Black Jack Pershing II

Andreas: I did read your earlier post and noted from the excerpt that all the men in question were apparently members of the SS. Granted, they may not all have served as guards, but that is irrelevant to the main point. I see no injustice in executing a member of the SS present in a death camp. They were voluntary members of an organization expressly established to protect and expand the Nazi empire. That, in and of itself, merits the death penalty. I have tried (with one or two failures ) to maintain a civil tone in this discussion and not to ascribe any bad faith or ill will to any of the participants. I would hope to have received the same courtesy.

I draw the line at SS troops captured in a death camp. Those are the facts of this situation, and it is pointless to dwell on hypotheticals as there are so many variables at play. That is why it is a waste of time to try to come up with some sort of utilitarian calculus to determine at which point it is OK to stop letting the guilty go free and convict an innocent man. I am not trying to argue that the executions comported with military law, and I am agnostic on whether they had a negative effect on discipline etc. All I am saying is that they were not evil or unjust per se, and were certainly not an "atrocity" or in any way comparable to, for example, the Malmedy massacre. Were any of those executed not actually members of the SS? If so, I will rethink my position. The point is that here we have an extraordinary situation where the potential for error is extremely low -- Allied agents in disguise? disguised escaping prisoners? -- please. As a result, there is little, if any, chance for a genuine miscarriage of justice.

JonS - Again, I am not saying that summary executions should be an institutional policy. However, in the particular situation of the Dachau liberation, I find it hard to believe that the execution of some of the guards harmed morale and discipline more than treating them as POWs on a par with honorable soldiers would have.

What possible "innocent" reason could he have for being there within the realm of reason.

Posted by JonS: I am not arguing that we should have had a national policy of summarily executing anyone suspected of being a KZ guard. All I am saying is that summary on-the-spot executions of those who were obviously KZ guards was not wrong and should not be punished. Do you have any reasonable basis for believing that any of the men executed were in fact innocent -- i.e. that they were not in fact members of the SS or were not apprehended at Dachau upon its liberation? If not, you are setting up a gigantic strawman.

posted by Kingfish: Why not?</font>

Posted by M. Dorosh: You are completely missing my point. I was arguing that the Japanese-Americans got "due process", and they ended up with a manifestly unjust result anyway. That is what I meant by "...my irony meter went into overload. AFAIK, the internees did get due process, and a fat lot of good it did them in the realm of justice." [emphasis added] The point is that "due process" as such does not ensure justice. Similarly, lack of formal due process does not necessarily entail a lack of justice. I do not see why this is so difficult to comprehend. Regarding the witness issue, that is what one would call a prudential, rather than a moral, argument. Had the Nazis not been kind enough to leave us with such detailed records of their crimes, I would accord it more weight. Regarding Lord Blackstone's (I think) pronouncements on letting the guilty go free to save the innocent, I would say it makes a nice aphorism and little more. Is it really better to acquit 10 guilty murderers than to unjustly convict me of a parking violation? Of course not. The point is that we should err on the side of caution when there is some reasonable doubt as to someone's guilt. As regards the KZ guards, there is no reasonable question of guilt. If you can show me evidence to the contrary (i.e. of completely innocent men who just happened to be wearing SS uniforms in Dachau when it was liberated), I would be glad to hear it.

Posted by Dorosh:

Kingfish posted: I don't really care when he arrived. JonS posted: I shall refrain from responding in kind.

To my mind, being present at a death camp in an SS uniform merits the death penalty. Such presence proves complicity in the murder of millions of people. I do not care if he had been sneaking food to the inmates or that, in his heart he was really sorry and felt bad. Again, these are special circumstances. I am not saying that it is always alright to summarily execute prisoners. I am saying that the appropriate consequence for summarily executing a KZ guard is a pat on the back.

I dunno - running a death camp maybe? I would have to say that morally, if not legally, they forfeited their rights when they clipped on that Totenkopf and went to work at Dachau. Indeed it is Again, legal and just are not always the same. Just because their acts were technically illegal, does not make them wrong. One could make a good argument that treating KZ guards with the full dignity of prisoners of war would have been a helluva lot worse to discipline and group order than what took place. Because one was running a death camp and the other was making jokes about the government.

Posted by M. Dorosh: Easy, tiger. If you cannot discern a qualitative difference between executing wounded soldiers in a hospital and executing SS men caught red-handed in a death camp, it is time to recalibrate your antennae. I have no problem summarily executing anyone affiliated with running Dachau. Do you really think it is an excuse that someone was working in the kitchens doling out substarvation levels of rancid food? Or that he is on sick-leave from the 3d SS-PD, and is recuperating on light duty at the ol' death camp? Or even that he is, God forbid, mentally deficient? I hope for the sake of their immortal souls that they were mentally deficient. Where does your "slippery slope" lead to? To more summary executions of death camp guards? I wouldn't mind taking a quick jaunt down that slide, and I think humanity would be better, not worse, for it.

Posted by M. Dorosh: I completely disagree. We require due process in an attempt to avoid miscarriages of justice against the innocent and to protect citizens from the concentration of power in the state. Tying oneself up in procedural niceties does not, in and of itself, confer moral legitimacy. The process that is due depends on the nature of the situation. In the case of Dachau, I would summarize it as follows: 1) Was the prisoner apprehended at Dachau? 2) If yes, was the prisoner a member of the SS. If the answer to both is yes, I have a hard time seeing how a summary execution is in any way "unjust". Justice Jackson's quote demostrates exactly what was wrong with the Nuremburg trials: they were overly legalistic. We created ex post facto laws and then pigeonholed the defendants' conduct into them. Instead, rather than accusing the defendants of breaking particular laws, the prosecutors should have presented evidence of exactly what the Nazi regime had done and the various defendants' individual roles therein. The defendants should then have had an opportunity to dispute the evidence or to explain why they should not be punished. Then, the court should have decided on a just punishment. Jackson completely misses the point when he says that a fair trial requires an uncertainty of outcome. Why? If the facts are not in dispute, guilt (or innocence for that matter) should not be in question.

BigDuke6- I think you err when you refer to the executions of the KZ guards as "war crimes" or "atrocities." If they were, then we need a new definition for the terms. My only problem with the defendants was that they apparently felt the need to excuse their conduct by claiming that they were acting in self defense.