Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 10-09-2012, 09:19 AM
 
Location: Michigan
12,711 posts, read 13,437,800 times
Reputation: 4185

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dd714 View Post
Age is one thing, the fact that he was "just a guard" is another. The Nuremberg trials has already ruled that using that sort of defence is not justifiable if indeed attrocities were committed by an individual. Many tried to use that defense of "we were just following orders". It didn't work then, it should not work now.
Article IV of the Nuremberg principles states:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him".

The Nuremberg principles were applied to people who exercised at least some substantial degree of authority, not people on the lowest rungs of the military, or militarized social structure. Those people might of course still be held responsible for crimes they committed on their own account, but even at the time of the Nuremberg Trials and the Eichmann trial, it was never assumed that Article IV applied to grunt soldiers the way it did to Nazi leaders.

Hypocrisy check: I assume all those who wish to prosecute this old kraut deplore the successful use of the Superior Orders defense by Americans in the My Lai trial, correct?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 10-09-2012, 09:37 AM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,521,339 times
Reputation: 14621
I have followed this case for a long time and my uncle who was a tool-and-die maker as well, actually knew him in the 1970's at an acquaintance level. Having read the case and his history, it is pretty obvious that while he may have only joined when he was 17, he joined in 1943, turned 18 a couple months later and served well into 1944, all in the same capacity. The age issue while focused on in the CNN article is only a minor piece of the reasons holding up his deportation. He has admitted to escorting prisoners from work sites and serving as a perimeter guard. It has been semi-established that he certainly knew what was going on and what he was participating in even though he claims to have not directly committed any crimes.

My personal opinion is that yes, he should be prosecuted. This is the German government and legal system that is looking to prosecute him for crimes and the US should extradite him. It was our lax immigration policies after WW2 that allowed him and thousands of other former Nazi's with blood on their hands to seek refuge in the US as displaced persons. In the case of Mr. Breyer, he was actually denied entry when he first applied because he admitted to being a member of the Waffen SS, though he completely denied involvement in war crimes. However, several months later the immigration laws were changed and his SS affiliation was no longer a stumbling block and he was allowed entry. The loophole he wiggled through to get in also wasn't noticed years later when he applied for citizenship.

His case has been further complicated by the fact he had an American mother. He was born in 1925 in Czechoslovakia to a German father and American mother. His mother was legally a US citizen when he was born. By existing US law at the time he was not allowed to be a "natural" American citizen as that only applied if your father was an American. However, when he was first arrested in 1993 he succesfully argued that the natural citizen laws were gender biased. A federal court agreed that the laws were unconstitutional on the grounds of gender inequality. Since the laws were deemed unconstitutional Mr. Breyer was allowed to claim himself a natural American citizen from birth. So technically, he was an American serving in the SS at the concentration camps.

Since he was now techincally an American when the crimes were committed, this has greatly complicated his extradition. The US does not recognize the right of a foreign power to try American citizens for war crimes and is not a signatory member of the International Criminal Court at The Hague. That means the United States does not recognize that The Hague has any jurisdiction over American citizens or the nation as a whole.

Overall it seems as if Mr. Breyer will most likely never stand trial for his crimes do to the legal loopholes he has managed to wiggle through all these years. However, I personally think he should stand trial for his crimes.

A couple notes on things people were stating in the thread...

1. Not all SS members either Waffen or Totenkopf were volunteers. By 1943 the volunteer system was insufficient to meet demands and many people were drafted into the SS to serve in a variety of roles. This drafting was often done with force and any breach of discipline or attempt to desert would result in your death and punishment for your family. There are several known cases of SS draftees who deserted only to have their entire family executed for their "crime".

2. The US overall has a poor track record with Nazi war criminals. Our policies allowed thousands of men like Johann Breyer to enter the country and disappear and there were many others who were much clearer cases of war criminals who were deemed to be useful in the post war world who had their crimes ignored. There is no better example then that of Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon" who personally committed and directed many heinous acts. Of course, his skills at "counter-insurgency" were deemed very useful and he became an asset in South America for the American, British and West German governments. Eventually Barbie was caught and put on trial in France. I only mention this case, because it illustrates the strange dichotomy of the post-war world. Men who were the epitomy of war criminals, but could prove useful had their crimes ignored for many years. Now, we have a case where US law is obfiscating the prosecution of another war criminal. I see the prosecution of men like Johann Breyer as a form of atonement for the mistakes of the past, it doesn't matter that they are 80+ years old now.

3. There was an entire thread dedicated to the hypocrisy of the Nuremberg Trials and I think that it is one that is easily recognized. The victors wanted a form of justice and they got it. Some men like Doenitz were ultimately tried for nothing more then waging war. However, of the four charges at Nuremberg, three could be seen as hypocritical, but one was not and that is the charge relating to the Holocaust and broader war crimes. ALL nations in WW2 had rivers of innocent blood on their hands, but no nation save the Soviet Union (who was essentially unprosecutable) and Japan came anywhere close the level of barbarity and zeal of industrial execution that the Nazi's did. To attempt to bring in the concept of hypocrisy related to the charges about waging war has no place in a thread related to a man who committed crimes under the one charge that no one can argue with.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-09-2012, 09:51 AM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,521,339 times
Reputation: 14621
Quote:
Originally Posted by djacques View Post
Article IV of the Nuremberg principles states:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him".

