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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]

#81

Post by iknowordidthat »

stcredzero wrote: post #78
iknowordidthat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I have no idea why you are injecting the founding of the United States into this.

Nobody can possibly weigh every Wehrmacht member’s actions. Those that acted with distinction have been documented. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. If they were not, the outcome of the Wehrmacht’s actions would have been very different.

Your criteria is impossible to satisfy, by design. An attempt to rewrite history.

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

#82

Post by telesilla »

secfirstmd wrote: post #10
rolph wrote: post #3

i get a [PDF] from the submission. no complaints from me but usually a tag [PDF] is appended to title. That being said there are those that just love the excuse of just following orders, and those that have a moral boundary stronger than a perceived social duty. in a lot of cases there was a cloak such as, we are not told to do it immediately i have more efficient plans. >Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 - 9 October 19…

Highly recommend watching this 4 minute piece about Sir Nicholas Winton. Makes you feel good about humans. https://youtu.be/PKkgO06bAZk

Thank you so much for sharing. We should know this man's name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton

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

#83

Post by joe_the_user »

yifanl wrote: post #36
ppod wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with independence of thought, courage, and high principles, but is it moral? An militant anti-semite in present-day Germany is might be just as independent, principled, and courageous.

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

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

But that too is a moral view, is it not? It may be "meta-relative" to other moral views but doesn't keep it from being statement of values.

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

#85

Post by anigbrowl »

d0mine wrote: post #32
muglug wrote: post #28

The Milgram Experiment[1] shows that most people do go along with what an authority figure tells them. It’s one of the more depressing experiments in social psychology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

As I understand it, it is an optimistic experiment: almost a third of people can think for themselves and won't torture only because they were given an order. Some of us are not automatons :) https://www.xkcd.com/610/

I fail to see what's 'optimistic' about that. By those numbers, independent-minded people are outnumbered 2:1 by tools. Those numbers are likely way off the mark given both the tiny number and relative homogeneity of subjects in the original study, and the decades that have since passed with all the social and cultural changes. But the fact that so many populist politicians choose to predicate their campaigns on increasing animus towards some marginalized social group suggests there's quite a lot of people who either don't want to think for themselves or select for authority figures that will permit them to indulge their worst impulses.

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

#86

Post by BurningFrog »

dmix wrote: post #74
tomohawk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cent…

WW1 was of course an enormous tragedy, but it was fought between armies.

I'm not aware of any major attacks on civilians in that war.

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

#87

Post by gumby »

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…

I think there's a rational explanation for making what I agree with you is a quite a wrong assessment.

First of all, modern armies are mass action: uniforms make the "other side" literally uniform and undifferentiated. The purpose is twofold: first so that your own troopers won't think rationally about what they are doing and will simply follow along with the crowd, whether the rule is "shoot", "dig a foxhole", "don't run away" or whatever. The second value is to dehumanise the enemy and increase the chance that violence will actually be done to him (this is why the officers were so unhappy with the Christmas Day football game between British and German troops in WWI).

This whole process appeared in the Nopoleonic->Prussian invention of mass warfare; until then it was a largely retail affair when you really figured if you needed to kill that other guy in front of you or not.

Second of all, and again this is a function of 20th century warfare, this process was amplified through mass propaganda to whole populations, again dehumanizing the enemy. It's own long topic so I"ll stop here.

I will say that these refusals are even harder, not easier, when you're in a group who can see you take action or not (as opposed to firing at a far-away enemy where your colleagues can't really see how well you're aiming).

So in other words: everybody on HN has been trained to think this way, and all active participants in WWII had been likewise trained to think this way of the "other side"

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

#88

Post by tomohawk »

dmix wrote: post #74
tomohawk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cent…

About 20 million died in world war 1, and deaths were primarily combatants.

World War 2 was directed primarily at killing unarmed.

The Nazis wanted to colonize eastern Europe, so killed many to make room for that, as well as anyone that did not fit in with their notion of racial purity. The Japanese killed their millions in China, but also elsewhere. The Italian killing fields were in Ethiopia. The Soviets killed millions of prisoners of war.

Looking at the ideologies of these countries, their goal was to kill anyone who got in the way of those ideologies.

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

#89

Post by stcredzero »

iknowordidthat wrote: post #81
stcredzero wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I have no idea why you are injecting the founding of the United States into this. Nobody can possibly weigh every Wehrmacht member’s actions. Those that acted with distinction have been documented. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. If they were not, the outcome of the Wehrmacht’s actions would have been very different. Your criteria is impossible to satisfy, by design. An attempt to rewrite history.

Nobody can possibly weigh every Wehrmacht member’s actions

Strawman. Should you ever meet a former member of the Wehrmacht, you owe them the same general regard to be given any human being.

An attempt to rewrite history.

False. You are projecting. My words state the opposite of what you suggest. I take it you are invested in the idea that it’s okay to throw away individual rights in some situations and simply punish groups. If that is the case, then you are advocating for committing exactly the moral failing we should hold against the Wehrmacht.

In this case, this is the least popular implication of the principles which were fought for in WWII at the price of millions of lives.

In short, in 2019 terms, “Punch a Nazi” is committing the exact moral failing at the root of the discredited philosophy being fought. Peacetime politics through violence is wrong. Period.

(No, punching for political gain doesn’t make you a war criminal, obviously. No equivalence, obviously. What you are doing is introducing that moral framework. Best to avoid the moral framework of the worst villains.)

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

#90

Post by pergadad »

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…

Normal men - farmers, workers, clerks - receive a letter in the mail: " on the first of next month, report to base X. Failure to report will be considered treason".

You have kids at home. They'll have no more food on the table if you are dead.

You show up. You do what they tell you.

Sadly that's how it has always been. Some enjoy it-most though just want it to end.

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