05-13-2011, 06:51 PM
rjmacs wrote:
I have failed to make my point. These systems don't just mix up the directions on a moral compass; they mangle and disable the compass itself. They make it impossible for people to distinguish good from evil by design, and they do it chiefly by stifling the people's capacity to engage in reflection, deliberation, and creative communication with one another. In the absence of these things, the conscience doesn't just get disoriented; it atrophies and vanishes. I don't think that knowledge of a waiting war crimes tribunal would have made any difference to most Nazis.
How then to explain all the Germans who RESISTED the Nazi's? People from all ranks and walks of life did so. Some escaped, some paid with their lives. The nature of what the Nazi's were doing and the potential consequences were well known and widely discussed throughout Germany and other countries that were occupied. People were not being held in vacuums with other knowledge removed.
To excuse anyone who participated in the crimes of the Nazis claiming they were "brainwashed" is to dishonor the sacrifice of those people.
"IT is now a question of final decisions affecting the fate of the
nation. History will hold these leaders guilty if they do not act in
accordance with their professional and political conscience. Their
military obedience ends where their knowledge, their conscience
and their sense of responsibility forbid the carrying out of an order.
If their advice and warnings in such a situation are not heeded,
they have the right and the duty before their people and history
to resign from their posts. If they all act with a united will, then it
will be impossible to make war. In this way, they will have saved
their Fatherland from the worst, from catastrophe. It shows a lack
of stature and a failure to recognize one's obligations when a soldier
of the highest rank at such times sees his duties only in the limited
framework of his military tasks and is not conscious of the highest
responsibility to the whole nation. Extraordinary times demand
extraordinary actions." 1
With these words Ludwig Beck, the German Chief of the General
Staff from 1933 to 1938, went beyond the traditions which had
been normally binding on a senior German officer. He sought to
evoke in the man, to whom the words were addressed, General
Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, a higher sense
of responsibility than faithfulness to duty. He was ready to accept
all the consequences for himself. Six years later he paid for it with
his life.