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Bullsh!t, some people are so full of it it ain't even funny, genocide is genocide regardless of what century it happened.
If you hate Nazis so much do you even know that NASA was founded by a bunch of ex-Nazis? These "Evil Nazis" were not prosecuted because they were USEFUL. During WW2, Japanese Americans were sent to camps despite being unconstitutional, you might think the good ole USA is a great country built on justice freedom and democracy but it is in fact the biggest pile of crap in human history. You can be in denial all you want, but America's days are numbered.
Lots of Imperial Japanese Army officers were also spared the war crime trials so that they can help get japan up and running because of the fear of Soviet communism. In essence, these war criminals got a pass and they ended up heading some of the biggest japanese companies.....This is partly why the Japanese are so intransigent about admitting their war crimes to this day, and why many japanese politicians have no qualms about worshipping class A criminals in their shinto shrine. The Americans protected many japanese war criminals and this is why the current Abe administration is so pro-US (Abe himself is a descendant of an army officer of the war).
Getting back on topic...idk how old he is. He was young when he committed his crimes. He lived a long life, perhaps he had a family, worked, and otherwise lived a full life. Those he helped kill never had that chance.
Seems like Karma is here for her pay back.
No, given how long hie lived, and seemed to have a full life, karma missed him, for whatever reason. He was lucky.
People keep talking about him (and this subject in general) as though some of these people were living in a free society and were omniscient at the time they were making some of their "own choices". Groening was born in 1921 and was about 12 years-old when the Nazis came to power; he may have been old enough to know a pre-Nazi Germany, at the same time he was also young enough to have his life taken over by the totalitarian state that the Nazis tried to create. Do you really believe that by the time he was old enough to join the military he was in a position to make choices on his own free will? No, for the last 6 or 7 years he was being brainwashed to believe that the Nazis were the new order and that it would be like this for the "next thousand years". (If you don't think that teenagers are susceptible to propaganda then how do explain the modern teen's slavish devotion to pop culture?) After the war there were war crime trials -- these trials were held in order to hold those who created and led the system accountable for what they did. The reason the lesser "cogs" supposedly "escaped" prosecution in some cases was because those to held the trials recognized that "complicity" in the system by the "ordinary people" is much more ambiguous. Is it unfair and unjust that some of these people got off and led "normal" lives? I guess so, but I don't see how going after them when they're in their late 80s or 90s is going to solve anything. But I'm certain that it will result in a new wave of resentment -- especially among disaffected German youths. Unfortunately these trials are the result of pressure from -- and for the appeasement of -- special interest groups. The information to go after the real criminals was freely available in the archives from at least the 1960s -- but many of the real criminals are long since dead. Now they just go after anyone they can find who's still alive, people who were youthful paper-pushers or translators or what we would now consider child soldiers.
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Originally Posted by warren zee
Getting back on topic...idk how old he is. He was young when he committed his crimes. He lived a long life, perhaps he had a family, worked, and otherwise lived a full life. Those he helped kill never had that chance.
As cruel and true and truly gruesome as these atrocities were,,,you have to remember it was a war and when its over, its OVER. Done. You can't prosecute in peacetime what happened during war.
This had nothing to do with war !
If it was torturing enemy POW's, then it would be.
They were committing genocide on a group of their own citizens.
Where do you see the sympathy and excuses ? I never said that Communism was not evil. I said that I can see how an otherwise decent person would joint it in a mistaken belief that they were doing a good thing, based on them accepting the Communist propaganda at it's face value, while I can't see a decent person joining Nazis based on the face value of their propaganda. The Communist propaganda was appealing to the best in people, Nazi ideology was appealing to the worst in people. Please don't twist my words.
Or look at it this way. The Inquisition was ultimately an evil organization, responsible for mass murder throughout it's history. Their propaganda, the explanation for their deeds, was that they were torturing the heretics' mortal bodies to save their eternal souls. Many devoted Christians supported it and many served in it. Now, using your logic, the Christians are evil. The way I see it, Inquisition duped some good, decent people into doing it's evil work by appealing to their best intentions, much like the Communists.
And yes, I still stand by my statement - there were many bad / evil regimes in the XX century, Communists, Fascists, a myriad of large and small dictators. But the Nazis are in a completely different class of evil.
