German poster campaign launched to find surviving Nazis

[weltweit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23428997

A poster campaign has launched in Germany aimed at tracking down the last surviving Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice.

Some 2,000 posters showing the entrance to the Nazi Auschwitz death camp and asking people to come forward with information have been displayed in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

The US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center offers rewards for useful information.

It estimates there to be 60 people alive in Germany fit to stand trial.

Some are suspected of having served as guards at Nazi death camps or being members of death squads responsible for mass killings, particularly early on in the war.

If there are surviving Nazis around today they must be pretty old and possibly hard to recognise.

Still, if there are still some at large they should be brought to justice, I don't think there should be any statute of limitations when it comes to what they did.

 

[Miss Caphat]

hmm, I don't know. from my experience, people that elderly (90's and up) often seem remarkably different than their younger selves, and no doubt they are mentally and physically much frailer.
It seems almost like putting someone on trial for a crime someone else committed, if that makes any sense.
it is a shame that so many went unpunished. it just seems a bit too late, tbf.

 

[thedockerslad]

I disagree. Fascists should be held to account for their actions whatever their age and wherever they try to hide.

 

[Miss Caphat]

you have to admit, though...there are limitations for holding people accountable for their actions, right? for example if they have suffered some sort of catastrophic brain injury or something else that renders a person very different from the person they were at the time they committed the crime.
For instance, what if they suffer from dementia? altzheimer's? the aftermath of a major stroke?

 

[Miss Caphat]

I hope I don't sound like a Nazi sympathizer

I think I am just thinking this way because I was listening to a long radio program about the fact that scientists have basically discovered that we are our brains...that there really is no "soul" or what is thought of as a static consciousness...so looking from it that way, is a 90yr old really even the same person as the 20 yr old they were back in 1942?

 

[Manter]

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/23/germany-poster-appeal-nazi-war-criminals-wiesenthal. According to this one the Wiesenthal centre reckons there are 60 still alive in Germany. I am surprised so many tbh.

I hope they are caught and tried- what they were complicit in was so horrific they don't, IMO, get a free pass at any point. If they are fundamentally different people and have developed conciences, and have spent decades tortured by what they did, that's just poetic justice- they denied millions of a future.

My only issue with it is that it is focused on Germany and probably on relatively low level individuals- there are significant numbers of ex Nazis in the US, across Latin America, here.... And the numbers we (and the US) helped escape post WW2 because we needed them (or didn't prioritise going after them) is horrific. I'd like some light shed on that as well as a hunt for prison guards in Germany. (recently gone back through some MA research I did on the ratlines and been reminded how shockingly few even senior Nazis were held to account and how complicit our government were....really challenges the 'just war' account)

 

[weltweit]

Morning Manter, I suppose the only concern I have is the accuracy of memory after so much time, I suppose every German of a certain age might be suspects but after so much time will the memories of remaining victims be accurate enough to faithfully identify perpetrators whose appearance will also have changed a lot over the years.

 

[Manter]

Morning Manter, I suppose the only concern I have is the accuracy of memory after so much time, I suppose every German of a certain age might be suspects but after so much time will the memories of remaining victims be accurate enough to faithfully identify perpetrators whose appearance will also have changed a lot over the years.

There is a lot of paperwork- one of the peculiarities of the nazis is how thoroughly they documented their atrocities- so it is pretty easy to rule out people who are innocent/ falsely accused.

And I suspect families, friends etc have a pretty good idea who these people are- you'll know there are suspicious gaps in life histories etc, or momentos in locked drawers- few people are able to completely shut out their pasts.

Plus of course, there are a number of ex nazis who are quite open- there is a guy in Prague who regularly gives TV interviews. He doesn't think he did anything wrong, he was 'just following orders'

 

[DotCommunist]

hmm, I don't know. from my experience, people that elderly (90's and up) often seem remarkably different than their younger selves, and no doubt they are mentally and physically much frailer.
It seems almost like putting someone on trial for a crime someone else committed, if that makes any sense.
it is a shame that so many went unpunished. it just seems a bit too late, tbf.

would you say the same about aged child rapists

 

[weltweit]

... My only issue with it is that it is focused on Germany and probably on relatively low level individuals- there are significant numbers of ex Nazis in the US, across Latin America, here.... And the numbers we (and the US) helped escape post WW2 because we needed them (or didn't prioritise going after them) is horrific. I'd like some light shed on that as well as a hunt for prison guards in Germany. (recently gone back through some MA research I did on the ratlines and been reminded how shockingly few even senior Nazis were held to account and how complicit our government were....really challenges the 'just war' account)

I would certainly like to know more about this.

