The man is 95, he's going to die anyway. Jail time would just be kicking him while he's down.
I find it ridiculous when people jump to the gun like that. Do you think people has the same choice and rights as today?
Where young people forced to join Hitler Youth?; Yes.
Where they forced to become a soldier?; Yes
Where they forced to join SS?; Yes (mostly convicted criminals, mental patients, political prisoners and young people)
Refusing to serve or even advocating it, risked imprisonment in concentration camps or execution.
"Do you want to serve?"
"I would have to ask my father .."
"Is your father against Hitler?"
Not in war.
I dunno this guy's exact story but echoing @Nak there was not always a choice in whether you served the Reich or not. Sure, in the initial years of Hitler's government admittance into formations like the SS was absolutely a choice and seen as a mark of priveledge as opposed to the conscription of the Wehrmacht (the Wehrmacht was not 100% clean by themselves either, although to be fair most of the participants in WW2 were not, Allies included).
When the Waffen SS started their conscription in South East Europe of all German minorities, if you refused you would be imprisoned or executed and quite likely your family as well. It is easy for people to say 'oh, well I wouldn't have joined anyway' but very few people could make that decision. Many conscripts served only to protect their own lives and their families rather than out of any genuine loyalty to the Reich.
When a choice is between conscription or death and the death of your family members, it becomes less of a choice in a lot of people's minds.
iirc if one refused to carry out war crimes, then they would get a light slap on the wrist. even IF they were only conscripted, or if they volunteered to "protect their families and homes" they still prolonged the war, allowing more Jews to suffer needlessly. also, SS camp guard duty was completely voluntary.
sources: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992) and Hitler's Soldiers by Ben Shephard (2016).]
I don't think this guy should be imprisoned, but he should be held accountable for prolonging the war somewhat. Maybe having him go around to schools or educational facilities and discuss what he did and why he did it would be a worthwhile initiative.
Uuuh where'd the source in the OP go?
Half the thread just evaporated
Ah yes. The epic tale of the single German guard, who single-handedly prolonged the war against ~14 million soldiers. /s
(You must be joking)
He might have had three choices like the bookkeeper:
1) Go to the front-line and die.
2) Be a guard (Who might not have killed anyone)
3) Refuse to serve and get executed (w his family)
Point still stands. They still aided the Nazi war machine. They still ate up the propaganda. They still picked up a rifle and allowed the Holocaust to happen. They still voted for Hitler. They still stood back and watched as Jews and Slavs were beaten, rounded up and boycotted. They still worked in the factories. The VAST majority of German soldiers forced to serve didn't suffer severe reprecussions. Being forced to do something DOESN'T ABSOLVE SOMEONE OF RESPONSIBILITIES. Also, SS guards were voluntary. And they still indirectly got people killed by allowing these camps to function. By guarding them, forcing undesirables to stay and suffer or else they'd be shot. That's what i'm trying to say. The main point is that being forced to do something doesn't absolve you of responsibility. Otherwise, you'll end up like Albert Speer.
I think the guy might've deleted his account.
Can you provide a source about the SS being composed of mental patients and political prisoners? Because I'm pretty sure those were the people being exterminated, not selected for prestigious military positions
I believe he is referring to the Dirlewanger brigade, which was a voluntary brigade within the SS.
a lot of scientists were also forced into the SS as well just because that's how you advanced your career.
I think you're the only one that must be joking here. He was an accomplice to mass murder.
There were plenty of reserve units and units that didn't go to the front. Only thing is that they too were also part of the mass murder.
By "being a guard" you were actively participating in the existence and purpose of the camps. The guards were violent and racist.
This is a joke, right? There were very minimal consequences for those who said that they did not want to participate in the mass murder. If you were an officer you might be downgraded, or you might be transfered as an enlistedmen, but overall there were zero to light consequences for saying "No, I do not feel comfortable with being a guard" or "No, I don't feel comfortable shooting a bunch of Jewish people".
Yes, they are.
Those "soldiers who got forced into the war" more than bought into the racial rhetoric of the Nazi party. Christopher Browning used the example of a Reserve Police Battalion mainly made up of middle-aged men who did not grow up in Hitler's Germany and thus were not raised on his rhetoric and ideals in his book Ordinary Men. Yet even in spite of that they were generally more than willing to help perpetrate the Holocaust through mass executions, moving Jewish from the Ghettos to Concentration Camps, etc...
Another important book in the field is Soldaten: On Fighting Killing and Dying. Harald Welzer and Sönke Neitzel used the secretly recorded conversations of POWs from all branches of the Wehrmacht to demonstrate that these men were willing participants in mass murder and genocide.
There's literally no two ways about this. The SS was the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, and was not conscripting Germans. Conscription into the SS happened in territories outside of Germany. This man was not among that number since he seems to be charged in a German court, meaning he likely resides and Germany and likely has his entire life. Germans from outside Germany got conscripted. Judging from what I know about the SS's recruitment policies, I don't think he was conscripted.
