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Originally posted by rolyn:
No doubt it was up until the point he saw Hell falling out of the sky. His primary concern when putting paw print on a surrender he vowed never to sign was the belief that Tokyo was next.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The Japanese having liberated the Philippines from the nice Americans, but didn't manage to liberate Hawaii from them.

The origins of the Pacific war in WW2 are far more complicated that the caricature of evil Japanese conquering countries. Some of what they conquered was American, British, French imperial colonies, and their motivation was economic: America cutting them off from steel and oil. America from the Japanese perspective wanted war with them, with alternative being a fully ruined economy.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
That should be the take away from this, that is more important than whatever happens to the remainder of an old man's life.
Not because old people are unimportant, but that the message is more important than one person.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
... Not because old people are unimportant, but that the message is more important than one person. ...

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
That should be the take away from this, that is more important than whatever happens to the remainder of an old man's life.
Not because old people are unimportant, but that the message is more important than one person.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
This reinforces my conviction that for you, this trial is much less about justice for the individual in the dock than about making a point.

Which as far as I'm concerned is absolutely the worst possible approach to criminal justice, and certainly not a just one.

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from above link:
herein lies the greatest symbolism of the case: the Auschwitz survivors, now old themselves, provided what will probably be the last official accounts of their suffering in the death camp. This is much more important than any prison sentence.

the most important message remains: there is no statute of limitations on genocide or crimes against humanity. Anyone who is implicated in such crimes – and even if only indirectly - should never be allowed to feel exempt from punishment.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
This shows your misunderstanding. This is not about an approach to criminal justice. It is about war crimes.

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the prosecution of war crimes is about so much more

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herein lies the greatest symbolism of the case: the Auschwitz survivors, now old themselves, provided what will probably be the last official accounts of their suffering in the death camp. This is much more important than any prison sentence.

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Anyone who is implicated in such crimes – and even if only indirectly - should never be allowed to feel exempt from punishment.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[coughs politely] Nobody's yet answered my earlier post, and I really would like to know. What has this man done that he should be treated on par with (say) an actual prison guard?

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
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Originally posted by Enoch:
No Prophet, No! No! No!

If an individual is standing in the dock, he or she is being tried for what it is alleged he or she did. It is determining his or her guilt for what is alleged he or she did. If found guilty, he or she is punished for his or her crime(s).

This is not symbolic. It is actual crime and a matter of his or her individual and personal guilt. Anything else is requiring them to be a scapegoat.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
That's as may be.

But if combating the rise of neofascisim is the court's motive for handing down a custodial sentence to this particular perpetrator it is, in my opinion, a complete abuse of the criminal justice system and likely to be wholly ineffective.

Did you miss the bit where the Auschwitz survivor said she'd rather Gröning received a community sentence requiring him to speak in schools on the dangers of Neo-Nazism?

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

It says that the prosecutor in the 1960s Frankfurt Auschwitzprozesse would have liked to see all those of Gröning's ilk charged with murder, not just accessory to murder.

His reasoning was that the mere charge of accessory to murder implied the Nazi regime of genocide itself was legitimate (I had to read that assertion more than once before understanding it).

His whole argument appears to be the opposite of lilbuddha's: none of those involved were ordinary people with little or no choice; they all were every bit as monstrous as Mengele and co.

Which I think is to be completely self-deceived as to the common man's ability to be thoroughly evil. I repeat: any attempt to relegate an entire class of human (that conveniently excludes oneself) to some especially depraved subset is actually to take the first step down the road of Auschwitz all over again.

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If you understand it after re-reading, you are still far, far ahead of me. I don't understand it in the least.


It seems to me that the only effective way to combat an evil that relies on groupthink to go unopposed is to vigorously enforce individual responsibility for choices. Yes, I would like to see charges of murder, and accessory to murder, and so forth. Such charges make it plain that, whether the wrongful death took place in Auschwitz or Arkansas, it is equally a wrongful death, and the individual responsible is equally guilty.

What I would NOT like to see is a group of people who get punished as symbols--as a way of "sending a message" (though the message recipients are never specified, oddly enough). When you punish someone for any reason besides "he deserves it," you make it easy, even effortless for him and his supporters to slide into "it wasn't that bad, what he did... it wasn't actually bad at all... he's a martyr, and it's all a political game." Why leave that psychological escape open to such people? Even worse, why allow them to think of themselves as a special, mystical, persecuted class that is somehow above the run of human depravity ("Yes, we are villains, but we're arch-villains, hear us roar!")

