Would you have done anything?

finchy

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Yes take your point and it leads to the question of how do you ever apportion blame or praise if we are all the victims of our upbringing. If some of our sickest murderers could be shown to have had their personalities distorted by a dysfunctional childhood does it mean they aren't to blame ?

There are 2 big differences. The first is that if we have a sick murderer who has just committed a sick murder, he or she needs to be imprisoned to prevent other people from being sickly murdered.

The second is that we don't raise people from birth in this country with the sole intention of turning them into enthusiastic killing machines.

DeVlaeminck wrote:

One of those questions which you can argue either way - certainly the Nazi propaganda allied to the socio-economic circumstances in Germany and social norms etc may explain the behaviour of this concentration camp guard but does it actually excuse it ?

No, it doesn't excuse it. Saying that x causes y is not the same thing as saying x justifies y.

DeVlaeminck wrote:

There were after all many millions of Germans who did not support the Nazis and even those who may have had sympathies with Hitler initially who would have turned away when they realised the inhumanity of what he was doing.

How many of his generation, the generation that was raised with the propaganda, opposed the Nazis? There's a difference between being 13 years old and being told that the Germans are the master race and all opposition should be eliminated by any means necessary and being 33 years old and hearing the same thing.

I'll ask the question again - how sure are you that if you were brought up under similar circumstances (and say you had an enthusiastic Nazi family who sent you along to Hitler Youth so you'll be a good Aryan when you grow up), you would have seen the lies and the hate for what they are? Also bear in mind that as a child, you would probably have witnessed a lot of chaos, anxiety and absolute poverty at the end of the 1920s.

DeVlaeminck

finchy wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Yes take your point and it leads to the question of how do you ever apportion blame or praise if we are all the victims of our upbringing. If some of our sickest murderers could be shown to have had their personalities distorted by a dysfunctional childhood does it mean they aren't to blame ?

There are 2 big differences. The first is that if we have a sick murderer who has just committed a sick murder, he or she needs to be imprisoned to prevent other people from being sickly murdered.

The second is that we don't raise people from birth in this country with the sole intention of turning them into enthusiastic killing machines.

DeVlaeminck wrote:

One of those questions which you can argue either way - certainly the Nazi propaganda allied to the socio-economic circumstances in Germany and social norms etc may explain the behaviour of this concentration camp guard but does it actually excuse it ?

No, it doesn't excuse it. Saying that x causes y is not the same thing as saying x justifies y.

DeVlaeminck wrote:

There were after all many millions of Germans who did not support the Nazis and even those who may have had sympathies with Hitler initially who would have turned away when they realised the inhumanity of what he was doing.

How many of his generation, the generation that was raised with the propaganda, opposed the Nazis? There's a difference between being 13 years old and being told that the Germans are the master race and all opposition should be eliminated by any means necessary and being 33 years old and hearing the same thing.

I'll ask the question again - how sure are you that if you were brought up under similar circumstances (and say you had an enthusiastic Nazi family who sent you along to Hitler Youth so you'll be a good Aryan when you grow up), you would have seen the lies and the hate for what they are? Also bear in mind that as a child, you would probably have witnessed a lot of chaos, anxiety and absolute poverty at the end of the 1920s.

The point I was making was that we are all at least in part the product of our environment. It may be the case that this man would have not made those choices had he grown up in say 21st century Britain but is that really relevant - he was who he was and he did make the choices he made. As you concede explanation is not justification so you do seem to be agreeing with me there.

The part about the sick murderer still being a risk is a fair one but a different question. Are you saying a sick murderer should not be punished only removed from society to protect the rest of us ? That's a reasonable point of view but it's not the sole justification our justice system uses - there is an element of punishment and as this man did make choices he does deserve to be punished for them - as would I if I had made the same choices even if I could point to being brought up as a nazi (I wasn't btw).

Lookyhere

Alex99 wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Yes take your point and it leads to the question of how do you ever apportion blame or praise if we are all the victims of our upbringing. If some of our sickest murderers could be shown to have had their personalities distorted by a dysfunctional childhood does it mean they aren't to blame ?

One of those questions which you can argue either way - certainly the Nazi propaganda allied to the socio-economic circumstances in Germany and social norms etc may explain the behaviour of this concentration camp guard but does it actually excuse it ?

There were after all many millions of Germans who did not support the Nazis and even those who may have had sympathies with Hitler initially who would have turned away when they realised the inhumanity of what he was doing.

These are mitigating factors. Presumably this is taken into account in sentencing. That's why I wondered about pleading insanity a page or so ago. If someone's view of the world is so distorted etc... but still, it isn't a full excuse in my opinion.