The Nuremberg principles were applied to people who exercised at least some substantial degree of authority, not people on the lowest rungs of the military, or militarized social structure. Those people might of course still be held responsible for crimes they committed on their own account, but even at the time of the Nuremberg Trials and the Eichmann trial, it was never assumed that Article IV applied to grunt soldiers the way it did to Nazi leaders.

Hypocrisy check: I assume all those who wish to prosecute this old kraut deplore the successful use of the Superior Orders defense by Americans in the My Lai trial, correct?
You have to remember though that this isn't the US government prosecuting him, this is the German government that wants to prosecute him under their laws regarding Nazi war criminals. The DOJ believes that there is sufficient evidence, but the complications over his mothers citizenship status which made him an American from birth ex post facto and his age at enlistment in the SS have proved stumbling blocks in allowing the extradition to move forward since the US does not recognize any foreign powers right to try American citizens. Hence, his US citizenship must be stripped first. However, since he was an "American" and a minor when he enlisted it is not clear that he had the legal free will to make the choices he made.

I can't even think of a reverse example that is really valid, but it would be like the US wanting to have someone extradited here so we could put them on trial for crimes they committed in the US; only to have the other nation agree that this person committed crimes, but legal technicalities over citizenship status and age of consent are blocking them from going through with the extradition. No one is disputing that Johann Breyer is a war criminal that meets all the existing definitions, it's just his "legal status" that is in dispute.

For the record I do deplore the "superior orders" defense used at My Lai, I am not beyond recognizing US hypocrisy in these matters. However, the existence of hypocrisy does not mean that justice should not be done when there is the opportunity. If we want to root this argument in the laws that governed the Nuremberg Trials the "tu quoque" aka "you too" defense argument was disallowed. It doesn't matter what anyone else did or didn't do, it only matters what you did.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-09-2012, 04:23 PM
 
Location: Michigan
12,711 posts, read 13,437,800 times
Reputation: 4185
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
For the record I do deplore the "superior orders" defense used at My Lai, I am not beyond recognizing US hypocrisy in these matters. However, the existence of hypocrisy does not mean that justice should not be done when there is the opportunity. If we want to root this argument in the laws that governed the Nuremberg Trials the "tu quoque" aka "you too" defense argument was disallowed. It doesn't matter what anyone else did or didn't do, it only matters what you did.
"Justice" becomes a pretty wrangling concept when nobody has clean hands, or is even expected to keep an appearance of having clean hands; and if you can shrug over the impunity of the My Lai killers, others may be expected to shrug over the impunity (for 70 years) of Mr. Breyer.

But you are also understating the claimed moral authority of Nuremberg. Even though it was not allowed as a defense, Justice Robert Jackson did accept the basis of the tu quoque argument, obliquely:

"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us...We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-10-2012, 08:11 AM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,521,339 times
Reputation: 14621
Quote:
Originally Posted by djacques View Post
"Justice" becomes a pretty wrangling concept when nobody has clean hands, or is even expected to keep an appearance of having clean hands; and if you can shrug over the impunity of the My Lai killers, others may be expected to shrug over the impunity (for 70 years) of Mr. Breyer.
If justice requires perfection then there will never be any justice. It is the strive towards the perfection that should be our goal and we cannot get there if we overlook one crime simply because we have overlooked another.

Quote:
But you are also understating the claimed moral authority of Nuremberg. Even though it was not allowed as a defense, Justice Robert Jackson did accept the basis of the tu quoque argument, obliquely:

"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us...We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."
Justice Jackson was speaking of universal morality and attempting to set a lofty goal for the Tribunal, one that was not lived up to. However, yet again, you are pulling segments from Nuremberg that most, including myself, would not disagree were hypocritical. Justice Jackson's comment was directed against the central crime of committing an aggressive war. Telfrod Taylor one of Jackson's counsels very astutely pointed out that the crime wasn't committing the act, but the crime was losing.

I have personally argued the hypocrisy of Nuremberg in other threads, most directly in this one:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/histo...-executed.html

If you read through that, I doubt you will find that our positions on the overall experience of the trial and the concept of a moral highground are not all that different. Where I tend to draw the line is with the Holocaust. It was an act without parallel in its execution and industrial zeal. The sheer scale and brutality is hard to fathom. I do feel that the Allies were right in prosecuting those responsible for those acts and I feel that the German government is right to pursue those who partook in it as long as there are those to pursue.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-10-2012, 02:47 PM
 
Location: Michigan
12,711 posts, read 13,437,800 times
Reputation: 4185
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
If justice requires perfection then there will never be any justice. It is the strive towards the perfection that should be our goal and we cannot get there if we overlook one crime simply because we have overlooked another.
There is a very big middle ground between perfection and the practiced hypocrisy of the United States.