I'd like to also add that even if I was forced to do these things, I sure as hell would have killed myself long before 95 from the guilt
i'll never understand why people want a statute of limitations on genocide
He probably has done his fair share of "kicking people while they're down" except in a more literal sense.
Where did you see this? I have always had the understanding that the SS soldier was a prestigious and honorable position that most "true" Germans aspired to be.
What he did, regardless of if he had a choice or how long he has left to live, should never be forgiven.
I don't know enough about the situation to say if he deserves jail time or not but I really don't understand this idea that someone having the fortune to live this long somehow makes them worthy of enough pity to be automatically forgiven for their crimes.
Like poor him, he got to live one of the fullest lives anyone could hope for while the people in the camps he guarded certainly didn't.
The SS is believed to have administered to Penal Battalions that saw especially fierce, high-casualty fighting. Towards the end of the war, these Penal Battalions were not exclusively filled by political prisoners and disgraced soldiers, but, as Nak indicated, a wide range of persons not typically fit for combat, who the Nazis deemed as disposable.
Some of these are well-documented, while others unfortunately languish in obscurity, with no surviving veterans, divisional paperwork, and of course a desire by their task masters to bury their nature after the war.
If drafted and given a choice to either be a guard at Gitmo, or go to the front lines to step on IED's, which would you choose, or if it was someone else and they chose Gitmo, would you blame them? Furthermore, would you charge a guard at Gitmo as an individual 70 years later because he was a part of the military that was used to do wrong by the government of the time?
You can't hold one member of the military who's doing what his government is telling him to do accountable for the government's crimes. We don't go around trying to convict former soldiers of murder. Vietnam isn't begging the USA to extradite all former US Servicemen and women who fought
You do know that Camp Guard duty was voluntary, right? This guy volunteered to be in the SS. And a camp guard at that.
The Clean Wehrmacht and Nuremberg Defense is about moral cowardice, which this guy and other dudes were. Cowards complicit in war crimes. The Wehrmacht committed warcrimes and fully supported the SS and all decisions made in rounding up 'undesirables' for the Holocaust. Of course I can hold soldiers accountable for war crimes. That's why members of the Dirlewanger brigade were tried for war crimes and hung.
Clean SS is a new one tho.
It isn't just that the "military had done wrong" 70 years prior - the dude was an actual guard at an actual concentration camp thus directly helping to perpetuate human mass suffering and genocide.
What? If you participate in a gencodie you're damn right you're accountable for helping said genocide.
Except this isn't simply "killing soldiers of another nation in war time". This is a fucking concentration camp. You know those places where the Jewish and other "undesireables" were sent to be worked to death or outright killed? You know, innocent civilians???
Except again, this isn't about "just fighting", this is about directly participating in war crimes and genocide. Not to mention we should be punishing the war criminals from Vietnam but have done an awful job at it.
And here it is. "Just following orders". The Nuremberg Defense. It doesn't get you out of volunteering to guard a concentration camp. He willingly participated in a genocide.
Downplaying this guy's involvement out of the belief that he was "forced" is still not a valid defense. Nearly all Nazis who were arrested and tried have claimed they were just following orders / faced death threats. But this is a post-facto rationalizing of ones decisions after the tide of public opinion had decisively turned against them.
It's simply a fact that a concentration camp would not have functioned without guards whose job was to inspire fear in the prisoners to keep them from escaping, and sometimes used lethal force on the ones who did.
I think you can still fact sympathy for this guy. He's super old now and in the years since ww2 doesn't appear to have been a long lasting threat to anyone. But we shouldn't get it twisted about the consequences or stakes of one's involvement in the regime.
Some people think that prisons should only be used to remove a threat from society, and in a rehabilitative fashion only. In cases like this, where the person is too old to be a threat, and rehabilitation is pointless because of either reduced threat to society or them realizing their wrongdoings and changing, sending them to prison would be a pointless waste of resources.
Officially charging him and making sure he doesn't get to escape any sort of consequences for his actions are far from a pointless waste of resources. Let it be on record that he is a war criminal.
It's already on record that he's a war criminal. Both by court documents and his own admission. That's already been established.
As for "consequences", that would fall under punitive use of prison instead of rehabilitative. Which is what those people have an issue with.
I dont care if he goes to prison or not. Dudes gonna be dead in a few years and probably has zero quality of life as it is already. Obviously, you believe that the fundamental purpose of prison is to punish people instead of rehabilitating them. Some people dont.
I’ve been listening to a Sam Harris podcast, and a central topic he covered was “no Man creates himself”, a concept I found very hard to argue with. I don’t think it liberated people from any responsibility, but I do think that we as outsiders to a lot of these types of situations would do better to be more thoughtful going forward with judgements.
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