this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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One of the best things that happened in the 20th century was the firm reaffirmation, after the war was over, that Nazi lives do have value.
The allies would have been within every reasonable right to just string up the Nazi leadership like Mussolini, make a new treaty of Versailles, and mime tiny violins any time one of the citizens of Germany raised the alarm that their kids were starving. And, a lot of the people on the ground basically did exactly that. But the word from the top is: They are humans. They have rights.
The ones we think are guilty get lawyers and trials, no matter what we’re pretty sure they did. That’s what humans have to do for each other, in a just world. It doesn’t mean you don’t set things right, but you still give them human value and rights, even the worst, before you put them to death if that’s justice.
The whole roots of the war lay in misery and hate. What are we going to be reaping in 20 years if we just replant it all because it’s “what they deserve?” Let’s put an end to it.
It doesn’t mean we didn’t do terrible things in the war, or kill in self defense. Even kill whole cities in an instant, if you need to. But the killing isn’t the point. It’s just a protection, and it needs to end as soon as you can see a way to end it.
And then, back to human life and value. That is, in fact, what separates us from the Nazis, is that we’re not looking to throw it away.
The Nuremburg Trials still falls within the determination that Nazi lives did not matter. The executions were definitely the point.
The key example for this was Julius Streicher. He didn't plan the Holocaust, implement it, or get involved in any military action of World War 2. He just spread antisemitic and genocidial vitriol through the press.
Nazis and the ideologies they spread are a Crime against Humanity for Incitement of Genocide.
Maybe it’s just a question of semantics. But to get at the point I was trying to make, you can try a thought experiment:
Imagine someone brings in a big leaking bag of garbage off the street. They haul it into the courtroom, get a lawyer for it, spend months making sure it’s resupplied with water when it stops leaking and gets good housing, repeatedly had experts come in and examine it and look up the records of what type of garbage it had inside it. And then, everything having been satisfied to everyone’s satisfaction, they take it out and toss it in the dump.
Or, someone puts leaking garbage on a truck, drives it to a place where it’s stored until they can get themselves organized to get rid of it, and then they burn it. It’s given an asset tag, but mostly just so they can make use of a system to count the garbage and make sure there’s nothing of value in any of the bags.
You get my point, I think. My point is not that you need to be tolerant or soft about people who are going to try to kill you. My point is that they are (depressingly enough) very much human beings, the whole time they’re doing that, and the allies did good by vigorously rejecting the “anyone who wrongs me stops being a person” model.
That is two scenarios where garbage is disposed of. At no point is the garbage status questioned: because it is established it is garbage.
I don't think that thought experiment refuted anything.
Nazis are humans. Humans who perpetuate crimes against humanity. The crime against humanity that is Nazism carries the death penalty--as it should. It's a ideology predicated on lives not mattering.
There is a reason one of the most prominent acts of Nazi leadership is suicide.
This speaks to a difference of mindset about talking about stuff on the internet.
I wasn't trying to "refute" anything. I was just trying to say what I was trying to say. You can believe it, or not, or partially with caveats, or have some kind of rebuttal, it's all fine. In no way was I trying to refute anything you were saying. It's not necessary for one of us to "win." Sometimes, I'll be trying to prove someone wrong when I send comments to them, but this absolutely was not that.
It seemed like maybe you were hearing something different than what I was saying, and so I tried a different way of explaining it that hopefully would make it more clear. Then, after reading it and understanding it, there's a whole different step where maybe if you decide to you can agree with it. Or not. Honestly, that part's not completely my business. I'm just trying to explain what I meant. Along with acknowledging (if this wasn't clear) that, yes, in another sense, any Nazis are human garbage, and who really cares what happens to them at the end of the day.
If your model is that we have to "refute" until one of us wins, I think I will not take part. I made multiple efforts to say what I was trying to say. If you want to take it on, or not, is entirely up to you, and I think I will cease with any continued effort to put it across.
Oof, let me rephrase:
I don't think the thought experiment reinforced or helped explain the refutation of "Nazi lives don't matter" with the claim "Nazi lives do have value."
That should've been clear, and I think it is for any reading audience? So, uh, yeah.
If it helps, you can think of it not as a statement about the value we give to the Nazis, but the value we hold ourselves to.
