.
I would suggest watching the documentary film "Shaoh" and or reading Raul Hilbergs "The Destruction of the European Jew" they might just change your view on not only how Germans but the whole world viewed the "The Jew Issue"

Dyr

tiger55 wrote: »

Transfer to where? The eastern front? That would have been a death sentence.

Apparently he served in the eastern front as an officer in the Der Fuhrer regiment and was wounded and then was refused his request to return to the front.

Now that regiment was nearly wiped out in Russia and SS officers had a very short life expectancy on the eastern front so the guy can hardly be criticized for the fact he wound up working as a guard.

12Phase

It also shows how dangerous it when a society puts unquestioning patriotism ahead of all other values.

For a society to function it needs to be self critical and have transparency and political decent.

Fundamentally that was what went catastrophically wrong in Germany and when you combine it with high technology, excellent infrastructure and wealth, it can produce horrific results. As you've huge power to do damage.

That's what worries me a lot about the remaining authoritarian states. Many of them now have a lot of economic clout, huge technical and production abilities, growing military capabilities and no democracy.

Only North Korea seems to quite at that level of extreme and doesn't really have the resources to do much damage beyond its own borders.

What's remarkably about Germany is they actually came from a democratic history and suspended it.

Dyr

esforum wrote: »

the SS were not the wermacht, they were not soldiers that were ordered to do stuff not within the normal remit or just happened to be there. They were the Nazi party murderers who willfully went in and killed Jews.

Later in the war, Russians and some French, etc were forced but Germans werent.

(The US did indeed murder and rape thousands of German civilians following victory and occupation. )

Germans were conscripted into the SS after '43. Most of the foreigner soldiers were volunteers and they were all regular soldiers.

The units that that were responsible for ethnic cleansing, the SS-TV were kept separate from the other branches.

Wibbs

12Phase wrote: »

Yup. Couldn't and wouldn't do it and I am very sure plenty did walk and face consequences as a result.

Remarkably few did and has been pointed out refusal wouldn't necessarily mean a firing squad either. The Nazi's in power were all too well aware of how repellent the task was. The "cleaner" more mechanised killing methods were as much to do with keeping the horror at arms length for their soldiers as they were to increase the death tolls. From early on they knew that they faced serious psychological fallout as the early mass shootings had shown. Look at the former guard in question. He was very much detached from the pointy end of the butchery. In extermination camps this was how they worked. Like shít rises to the top, so do the true psychopaths and that small number controlled the messy killing stuff, while the more normal, less "evil" removed themselves and the psychos were helped by press ganged inmates(their roles were truly horrific psychologically and many of them killed themselves). The methods were mechanised, detached and dehumanised as much as possible.

Now you claim you would refuse and maybe you would, but you would be one of the extremely rare ones make no mistake there. People are very much herd creatures. Look at what happens when panic on the street kicks off, or someone has a heart attack and falls down. few actually move to help. The vast majority either walk on by, freeze and/or gawp. People can freak out at muppets taking phone pictures, even selfies at tragedies, but idiotic though they may be, they're far more the norm. People took photos of themselves at the gates of the Warsaw ghetto.

The psychos and the heroes are two sides of the same coin; major outliers. In peacetime both tend to be monumental pains in the hole for "normal society". Both rebel against the society in different ways. They don't fit in. I don't mean some achingly self obsessed 14 year old goth who paints their bedroom black, I mean real square pegs in round holes. In times of war and conflict it's their time to be relevant and useful to the society. Maybe it's why those outliers never got bred out by evolution?

In short if this was 1930's Germany, the odds are overwhelming that you'd be marching in step behind the crooked cross like the vast majority of the people here.

12Phase wrote: »

What's remarkably about Germany is they actually came from a democratic history and suspended it.

Again back to the herd mentality. Cause enough of a change, or series of little changes and people will give up autonomy to the herd leaders. Look at how people fall over themselves to give way their privacy on Facebook, even send of their DNA, the instruction manual for building them to see what's what and pay for the privilege.

On another forum hereabouts I was recently reading a thread about speed limiting all cars and quite the number were all gung ho for it. "Health and safety" is a real carrot and stick to move the mob. Keep them panicked about every little thing, keep them in debt and overwhelm them with choices of more tat to fill their lives with and you can steer them remarkably easily. A future totalitarian state will require no gestapo to oversee it. As it stands if you collected all the data about you could know who you are, who you know, where you go, what you buy, what newspapers you read, what are your politics, what are your sexual leanings, how fast you drive and so on. People are all to happy to offer this stuff up themselves. Above all carrots and sticks the best of all is giving people the means to garner attention and ego boosts. Hitler did that for a nation and...

TBH that democracy ever took off in the first place is what always puzzles me.

Bambi wrote: »

Germans were conscripted into the SS after '43. Most of the foreigner soldiers were volunteers and they were all regular soldiers.

The units that that were responsible for ethnic cleansing, the SS-TV were kept separate from the other branches.

Yep. I think some are getting their "history" and "facts" from Hollywood B movies.

osarusan

I wouldn't be in favour of leaving him alone just because he's an old man.

But I'd like to see exactly what the law is here (I'm assuming/hoping it is something more nuanced than 'you were there so you're a mass murderer'), exactly what evidence there is of his alleged crimes under that law, and what his defence is.

If he's responsible for making sure innocent people didn't make it to old age, then he shouldn't be allowed have an undisturbed old age himself.

If there's evidence he was more than a powerless cog in the wheel, then he should face trial. There's no justice in letting him live his entire life getting away with murder, if that's what he did.