Demjanjuk - guilty or not guilty?

[$tevie]

rjmacs wrote: Nazism didn't (and couldn't) operate because Germans and their allies were just bad people who had no trouble slaughtering innocents. It took a lot of work to make that happen, and much of the work was put into destroying people's capacity to distinguish good and evil.

Which is why you need to establish that you will be punished eventually for crimes as defined by forces greater than yourself, whether or not you have lost your moral compass. If everyone in that country knew they could be hung for what was happening maybe they would have opted to kill Hitler early on instead of 11 million innocents.

[Chakravartin]

rjmacs wrote: I also don't think there's anything morally ambiguous about genocide or mass slaughter. However, our legal system is adept at holding individuals responsible but remarkably poor at bearing witness to systems that twist people into executioners.

That's one of the stupidest things I've ever read on this forum.

So, you kill 30,000 people and then you ask for clemency because "the system" made you do it.

Seriously?

Your buddies ran away, but you kept going. Killing them by the hundreds. Men, women and children.

The remains are being scavenged for the gold from their teeth. Your bosses are making soap and buttons from those people's fat and bones and you never questioned that? Never thought to stop.

Because someone told you that it was okay.

This is not the story of some kid raised in a basement and never learning how to behave like a civilized person. This was an adult who chose to murder those people and then chose to run away from justice.

But you'd forgive him because he wasn't responsible for his actions?

Bullsh!t.

"I was just following orders" is not an excuse for genocide.

[rjmacs]

$tevie wrote:
[quote=rjmacs]Nazism didn't (and couldn't) operate because Germans and their allies were just bad people who had no trouble slaughtering innocents. It took a lot of work to make that happen, and much of the work was put into destroying people's capacity to distinguish good and evil.

Which is why you need to establish that you will be punished eventually for crimes as defined by forces greater than yourself, whether or not you have lost your moral compass. If everyone in that country knew they could be hung for what was happening maybe they would have opted to kill Hitler early on instead of 11 million innocents.
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.

[Chakravartin]

rjmacs wrote: I don't think that knowledge of a waiting war crimes tribunal would have made any difference to most Nazis.

For the purpose of prosecuting them as criminals, it's helpful when you can show that the killers were aware that they were committing acts of murder.

...

I wonder if you'd be so quick to excuse the man if you'd met him while he was killing people professionally.

[August West]

That's one of the stupidest things I've ever read on this forum.

But you'd forgive him because he wasn't responsible for his actions?

That's one of the stupidest strawmen I've ever read on this forum.

[Chakravartin]

August West wrote:

But you'd forgive him because he wasn't responsible for his actions?

That's one of the stupidest strawmen I've ever read on this forum.

You are using the wrong definition of "strawman."

[Grace62]

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.

[rjmacs]

Grace62 wrote:
[quote=rjmacs]
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.
I applaud those very few Germans who managed to resist totalitarianism; most did so not as lone individuals acting out of conscience but as small communities of confederates working together. What allowed them to resist evil was their success in maintaining pockets of reflection and deliberation in secret spaces where it was still allowable to talk about the (im)morality of Nazi action. Sadly, they were a tiny minority. Why?

Was it because most Germans were inclined toward evil, or moral cowards? Was it because they just didn't care, or were not raised to know right from wrong? Or alternately, was it because they came to live in a totalitarian state where questioning the rightness or justice of decisions or actions was verboten? Was it because if you dared to raise your voice to ask if something was right, you were killed or shipped to a camp? In a space where you aren't allowed to discuss right and wrong, those categories start to lose their meaning. As human creatures, we figure out whether things are right or wrong by talking about them, struggling with them, engaging one another's hearts and minds in conversation. We debate (like we are doing here), we protest, we demand, we weep and grieve, we dissent; in community with others, we discover what is good as a collaborative act.

The Nazis prevented this by fiat and force. They de-moralized German society by declaring that the Reich's morality was the only one, on pain of death. Did some resist? Yes, and thank God they did. But most did not. Are most guilty of accessory to murder? Are they all guilty of genocide? Ought they all face prosecution?