A buddy of mine had a relative who was in Germany for the occupation. He was one of the guys I was talking about, miming tiny violins. He fucked a lot of German girls who were half starving. He had money and food and all the armaments of the occupation behind him, so they didn't really have a choice. He would go into people's houses and just take stuff, if it looked like something cool he wanted. My friend said he thought that having that experience, having this guy over there in his formative years having all his darkest instincts catered to and amplified, basically ruined him as a person. His whole life he wasn't able to really be right because of it. But at the time, I guess he thought something along the lines of, "What's the difference?"
After all, they're Nazis. Or basically Nazis. Anyway, their lives have no value.
Like I say, I do get what you're saying. But also... what do you do, when you have a whole population, millions of people, who have all given approval in some way large or small for some kind of monstrous crime?
Some of them deserve to die. Some of them are redeemable. In general, for most of them, I think that kind of question is mostly just not anyone else's business to get involved in. Whatever they did or didn't do is going to have to be something that they live with, maybe square up with their maker after if you think of it that way, and nothing you can do can tip the scales of it in any direction. But what about their kids? What about the society they're now trying to build in the aftermath? It's so easy and satisfying to say they all have no value, not look at them as human people with all the potential and all the evils and failings that entails, not examine the factors that tipped all so many of them over into taking part in what they did. Not try to make sure you really understand it, try to work it out, so you can see how to work so it doesn't happen again.
There is an easy answer to all of these questions, of course: "They're Nazis. Fuck 'em." In combat, that's the answer. But out of combat, what future are you building when you write off a whole population because they all took part in a culture that started excusing or committing terrible crimes? Maybe they were confused by propaganda. Maybe they were scared, or just went with the herd. Maybe they had that darkness inside them. Maybe they were creative instigators. How are you going to look into every one of them, and decide what the answer is? Choosing one universal answer is easy, but that doesn't make it right. And like I say, you are going to lose something of yourself when you start looking at other human beings that way. That's part of why a lot of people who've been in combat come back with bad bad problems.
This whole set of questions about how to relate to that whole population of evil is about to become (or has become) a pretty fuckin' relevant question in America.
For the record my initial statement regarded the Nuremburg Trials and the outcome that led to a propagandist being executed. I really honestly did not expect referencing the Nuremburg Trials to be so criticized.
Telling me I'd be losing my humanity by finding the outcome of Nuremburg Trials to be just is some wild shit.
Not sure how you got from:
... to concluding I was criticizing the outcome of the Nuremberg trials. Obviously they were a good thing, and the outcome was a good thing. Anyone actually reading my messages would observe me repeatedly using the example of the process and the good outcome of the Nuremberg trials as a perfect example of what we should be emulating.
I suspect you're still trying to "win," and desperately rearranging things I'm saying into things I am not, so you can do so. I welcome you to try again if you'd like to.
I still don't think we should use the death penalty, even here. It's all too easy to pick an innocent person, accuse them of being a Nazi, and send them to a short drop and a quick stop. Put them in prison until they can be rehabilitated if possible, and until they're no longer a danger to society if not (usually due to regular death).
Yeah, this is more the sentiment for expressly virulent, unrepentant Nazis. The kind that went to Nuremburg. Someone who is actually capable of changing and renouncing the ideology isn't a Nazi.
You know there were some acquittals at Nuremberg, right? Papen, Schacht and Fritzsche all went free.
The second phase, after the first phase had tried the Nazi high command, arrested almost 100,000 people, identified 2,500 who were not just Nazis but actual war criminals, tried 177, and convicted 142. Of those, 25 were sentenced to death.
I'm not saying right or wrong here, since we're already talking about that and having enough difficulty in it already. But the exact step you are skipping over in creating a class "that went to Nuremberg" whose lives have no value, was a critical, critical part of how the allies ran the trial. It might explain why in the other conversation you are confused about why the allies did it that way, if you are confused about what it was they actually did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials#Verdict
This also irritated me. Who makes this determination, on which life and death are being staked? You? We just bring everyone who's carrying a Nazi sign in front of you, and you decide whether they are actually capable of changing and renouncing the ideology? Or if not you, who does it?
Look, I didn't make the statement that Nazis have value.
The basis of all of this was to point out the reason Julius Streicher was executed even though he wasn't involved with military operations or the Holocaust.
This has gotten you very accusatory with how much you're reading into that. It really does seem like you're taking personal issue with it, which is wild. You keep saying this conversation shouldn't continue, so please.
Sorry if I annoyed you with my thoughts about human life and due process. I really am not trying to get personal about it, you may be right, but it's important to me.