phillybear arrested at last

[naomi 356]

Any pressure they may have felt should have washed away with the tears of the helpless victims as they held up their weapons to destroy another person’s future. As Hitler’s movement swore to exclude all non-Jewish German citizens from persecution, those who carried out the executions had no real reason to fear any type of retaliation by Nazi officers if they chose not to cooperate. "Goldhagen provides strong anecdotal evidence that Himmler’s order that no German be coerced into taking part in the extermination campaign was respected. According to testimonies later given by these men, their officers repeatedly gave them the option to abstain from killing in any given operation. Some few exercised the option and served in support roles. Some transferred out. No soldier, it seems, anywhere in the Nazi Empire, was ever punished for failing to kill Jews. Nevertheless, almost every soldier who was asked to kill civilians in this way did so" (Reilly).

 

Source

 

It is how every survivor's story I've ever heard describes the officers' satisfaction in what they were doing. I've never heard of oppressed SS officers. Parties after a hard week's killin', yes.

[FeelingMN 273]

Gotta love the geek club.....homosexuality is the downfall of our society but Nazi officers shouldn't be held accountable for their actions because that was a really long time ago and they were just following orders.

 

[MTSkiBum 1,625]

Gotta love the geek club.....homosexuality is the downfall of our society but Nazi officers shouldn't be held accountable for their actions because that was a really long time ago and they were just following orders.

 

 

 

Since I am the main person arguing that this person should not be tried because it does not accomplish anything you should also know that I support homosexual marriages/rights in their entirety.

[FeelingMN 273]

Since I am the main person arguing that this person should not be tried because it does not accomplish anything you should also know that I support homosexual marriages/rights in their entirety.

Yeah, I know. Just making a general observation.

 

If this guy had been arrested and tried 40 years ago, would you adopt the same argument?

[penultimatestraw 473]

Man, 89... I know it is a serious accusation, but something seems wrong with putting a guy that old on trial for stuff he did as a teen.

 

I know following orders isn't a defense, at least in the American military, but this seems wrong to try a guy for something that happened 70 years ago.

What in the world?!? Because he got away with his atrocities for decades he should be left off the hook? Do we punish people whom we catch right away more severely?

[Voltaire 5,363]

 

The youngest age you could be allowed into the SS was 17. You had to apply, and they had to want to take you over the next Nazi Youth (which is usually where the younger officers were recruited from). You needed to satisfy them that the mission politically and philosophically resonated with you. If you look at the sophistication of how the genocide was carried out, that makes sense.

 

Quotes from the Organisation Book of the Nazi Party for 1943 stipulate how men can be accepted into Death Head Units where it's alleged this guy served.

This guy's not an officer, he's enlisted.

 

Now if enlisted folks were chosen with the same self-determining selection process as officers, my argument goes *pop* like a balloon in the hands of a sinister five year old.

[penultimatestraw 473]

I tend to forgive people and I like to think the point of the judicial system is to prevent future crimes.

 

I do not think he was going to commit any more crimes. I do not think he should be tried for a crime he committed so long ago.

The judicial system aims both to punish and prevent future crimes. I also like forgiving people who show contrition - what has this guy done to deserve mercy other than live a long time?

[Googballz 39]

The judicial system aims both to punish and prevent future crimes. I also like forgiving people who show contrition - what has this guy done to deserve mercy other than live a long time?

Apparently, he hasn't spent the past 60 years throwing neighborhood kids in an oven so he should get a pass.

[penultimatestraw 473]

 

 

I realize that you are correct and that jails in America are a punitive system, it is why we have the highest incarceration rate in world. All this does is increase the cost to the government without making us as a people safer.

 

It is my belief that the judicial system should change to be more of a preventative system.

Our incarceration rate is high in large part because of inconsequential criminal acts - drug possession, for example. I don't think anyone will argue murder is inconsequential.

