Morgoth, on 17 July 2015 - 08:16 AM, said:
Apt, on 17 July 2015 - 08:04 AM, said:
R3per_Inc, on 17 July 2015 - 07:36 AM, said:
Morgoth, on 17 July 2015 - 07:02 AM, said:
R3per_Inc, on 17 July 2015 - 06:50 AM, said:
Some viewpoints on the SS and the lack of understanding of Nazigermany is really disturbing.
Not entirely surprising though. When I took modern history in upper secondary school I realised what I head learned before had been so watered down and simplified it might as well have been about something else altogether. Happens all the time still, the upper secondary school course was limited too, just slightly less so. It's not bad, the Norwegian School system, but the second world war -- all history really -- is complicated.
Yet it is actually quite easy: Just read "Mein Kampf" and understand that they took each word of this book serious and followed it step by step, word for word. You can't compare the german Nazi's to the everydays racists or fanatics.
Of course you can. People like to think of Nazi Germany as some terrible convergence of hatred and fascism, orchestrated by some sinister inner circle but they were just people. People caught up in the 19th and 20th centuries vast sweeping societal reforms, radical new ideologies powered by science and industrialization. There were fascists, racists and warmongers everywhere back then, in Europe and in the Americas.
This guy was a 20 something year old kid who was doing what was expected of him. What he did was not a crime, it was a civic duty. A belief in the greatness of ones country, wanting to excel, to serve for the greater good. There's plenty of stories of SS officers portrayed as the monsters of the Nazi regime, but seriously, they were just officers. The equivalent of Americas Federal Agents or any other country with various officials or officers of a state with a well developed military office.
There is a big difference between serving you country and out right partaking in crimes against humanity. He himself states that he was shocked and disgusted by the actions of other memebers of the staff at the camp. This alone should indicate to you that this guy was not some monster, not a sadist, not a sociopath or any other picture that has been painted of the leaders of Nazi Germany. He was just some guy. Doing his job. Fanatically loyal to an evil regime? Sure, but who are we to judge what somebody believed in 70 years ago?
I get that we want the people responsible for the warcrimes to be punished but some SS officers who served as a glorifed clerk, is not the one that needs to be punished in this case. Especially not if it is one that objected to the treatment of the prisoners. And especially not 60 years after they got done with the Nuremberg trials.
Is that where you want to go now? That officers of SS were simply driven by a love for their country. We shouldn't judge the ethics of the past? Jesus christ, Apt. That's some fucked up revisionist history you keep in your head. People at the time were appalled by what happened at the camps. Germans were horrified by what happened there. This is not a new thing. Also, again, stop with your entirely ignorant attempt to claim that an officer of the SS was the same as a regular bureaucrat of any other nation. It is simply not true.
If the treatment of the prisoners bothered him he could have refused to participate. It's as simple as that. Instead he made the choice to continue aiding the worst example of genocide the world has ever known, and after 70 years of hiding from his crimes he has now been convicted.
Have you actually read up om the guy?
If we set aside healthy scepticism that he might be making himself sound more innocent than he really was, his account comes off as the story of just another German person doing his civic duty in a time of war.
He didn't hide. He served his time in Britain after the war and was sent home. He was denied the job that he wanted because he had served in the SS. When he learned of the growing support for Holocaust revisionism he, himself, spoke out. He could have just shut up and stayed hidden. Instead he decided to bring more awareness to the topic. In all likelihood from what I gather from various articles I actually think he wanted them to sentence him, while he believes himself morally "innocent", I think he wants to be punished because the sacrifice will serve as a reminder that Auschwitz did happen and it should be punished.
People were appalled by the camps yet but what has that got to do with anything? Like he himself stated, there was a big difference between hearing Jews being exterminated and actually seeing it in the flesh. He didn't join the SS because he had always dreamed of working in a death camp. He wanted to serve his country. He wanted to be a god damn clerk. He wasn't some blood thirsty officer killing gypsies in the forests of Eastern Europe.
I think it's too easy to look back at the time and just dismiss millions of Germans as being evil or criminal. I am not saying the guy is completely innocent. Like you said, it's not like he defected or refused to continue working. He continued his work. But he neither had the responsibility for the Final Solution, nor did he have any power to stop it. He was just one of many who simply followed orders and did what everyone was doing, keeping his head down. As mentioned above, there are plenty of experiments done that show how people behave and react under these circumstances.
History is done a disservice by painting a picture of SS officers and Nazi Germany in general, as something uniquely evil or somehow distanced from other countries, other peoples. What took place in Germany, is taking place across the world today. If we cannot see that any people, any culture is capable of evil, then we cannot learn from history. And just to get back on the topic, punishing this guy 70 years later serves absolutely no purpose. This is the equivelant of punishing the Whisteblower who is reporting on the Company that did the wrongdoing.