Honour in Combat

[GasMask]

76mm, hey, no problem. I didn't read all 11 pages of replies (lol). I just replied to the orriginal topic which was about honor and chivelry. Personally I think war is awful... the only thing that is chivelress is the outcome, everything in between is just war.

[John Kettler]

MrJingles,

Elsewhere, I forgot to mention that I'm glad your faculty advisor is backing you on your project. Not having to row with the advisor makes for much more efficient and effective research.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Zarquon]

Re BigDuke/BlackJack:

I'm feeling a little strange quoting 18th-century philosophers on this, because usually it's a little too high-brow for me. But it has all been said before (and much more stringent than I could possibly put it):

Wikipedia

Kant defined an imperative as any proposition that declares a certain kind of action (or inaction) to be necessary. A hypothetical imperative would compel action under a particular circumstance: If I wish to satisfy my thirst, then I must drink this lemonade. A categorical imperative would denote an absolute, unconditional requirement that exerts its authority in all circumstances, and is both required and justified as an end in itself. It is best known in its first formulation:

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law.

He expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the moral philosophy of his day because he believed it could never surpass the level of hypothetical imperatives. For example, a consequentialist standard may indicate that murder is wrong because it does not maximize good for the greatest number; but this would be irrelevant to someone who is not interested in maximizing the good. Consequently, Kant argued, hypothetical moral systems cannot persuade moral action or be regarded as bases for moral judgments against others, because the imperatives they are based on rely too heavily on subjective considerations.

That's why BlackJack's saying "I'm far from wanting to make it official policy, but in that case it was OK" drives me mad. It's just illogical. If is justifiable, then it will be justifiable the next time, too. For example when someone summarily executes all members of the Mafia, or the KKK, or the Baath party. There can be no reasonable doubt that they all willingly and knowingly joined a murderous club, can there? If you allow it to happen once, you allow it once and for all. And even if those men shot only the guilty ones (accidentally, because they had no way of knowing it), it doesn't change anything.

[Black Jack Pershing II]

Zarquon-

With all due respect, you are the one that is being illogical. You are taking my proposition that a summary execution may be morally justified in a particular instance, and drawing the conclusion that summary executions must therefore be must be justified in a wide range of instances. That does not necessarily follow.

To the contrary, to be consistent, I need only admit that summary executions might be justified in comparable situations. And I think I can admit that.

For example, if you (extremely) hypothetically transplanted Dachau to Alabama and substituted blacks for Jews, and KKK members for SS men, I would have a hard time seeing the injustice in a camp liberator shooting any hooded,white-robed individuals they happened to find on site.

PS -- Kant's moral philosophy is banal. It took him page after turgid page to come up with the conclusion that we should live by the Golden Rule. Duh. His metaphysics, on the other hand, make him worthwhile.

[John Kettler]

Mr. Jingles,

In Cornelius Ryan's THE LAST BATTLE, a Russian officer stops long enough to warn a German woman about the "animals" in the second echelon so she can take precautions to avoid being raped. In Sajer's THE FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, he shares his rations with Russian POWs.

Regards,

John Kettler

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by GasMask:

I don't understand why you say I'm not comprehending discipline. That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

I said that war is hell, and there is nothing good about it. Sometimes you must fight for what is right, or for freedom, or to stop an evil enemy. The United States has done that quite a few times, but it doesn't change the fact that war, is war, and it's not fun, and it's not good, and it's men dying, and it's little kids dying.

I joined the Marine Corps to help people and to do a service to my country, so I'm not saying going to war is wrong, I'm just saying that it's war and when a man is fighting in it, he's not thinking, oh this is honorable, or this is chivelress; he's thinking, I hope I can survive this and complete the mission at hand to the best of my abilities.

So don't go saying that I don't understand discipline, and please don't try to shove any more words down my throat.

Basically I'm just saying that the outcome or the justification for a war can be honorable, however it doesn't change the fact that a war is brutle and it's about death and distruction. Just because you try to do your best to preserve life doesn't mean there will be no life lost, because the other guy isn't going to want to play nice, and that is why we have wars.

Do you think the United States went into WWII saying, we're going to kill everyone? No, they went in thinking of the best way to end it and as fast as possible, but the Germens didn't want to be conquered so you thus have death. Honor and Chivelry are just words to suger coat the horrors of war, and reading a book doesn't put you on the front lines. And I'm sure thatSydney Jary doesn't like war either; just because you are serving, or doing your duty or you have strong discipline and do what your told, doesn't mean you love war, no man should love war. Yeah, I'm sure Patton did, but he was a General; and with all do respect, I love the man, but he's not in the trenches. It's easy to love war when you're directing it and not fighting it.

