Law at Nuremberg
Donald Phillipson
Donald Phillipson quoted 2 paras of the US Constitution:
>>The former says "the judicial Power" i.e. US Supreme Court, has
>>jurisdiction over "all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this
>>Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or
>>which shall be made, under their Authority."
>>
>>This seems to exclude German war crimes trials, which were not
>>"arising under this Constitution."
George F. Hardy (geo...@mail.rlc.net) rebutted:
> It arises under a Treaty. 1) under this Constitution;
> 2) under the Laws of the United States; 3) under Treaties
> All of them whether already made or to "be made".
The constitutional authority of the US Supreme Court over treaties is
unambiguous. First, the US Senate must ratify a treaty before it
enters into effect. Second, the clause qoted enables that anyone to
argue under US law that a particular treaty is "unconstitutional" and
therefore null, i.e. not binding on the US government.
The Constitution does not say the US Supreme Court may alter treaty terms
agreed by foreign with US negotiators (negotiators are supposed to know
beforehand what US political and constitutional authority will approve) or
apply US law to non-Americans or outside American jurisdiction. (The more
treaties you sign,, the more "grey areas" you create, making work for
constitutional lawyers, cf. North American Free Trade Agreement.)
Hardy's most obvious error is his reliance on the "treaty" provisions
of the Constitution. No treaty governed the Nuremberg International
Tribunal of 1945-46. It was set up by non-treaty agreement among the
Four Powers occupying Germany after dissolution of the Third Reich
government. (Within its proceedings, any lawyer was able to argue
that this or that international treaty did or did not apply, and the
Tribunal's own judges ruled on these claims.) Whatever influence was
later imputed to the American constitution (or Russian or any other):
-- the military defeat and civil abolition of the Third Reich did not
take place "under a treaty" or "under this Constitution." (US
generals and combat troops remained under the US Constitution, British
under the British, and so on: but the victors in war and the parties
dictating terms of unconditional surrender were men, not constitutions.)
-- the Four Powers' agreement to try top Nazi executives in an
unprecedented international tribunal was not made "under a treaty" or
"under this Constitution" but at the 3-power Yalta Conference of early
1945. (Yalta agreements were not a treaty and therefore did not
require US Senate ratification before the USA could comply.)
If Hardy claims any other war crimes trial was or ought to have been
governed by the US Constitution, we may note that those conducted by
occupying powers Britain, France and the USSR or the (later)
governments of East or West Germany were not organized to comply with
the US Constitution, and neither prosecution nor defence ever said
they ought to be. At the same time, it was informally and practically
accepted that all war crimes trials should be as nearly uniform as
possible.
As has already been noted, "Anglo-Saxon" justice nowadays includes a
presumption of innocence and "Napoleonic" justice a presumption of guilt.
There was ample opportunity at Nuremberg for constitutional lawyere to
object and argue, because certain defendants explicitly said they did not
recognize the authority of the tribunal. But none ever invoked the US 5th
Amendment (and no judges said they could or should); some defendants
declined to answer certain questions and no Napoleonic-code judge said
they could or should be compelled to answer, as his country's constitution
might have permitted.
Not least, the US Supreme Court decision in the Yamashita case was not
recognized by Russia, Britain and France as casting any doubt on the
legitimacy of war crimes trials in Germany, and there was no higher
legal authority to which the USA could have appealed this
non-recognition. But things do not stand still for ever, which is why
a new International Crimes Court was so recently created (which the
USA has declined to ratify, for reasons with which Hardy is familiar.)
--
| Donald Phillipson, 4180 Boundary Road, Carlsbad Springs, |
| Ontario, Canada, K0A 1K0, tel. 613 822 0734 |
George F. Hardy
moderators will deny this posting or further exchanges. If they do,
I hope they will move this thread to history.moderated and announce
that change on this board.
Anticipating rejection, I am also replying by e-mail.
In article <6pto32$f...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, ad...@freenet.carleton.ca
(Donald Phillipson) says:
>George F. Hardy (geo...@mail.rlc.net) rebutted:
>
>> It arises under a Treaty. 1) under this Constitution;
>> 2) under the Laws of the United States; 3) under Treaties
>> All of them whether already made or to "be made".
>
>The constitutional authority of the US Supreme Court over treaties is
>unambiguous. First, the US Senate must ratify a treaty before it
>enters into effect. Second, the clause qoted enables that anyone to
>argue under US law that a particular treaty is "unconstitutional" and
>therefore null, i.e. not binding on the US government.
>The Constitution does not say the US Supreme Court may alter treaty terms
>agreed by foreign with US negotiators (negotiators are supposed to know
>beforehand what US political and constitutional authority will approve) or
>apply US law to non-Americans or outside American jurisdiction.