The only message I'd like to see sent is the one to the accused, which says "You did X and therefore justly deserve Y." It's nice if other people learn something from watching, but justice is not primarily a political teaching tool.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped
It seems to me that the only effective way to combat an evil that relies on groupthink to go unopposed is to vigorously enforce individual responsibility for choices.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
This reinforces my conviction that for you, this trial is much less about justice for the individual in the dock than about making a point.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

I am very familiar with a couple of cases in which harsh sentences have been dished out precisely to make a point,

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Originally posted by Enoch:

If an individual is standing in the dock, he or she is being tried for what it is alleged he or she did.

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Originally posted by Enoch:

This is not symbolic. It is actual crime and a matter of his or her individual and personal guilt. Anything else is requiring them to be a scapegoat.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I suspect that he will have a community sentence.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
This reinforces my conviction that for you, this trial is much less about justice for the individual in the dock than about making a point.

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And this reinforces my belief that people cannot help but think in a zero-sum manner.
Life is not zero-sum.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Oskar Gröning's trial is important. Not because he was exceptionally evil, but because he wasn't.

That should be the take away from this, that is more important than whatever happens to the remainder of an old man's life.
Not because old people are unimportant, but that the message is more important than one person.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
For freaking bookkeepers?

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And yes, he's an evil bookkeeper. A scavenger, a bottom feeder, a patsy of an evil state. Duh. But nobody says he was going through the suitcases and pilfering crap to take home. Which would be ordinary theft, and thus criminal.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
In short, we're back to the original charge: You (meaning him) hung out with some really evil dudes, you knew what they were doing and didn't lift a finger to help their victims, and you provided support services* to their evil organization, though you did not yourself actually murder, torture, or imprison anyone.

*services of a type that are not evil in themselves, e.g. going through suitcases and removing items at the behest of authorities is what the TSA does too. The evil comes in who you're doing it for, and their motives.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
So again--we're looking at fudging things so that what is sin but not crime can be punished as a crime.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And yes, he's an evil bookkeeper. A scavenger, a bottom feeder, a patsy of an evil state. Duh. But nobody says he was going through the suitcases and pilfering crap to take home. Which would be ordinary theft, and thus criminal.

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Part of the Nuremberg defense was that various actions, up to and including genocide, were not criminal because they were done under color of law. You seem to be reviving this argument.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
In short, we're back to the original charge: You (meaning him) hung out with some really evil dudes, you knew what they were doing and didn't lift a finger to help their victims, and you provided support services* to their evil organization, though you did not yourself actually murder, torture, or imprison anyone.

*services of a type that are not evil in themselves, e.g. going through suitcases and removing items at the behest of authorities is what the TSA does too. The evil comes in who you're doing it for, and their motives.

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Doesn't the same reasoning apply the Nazi elite, who also didn't personally "murder, torture, or imprison anyone".

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
So again--we're looking at fudging things so that what is sin but not crime can be punished as a crime.

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Once again, given that the Third Reich rewrote the law to legalize virtually all of their actions, couldn't that be said of virtually all their actions?

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Note. Not at all. My point is simply that you can't criminalize something after the fact, retroactively. The man appears to be guilty of nothing but being a colossal weasel who knew of the evil and did nothing to stop it. But that is AFAIK not criminal and never has been criminal.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
His personal actions did not involve any murdering, imprisoning, or torturing. Nor did he filch objects for personal gain, which could be classed as looting or theft. There is simply no criminal category to fit him under.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Gröning didn't care about Jews being killed when he first learned of the practice. Not quite an innocent little bookkeeper.

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But I've said it is about more than that and it is.
Nazi Germany did not happen overnight and with no support.
It happened with a lot of willing accomplices.
It also happened because people didn't care what happened to "others".
And it happened because of fear.

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You point to one conflict, dust your hands and say lesson learned. I call bullshit. That is still a they did a bad thing and misses the point entirely. The point is that we could do the same thing.

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But you know what? Even in your "Hang on, when did this evil regime magically appear all around me"? scenario, yes, individuals are responsible for letting it continue.
Is this fair? No.
Is this easy to say from my relative safety? Yes.
Doesn't mean it isn't right.

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Seems to me that there is a group of people, who are kinda revered by most Christians, who stood for what they believed right and were killed for this. Starts with m, I think. Magicians? No. Martians? Apparently not. I'll come to it eventually.

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Anyway, the point is not about becoming a martyr, but about allowing that to become the option in the first place.

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Even in a fully free and democratic system, how much responsibility does an individual have for the government returned? Is each individual American or Brit personally culpable for the last decade of war in the middle east?

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Of course we all share responsibility for what out governments do. We allow it.

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And it is silly to say "Oh, then, arrest everybody".
We have laws that delineate legal responsibility. It is the way the law works.
In this case we are taking active participation, not vague knowledge of something bad.

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Even in a fully free and democratic system, how much responsibility does an individual have for the government returned? Is each individual American or Brit personally culpable for the last decade of war in the middle east?