War is fun as a video game, but as real life, it should be the last option always because innocent lives always get lost, and that's a tragedy.

You know what? I'll put a link on here to a web site that shows videos of attacks in Iraq. Click on the video called IRAQI SNIPER DEDICATES 9 BULLETS TO BUSH. It shows 9 US troops being sniped in the head as they talk to kids in Iraq. Sure they went in there to be nice and talk to kids and make peace, but this sniper asshole shoots them, if that's not HELL, then you tell me what it is. I'm sick of people acting like war is a passtime to watch on the news and discuss at work.

[snip]linky gone[/snip]

Sorry about the delay - been away from the computer over the weekend. Also, the intent isn't to offend based on service or anything like that.

Basically, in the 11-odd pages, certain posters have been excusing US soldiers shooting SS men captured at Dachau out of hand and, to me, you came in on that side saying "war is hell, deal with it".

My point is that the aforementioned incident represents a collapse of discipline on the part of that unit. Excusing it because "War is Hell" is also excusing a lack of discipline. But having read your later posts, I don't think that you intended to mean that.

I mentioned Sydney Jary because he opposes the view that in order to fight a war one must become brutal. This does not mean one should shirk from the task in hand, but that summary executions or killing not required for completing the mission should be avoided. As the leader of a singularly effective platoon in NWE his views ought to count for something.

I don't believe that the US went into WW2 with the aim of killing everyone, but had they done things could have been a whole lot bloodier.

[JonS]

I've been pondering the positions of Bigduke and Black Jack (and, to be fair, I'm effectively assigning them the same position, although they hold slightly different ones) as demonstrated in this thread. And I wondered where the disconnect between them and myself might have come from.

In doing so, I had a fuzzy mental image of blobs of people, so I decided to try and formalise that as a Venn diagram:

This is how I view the likely situation in Germany in general, and in the camps in particular in April/May '45. The camp guards were primarily - but not exclusively - SS, who were in turn primarily German. As with all groups of people, some were innocent of any wrongdoing - or at least, for or particular purposes, innocent of anything to do with the camps. Some of them were also conscripts, and therefore not there of their own volition (though any criminal activity they undertook while there was their own doing.)

Looking at the green circle in particular, which represents the guards at the camp when the US soldiers arrived, we have a somewhat murky picture. They likely consisted of some mix of SS and other Wehrmacht, Germans and non-Germans, some conscripts, and in all likelihood some people who were simplynin the wrong place at the wrong time. In other words, innocent of whatever they were about to be shot for. I'm not going to bother to try and assign numbers or weightings to the relative areas (in fact, the relative areas in either diagram should not be taken to represent anything, with one exception, noted below), just note that there were a lot of overlaps. It is, I suppose, conceivable that the overlap of 'Innocent' and 'Camp Guards' contains no members. It is conceivable, but not provable, especially not since the evidence died in a flurry of .30 rounds.

OTOH, I think this is how Duke and Jack see it:

Much simpler. The Camp Guards were all SS, and all SS were Camp Guards (in effect, if not in practice). There were no Innocent SS/Camp Guards - all had done something wrong. Even if it wasn't the ostensible reason they were shot, the mere fact that they had done something, somewhere is good enough that they be shot without trial. What had they done? Well, again we don't know since again the evidence died in a flurry of .30 rounds. But that's ok, because they had done something. They must have done - they were SS.

Duke (or Jack?) allows that some small number of the SS/Guards might have been conscripts, and therefore at the camp against their will. This however, seems to be irrelevant, since they were still SS and therefore guilty of something, somewhere. (Incidentally, the tiny overlap of Conscripts with SS and Camp Guards is the only place where the size of the overlap conveys information about the size of the group). There is, however, explicitly NO overlap between the SS/Camp Guards and Innocent.

Basically, absent any evidence, Jack and Duke are prepared to say that they know that some of the overlaps in 'my' diagram contain zero members. I am prepared to say that may be the case, but there is no way of knowing, and absent that knowing, there is no way to avoid shooting the wrong people. Which is the point of due process and a trial.

Regards

JonS

[tankibanki]

Don't forget that most of the ones shot were not actually camp guards as those had already fled.

[JonS]

That is covered in the two diagrams.