I am aware of some Nazi rocket scientists being moved after the war I think to the US to help with their rocket programs but I don't know much more than that.

 

[DotCommunist]

I would certainly like to know more about this.

I am aware of some Nazi rocket scientists being moved after the war I think to the US to help with their rocket programs but I don't know much more than that.

it was Operation Paperclip and iirc that was the name of the american project but the USSR got a few of brauns boys as well

 

[DotCommunist]

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/23/germany-poster-appeal-nazi-war-criminals-wiesenthal. According to this one the Wiesenthal centre reckons there are 60 still alive in Germany. I am surprised so many tbh.

I hope they are caught and tried- what they were complicit in was so horrific they don't, IMO, get a free pass at any point. If they are fundamentally different people and have developed conciences, and have spent decades tortured by what they did, that's just poetic justice- they denied millions of a future.

My only issue with it is that it is focused on Germany and probably on relatively low level individuals- there are significant numbers of ex Nazis in the US, across Latin America, here.... And the numbers we (and the US) helped escape post WW2 because we needed them (or didn't prioritise going after them) is horrific. I'd like some light shed on that as well as a hunt for prison guards in Germany. (recently gone back through some MA research I did on the ratlines and been reminded how shockingly few even senior Nazis were held to account and how complicit our government were....really challenges the 'just war' account)

Italian fascists also ran a ratline for ex nazis to south america after the war, for a cost of course

 

[Citizen66]

So is everyone guilty by association? If Nazi rocket scientists weren't death camp guards then I see no reason for them to be hunted down.

 

[DotCommunist]

So is everyone guilty by association? If Nazi rocket scientists weren't death camp guards then I see no reason for them to be hunted down.

those who have outstanding crimes to answer, should be hunted down. I don't think that includes joe wermacht no.

 

[Citizen66]

those who have outstanding crimes to answer, should be hunted down. I don't think that includes joe wermacht no.

Sorry I think that was in reply to weltweit but I type well slow on my tablet.

 

[weltweit]

So is everyone guilty by association? If Nazi rocket scientists weren't death camp guards then I see no reason for them to be hunted down.

Sorry I think that was in reply to weltweit but I type well slow on my tablet.

No worries. I don't think the Wiesenthal centre is going to be so bothered about rocket scientists, I think they are mainly after concentration camp personnel and or others involved in the so called "final solution".

 

[Belushi]

I would certainly like to know more about this.

I am aware of some Nazi rocket scientists being moved after the war I think to the US to help with their rocket programs but I don't know much more than that.

The West Germans let tens of thousands of ex-Nazis off the hook after the war.

 

[frogwoman]

those who have outstanding crimes to answer, should be hunted down. I don't think that includes joe wermacht no.

Some Wehrmacht soldiers did willingly take part in atrocities tho and they should be hunted down.

I don't think age is an excuse. I'm sick of this bollocks "oh pinochet is old, let's allow his trial"

 

[Callum91]

At such advanced ages I fail to see how it's ''bringing them to justice''. There's nothing you could do to one of these people that would make up for what they did. Throwing a 90 odd year old in prison for a few years max is hardly them paying for such atrocities. Not that I'm suggesting they get let off the hook, of course not, that would be plain wrong. But it's so long after the initial event now that it, in my eyes, hardly seems worth it.

 

[frogwoman]

No worries. I don't think the Wiesenthal centre is going to be so bothered about rocket scientists, I think they are mainly after concentration camp personnel and or others involved in the so called "final solution".

Many of those who were involved in the Nazi state apparatus and the final solution got away with it though or were used by the Allies to do other things after the war. de-nazification largely only applied to the very high-ups and those doing the actual killing iirc.

 

[Manter]

I would certainly like to know more about this.

I am aware of some Nazi rocket scientists being moved after the war I think to the US to help with their rocket programs but I don't know much more than that.

there isn't (IMO) a good single study on this- there are lots of bits in lots of different books, but it has got pretty clouded by popular culture. There is a debate about whether operation odessa even existed (of book and film fame). There is a new book out by Daniel Stahl, focussing on South America, but I haven't read it yet (it's only available in German and I'm bracing myself...).

 

[Manter]

Italian fascists also ran a ratline for ex nazis to south america after the war, for a cost of course

they did- as did croatian fascists out through switzerland. And some catholic priests seem to have run ratlines too. I recently discovered there was a ratline to Ireland and significant numbers of Nazis settled there, which I didn't know.