I suppose it could be viewed as a pyramid, where at the top, are a small number of psycopaths that look for opportunities to kill without outside influence, and at the bottom there are a big majority that would refuse to kill, or at least be very resistant to coersion to kill. Inbetween, there would be a significant number that wouldn't need a lot of persuasion to kill and some that seek out opportunity to do so in the appropriate culture. These people still getting sentenced aren't at the bottom of the pyramid.

this would show that anyone who has not been subject to years of brain washing can and will go onto to kill or inflict pain, all but for the grace of God.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

finchy

DeVlaeminck wrote:

The point I was making was that we are all at least in part the product of our environment.

I know what your point was, I was just saying that I think the two are very different cases and should be judged accordingly.

DeVlaeminck wrote:

It may be the case that this man would have not made those choices had he grown up in say 21st century Britain but is that really relevant - he was who he was and he did make the choices he made. As you concede explanation is not justification so you do seem to be agreeing with me there.

I would not say that is irrelevant. We all know that there were some people who definitely guilty as hell of war crimes - the top layers of the Nazi Party, the most enthusiastic participants an so on. We also know that the holocaust could not have happened without the input of a very large number of people. The question is, where do you draw the line between those people who should be punished, and those who shouldn't? What about the people who drove the trains, or the people who kept lists of local Jews? At some point, you have to stop punishing the people involved. It would appear that we disagree on the level at which that line should be drawn.

On this practical level, if we were to hunt down and prosecute everyone who has ever committed a war crime, you'd have an endless task. Think of everyone who either actively took part or was complicit in -

- German war crimes against civilian populations in occupied countries
- Soviet POW camps from which only about 5% of the German POWs emerged alive
- Japanese POW camps
- Allied war crimes against German soldiers and civilians

Then, moving on from WW2

- European colonial powers fighting against liberation movements in their empires
- Uganda
- Congo
- Afghanistan
- Sudan
- Rwanda
- Liberia
- South American military juntas
- Yugoslavia

I could go on and on with this list, and if you are to punish anyone who was operating at Hanning's level, then you've got millions of people to imprison. That is another reason that I would argue that it's more important to go for the leaders. FWIW, my grandad was a POW in one of the Japanese camps and he was treated appallingly for 3 years. He was almost starved to death by the time the war ended. I don't blame every single person involved, the only people that I would want punished are the people who created that culture and gave the orders.

DeVlaeminck wrote:

The part about the sick murderer still being a risk is a fair one but a different question. Are you saying a sick murderer should not be punished only removed from society to protect the rest of us ? That's a reasonable point of view but it's not the sole justification our justice system uses - there is an element of punishment and as this man did make choices he does deserve to be punished for them - as would I if I had made the same choices even if I could point to being brought up as a nazi (I wasn't btw).

Well, I have mixed feelings about the purpose of our justice system. I definitely believe in it being used to protect the public, also to rehabilitate criminals and as a deterrent. Taking away their freedom is a punishment in itself IMO, so although I feel as angry as any other human being when I hear about certain crimes, I'm not sure about the extent it should be used as punishment. I think I'm quite pragmatic about this - I favour the system which most reduces crime, but I've not really looked into the subject in any great detail, so can't say too much about it.

DeVlaeminck

I'm not particularly arguing that we must send this guy to jail - or that we mustn't - just that I do think he does carry some guilt for making a free choice (if indeed he did) to join the SS and he carries that guilt even if he grew up in a different environment than we do. He may be the product of a very different era but that product is still what he is it isn't something apart from him.

I accept that there were millions of people (probably - I am not a student of 20th century German history and I know many people on here probably do have quite a lot of knowledge of this period) who shared a similar burden of guilt and that for pragmatic reasons it may not have been desirable to pursue them all through the courts.

finchy

I was thinking about this subject again yesterday, and tried to imagine how I, if I were taken back in a time machine to WW2, with my set of late 20th/early 21st century morals and knowledge of history, would act in such a situation. Another perspective on this subject - if you were given the choice of (a) being totally cowardly and serving as a guard in a concentration camp, participating in the deaths of c. 6.5 million people but never actually killing anyone yourself or (b) going fighting on the Eastern Front, being brave enough to risk your own life, but also participating in the deaths of c. 20 million people and having to pull the trigger and kill other people (possibly including civilians and conscripted soldiers). Is it better to take option (a) or (b)?

ugo.santalucia

Ben6899 wrote:

And I'd argue that the Holocaust was *the* most horrific thing to have ever happened in history.

Together with the other genocides we are less aware of... Stalin killed a few million people, the numbers in Rwanda are still unclear (and that was very preventable had the UN stepped in early)

ukiboy

The crimes of the Nazis were horrendous beyond comprehension. Turning genocide into an industrial efficient project which involved all of Germany. But I agree with ugo - all such attempts at genocide are equally horrific.
Stalin (and communism in general) achieved a higher head count in terms of mass murder than Hitler did.
Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Armenia... All horrendous crimes.