More specifically, the possibility of it is allowed for it in 'mine', but not in 'Dukes'. That is one of many problems with the Duke/Jack position, IMO.

[IDILIX]

Originally posted by Dave Stockhoff:

..

...

Back when Russia and Turkey were fighting over the Balkans before WWI, the British press always reported Turkish atrocities. It never reported Russian ones. This made it tough for the Turks, diplomatically. The more things change . . .

yes it did very much... since noone really cares about what u suffer , u start replying in kind with no remorse...

[Bigduke6]

JonS,

Good for you for trying to reduce the discussion to graphics, that usually helps, and I think it does here.

That said, you aren't getting my position quite right, although you certainly come close.

My basic points are these:

1. Concentration camps were so horrible, so abhorrent to all society, that the best thing for society to be healty in the future, and to avoid a repeat concentration camp, was to make absolutely sure as many people who were complicit in concentration camps were punished utterly.

2. That imperative in my view outweighs the conflicting social need to ensure "due process". I acknowledge inflicting punishment on people without "due process" has two basic problems, first that you may well punish some innocent, and second by abandoning "due process" in the case of a concentration camp, you run the risk of losing respect for "due process" in other situations. I recognize the importance of "due process" in a healthy society and I realize full well that it was the German society's willingness to abandon "due process" that put millions of innocent people in concentration camps in the first place.

3. I do not, however, think due process is an absolute that must, or even should, be given first priority in a judgement call at all times. This is not because I am against due process, but because I (a) realize due process is implemented by humans and so is inherently imperfect, ( consider the latter days of WW2 in Germany a situation in which due process did not and could not function properly and © see points 1. and 2. above.

4. I believe due process was additionally unfit for dealing with concentration camps not just for practical reasons (end of war chaos, tens of thousands of suspects, millions of witnesses); but also because I believe a concentration camp was not simply a collection of individual crimes that could be catalogued and listed on a bazillion individual rap sheets. Certainly there were murders and torture and evil things without number done to little children, but the real crime of the concentration camps was that tens of thousands of guards, administrators, etc. etc. simply participated. The allowed it to continue. They did not object in any meaningful way. They accepted the line that being in a war gives you the right to accept just about any evil the human imagination is capable of as long as that evil is carried out in an organized fashion sanctioned by the reigning government.

5. I think that attitude is wrong. I think people should not be pardoned for acceding to truly horrible criminal acts carried out, massively, in their name. Certainly that does not mean that I believe every single German alive in 1945 should have been shot dead because Dachau operated on German territory. There are degrees of culpability - and in my opinion the degree of culpability of a guy willing to participate in the operation of a concentration camp in April 1945 is enough to merit his execution. I say: You sanctioned it, now pay the price.

6. I believe the number of "innocent" persons capable of being present in an official capacity at Dachau, when the Americans broke in, is so perishingly small so as to be insignificant. Yes I can imagine some poor guy coming off medical leave, seeing the concentration camp and hating it with every fiber of his body, placed on guard, and unable to desert before the Americans captured him.

But for every innocent I see tens of thousands who figured that's what the Jews and the Communists had coming to them, after all Jews and Communists aren't human and there's a war on, and in any case all my mates are going along with the concentration camp so why shouldn't I.

That attitude is far more dangerous to society, in my view, than any "slippery slope" involving a step back from due process. As proof I offer the millions of people murdered and millions more abused in the concentration camp system. I fail to see how respect of due process, where the concentration camp perpetrators are concerned, is better for society than not killing and abusing all those millions of people.

So certainly, the graphic that you drew represents my view of the concentration camp guards standing around Dachau in April 1945 accurately, as far as it goes.

But the thing driving my attitude to this is not the logic: "They probably were guilty, so it's just fine to punish them by whatever means at hand." Although I would say that statement was basically true at the time.

Rather, the thing driving my attitude is: "Due process is a legal concept developed by human society to protect human society. Like all other human constructs, it is imperfect. It is not only conceivable but obvious that there could be crimes and, more generally speaking, threats to society that the concept of due process is incapable of dealing with properly, for the good of human society.

I sumbit that allowing people involved in operating concentration camp to escape unpunished, especially those who went along with it passively, is a clear case of a set of crimes due process cannot handle.

And I think that simply repeating the mantra "if we don't follow due process, we become just like them" is myopic, short-sighted, and intellectually lazy. Over the 6 million years or so we humans have been on this planets we have been making laws, and as society has changed so have the laws changed. Concentration camps were pretty much unique crimes in the human experience. I ask: Why should we not consider adapting our laws to this wholly new crime?