 

[Manter]

So is everyone guilty by association? If Nazi rocket scientists weren't death camp guards then I see no reason for them to be hunted down.

its a tough one. There are a couple of different issues in there- firstly collective guilt (there is a school of thought, to which I don't subscribe, that says if you were part of the apparatus, you are guilty by association- it was impossible to be ignorant and if you knew what was going on you had a moral duty to stand up against it) but, probably more pertinently, there is what, precisely, the 'rocket scientists' were up to. Many scientific research institutes operated using slave labour- so a 'rocket scientist' may well have been attached to a factory where prisoners (jews, political prisoners, POWs) were being mistreated, starved, shot... and some scientific research actively used prisoners. So, for example, there was a body of research on how humans responded to various forms of weaponry (I'll let your imagination go into the details of what those experiments involved) and another into how human bodies responded to high velocities etc. So any trial would have to investigate whether said 'rocket scientist' had received and used that research, had they known where it came from, had they asked specific questions which precipitated more human experiments, had they taken part in those experiments etc etc.

That said, most 'rocket scientists' were either dealt with (or not) by the Allies after the war- many were taken into American, Russian etc programmes after the war- they were too high profile to disappear easily. I suspect this is a hunt for camp guards as Weltweit says (though again, a question remains about whether guards could have refused duties - the just following orders defence)

 

[weltweit]

there isn't (IMO) a good single study on this- there are lots of bits in lots of different books, but it has got pretty clouded by popular culture. There is a debate about whether operation odessa even existed (of book and film fame). There is a new book out by Daniel Stahl, focussing on South America, but I haven't read it yet (it's only available in German and I'm bracing myself...).

I loved that film, especially the twist at the end.

 

[butchersapron]

The west german state wasn't interested in pursuing high level nazis post-war, quite the opposite. Why would the unified state give a shit now?

As for Odessa etc it has been established as fact for some time now, as have other such networks (10 000 ideological nazis brought to the US by Republican front groups for example) - see The Beast Re-awakens by Martin Lee for a horrendous mount of references.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Morning Manter, I suppose the only concern I have is the accuracy of memory after so much time, I suppose every German of a certain age might be suspects but after so much time will the memories of remaining victims be accurate enough to faithfully identify perpetrators whose appearance will also have changed a lot over the years.

I'm not particularly concerned about memory, because there's so much documentary evidence, as well as testimony taken in the aftermath of the war. Bear in mind that even prior to re-unification, the West German authorities had 17km of shelved records on the Nazi dictatorship in their central archive alone, to which has been added the DDR's extensive archive (although they liquidated a lot more Nazis than the western powers ever did).

 

[ViolentPanda]

I would certainly like to know more about this.

I am aware of some Nazi rocket scientists being moved after the war I think to the US to help with their rocket programs but I don't know much more than that.

There's a halfway-decent book on the British end of the scramble at the end of the war to capture Nazi secrets and scientists. It's called "T-Force: The Race for Nazi War Secrets, 1945" by Sean Longden.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So is everyone guilty by association? If Nazi rocket scientists weren't death camp guards then I see no reason for them to be hunted down.

If they committed no criminal acts (by which I mean direct acts), then there's no reason to go after them. Despite what the likes of Jazzz tried to promote (w/r/t Prince Bernard of the Netherlands), mere membership of the Nazi party isn't necessarily an indication of criminal propensity.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The West Germans let tens of thousands of ex-Nazis off the hook after the war.

As did the USA, the UK and the French. The Soviets were rather more forceful in their house-clearing.

 

[Sprocket.]

The one thing that the Nazi's excelled at was paperwork and photographic records.
In their minds they were making history, creating the NWO. This is where the evidence lies.
For every old Nazi they find there are hundreds who dipped under the radar.
A lot of the Nazi's responsible were young middle class idealists, craving something better than the turmoil hoisted on them following the reparations and super inflation.
How many of them still retain that same vigour and haste for murdering half of Europe is only going to be highlighted by standing each and everyone of them in front of a court.
We must always strive to ensure that economic conditions do not create the like of this again.
It is the shame of the German Nation yes, but the ultimate fault was the utter failure of the Left to put aside the ridiculous in-fighting over minutiae and views to provide a united front to halt the rise of the Nazi's and also the Western elites who were terrified by the spectre of the Russian revolution into thinking really it was ok for somebody to be putting the reds, Jews, homosexuals and criminals down.
Round 'em up, but I doubt they will show any fear or remorse.