[penultimatestraw 473]

I tend to agree with you, but just playing devils advocate here: is it possible that we'd have even more crime if our incarceration rate weren't so high? Put another way, could there be something about this country that makes us more likely to have higher rates of crime than, say, a Western European nation?

A big component to the deterrent part of our system failing, according to some, is delays in punishment. Not because the criminal evaded capture, but through numerous appeals, etc.

[penultimatestraw 473]

High number of people who eat Skittles and drink Mountain Dew?

High gun ownership?

[penultimatestraw 473]

This is bullsh*t. This guy is a nobody.

 

Like him, I joined the Army when I was 17, let me tell you what the deal is.

 

I made zero decisions. I went where they assigned me and when I got there, I did what they told me. If I didn't do what they told me, or if I walked away, I'd get seriously punished for it. We're going to fock this dude over because that's where some Army commander assigned him and where he got off the truck? This guy has no responsibility for what happened there. He's a peon. It's his bosses who were the real criminals.

So military service excludes morality? Just do as you're told, right?

[MTSkiBum 1,625]

To be fair I don't care if he is tried or goes to jail. I just found it funny that it sounded like naomi wanted blood and that Jesus pretty heavily teacher a turn the other cheek philosophy.

[naomi 356]

This guy's not an officer, he's enlisted.

 

Now if enlisted folks were chosen with the same self-determining selection process as officers, my argument goes *pop* like a balloon in the hands of a sinister five year old.

 

"In 1942, the Waffen SS embarked on a drive to recruit ethnic Germans there (Slovakia). Breyer joined at age 17 and was called up in 1943."

 

How the recruiting worked

 

German historian Hans Buchenheim:

 

Buchheim argues there was no coercion to murder Jews and others, and all who committed such actions did so out of free will.^[38] Buchheim wrote that chances to avoid executing criminal orders "...were both more numerous and more real than those concerned are generally prepared to admit".^[39] Buchheim commented that until the middle of 1942, the SS had been a strictly volunteer organization, and that anyone who joined the SS after the Nazis had taken over the German government in 1933 either knew or came to know that he was joining an organization that would be involved in atrocities of one sort or another.^[40]

Buchheim found no evidence that SS men who refused to carry out criminal orders were punished with execution or sent to a concentration camp.^[41] Other historians agree.^[42] On the other hand, there is no known record of an SS officer refusing to commit an atrocity; they willingly did so, and then cherished the awards they received for doing so.^[43] Buchheim notes that SS wartime rules, though calling for harsh and murderous treatment of Jews, prohibited acts of gratuitous sadism, as Himmler wished for his men to remain "decent", and that such acts of gratuitous cruelty were taken on the individual initiative of those who were either especially cruel and/or wished to prove themselves ardent National Socialists.^[44] Finally, Buchheim argues that for those of a non-criminal bent who committed crimes did so because they wished to conform to the values of the group they had joined and were fearful of being branded "weak" by their by colleagues if they refused.^[45]

 

Most importantly,

 

Under Himmler, the SS selected its members according to the Nazi ideology. Creating elite police and military units such as the Waffen-SS, Adolf Hitler used the SS to form an order of men claimed to be superior in racial purity and ability to other Germans and national groups, a model for the Nazi vision of a master race.

 

Not sure if you can read wiki, but the Nazi idealogy link is worth reading.

 

You needed to identify with it on a voluntary basis in order to be accepted.

 

The reason no evidence can be found about punishment for SS men who didn't kill (there's no shortage of military discipline records) is probably because, like Buchheim

describes, it wasn't to be coerced. Men who didn't want to transferred out.

[Voltaire 5,363]

 

"In 1942, the Waffen SS embarked on a drive to recruit ethnic Germans there (Slovakia). Breyer joined at age 17 and was called up in 1943."

 

How the recruiting worked

 

German historian Hans Buchenheim:

 

Most importantly,

 

Not sure if you can read wiki, but the Nazi idealogy link is worth reading.

 

You needed to identify with it on a voluntary basis in order to be accepted.