After all, laws serve society, not the other way around, which is of course what the lawyers would have us believe.

[Kingfish]

Rather, the thing driving my attitude is: "Due process is a legal concept developed by human society to protect human society. Like all other human constructs, it is imperfect. It is not only conceivable but obvious that there could be crimes and, more generally speaking, threats to society that the concept of due process is incapable of dealing with properly, for the good of human society.

But you can't take something like due process, whose principle is that of fairness and equality regardless of the circumstances surrounding the crime, and apply it selectively. It negates the entire concept.

If anything, due process must be applied to the most heinous of crimes in order to affirm its legitimacy in a civilized world.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

JonS,

Good for you for trying to reduce the discussion to graphics, that usually helps, and I think it does here.

That said, you aren't getting my position quite right, although you certainly come close.

My basic points are these:

1. Concentration camps were so horrible, so abhorrent to all society, that the best thing for society to be healty in the future, and to avoid a repeat concentration camp, was to make absolutely sure as many people who were complicit in concentration camps were punished utterly..

But what about Canadian and American concentration camp guards? Do they fall into the same category?

Were the guys in the towers the same ones shooting people, gassing people and/or putting them in ovens? I thought it was the inmates themselves who were organized into doing the latter.

Does the act of standing in a tower make you morally reprehensible? You're looking at things en masse, but the thing about criminal organizations, is that the responsibility is diffused throughout entire organizations. Hence the quandries that most thinking people have when assigning guilt.

Was Germany as a nation guilty? Just the guys in the camps? Just the guys in the camps who gave the orders? You talk about "concentration camp guards" as if that was a clear definition of whom you're talking about. What constitutes a guard? Do you mean all camp staff? The commandant was not a "guard" in the literal sense - I doubt he stood fire piquet at night or manned a tower - yet if anyone was guilty, it was Hoess, Eicke and that ilk.

So once again, you use terminology with a broad brush when it is not applicable.

I guess that makes it easier to shoot people out of hand, but it would not be very easy to make a legal case given your poor definitions and framing of the discussion.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

JonS,

Good for you for trying to reduce the discussion to graphics, that usually helps, and I think it does here.

That said, you aren't getting my position quite right, although you certainly come close.

Thanks, I hoped it would.

the thing driving my attitude to this is not the logic: "They probably were guilty, so it's just fine to punish them by whatever means at hand." Although I would say that statement was basically true at the time.

Rather, the thing driving my attitude is: "Due process is a legal concept developed by human society to protect human society. Like all other human constructs, it is imperfect. It is not only conceivable but obvious that there could be crimes and, more generally speaking, threats to society that the concept of due process is incapable of dealing with properly, for the good of human society.

If I many paraphrase, your position is NOT "They must be guilty of something, so let's shoot them", in other words the focus is not on individual culpability. Rather it IS "this crime is so huge we must punish someone, no matter who", which is a focuses on the overall group of crimes making up the Holocaust, or at least the Dachau part of it, at a higher level, aka collective responsibility/collective punishment.

I submit that allowing people involved in operating concentration camp to escape unpunished, especially those who went along with it passively, is a clear case of a set of crimes due process cannot handle.

I disagree, obviously. That some were not punished is not a failure of due process, it is a failure of will to follow due process. The US and the UK had just won WWII. They were *this* close to developing usable nuclear power. In a few years the US would go to the moon. It wasn't a lack of capability or resources, it was a lack of will.

Besides, when the shootings at Dachau occurred all that was in the future. The soldiers had no way of knowing the scale and scope of the Holocaust from their limited perspective at that time. They also had no way of knowing that their army and nation would subsequently suffer a lack of will to follow up and prosecute all involved. They simply suffered a breakdown in morale and discipline, took the law into their own hands, and shot some people they should have been protecting.

There is - to me - a huge difference between what they did, and a later rationalisation along the lines of "we have all these people we think were involved in running the camps, but we can't be bothered sorting the wheat from the chaff so we'll just call them all guilty and shoot the lot." While I don't agree with that position either, at least it would indicate that someone had actually put some thought into it, and consciously decided to ignore the rules and laws.

And I think that simply repeating the mantra "if we don't follow due process, we become just like them" is myopic, short-sighted, and intellectually lazy. Over the 6 million years or so we humans have been on this planets we have been making laws, and as society has changed so have the laws changed. Concentration camps were pretty much unique crimes in the human experience. I ask: Why should we not consider adapting our laws to this wholly new crime?