I do love posters who 1) make an invalid point and 2) immediately
prove their point is invalid. If a person may "argue under US law
that a particular treaty is "unconstitutional" and therefore null,
i.e. not binding on the US government." (and I add, the person who
brought the action), then (assuming a favorable ruling from the US
judiciary -- a Supreme Court decision is not required), with a treaty
provision "null", how does that differ from "alter(ing) treaty terms
agreed by foreign with US negotiators"?
>Hardy's most obvious error is his reliance on the "treaty" provisions
>of the Constitution. No treaty governed the Nuremberg International
>Tribunal of 1945-46. It was set up by non-treaty agreement among the
>Four Powers occupying Germany after dissolution of the Third Reich
>government.
Now we are introduced to the concept of an outside-the-Constitution
inter-governmental agreement. It is unclear to me that there is
*any* outside-the-Constitution authority vested in any branch of
the US government. I would argue no. If one cannot find a
constitutional basis for an action, that action is barred by
the constitution. I point to the 10th Amendment, as but one
clause in the Constitution which supports my interpretation.
>-- the military defeat and civil abolition of the Third Reich did not
>take place "under a treaty" or "under this Constitution."
So, WWII was an outside-the-Constitution action? Wow.
>-- the Four Powers' agreement to try top Nazi executives in an
>unprecedented international tribunal was not made "under a treaty" or
>"under this Constitution" but at the 3-power Yalta Conference of early
>1945. (Yalta agreements were not a treaty and therefore did not
>require US Senate ratification before the USA could comply.)
International agreements (not ratified by the Senate) have no force and
affect. They are without any basis in law. There is not doubt that
the US government, by participating "in an unprecedented international
tribunal", was breaking new ground, ground well outside (IMHO) federal
authority under the Constitution.
>If Hardy claims any other war crimes trial was or ought to have been
>governed by the US Constitution,
(Quick interruption: I only claim the US war crimes trials were governed
by the US Constitution. And that all POWs held by the US were also
governed by federal authority which is governed by the US Constitution.)
> we may note that those conducted by
>occupying powers Britain, France and the USSR or the (later)
>governments of East or West Germany were not organized to comply with
>the US Constitution, and neither prosecution nor defence ever said
>they ought to be.
True. I have brought up the trials by the UK, not the others. One
poster has recently introduced the French, to which I suggested a
discussion of the Ramcke case. I have no objection to the more
primitive concepts of justice under which (for example) the Czechs
garotted "war criminals", such as Ludin. Nor the summary executions
by the Russians. One has no reason to have expected better.
>At the same time, it was informally and practically
>accepted that all war crimes trials should be as nearly uniform as
>possible.
No, not that the USA would be dragged down to the levels noted above.
For exactly that kind of reason, foreign agreements are well covered
in the US Constitution. And the ability of the US government to make
them limited to duly ratified treaties
>As has already been noted, "Anglo-Saxon" justice nowadays includes a
>presumption of innocence and "Napoleonic" justice a presumption of guilt.
>There was ample opportunity at Nuremberg for constitutional lawyere to
>object and argue, because certain defendants explicitly said they did not
>recognize the authority of the tribunal.
I am sorry. You are misinformed. To use the words of a prosecutor, that
might be "appropriate in a court of law, but certainly not in this
proceeding."
>But none ever invoked the US 5th Amendment (and no judges said they could
>or should);
Again, incorrect. And the correct information has been posted recently.
Supreme Court Justice Murphy, in an opinion on "war crimes" trials"
wrote: "The Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process of law applies
to 'any person' -- American citizens, aliens, alien enemies or enemy
belligerents -- who is accused of a crime by the Federal Government
or any of its agencies."
Please note that the Fifth Amendment covers *far* more than just
self incrimination.
>Not least, the US Supreme Court decision in the Yamashita case was not
>recognized by Russia, Britain and France as casting any doubt on the
>legitimacy of war crimes trials in Germany, and there was no higher
>legal authority to which the USA could have appealed this
>non-recognition.
No one ever said it applied to other countries, only to the actions
of the US government and any of its agencies.
>But things do not stand still for ever, which is why
>a new International Crimes Court was so recently created (which the
>USA has declined to ratify, for reasons with which Hardy is familiar.)
Yes, things do not stand still. Which is why the Geneva Conventions
of 1949 and 1977 both failed to include the Nuremberg Principle that
following orders is no defense, and why the US will not ratify the
1977 version of the Geneva Convention which includes the principle
(well diluted) of "command responsibility", the sole charge against
Yamashita, who was hanged. No country is willing to commit itself
to be judged under the Nuremberg Principles. Only Germans are to
be judged (by others), and executed, according to these standards.
GFH
***************************************************************
http://www.ankerstein.org/
The Anchor Stone Building Set (Anker-Steinbaukasten) Home Page
See what makes me tick.
***************************************************************
jim...@my-dejanews.com
geo...@mail.rlc.net (George F. Hardy) wrote:
> I hope that this thread is not getting so far from WWII that the
> moderators will deny this posting or further exchanges. If they do,
> I hope they will move this thread to history.moderated and announce
> that change on this board.