You're link again mentions officers and still makes no mention of enlisted. I presume you don't know the difference between the two. If the German Army he joined in 1943 operates like the US Army did when I joined it in 1989, enlisted folks didn't have options of where they were sent. When he says he was sent there involuntarily, based on what I know of the US Army, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

Edit :Sorry. I spoke too soon. Your link does mention, not your cut sample. The enlisted were selected the same way.

 

So this guy joined in 1943 right when the policy change happened when it went from voluntary to involuntary. Now, he claims his conscription there was involuntary. Since it happened in 1943, it could be either one. I would assume the German government has the paperwork noting his time of enlistment and since they are pursing him so hard, they must have documentation that he was on the wrong side of that divide.

[penultimatestraw 473]

To be fair I don't care if he is tried or goes to jail. I just found it funny that it sounded like naomi wanted blood and that Jesus pretty heavily teacher a turn the other cheek philosophy.

She's an Old Testament kinda gal.

[naomi 356]

You're link again mentions officers and still makes no mention of enlisted. I presume you don't know the difference between the two. If the German Army he joined in 1943 operates like the US Army did when I joined it in 1989, enlisted folks didn't have options of where they were sent. When he says he was sent there involuntarily, based on what I know of the US Army, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

Edit :sorry your link does mention, not your cut sample

 

So this guy joined in 1943 right when the cutoff happened when it went from voluntary to involuntary. Since the Germans are pursing him so hard, he must be on the wrong side of that divide though he claims it was involuntary. And since it happened in 1943, it could be either one. I don't know who to believe.

 

This link is mostly the Waffen-SS's guidelines in their own words. Their whole approach was wanting people who identified with the mission.

 

When the German historian mentions "SS men" and talks about how there was no disciplinary action if you didn't kill a Jew, I assume that covers all the non-officers. It's clear that morale was really important. They didn't want occasion for resentment. Someone doesn't wind up in that environment if they're not identifying with the cause...or else they get out of there when they can, which has been Breyer's argument.

 

In testimony in 2002, he told the U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania that he had been sent to Auschwitz from Buchenwald in May 1944, then was given leave in August and returned home. He testified that he stayed in hiding in and around his home until the Soviet army closed in.

According to Breyer, the town's mayor provided him a letter asking for authorities to excuse his desertion because he had been needed on the family farm. Breyer testified that the letter worked with Nazi authorities, and that he was able to eventually rejoin his unit fighting outside Berlin in the final weeks of the war.

The documents, however, call his testimony into question, suggesting he was at Auschwitz through the rest of 1944 and into 1945, which would have meant he was there during the time some 426,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, 320,000 of whom went directly into the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

 

Then the article goes into potential fraudulent documents, what the U.S. Justice Department determined was legit, etc.

[Voltaire 5,363]

So military service excludes morality? Just do as you're told, right?

 

Sometimes.

 

You've no idea how miserable I was in the Army and how I hated it and how many things I did against my will. Now none of them were against my conscience, I was never asked to guard a gas chamber. I worked in maintenance section. Everything was on the up-and-up.

 

The worst I was asked to do was go to Iraq and participate in the war, but in 1991, despite not wanting to go, I agreed that war was worth fighting and I knew I'd taken such a risk when I joined in the first place. While there, I even got to be a makeshift prison guard for one night. We made a makeshift circle with constantina wire, put the POWs in the middle, surrounded the circle with trucks pointed inward and kept our truck lights on them all night. We didn't interact with them, just watched them. They were expected to sleep but mostly sat around all night BSing with each other and smoked cigarettes. Then I was relieved and went to sleep. By the time I woke, the POWs were all gone.

[penultimatestraw 473]

 

Sometimes.

 

You've no idea how miserable I was in the Army and how I hated it and how many things I did against my will. Now none of them were against my conscience, I was never asked to guard a gas chamber. I worked in maintenance section. Everything was on the up-and-up.