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Unless they made an active effort to change policy, yes.

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No, it is not always clean, simple or easy, but we, as a rule, are much to passive in our participation in the process.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Fine, haul him in for state-sanctioned theft if you want. That's not what they did at his trial, is it? "State sanctioned theft" would at least have some semblance of reason about it. He did actually participate in taking victims' goods, even if he did not profit from the objects taken.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Well, no. We're talking about being a book-keeper who happens to work in the same place where it's going on. To me, that's stretching the definition of "active participation" well beyond breaking point.

I mean, where does it stop? Should the locomotive crews who delivered trainloads of Jews to Auschwitz be considered "active participants"?

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Well, no. We're talking about being a book-keeper who happens to work in the same place where it's going on. To me, that's stretching the definition of "active participation" well beyond breaking point.

I mean, where does it stop? Should the locomotive crews who delivered trainloads of Jews to Auschwitz be considered "active participants"? If so, then what about the maintenance crews who made sure the locomotives were in working order? Or the factory workers who built the locomotives in the first place? Or the miners who produced the raw materials that enabled the locomotives to be built?

Or what about the other people who happened to be working at Auschwitz - the cooks, cleaners, repairmen and so forth? Were they "active participants"?

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Of course we all share responsibility for what out governments do. We allow it.

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"We" collectively, perhaps. An argument can be made for that. But it's an argument that I would suggest breaks down as soon as "we" becomes anything other than the entire population, especially when you start talking about direct responsibility for the bad things that government may do.

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We're talking about being a book-keeper who happens to work in the same place where it's going on. To me, that's stretching the definition of "active participation" well beyond breaking point.

I mean, where does it stop?

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Previously you said we all share responsibility for what our government does. Now you're saying that responsibility falls only on those who don't actively resist (however that may be defined - would working as a book-keeper for one of the charities who opposed it be enough?).

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Weren't you the one who recently said "If knowledge were water, you'd die of dehydration collecting what the electorate understand"? Surely that would mean their passivity is a good thing... [/QB]

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
We're talking about being a book-keeper who happens to work in the same place where it's going on. To me, that's stretching the definition of "active participation" well beyond breaking point.

I mean, where does it stop?

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It goes at least as far as anyone who worked in the process.

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Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
We're talking about being a book-keeper who happens to work in the same place where it's going on. To me, that's stretching the definition of "active participation" well beyond breaking point.

I mean, where does it stop?

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It goes at least as far as anyone who worked in the process.

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But the point is - what IS the "process"? Is it limited to people who actually stepped foot inside Auschwitz? Does it include people who never went near the place, yet whose actions (or inactions) allowed what happened there to continue?

Is Gröning really more culpable than (say) the man who drove the trains? Or a woman who cooked the meals for the guards?

It took the actions (and inactions) of a huge number of Germans to allow Auschwitz to happen (and keep happening). I have yet to see a convincing argument as to why Gröning should be picked out for attention over all the others.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
So, "We are all responsible, but I'm not."?

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Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Is Gröning really more culpable than (say) the man who drove the trains? Or a woman who cooked the meals for the guards?

It took the actions (and inactions) of a huge number of Germans to allow Auschwitz to happen (and keep happening). I have yet to see a convincing argument as to why Gröning should be picked out for attention over all the others.

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Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Is Gröning really more culpable than (say) the man who drove the trains? Or a woman who cooked the meals for the guards?

It took the actions (and inactions) of a huge number of Germans to allow Auschwitz to happen (and keep happening). I have yet to see a convincing argument as to why Gröning should be picked out for attention over all the others.

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Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
But the point is - what IS the "process"? Is it limited to people who actually stepped foot inside Auschwitz? Does it include people who never went near the place, yet whose actions (or inactions) allowed what happened there to continue?

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Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Is Gröning really more culpable than (say) the man who drove the trains? Or a woman who cooked the meals for the guards?

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Originally posted by Moo:
AIUI many of the people who worked at Auschwitz were not German. They were citizens of the occupied countries. I assume they were coerced into working at Auschwitz; my impression is that the Nazis forced the citizens of the occupied countries to do all kinds of work they did not volunteer for.

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Originally posted by Croesos
Well yes. Auschwitz was a combination forced labor / extermination camp and the slaves (I don't think the term "worker" quite covers the actual situation) were almost exclusively from occupied countries.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
This kind of "I was never near the place" reasoning would seem to remove culpability from most of the Nazi elite. Kind of a reverse Nuremberg defense. "I was only giving orders."

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A lot of the top Nazi bods were quite expert in their endeavours to keep personal reputations unsullied.
I believe even AH himself was crafty enough never to actually apply his signature to any Final Solution documentation. A nod and a wink was sufficient. Rather hoping he'd go down in history as a bloody nice bloke.

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