>
> Anticipating rejection, I am also replying by e-mail.
>
> In article <6pto32$f...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, ad...@freenet.carleton.ca
> (Donald Phillipson) says:
> >Hardy's most obvious error is his reliance on the "treaty" provisions
> >of the Constitution. No treaty governed the Nuremberg International
> >Tribunal of 1945-46. It was set up by non-treaty agreement among the
> >Four Powers occupying Germany after dissolution of the Third Reich
> >government.
>
> Now we are introduced to the concept of an outside-the-Constitution
> inter-governmental agreement. It is unclear to me that there is
> *any* outside-the-Constitution authority vested in any branch of
> the US government. I would argue no. If one cannot find a
> constitutional basis for an action, that action is barred by
> the constitution. I point to the 10th Amendment, as but one
> clause in the Constitution which supports my interpretation.
I guess I should not be surprised this dicussion comes up so often but I am
surprised at the contortions some people will go through to attempt to
enshrine the process at Nuremberg.
People can go on forever over the existance or non-existance of a foundation
for Nuremberg. It is the nature of taking a position.
But the essential feature of the IMT is not whether or not it was a "legal"
proceeding.
The essential feature is whether or not the procedures used by the IMT can be
reasonably expected to result in justice.
If the participating countries had determined the process of determining
guilt or innocense were to throw them in a lake and see if they float that
would have been a formally approved process. Once the discussion goes to the
legality of formation rather than the process itself, the discussion is off
the subject.
Civilization has spent many thousands of years in arriving at processes that
will lead to what the people who matter will perceive as justice. While we
occasionally pull out small parts of a system like the above witch test it
rarely bears upon the entirety of the process.
I submit that anyone looking at the entirety of the Nuremberg process can not
hold it was a process likely to arrive at the facts of the case and permit
justice.
An exhaustive list of the procedures not conducive to justice is difficult to
prepare. A few examples will suffice. The "crimes" were created after the
commission of the act and were tailored to the acts and were applied in an
unjust manner.
One example will suffice. Planning for war became the crime of conspiring to
wage an aggressive war. What other kind of war is there? Where is the crime?
Simply "declaring war" would have sufficed save that could not be considered
a crime give who was initiating the declaring in that war.
That in itself is sufficient to negate the possibility of justice.
So clearly debating the color of authority is beyond the scope of the
discussion rather the nature of the action itself is the substance of the
issue.
> >If Hardy claims any other war crimes trial was or ought to have been
> >governed by the US Constitution,
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
John D Salt
<jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> [big snips]
>I submit that anyone looking at the entirety of the Nuremberg process can not
>hold it was a process likely to arrive at the facts of the case and permit
>justice.
If the above were true, it would be very easy to present a list of cases
in which a defendant was unjustly condemned for crimes he did not commit.
Please feel free to present such a list at any time.
>One example will suffice. Planning for war became the crime of conspiring to
>wage an aggressive war. What other kind of war is there?
Defensive war. Or are you really claiming some kind of moral equivalence
between an agressor and the party they attack?
All the best,
John.
--
John D Salt Dept of IS & Computing,| Barr's Law of Recursive Futility
Brunel U, Uxbridge, Middx UB8 3PH | [BLORF]: If you are smart enough
Disclaimers: I speak only for me. | to use one of these... you can
Launcher may train without warning.| probably manage without one.
juxta...@my-dejanews.com
> One example will suffice. Planning for war became the crime of conspiring to
> wage an aggressive war. What other kind of war is there? Where is the crime?
> Simply "declaring war" would have sufficed save that could not be considered
> a crime give who was initiating the declaring in that war.
> That in itself is sufficient to negate the possibility of justice.
Err, what about "justice" for the peoples of small countries (or big
ones) attacked without provocation by the Nazi war machine? What threat
did Denmark or Holland or Yugoslavia pose to mighty Germany? Hitler
attacked these places and others on the theory that "might makes right."
No one will question the victor, Hitler said. The war crimes tribunals
provided a salutory answer to this sort of unlawful international
mugging. It's just too bad that getting the Nazis into the dock at
Nuremberg required the sacrifice of so many millions of lives, Germans
included.
Kevin Douglas
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
>> One example will suffice. Planning for war became the crime of conspiring
to
>> wage an aggressive war. What other kind of war is there?
There is attacking and being attacked. I'm not sure that "conspiring to
wage an aggressive war" meant what you think it might have. It didn't refer
to all of the contingency plans which Generals draw up before a war to deal
with various situations. More like, "Let's attack Poland, this is how we're
going to do it".
Nuremberg did set an important precedent. It used to be true that war was
an accepted practice by governments. In the 18th century when one country
attacked another and lost no one really questioned whether the attack was
legitimate or not, that's just what countries did.
Not so today. I suppose this started to change with the defeat of Napoleon,
but if one country wages an aggressive war on another, loses, the country
attacked doesn't have to write this off as "just one of those things".
