[Honour in Combat]

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.

[Honour in Combat]

Then when and where do you draw the f***ing line?

If it is ok to shoot SS guards caught in the camps, then what about the ones captured in the neighboring towns? Or identified by former prisoners 40+ years later?

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.

[Honour in Combat]

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.

[Honour in Combat]

but if you shoot him before interrogating him, how do you know?

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

[Honour in Combat]

Posted by JonS:

I don't care how you respond, as long as you do actually respond with a soundly based reason.

Currently all we've got out of you is "shoot them all; don't care if they're innocent; wearing an SS uniform is ipso facto proof of guilt; we should do it because they are doing it; etc"

While those are all somewhat understandable bases for individual action, as the basis for national policy and a system of military justice they are complete crap.

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.

[Honour in Combat]

posted by Kingfish:

Originally posted by Black Jack Pershing II:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> I don't really care when he arrived.

Why not?</font>

[Honour in Combat]

Posted by M. Dorosh:

So the fact that they were Japanese was all that mattered - they deserved it because they were Nips.

Thanks for the clarification.

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.

Do you care to explain how murdering prime witnesses in future war crimes trials would be of benefit to anyone, or what your thoughts on "better a guilty man go free than an innocent man punished"? Because that seems quite central to the reasons why you don't just let your men execute people without a trial.

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.

[Honour in Combat]

Posted by Dorosh:

What about American and Canadian concentration camp guards after the war? Were they, or were they not, "war criminals" for having staffed the camps that deprived those of Japanese descent of their personal property, their rights, and their dignity? Or were they "just following orders"?

[Honour in Combat]

Kingfish posted:

Sorry, but this is BS any way you look at it. Without even the most basic of investigations you can not determine if the guard in question was there when the first train rolled in, or had arrived only 20 minutes before the Allied tanks crashed thru the gate.

I don't really care when he arrived.

JonS posted:

Goebbels would be proud of you.

I shall refrain from responding in kind.

[Honour in Combat]

Wrong. All you've got is that they were at a death camp. There is a vast difference, and without a trial you will never, ever know.

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.

I don't know how it works in the US, but in NZ the GCs are written into the AFDA and the DM69 (c.f. UCMJ), at which point all NZ soldiers, saliors, and airmen are obliged to uphold them, and see that they are upheld, at all times or face the appropriate consequences.

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.

[Honour in Combat]

Caught red-handed at what?

I dunno - running a death camp maybe?

If in the act of killing prisoners, then you can shoot them. Once they put their hands up, they become prisoners, to be afforded all the protections demanded by the rules of land warfare, the Geneva Convention, and whatever other treaties your army is a signatory to.

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.

It's that simple.

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.

How is shooting an SS guard without trial different from gassing a political prisoner without trial?

Because one was running a death camp and the other was making jokes about the government.

[Honour in Combat]

Posted by M. Dorosh:

Probably because you obviously have no concept of what justice actually is.

And if the prisoner in your example was mentally deficient in some way, or worked in the motorpool or kitchen at Dachau, you would still justify shooting him in cold blood?

By that logic, the Japanese soldiers in Hong Kong who bayonetted men lying in hospital beds were justified - they were at war with the British, they found British soldiers in a hospital, and they then killed those British soldiers. The fact that they were lying wounded in a bed is irrelevant.

Slippery slopes tend to be just that. You can't go out and say you're fighting for democracy and justice, and then not practice it. Why fight at all, then? Just to become what you're fighting against? No thanks.

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.

[Honour in Combat]

Posted by M. Dorosh:

But it is the very process of tying one's self up in knots to the advantage of an indecent man that gives the decent man the moral authority to judge the indecent.

To paraphrase the (fictional) dialogue from Alec Baldwin's NUREMBERG movie:

Justice Jackson - a fair trial means an uncertain outcome.

Soviet General Ion T. Nikitchenko - you would let a man like Ernst Kaltenbrunner - responsible for the Gestapo and the concentration camps - you would permit a man like this to stand up in the courtroom and declare himself "not guilty"?

Justice Jackson - yes, that is exactly what I would allow.

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.

[Honour in Combat]

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.