this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
543 points (90.2% liked)

World News

39199 readers
2068 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In fact the modern post-WW2 era is about as good as it gets. And that is indeed not much.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would you say that only the losers trend to be charged of war crimes. And probably some low-ranking war Victors.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think generally it's more akin to your average legal proceedings. The plebs who commit war crimes will face the full extent of the law, but when wealthy entities or nations do it they will often get away with it.

When it comes to charging the losers, even with the Nazis and the Nuremburg trials there was a significant amount of opposition from people within the Allied nations against prosecuting them. Actually, in an article about Ben Ferencz (the guy who worked hardest to make the Nuremburg trials happen) I read about a Nazi tried in the UK, Winston Churchill personally donated towards this Nazi's defense and then had his execution commuted down to life, then later only ~20 years. By the end of the war Churchill was vehemently against the Soviets and chomping at the bit to invade them, I think this gave him sympathy towards Nazis who had been fighting Soviets. I've since been unable to find the guy's name, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't know that about Churchill. Thanks for the TIL. But yes, you are correct there's a class divide when meting out justice. Though I do not fully understand that thing about not prosecuting leaders of the losing party in a war. is this maybe because the victors somehow feels some form of connection to the other side's leaders simply because they consider themselves as "sparring partners" during the course of the war? And of course, they were not in the field themselves fighting for their lives and somehow they just view all of these as a sort of boardgame or like a D&D campaign with maps and miniature figures of tanks and army battalions. Obviously, these are just guesses of mine and I confess that I do not have a great knowledge of politics during wartime.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'll just repeat the disclaimer again, I haven't been able to confirm that Winston supported a Nazi's defense since I first read it. I started on a long Ben Ferencz article, then found a wiki page for the Nazi with sources that seemed legit on a cursory glance. However, I can't remember the Nazi's name, nor find his article (which Wiki may have removed as articles about individual people are often removed per their rules) nor even the Ferencz article now.

However Churchill's post-war anti-Soviet rhetoric is widely known, and he has been quoted as saying the Soviets were worse than the Nazis.

As for the exact motives, we can only really guess. There's possibly the respect for an opponent, but prosecuting the losers could also turn them into martyrs and stoke further conflict. In particular, WW2 started in part because of the position Germany was in after WW1.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for all that, now I need to do some more reading.