That's progress. How are countries which wage aggressive war supposed to be
punished? At Versailles, of course, the solution was to levy reparations
for generations (which wasn't something the Allies invented, this what what
Germany did to France after the Franco-Prussian war).
After World War II people realized this was not an effective solution, it
prevented countries from rebuilding, kept old tensions alive, and "locked"
succeeding generations into events over which they had no control (which was
one reason Hitler came to power).
So at Nuremberg the Allies went in a different direction. Punish those who
started the war (ie. those in the government) then clean the slate so the
defeated country can rebuild. Those responsible for the aggression are held
accountable.
Your assumption seems to be that the actual declaration of war doesn't
matter all that much. War is just "one of those things", it doesn't matter
who starts it, the only war crimes which count, arguably, are those which
are those which are related to how the war was conducted.
No. At Nuremberg waging aggressive war was considered one of the crimes.
And rightly. This solution was much better than the one adopted after World
War I. And there's a world of difference, of course, between it and what
the Germans were planning had they won.
This, my opinion, is the fatal flaw in your argument. You're standing up
for the rule of law AND arguing that who commenced hostilities doesn't
matter.
Think of it this way. In what area of law is it an accepted notion that who
starts what doesn't affect the circumstances of what happens later? If I'm
at a bar, someone tries to punch me, I knock out his tooth, that's not the
same act it would be if he didn't try to punch me.
If I jump in front of a speeding car and it hits me that's not the same act
as if I stand at a street corner, a car turns around, and runs me over.
That's basic.
>> Simply "declaring war" would have sufficed save that could not be
considered
>> a crime give who was initiating the declaring in that war.
Yes, that was one of the crimes at Nuremberg. Declaring war.
>Hitler
>attacked these places and others on the theory that "might makes right."
>No one will question the victor, Hitler said. The war crimes tribunals
>provided a salutory answer to this sort of unlawful international
>mugging. It's just too bad that getting the Nazis into the dock at
>Nuremberg required the sacrifice of so many millions of lives, Germans
>included.
MIght have gotten the attributions wrong since this statement seems to agree
with my point. If so I apologize. By the way, the US presently has
something like 70,000 names on its list of people who are not immediately
allowed into this country because they're suspected of having committed war
crimes during World War II. I don't know what someone had to do to get
placed on that list, know it's not a verdict but I'm guessing the Justice
Department needed to have some reasonable suspicion (since this is a
question of American law, now, the government can't just exclude people at a
whim).
I don't think a hundred defendants were tried at Nuremberg. Far from being
too strict I think one could make a very strong argument that the Allies let
most people off. World War II was a huge event. The Holocaust alone must
have involved tens of thousands of people. Most were not tried.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
juxta...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> In article <6q4kkt$9nm$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> > One example will suffice. Planning for war became the crime of conspiring to
> > Simply "declaring war" would have sufficed save that could not be considered
> > a crime give who was initiating the declaring in that war.
> > That in itself is sufficient to negate the possibility of justice.
> Err, what about "justice" for the peoples of small countries (or big
> ones) attacked without provocation by the Nazi war machine?
The issue here is justice under law and nothing else. If you wish to go into
the theology of a just war there are certainly religion newsgroups for such
discussions. Attacking other countries, big or small, was not a crime at the
time of the attacks. Therefore there can not be justice in convicting anyone
of a crime that did not exist at the time of the acts.
> What threat
> did Denmark or Holland or Yugoslavia pose to mighty Germany? Hitler
> attacked these places and others on the theory that "might makes right."
Please this is for the discussion of WWII not morality. The discussion here
should be limited to strategic reasons for such attacks. Right or wrong is
not relevant to the issue any more than the "immorallity" of Britain planning
the invasion and conquest of Finland and the de facto conquest of Iceland or
the Russian conquest of Poland.
Such considerations are not relevant to the war. Again the morality of a just
or unjust war is murky and best and there is no theological agreement on WWII
in any direction. A proper moral judgement has to be based upon actual facts
not upon opinions of facts.
> No one will question the victor, Hitler said. The war crimes tribunals
> provided a salutory answer to this sort of unlawful international
> mugging. It's just too bad that getting the Nazis into the dock at
> Nuremberg required the sacrifice of so many millions of lives, Germans
> included.
No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war itself)
ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >> One example will suffice. Planning for war became the crime of conspiring
> >> to wage an aggressive war. What other kind of war is there?
> There is attacking and being attacked. I'm not sure that "conspiring to
> wage an aggressive war" meant what you think it might have. It didn't refer
> to all of the contingency plans which Generals draw up before a war to deal
> with various situations. More like, "Let's attack Poland, this is how we're
> going to do it".
What is the difference between conspiring and planning? The former has a
criminal connotation, the latter does not. Conspiring also has the
connotation of secrecy, all war planning is done in secrecy, spies willing.