I have to agree with you. The Twentyth century comes out as perhaps the bloodiest ever. There were more attempts at genocide than Hitler and Cambodia and Armenia, but world wars which killed so many more because they were enhansed by technology. There have been periods where war and genocides were common, but they didn't have the population or tecnology to add up to such mind bending numbers. The smaller killings get overwhelmed by the numbers.
And wars are often about nationalism. The difference with Hitler was while he used nationalism as an excuse, his desire to wipe out whole catagories of people was from pure hatred. And it was carried out with such meticulas care and planning that in the end it impacted the german military's attempts to forstall the end. One reason why in some areas the allies came through so quickly was that in a last ditch effort to kill every Jew and undesirable, the SS had taken all the train cars leaving behind military units who now had nowhere else to go. This is a very telling decision, one which left their military compromised and vulnerable, and that *that* didn't matter if he could kill a few more undesirables, speaks to how central the holocaust itself was to the Nazis.
Nobody else has built factory complexes designed to extract the last use of the prisoners before they died, and approached genocide with such a degree of planning. This began early on, and grew, and wasn't to be haphazard. It became an industry, and the bodies and work of the victums part of the resources. The coldness of it and the complete denial of any humanity to the victums is what surpassed any other genocide, especially considering the numbers.
Stalin's gulag system and that it outlived him owes much to improved technology, but it also reflects the policies of all those Czars and gentry who even into the 20th century held the pesantry in virtual serfdom. And Stalin's motives were born of his paranoia, where Hitler was building a giant death machine born of his ideology.
I fear for this new century and what it brings. But I don't see Hitler and his killing machine as much as religious themed wars and the inevitable reaction against those who share the faith but not the agenda. Maybe we are going backwards towards the Middle ages now with much better tech.
Every reason not to forget Herr Hitler and his empire built on death.
Last edited by nightbird47; 04-25-2015 at 03:17 PM..
There's a big difference between having ancestors who committed horrible crimes and committing those crimes yourself. Nobody is responsible for the morality of their ancestors. They need to focus on their own morality, which too few do.
Very true, and one reason old feuds still make new wars. Sure, their parents are old and their grandparents are dead, but we still owe 'them' back. Make someone a 'them' and they cease to be human beings, just someone to blame. This works the same if you were the side responsible. The next generations need feel no personal shame for what they didn't do, but should be judged by how they choose to live. You are not your ancestors.
Also, there are different moral standards at different times. To do what Hitler did in the middle of XX century was completely evil by the standards of that century, many people who survived through this atrocity are still alive.
That's the other measure. It's interesting if you look at the kingdoms way back in early biblical time and before. If your tribe lived on one side of the river and the other tribe on theirs, and there was plenty of water, then maybe you could have peace. If it was a dry year and they pulled much of it into a lake, leaving you none, you owed them. It wasn't uncommon or unusual to make it the last war once you looked like you could... enslave or kill the population, take over the land and the river. That way they could never try that again. And it was equal opportunity. They'd just as easily do it to you.
Can we say they did evil? If it was the goal of both sides to remove their rival and generally how things were done, was it terrible and cruel, but not evil?
But come ahead centuries and an industrialized nation goes into darkness and with the support of enough of the populace their leader builds an industry which is for nothing less than killing the undesirables and using them efficently as 'resources', and can you compare them? If the world had not thought his acts horrific and terrible, the trials and international system of laws would not have resulted.
This is the same theme which comes up when people discuss geneology. Was this ancestor a slaveholder? Should you feel shame for them? Some people would. But perceptions change, and can we really look back three hundred years and judge? Or even longer? But we can the acts of those within our own span of understanding.
Hitler would have been one of the evil kings of some medieval time, and he would have gained a name that stuck, and been looked upon as one of the 'infamous' monarchs, but then those who weileded power who broke a lot of rules are just a page over a pargraph in your book. I think Hitler will not be ever reduced to a footnote so long as we maintain civilization.
I don't see how going after them when they're in their late 80s or 90s is going to solve anything.
The majority of your post was well reasoned mitigation that I find persuasive. As for what purpose does it serve to prosecute Groening or any other aged individual be they former Nazis, cadre of the Khmer Rouge, or Rwandan priest, the crimes that they committed are so heinous that most legal systems refuse to recognize any statutes of limitations. The purpose being, to serve notice that no matter how long it takes, justice will be served and they will be brought to account for their crimes. And if that means that these individuals will have to spend their entire lives worrying about who is knocking at their door, so be it.
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