 

The worst I was asked to do was go to Iraq and participate in the are, but in 1991, despite not wanting to go, I agreed that war was worth fighting and I knew I'd taken such a risk when I joined in the first place. While there, I even got to be a makeshift prison guard for one night. We made a makeshift circle with constantina wire, put the POWs in the middle, surrounded the circle with trucks pointed inward and kept our truck lights on them all night. We didn't interact with them, just watched them. They were expected to sleep but mostly sat around all night BSing with each other and smoked cigarettes. Then I was relieved and went to sleep. By the time I woke, the POWs were all gone.

Never been in the military, but I understand how a hierarchy and respect for authority is critical for it to function. But I don't expect soldiers to act like amoral robots.

[naomi 356]

To be fair I don't care if he is tried or goes to jail. I just found it funny that it sounded like naomi wanted blood and that Jesus pretty heavily teacher a turn the other cheek philosophy.

 

That read like "wanting blood" to you?

 

What Jesus preached supports civil justice. It definitely doesn't support moral relativism. Turning the other cheek doesn't translate into supporting that a justice system be inconsistent.

[Mungwater 597]

 

Sometimes.

 

You've no idea how miserable I was in the Army and how I hated it and how many things I did against my will. Now none of them were against my conscience, I was never asked to guard a gas chamber. I worked in maintenance section. Everything was on the up-and-up.

 

The worst I was asked to do was go to Iraq and participate in the war, but in 1991, despite not wanting to go, I agreed that war was worth fighting and I knew I'd taken such a risk when I joined in the first place. While there, I even got to be a makeshift prison guard for one night. We made a makeshift circle with constantina wire, put the POWs in the middle, surrounded the circle with trucks pointed inward and kept our truck lights on them all night. We didn't interact with them, just watched them. They were expected to sleep but mostly sat around all night BSing with each other and smoked cigarettes. Then I was relieved and went to sleep. By the time I woke, the POWs were all gone.

That's pretty standard in regard to the five S's. it's more likely your higher leadership didnt explain things enough to you.

[Voltaire 5,363]

That's pretty standard in regard to the five S's. it's more likely your higher leadership didnt explain things enough to you.

Ironically, the war was the most chilled, stress-free part of being in service. I deactivated two units (Pershing Missiles in Schwaebish Gmund and 2nd Armor FWD in Garlstedt, Germany) which if you're in maintenance section is that last place you want to be. Still both those units treated people poorly. Good riddance.

[Googballz 39]

It seems to me Voltaire signed up for the military thinking he was going off to college and party for four years and was shocked he didn't get to make all his own decisions.

[drobeski 3,061]

High gun ownership?

high pitbull ownership ?

[Voltaire 5,363]

It seems to me Voltaire signed up for the military thinking he was going off to college and party for four years and was shocked he didn't get to make all his own decisions.

 

Realizing how incompetent and uncaring a big government agency is can be pretty startling for a teenager. Suddenly, the PR and the marketing of this elite fighting force confronts the reality surrounding you once you're inside said fighting force. It's pretty amazing about how people in it don't know their job or what they're doing and are lazy, unhelpful, don't care and neither does anybody else. It can be pretty eye opening. And yet despite this, it was the same Army that cleanly won the Gulf War. Saddam's Army was even worse.

 

Watching the VA scandal unfold brings back memories of incompetently big government runs things; you can't help but reach the conclusion that these problems are everywhere.

[SUXBNME 1,563]

 

It's not.

 

If this was a man who was suspected of murdering abortion doctors, if this was a man who was suspected of lynching blacks, would time phase anyone as a factor?

 

It definitely doesn't do society ill to clearly on the whole stand for justice, because on the small parts it has. Failing in the small parts (like something removed by time) is failing in general, because we want to be saying that the value of human life is fixed.

 

Maybe someone's criminal persuasion has nothing to do with the same spirit of the crime chosen to let go unrecognized...but the more 'give' is granted to recognition of what merits justice, the more justified/palatable the injustice that resonates with them seems.