Once Poland pulled out of the Danzig Corridor negotiations (after getting the
phoney defense defense treaty with Britain and France -- other than declaring
war they sat on their hands with their thumbs up their asses) both sides
prepared for war. Poland had the superior forces for a non-mobile war,
Germany had invented mobile warfare, the Blitzkrieg. And still, even fighting
a two front war against both Germany and Russia, Poland held out longer than
France. That might have been the most equal confrontation of the war.
To reiterate the point I am making, even unprovoked attack was not a crime
between Germany and Poland at the time under any construction of any treaty
to which both were signatories at the time. Even if it were, the charge at
Nuremberg made no reference to any treaty violation.
The charge was a crime created after the war. Therefore ex post facto.
Therefore unjust. Convictions under ex post facto laws are unjust. This is a
very straightforward subject. I don't see why it is getting such a response.
> Nuremberg did set an important precedent. It used to be true that war was
> an accepted practice by governments. In the 18th century when one country
> attacked another and lost no one really questioned whether the attack was
> legitimate or not, that's just what countries did.
That is what countries, groups, tribes, kingdoms, whatever did as far back as
there is a recorded history of Europe, the world even. There is no cause to
limit it to the 18th century.
The precedent however was that crimes can be tailored to the actions of the
losers after the war. At least the method being pursued now, the creation of
a permanent war crimes court establishes the crimes BEFORE the court has
jurisdiction. Some interesting things are soon to be war crimes such as what
Germany did in resettlement in its half of Poland.
It is not a legitimate precedent to hold that unjust acts can be perpetrated
upon the loser simply because they lost.
> Not so today. I suppose this started to change with the defeat of Napoleon,
> but if one country wages an aggressive war on another, loses, the country
> attacked doesn't have to write this off as "just one of those things".
> That's progress. How are countries which wage aggressive war supposed to be
> punished? At Versailles, of course, the solution was to levy reparations
> for generations (which wasn't something the Allies invented, this what what
> Germany did to France after the Franco-Prussian war).
Reparations were assessed upon the loser REGARDLESS of who started the war.
That is no different than creating crimes after the war to fit the actions of
the losers.
Under a similar war crimes concept, had Britain lost the Battle of Britain
and had to surrender, Churchill and his senior war staff would have been on
trial. Bombing civilian populations (Sir Butcher Harris) would have been
declared a crime against humanity and since what Germany might have done
could not have been considered by the "German Military Tribunal" it would
clearly be a hanging offense for both Harris and Churchill. Conspiring to
wage an aggressive war against Germany similarly a crime worthy of hanging.
Since Germany had not attacked Britain prior to Britain's DoW that would be a
cut and dried crime.
The list can go on and on.
> After World War II people realized this was not an effective solution, it
> prevented countries from rebuilding, kept old tensions alive, and "locked"
> succeeding generations into events over which they had no control (which was
> one reason Hitler came to power).
> So at Nuremberg the Allies went in a different direction. Punish those who
> started the war (ie. those in the government) then clean the slate so the
> defeated country can rebuild. Those responsible for the aggression are held
> accountable.
Even though it was not a crime to start a war. And it was NOT a tribunal to
establish impartially the party responsible for the agression. It was
judiciallly noticed that as Germany had lost it was guilty of crimes created
after the war. The only issue before the court was hang the individuals who
ran the country and the war.
Now we can go into who started the war in another thread if you wish. Here we
need note only that there has never been an impartial judicial review of who
started WWII. Therefore the primary test of culpability was not met, rather
only victor's justice.
It is elementary here. If a cop finds two people fighting his primary
obligation is an impartial determination of who started it, listening to both
sides of the story. If a white cop is hearing a dozen honkies screaming the
nigger started it (and fell and hurt himself,) it is still incumbent upon the
officer to ascertain the actual facts of the fight. And then it still goes to
the judge to hear the case if the parties still dispute who started the
fight.
Impartial determination as to who started the war is something lacking prior
to Muremberg. Without that, there was no foundation for the IMT limiting
itself to Germany only.
It was decided as part of the protocols of the IMT that it had no
jurisdiction over the winners, in fact that it had no jurisdiction over even
Italy. (Italy had been using gas in Ethiopia since 1937 and at least that was
a violation of the treaty it was a party to, even though it did not apply to
a war with Ethopia as Ethiopia was not a signatory to the treaty.)
But in fact it was not the IMT that caused the change. It was first
unconditional surrender and then the complete allied control over a puppet
government and complete control over the press and educational ciriculum.
Since the end of that war Germans have been educated solely in terms of the
victors' view of the war, as though there were only one side to any subject.
I can understand the victors sticking by their side of things as least as
long as registered voters are still alive but that the losers are stuck with
the victors' side of it is not realistic.
It would be like all of Russia teaching that the last seventy years were
based upon the evil of godless communism and nothing else permitted to be
taught. "Why did Russia declare war on Germany? Pure godless communist evil."
