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Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

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Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#71

Post by mixmastamyk »

imrelaxed wrote: post #62
fit2rule wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to Germany from America precisely because of Germans' lack of hubris about their ability to take responsibility for the crimes of their nations' past - while America is, without doubt, not ready to confront its own heinous crimes, being committed in present time, as yet. Neo-nazism doesn't scare me as much as the average American patriot, whose political cover allows many, many crimes to be committed in their…

When making serious accusations be sure to detail them in order to expose your inner logic to the scrutiny of others, else you’re just another idiot making unfounded claims on the internet.

The subject is well known to those who are interested.

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#72

Post by ufmace »

leftyted wrote: post #58
jacobush wrote: post #6

The last line resonated with me a lot "In every case of documented refusal to obey orders to exterminate people, the coercive powers of the Nazi system proved to be impotent or ineffective." I would have expected the opposite. I guess this means, the structures of society and rule of of law were actually sort of still working, but that most people feared going against the zeitgeist.

This is an important point that is too often left unsaid. People today have an image of the Nazis organizing the deportation and murder of the Jews in a top-down fashion while everyone who wasn't German powerlessly looked on. But, actually, the Holocaust happened at the scale that it did because people went along with it. And not just the Germans; also the people in occupied countries, and in some cases even the Jews…

Yes, I have read that, and find it... I'm not sure of the best word, maybe daunting? From what I've read, the Wannsee conference was convened with the expectation that they would have to convince a bunch of middle-management bureaucrat types that switching to organized mass-murder was necessary. Apparently, much to their surprise, everyone agreed right away, and immediately started coming up with their own ideas to make it run more smoothly and efficiently. Apparently, nobody at all raised any objections or even dragged their feet at the idea of organizing mass murder.

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#73

Post by blattimwind »

ekianjo wrote: post #39
blattimwind wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair I don't think anybody saw systemic violence upon civilians during a war between states (as opposed to a civil one) as a realistic possibility during the inter-war period. It was well outside the customs of war in our corner of the world at that point. Really? Atrocities against civilians in war were common even then. No need to look further than e.g. the colonies.

> Really? Atrocities against civilians in war were common even then. No need to look further than e.g. the colonies. I think the point was that scale of it was quite different in WW2. In WW2 the majority of casualties were civilians, which was new compared to previous conflicts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio is of relevance here. WW1 already had an almost 1:1 ratio, though this ratio isn't really indicative of atrocities per se. E.g. previously you might have rather seen pillaging. Going a bit back, the people's crusade of 1096 mostly pillaged European cities and landscape.

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#74

Post by dmix »

tomohawk wrote: post #70
stcredzero wrote: post #61

It makes me angry, when I see people online talking about the whole of the WWII Wehrmacht as if they are all uniform, fungible movie villains. This was a huge organization of human beings. The degree to which any individual is culpable needs to be considered on an individual basis. Human rights are absolute, even for the soldiers of the enemy. Principles like that are what separate free countries from tyranny. This i…

Something like 80% of the 60 - 65 million people killed during world war 2 were unarmed. They were civilians or prisoners of war. The vast majority of these were killed by Germany, Japan, Italy, and Soviet Union. While there were individuals who resisted this, the systems of government and the belief systems that drove the totalitarian states where unprecedentedly horrific. If you're interested in learning more about…

> While there were individuals who resisted this, the systems of government and the belief systems that drove the totalitarian states where unprecedentedly horrific.

World War 1 happened 2 decades earlier and wasn't totalitarian and was nearly as horrific (the combat itself was usually far more horrific than WW2). The legacy of humans has been constant war for centuries before that. Even reducing it to some 20th century political ideology is insufficient. Human history has long been a series of duelling nation states, religions, city states, war lords, tribes, etc.

The only thing that stopped wars was economic production trumped state expansion while becoming global creating strong interconnections between nation states... and technology (ie, nuclear weapons, total war economies) made the stakes of war too high. But again that's just what stopped or slowed down the bloodshed, not a sufficient explanation of why it kept happening.

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#75

Post by FabHK »

fit2rule wrote: post #63
staticautomatic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that's true, which I'm not sure it is, it doesn't necessarily mean that morals emerge from individual choice. Personally I think morals are emergent from groups.

Morals are an individual personal choice - derived from the word 'morales', which means 'custom'. Individuals adopt customs - both learned individually, and mores adopted from a group. Ethics are a group choice - a set of morals, in the plural, derived from "ethike" - the 'science of morals'. They're interlocked, sure, but it is an individual who makes a moral decision for themselves, but an ethical decision for thei…

Not sure that's an accepted definition. Others consider ethics the study of morality.