Quote:
Justice Jackson was speaking of universal morality and attempting to set a lofty goal for the Tribunal, one that was not lived up to. However, yet again, you are pulling segments from Nuremberg that most, including myself, would not disagree were hypocritical. Justice Jackson's comment was directed against the central crime of committing an aggressive war. Telfrod Taylor one of Jackson's counsels very astutely pointed out that the crime wasn't committing the act, but the crime was losing.
If Gen. Taylor believed that, I doubt he said it very publicly at the time, as it would've been a slap in Jackson's face, the diametric opposite of what Nuremberg was supposed to be about.

Quote:
Where I tend to draw the line is with the Holocaust. It was an act without parallel in its execution and industrial zeal. The sheer scale and brutality is hard to fathom. I do feel that the Allies were right in prosecuting those responsible for those acts and I feel that the German government is right to pursue those who partook in it as long as there are those to pursue.
If there is a unique aspect to the Holocaust, very few people can reasonably held responsible for creating or even mentally absorbing this uniqueness at the time, and I doubt Breyer was one. People like him didn't call what they were doing the Holocaust, they just called it work. Or "defense."

I don't doubt he was a common thug, but he's certainly no danger to anyone at the moment.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-10-2012, 03:14 PM
 
Location: Warren, OH
2,744 posts, read 4,213,312 times
Reputation: 6503
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil306 View Post
I could agree with this statement, except for one HUGE glaring omission:

He JOINED THE SS. He could have joined the regular army, air force, or navy. However, he CHOSE to join the SS, which was designed, by Himmler, to be the "strong arm" of Germany. He KNEW what he was doing and he KNEW what the SS was all about.

Just a quick google search:

What is the Difference between the ss and Germany army

He didn't know any better? Then WHY were there THOUSANDS of others who DID NOT join the SS? They did join the Navy, the Army, the Air Force. Why did THEY do that and he decided to join the SS? Because he wanted the glamour, the love, the support, and guidance of the German people. The SS was feared and revered in their society. He wanted it all and got it all; now its time to pay the piper.

He made his decision. He was proud of his decision. NO WHERE does he even say he was "sorry." Nothing. Notta. Zip. Zilch. He only says he was "camp guard" and didn't kill anyone. Well, yes he did. He walked around with MP40 on his side and kept men, women, and children locked behind a barbed wire fence. Those same people were walked into a gas chamber and killed.

And as I said, when the war came to an end, he didn't stay and stand up for his "Fatherland." Which he swore an allegiance too. He turned, ran like the coward that he was then and is now, and came to the United States. I sure wish the 6 million Jews, Roma's, homosexuals, et al had the chance to come to the United States and live. Oh, sorry, the United States wouldn't let them.

Very good post.Would have given you rep but was blocked. The SS were not regular German soldiers.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-11-2012, 07:39 AM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,521,339 times
Reputation: 14621
Quote:
Originally Posted by djacques View Post
There is a very big middle ground between perfection and the practiced hypocrisy of the United States.
I don't disagree. What I don't understand is your insistence on beating the drum of American hypocrisy over this case when it is very clear that it is Germany that wants to put him on trial. What do you want people to say? You want Herr Breyer to not stand trial for his crimes as some sort of symbolism?

Quote:
If Gen. Taylor believed that, I doubt he said it very publicly at the time, as it would've been a slap in Jackson's face, the diametric opposite of what Nuremberg was supposed to be about.
The comments are published in transcripts of the meetings of the US team. Again though, his comments and those of Justice Jackson were directly addressing the concept of trying the German leaders for waging war.

Quote:
If there is a unique aspect to the Holocaust, very few people can reasonably held responsible for creating or even mentally absorbing this uniqueness at the time, and I doubt Breyer was one.
This is simply laughable. Every Allied soldier that saw those camps fully understood the 'uniqueness' of what was going on. The German civilians who turned their eyes away as their neighbors were taken away knew the 'uniqueness' of the situation. The people who lived near the camps and had ash blanket their towns like snow knew the 'uniqueness'. The people who worked in those camps and witnessed the day-to-day brutality including killing people for entertainment understood the 'uniqueness'.

Quote:
People like him didn't call what they were doing the Holocaust, they just called it work. Or "defense."
People like him knew very well what was going on. Breyer even admitted that he knew what was happening and witnessed many acts of brutality. By all legal definitions in the US and Germany his role is akin to assisting in the persecution that took place.

Quote:
I don't doubt he was a common thug, but he's certainly no danger to anyone at the moment.
Very true, but he also entered the country and obtained his naturalized citizenship under false pretenses. Had his service as a guard been known, he would have been barred from entry into the country then. He also would have been stripped of citizenship and deported in 1993 had he not been able to make a natural born link through his mother that has greatly complicated the extradition.

What I am struggling with here is separating the macro discussion of Nuremberg, war crimes and American hypocrisy from the micro discussion of the individual case of Johann Breyer.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top