Don't mind the consensus is Germany started it, while only a couple Russians
concur with Germany that it was premptive, elevate the German necessity for a
premptive strike to be primary.
> Your assumption seems to be that the actual declaration of war doesn't
> matter all that much. War is just "one of those things", it doesn't matter
> who starts it, the only war crimes which count, arguably, are those which
> are those which are related to how the war was conducted.
No, rather I hold strictly that he who declares the war starts the war. But
in those days it did not matter who started a war. It mattered only who won.
As to what constitutes a war crime, that is by mutual agreement of the
signatories to agreements as to what constitutes a war crime. That is an
elementary principle of law, the definition of the crime before it can be a
crime to perform the act. Another principle of law is that it has to be by
mutual consent. In countries consent is seen by citizenship. Until people can
leave earth nations have to mutually agree as to what is a crime.
Technically, under the principles of the IMT, in 1946 the nations of the
earth could have retroactively declared the use of the A Bomb a war crime and
tried folks like Truman and LeMay and hung them. (Even though firestorming
had killed more per raid than the bomb, it was simply impressive.)
That is law. Morality is best discussed in religion newsgroups.
> No. At Nuremberg waging aggressive war was considered one of the crimes.
Since only one side could be tried for it, it was a priori under judicial
notice that Germany was guilty. Therefore it was not impartial. Therefore it
was a hanging court.
> And rightly.
Why? Why should the loser be considered the only cause of a war without an
impartial judicial determination of the facts as to who in fact started the
war?
> This solution was much better than the one adopted after World
> War I.
I can not agree that it is ever a good idea to adopt the tools of tyrants, to
disregard the principles of law that can arrive at justice, even in a good
cause. (After you have destroyed the law to get to the Devil what will there
be to protect you? -- some novel or other paraphrased from memory)
> And there's a world of difference, of course, between it and what
> the Germans were planning had they won.
I am afraid I am unaware of any planning documents ever having been
discovered much less introduced into evidence at Nuremberg. Perhaps you could
point to some. Now if you are saying that you can determine their plans from
war propaganda, I have to disagree. I would like to read the documents
themselves.
The only document I am aware of is between Germany and Japan, a preliminary
agreement to agree which laid out spheres of influence and which countries
would be garrisoned (advanced forces like US bases in Europe against Russia)
and such. No more than an agreement to agree. I am aware of no follow on
meetings or documentation of them.
> This, my opinion, is the fatal flaw in your argument. You're standing up
> for the rule of law AND arguing that who commenced hostilities doesn't
> matter.
If standing for the rule of law is my flaw then I can only fervently wish
that everyone shared that same flaw.
As to who commenced hostilies that could legitimately be called the start of
WWII, as above, he who declares the war starts the war. Do you agree with
that position? For better or for worse, he who declares the war starts the
war.
If you look at who made the declarations of war that started WWII then yes, I
am discounting the fact that it was the DoWs of Britain and France that
started WWII. But I can not imagine one person who can look back on WWII and
say PROTECTING only half of the military dictatorship of Poland was worth it.
I do not see it being worth the war at all. I can see nothing that starting
the war prevented that, in the worst possible speculation, was more than did
happen.
> Think of it this way. In what area of law is it an accepted notion that who
> starts what doesn't affect the circumstances of what happens later? If I'm
> at a bar, someone tries to punch me, I knock out his tooth, that's not the
> same act it would be if he didn't try to punch me.
And if there is a squabble between two other people (Germany and Poland) and
you and your buddy (Britain and France) say to one (Germany) if you hit the
other guy (Poland) us two are going to beat the crap out of you. And while
doing that the entire bar is willing to watch the fight but you expand it to
a bar room brawl, just who causes the brawl? And, BTW, you and your buddy
ignore another party (Russia) beating the crap out of the other guy (Poland)
while you concentrate on the fight you wanted.
Fourty years ago the facts of the war and who started it were taught clearly
in gradeschool. Over the years it has been simplified terribly. And to the
point where pointing out elementary school knowledge is now in some manner
considered supporting Germany. I have also seen that in the
over-simplification of the US Civil War, pointing out it was not fought over
slavery is somehow considered supporting slavery.
Events of war are never simple nor is the discussion of them simple.
The question we have before us is only whether or not Britain and France in
fact solved anything by started WWII with their declarations of war or did
they make matters worse? Clearly at the time and as both sides said it was
for their own national interests and really had nothing to do with Poland.
What were the DoWs to prevent? War with France and Britain? Obviously not.
Were they to liberate the polish military dictatorship? 6-8 months of
Sitzkrieg hardly indicate an interest in Poland.
And, as above, was WWII worth half of Poland that was a military
dictatorship? In fact hardly distinguishable from the common conception of a
fascist government. After B&F found they were in over their heads they needed
help and then, yes, it could then and only then be cast in terms of fighting
for democracy but for the US it was nothing but pulling their cajones out of
a fire of their own making.