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#76

Post by chewz »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #22

I think it's worth noting that the armed forces and the Nazi party itself were not in lock step for the duration of the 3rd Reich. While the SS answered more or less directly to the Nazi party there were certainly individuals throughout the leadership of the armed forces that did not like their resources being used to carry out genocide and or help the SS because they had little interest in that, they wanted to fight…

It is always better to study history then to make broad general statements.

As an example Babi Yar one of largest mass execution of Jews during II WW.

> Contrary to the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht", the Sixth Army under the command of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau worked together with the SS and SD to plan and execute the mass-murder of the Jews of Kiev.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#77

Post by stcredzero »

tomohawk wrote: post #70
stcredzero wrote: post #61

It makes me angry, when I see people online talking about the whole of the WWII Wehrmacht as if they are all uniform, fungible movie villains. This was a huge organization of human beings. The degree to which any individual is culpable needs to be considered on an individual basis. Human rights are absolute, even for the soldiers of the enemy. Principles like that are what separate free countries from tyranny. This i…

Something like 80% of the 60 - 65 million people killed during world war 2 were unarmed. They were civilians or prisoners of war. The vast majority of these were killed by Germany, Japan, Italy, and Soviet Union. While there were individuals who resisted this, the systems of government and the belief systems that drove the totalitarian states where unprecedentedly horrific. If you're interested in learning more about…

While there were individuals who resisted this, the systems of government and the belief systems that drove the totalitarian states where unprecedentedly horrific.

There is nothing controversial about saying that. If you are implying that I'm ignorant of such a basic fact, then this is insulting and commenting in bad faith.

What is controversial nowadays, ironically for a society which claims to be founded on inviolate individual human rights, is that the exact same regard for individual culpability should be accorded members of the Wehrmacht. My previous comment supports the notion of group culpability for members of an army. However, the idea that all members of the Wehrmacht are equally culpable is simply ridiculous and untenable, given the facts and given the principles of individual human rights.

If you're interested in learning more about this history, "The Second World Wars" by Victor Davis Hanson is a good place to start.

If you mean to insinuate that I know nothing of the very basic history of WWII, please know that I am already a fan of David Hanson.

As noted elsewhere, it is an act of individual courage to go against the flow of the groupthink. I hardly think "Nazi German Bad" is at all controversial. However, in 2019, "individual rights for all, no exceptions" is controversial, in direct contradiction to our stated values in the US.

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#78

Post by stcredzero »

iknowordidthat wrote: post #69
stcredzero wrote: post #61

It makes me angry, when I see people online talking about the whole of the WWII Wehrmacht as if they are all uniform, fungible movie villains. This was a huge organization of human beings. The degree to which any individual is culpable needs to be considered on an individual basis. Human rights are absolute, even for the soldiers of the enemy. Principles like that are what separate free countries from tyranny. This i…

As the paper clearly illustrates, there were so few documented cases of refusal that they are negligible when weighing the war crimes of the Wehrmact and its members. Less than one hundred out of millions. Viewing them all as “fungible villains” is a very accurate approximation with a ridiculously low error.

Hey, we'd only disregard the truth for a couple of complete innocents, so let's just treat this entire group of individuals as fungible and disposable? Sorry, but that's not properly valuing individual human rights. As I point out above, almost every one in the faction is culpable. However, they should still be held individually culpable, in accordance with their particular facts and individual human rights and the stated principles of the founding of the United States.

If one starts allowing group culpability without regard for the innocents, no matter how few, then this destroys the principle of individual culpability. Sorry, but that's something the good guys shouldn't be doing, and only something one should expect the bad guys to do.

Good guys don't treat entire groups of people as fungible and disposable. Period.

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#79

Post by hutzlibu »

choeger wrote: post #50
hutzlibu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Think of the Nazis as a gang of uneducated mobsters" Only that they were quite educated. Not the lower troops of SA. But the party members were very much into classical education, classical music etc. And they totally went by law and order. "Just" a different order. With racism as its core fundamentals and the neglect of humanism in general.

It was a metaphor.

I know .. but many people have this picture of the Nazis. So I wanted to clarify ..

Re: Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]

#80

Post by yifanl »

staticautomatic wrote: post #43
yifanl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(In some views) morals are relative and personal, not absolute.

They don't have to be objective or subjective. I've never understood the argument that morals are individually subjective. If individual people freely did anything all the time then where would morals come from?

I don't agree with the relativistic point of view either, but it's a common enough viewpoint that I can forgive the GP's casual usage of the term :)
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