Edit: LET ME BE CLEAR THAT I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT DEMJANJUK SHOULD BE EXONERATED OR EXCUSED FROM WAR CRIMES. That is completely and totally NOT my point, or something i have said.

[rjmacs]

Chakravartin wrote:
So, you kill 30,000 people and then you ask for clemency because "the system" made you do it.
. . .
But you'd forgive him because he wasn't responsible for his actions?
. . .
"I was just following orders" is not an excuse for genocide.

I've clearly struck a nerve. I didn't advocate clemency, nor that we excuse his actions. I never said he didn't belong in prison, or should be forgiven. I don't know if his acts are forgivable.

As you noted, i wrote:

rjmacs wrote: I also don't think there's anything morally ambiguous about genocide or mass slaughter.

I'm not sure i can be clearer about that. What i think is that when we focus the entire moral evaluation on the individual, we lose sight of the part of this evil that was collective. And collective evil, systemic evil, is more than just a group of morally deficient people. It's an entire set of practices that actually transform morally capable people into morally neutered people. Totalitarianism does more than just crush its enemies; it actually creates a universe in which people are changed from reflective, deliberative beings into well-trained, bureaucratized, obedient automatons. Hanna Arendt's work on this subject is particularly enlightening, as is her description of Adolph Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem.

There's more to the story of Nazism and the Holocaust than good guys who resisted, and bad guys who just followed orders. It doesn't make the enterprise any less evil. It makes it more evil, in fact, and more insidious and terrifying - because it suggests that it could happen to any of us. That we - good, moral, conscience-driven people - could become butchers, if we don't maintain a society in which morality is plural, contested, debated, and lively.

[Grace62]

rjmacs wrote:
[quote=Grace62]
[quote=rjmacs]
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.
I applaud those very few Germans who managed to resist totalitarianism; most did so not as lone individuals acting out of conscience but as small communities of confederates working together. What allowed them to resist evil was their success in maintaining pockets of reflection and deliberation in secret spaces where it was still allowable to talk about the (im)morality of Nazi action. Sadly, they were a tiny minority. Why?

Was it because most Germans were inclined toward evil, or moral cowards? Was it because they just didn't care, or were not raised to know right from wrong? Or alternately, was it because they came to live in a totalitarian state where questioning the rightness or justice of decisions or actions was verboten? Was it because if you dared to raise your voice to ask if something was right, you were killed or shipped to a camp? In a space where you aren't allowed to discuss right and wrong, those categories start to lose their meaning. As human creatures, we figure out whether things are right or wrong by talking about them, struggling with them, engaging one another's hearts and minds in conversation. We debate (like we are doing here), we protest, we demand, we weep and grieve, we dissent; in community with others, we discover what is good as a collaborative act.

The Nazis prevented this by fiat and force. They de-moralized German society by declaring that the Reich's morality was the only one, on pain of death. Did some resist? Yes, and thank God they did. But most did not. Are most guilty of accessory to murder? Are they all guilty of genocide? Ought they all face prosecution?

Edit: LET ME BE CLEAR THAT I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT DEMJANJUK SHOULD BE EXONERATED OR EXCUSED FROM WAR CRIMES. That is completely and totally NOT my point, or something i have said.
Sorry but I for one do not, and cannot, excuse or explain the Nazis in the manner that you do. Every single man or woman who participated in the Holocaust made an individual choice. I would excuse children and the mentally challenged, but that's it.

The fact that so many were willing to make the wrong choice is highly disturbing, but the number of people involved does not remove or alter their individual moral responsibility.

As for the risk, yes some people were killed or imprisoned for resisting. However, research has shown that for the majority of Germans who simply made it known that they disagreed with the Nazi's, NOTHING happened to them. The sad fact remains that the majority CHOSE to remain silent and yes ACCEPTED what was happening to the Jews and other people in their country.

Since we've gone Godwin on the Catholic thread, maybe we should get some input from Joseph Ratzinger???