> If I jump in front of a speeding car and it hits me that's not the same act
> as if I stand at a street corner, a car turns around, and runs me over.
> That's basic.
True but B&F did jump in front of Germany for their own national interest
reasons.
Now you may side with their justifications but frankly I can't see one thing
that was ameliorated by their DoWs. They damn near got their butts whipped in
the process and Britain came so close to losing the Battle of Britain that
with avoiding any of a couple mistakes Britain would have had to surrender.
Some put the margin as low as four days to have avoided a Europe divided
between Germany and Russia. And with that, we go to soc.history.what-if.
> >> Simply "declaring war" would have sufficed save that could not be
> >> considered
> >> a crime give who was initiating the declaring in that war.
> Yes, that was one of the crimes at Nuremberg. Declaring war.
No it was not considered a crime. There was clearly no way to make declaring
war a crime and ignore who made the fatal declarations that "once more
plunged Europe into war" and other stirring propaganda phrases.
I suggest you look into what actually transpired at the IMT some time. It is
not pretty.
> >Hitler
> >attacked these places and others on the theory that "might makes right."
> >No one will question the victor, Hitler said. The war crimes tribunals
> >provided a salutory answer to this sort of unlawful international
> >mugging. It's just too bad that getting the Nazis into the dock at
> >Nuremberg required the sacrifice of so many millions of lives, Germans
> >included.
> MIght have gotten the attributions wrong since this statement seems to agree
> with my point. If so I apologize.
What in the world are you apologizing for if you are participating in a
factual exchange?
> By the way, the US presently has
> something like 70,000 names on its list of people who are not immediately
> allowed into this country because they're suspected of having committed war
> crimes during World War II.
Suspected? I follow the actual trials and hearings when I can find them
reported. There are resounding testimony to the injustices of the IMT
continuing to this day. They are rarely as clear-cut travesties of justice as
Demjanjuk. Usually they are on the order of "he was likely a member of
therefore should have known of something of which we ask the court to take
judicial notice without physical evidence."
> I don't know what someone had to do to get
> placed on that list, know it's not a verdict but I'm guessing the Justice
> Department needed to have some reasonable suspicion (since this is a
> question of American law, now, the government can't just exclude people at a
> whim).
Usually all one has to do is have a Ukrainian name and a political interest
group manufacturing a case. The "Justice Department" group in charge is the
OSI, accused by a federal judge in the Demjanjuk case of working fraud upon
the court in the matters of concealing exculaptory evidence, attempted
destruction of exculpatory evidence (perhaps the only thing that saved his
life was the attempt failing) and conspiracy with the KGB to introduce forged
evidence. It is still a wonder to me that they are still employed by the OSI
instead of being fired and disbarred before spending fifteen years in
Levinworth.
> I don't think a hundred defendants were tried at Nuremberg.
In the primary IMT, 11 or 13 I think, something like that. And there was no
attempt to demonstrate personal knowledge of some of the ex post facto
crimes.
> Far from being
> too strict I think one could make a very strong argument that the Allies let
> most people off. World War II was a huge event. The Holocaust alone must
> have involved tens of thousands of people. Most were not tried.
It is always good when people are not tried for crimes manufactured after the
fact and tailored to the acts that they performed.
Again, if my flaw is standing for the rule of law and justice, I stand
(rather sit) guilty and proud of my guilt.
Donald Phillipson
> The issue here is justice under law and nothing else. If you wish to go into
> the theology of a just war there are certainly religion newsgroups for such
> discussions. Attacking other countries, big or small, was not a crime at the
> time of the attacks. Therefore there can not be justice in convicting anyone
> of a crime that did not exist at the time of the acts.
> juxta...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>> What threat
>> did Denmark or Holland or Yugoslavia pose to mighty Germany? Hitler
>> attacked these places and others on the theory that "might makes right."
> Please this is for the discussion of WWII not morality. The discussion here
> should be limited to strategic reasons for such attacks. . . .
> A proper moral judgement has to be based upon actual facts
> not upon opinions of facts.
> No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war itself)
> ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
>
> This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
> and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
But Jimiden's logic is not wholly convincing e.g.:
(a) "The issue here is justice under law and nothing else."
(b) ". . . this is for the discussion of WWII not morality."
Fortunately the facts about Nuremberg seem reasonably clear.
There were four charges:
1. Conspiracy to commit crimes in indictments 2-4.
2. Crimes against peace, i.e. invading Poland, Holland, Russia etc.
3. War crimes, e.g. shooting prisoners, as after the Sagan "Great
Escape," 1944.
4. Crimes against humanity, e.g. extermination camps, SS "medical"
experiments etc.