Naomi just won this thread.

[IGotWorms 4,060]

 

It's not.

 

If this was a man who was suspected of murdering abortion doctors, if this was a man who was suspected of lynching blacks, would time phase anyone as a factor?

You seem to be suggesting that people want to give him a pass because he is "only" accused of killing Jews, which is fockin :wacko:

[IGotWorms 4,060]

This is bullsh*t. This guy is a nobody.

 

Like him, I joined the Army when I was 17, let me tell you what the deal is.

 

I made zero decisions. I went where they assigned me and when I got there, I did what they told me. If I didn't do what they told me, or if I walked away, I'd get seriously punished for it. We're going to fock this dude over because that's where some Army commander assigned him and where he got off the truck? This guy has no responsibility for what happened there. He's a peon. It's his bosses who were the real criminals.

How many people did you exterminate in a genocidal fashion?

[IGotWorms 4,060]

A big component to the deterrent part of our system failing, according to some, is delays in punishment. Not because the criminal evaded capture, but through numerous appeals, etc.

That's pretty dumb. The argument only makes sense as applied to the death penalty, since people sentenced to prison almost always serve their time while pursuing appeals. And as for the death penalty, all those other first world countries with lower crime rates don't practice it.

[IGotWorms 4,060]

Naomi just won this thread.

That first paragraph of hers was one of the nuttiest things I have ever read on this board. No shocker that you thought it was profound

[Voltaire 5,363]

How many people did you exterminate in a genocidal fashion?

 

In retrospect, it's pretty amazing that I was able to keep my impulse to frag under control.

[naomi 356]

You seem to be suggesting that people want to give him a pass because he is "only" accused of killing Jews, which is fockin :wacko:

 

I don't think people think through it that much. I know they definitely wouldn't assent to that.

 

But when we have injustice that cultural consciousness is on high-alert about though, like racism, or abortion opposition, that "geez., he's so old now, kinda sad and pointless to prosecute him" ...would it come to mind as easily?

 

Like I don't imagine you EVER saying "it does seem sorta sad and pointless" in one of those scenarios, but with this you did. It's something I want to be wrong about though. Just be super honest asking yourself that question

[penultimatestraw 473]

high pitbull ownership ?

if you outlaw guns, only the pitbulls will have them.

 

And it ain't the pitbulls that's the problem. It's their teeth.

[phillybear 366]

I have an alibi. I was out strangling Girl Scouts at that exact same time. So go take a sh!t in a hat and wear it.

[IGotWorms 4,060]

 

I don't think people think through it that much. I know they definitely wouldn't assent to that.

 

But when we have injustice that cultural consciousness is on high-alert about though, like racism, or abortion opposition, that "geez., he's so old now, kinda sad and pointless to prosecute him" ...would it come to mind as easily?

 

Like I don't imagine you EVER saying "it does seem sorta sad and pointless" in one of those scenarios, but with this you did. It's something I want to be wrong about though. Just be super honest asking yourself that question

Well you're wrong. I'd say the same thing if it was an abortion doctor killer or whatever. Frankly I find your assumptions to be highly offensive.

[Mungwater 597]

Well you're wrong. I'd say the same thing if it was an abortion doctor killer or whatever. Frankly I find your assumptions to be highly offensive.

If you find anything Naomi says offensive, you need to get out more.

 

Or maybe people use that term "offensive" too much, I can't think of anything that would offend me.

[Googballz 39]

Naomi hurt Worms' feelings.

[Bishop82 61]

Or maybe people use that term "offensive" too much, they forgot what it means.

Fixed

[shotsup 833]

Tell me a story ....... Spill your guts old man

[penultimatestraw 473]

If you find anything Naomi says offensive, you need to get out more.

 

Or maybe people use that term "offensive" too much, I can't think of anything that would offend me.

If you understand anything Naomi says, you need to get out more. But I'm offended by her lack of brevity.