It's a good question, and of course the answer is 'we did'. The revised GCs of 1949 were done to take into account a range of events that occurred in WWII that previously either hadn't been considered, or weren't much of a problem. WWII moved the goal posts, so 'we' moved the pitch.

Regards

JonS

[ February 22, 2006, 12:04 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[Maj Kong]

Although the Dachau photos clearly show some Germans were shot...I have trouble having complete faith in all the web sources cited. None are truly primary sources (no scanned pdfs on government websites) and the Wikipedia entries and "Scrapbook" pages seem like veiled attempts at denial. Big emphasis on Dachau mainly contained Communists, etc. not Jews. Gas chambers not used...Peiper and others tortured to ensure Malmedy convictions.

Back to original topic...I always thought John Keegan's "Face of Battle" was excellent talking about the differing incidents of kindness/cruelty and Holmes "Acts of War".

I do have to admit I'm always a little leery though of people who aren't or have never been soldiers who continue to play and be fascinated by wargames far into adulthood while professing abhorrence about war. It's like someone being guilty about watching porn but they do it anyway.

[Tagwyn]

My Dad was there immeidatly after the camp was liberated ... all German camp personnel were killed. The ones shot were lucky. Tag

[Andreas]

@Tagwyn - rubbish. Have you got any proof for this? And no, your father's war stories ain't good enough.

Maj Kong - the transcription of the US document provided by me (originating from the AHF) comes from a very trustworthy AHF forum member. I also recommend the divisional history 'The Rock of Anzio' where this event is treated in detail.

Regards

Andreas

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by Andreas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Black Jack Pershing II:

Andreas:

Do you have any reliable stats on the number of conscripts in the SS? Doing internet research on questions like this ends to lead to websites that I would really prefer not to have in my log.

No, all I can tell you is that it was not insignificant, since it co-incided with the expansion of the W-SS and the heavy losses of the late war that needed to be replaced. But if you are really interested, you can ask the question on the AHF.

</font>

[Wisbech_lad]

Anecdote from my old biology teacher (who was a very interesting bloke - worked in OR during the war, and rose hip syrup project)

Anyway, at the end of the war, UK soldiers demobbing were shown propaganda films on - basically - why it had been worth fighting - as part of their demob. So, as part of this, newsreels on KZ were shown.

At one of the sessions shown, an enterprising left wing colleague of his decided to follow with a newsreel of recent advances in Soviet science.

The veteran tommies fled, white, some vomiting, many swearing vengeance on a certain Dr Pavlov, whose experiments were highlighted.

Torturing dogs still makes most people mad - doesn't mean that killing lab workers out of hand is justified (tho' the ALF says it is)

[Maj Kong]

After googling more about the 45th Div and Dachau it's quite interesting because of the controversy between LtCol Sparks and BGen Linden of the 42nd Div.

Andreas, concur your source seems very knowledgeable. Other AHF posts used Mr. Kettler's questionable sources.

I recall seeing some of the British films about the camps on PBS...bulldozers clearing the stacks and stacks of bodies...definitely memorable.

[Tagwyn]

Andreas: My dad's stories were based on his own perspective. I am sure he was not lying. I have an SS dress saber he "borrowed" from a gutted officer. Probably one of Dorosh's "true soldiers."

Best to you

Tag

[Dandelion]

Originally posted by Tagwyn:

My Dad was there immeidatly after the camp was liberated ... all German camp personnel were killed. The ones shot were lucky. Tag

Your dad? So you're born in the thirties or forties then are you? Just curious.

Cheerio

Dandelion

[Kingfish]

Originally posted by Tagwyn:

Andreas: My dad's stories were based on his own perspective. I am sure he was not lying. I have an SS dress saber he "borrowed" from a gutted officer. Probably one of Dorosh's "true soldiers."

Best to you

Tag

Did your dad eat his liver with with some fava beans and a nice chianti?

[John Kettler]

Maj Kong,

How can the statements from primary eyewitnesses on both sides, including the sworn statement to the German Red Cross of one who was in the SS group machine gunned, coupled with contemporary photography, be deemed "questionable sources," praytell? Please see not only the lengthy illustrated main story here, but the related ones following it.

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/SoldiersKilled.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Dandelion:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Tagwyn:

My Dad was there immeidatly after the camp was liberated ... all German camp personnel were killed. The ones shot were lucky. Tag

Your dad? So you're born in the thirties or forties then are you? Just curious.

Cheerio

Dandelion </font>