## 1-3 were all offences under national law, common law or
international law. "Crimes against humanity" were indeed ex post facto
i.e. defined as a crime only after the events they condemn. So if
the phenomenon of post-facto law were by itself enough to make
a trial "unjust" we would have to deal selectively with the
results: only 2 men among 18 convicted (and
3 acquitted) were convicted on count 4 alone. All the others
were also convicted of crimes defined in law before 1945.
The two were Baldur von Schirach and Julius Streicher. Observers
agreed Streicher may have been unjustly convicted, being in
1945-46 possibly even less sane than Hess. But the ex post
facto law phenomenon, if accepted, would not much help 16 of
the 18 men convicted.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
In article <6q4rpm$13co$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
John...@brunel.ac.uk (John D Salt) wrote:
> In article <6q4kkt$9nm$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> <jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> >I submit that anyone looking at the entirety of the Nuremberg process can not
> >hold it was a process likely to arrive at the facts of the case and permit
> >justice.
> If the above were true, it would be very easy to present a list of cases
> in which a defendant was unjustly condemned for crimes he did not commit.
> Please feel free to present such a list at any time.
Not only did I give an example, you quoted it. There is no need for a list as
the example (without the editting) goes to the heart of the issue. It is a
fundamental principle of law that one can not be guilty of committing a crime
before the act becomes a crime. Ex post facto laws were considered to be
inherently unjust and the tool of tyrants.
If in five years participating in this conference becomes a crime, you and I
can not be convicted in JUSTICE of the act of participating now.
One can not be justly convicted of a crime that did not exist at the time of
the act. Such a conviction is not justice.
Therefore every conviction was unjust as they could not have committed the
crimes of which they were convicted as the acts were not criminal at the
time.
> >One example will suffice. Planning for war became the crime of conspiring to
> >wage an aggressive war. What other kind of war is there?
> Defensive war. Or are you really claiming some kind of moral equivalence
> between an agressor and the party they attack?
As noted that did not become a crime until after the war was over.
I have yet to see a war where there is a truly innocent participant. What did
Germany do to the national interests of Britain and France that caused them
to declare war on Germany? While Germany may appear innocent on the surface,
it was in fact reconstructing a central european empire that could challenge
their hegemony over Europe. In Europe for centuries, attempting to challenge
hegemony was considered a cause of war.
Kevin Douglas
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>The issue here is justice under law and nothing else. If you wish to go into
>the theology of a just war there are certainly religion newsgroups for such
>discussions. Attacking other countries, big or small, was not a crime at the
>time of the attacks. Therefore there can not be justice in convicting anyone
>of a crime that did not exist at the time of the acts.
I'm not sure you're right as a matter of law. After World War I most
countries, including Germany, signed the the Lacarno Pact and a few other
treaties which explicitly forbade countries from waging aggressive war.
Hitler withdrew from those treaties but so what? I don't think the treaties
had a mechanism for leaving, in fact I think Hitler just renounced them.
>Such considerations are not relevant to the war. Again the morality of a just
>or unjust war is murky and best and there is no theological agreement on WWII
>in any direction. A proper moral judgement has to be based upon actual facts
>not upon opinions of facts.
If there's no theological agreement about WWII then such a consensus is
imposible. You're making a very strange argument, that the Allies were
required out of their respect for law to tolerate German actions which
stemmed from no respect for law. Why? If that's the calculus why are the
Allies held to a different standard?
>No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war itself)
>ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
>This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
>and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
The law is an instrument of justice, it's not the thing itself. There was
no appropriate mechanism to deal with what happened during World War II, in
no small part because law is generally thought of as an instrument of
national sovereignty and the war, of course, was international.
Justice, however, is a different subject. Even within a particular country
there are all sorts of situations where the law and justice can collide.
Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s, for instance, was very legal. It wasn't
just.
I'd be curious if you could cite a case at Nuremberg which wasn't based upon
some principles and standards of international law which had been
articulated before. Geneva, Lacarno, the League of Nations, etc., these
were the institutions which established what international standards were.
And if you look at the Geneva treaties, by the way, you'll find they go
beyond explicit descriptions of what was permissable and not, a phrase which
shows up all of the time is "according to the accepted customs of war",
which shows rather clearly that countries recognized these to exist.
If you were a lawyer fighting a traffic ticket within a single jurisdiction
and faced the kinds of technicalities found at Nuremberg if I were the judge
I'd agree with you, you deserved to get off. There was no single
jurisdiction, not every precedent had been worked out, that doesn't mean
these concepts didn't exist as matters of law, and of course the matter was
a bit more serious than a traffic ticket.
The Nazis, by the way, knew they were committing war crimes, that shows up
in German documents all over the place. We know more about what the Nazis
did and thought than any of the prosecutors in 1946.
But it does still comes back to justice. What you think is simple in fact
raises very complicated issue even within our own system. A fault in
procedure, for instance, doesn't usually lead to acquittal but a retrial.
Why? Because the law is concerned with justice.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
ad...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Donald Phillipson) wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >> What threat
> >> did Denmark or Holland or Yugoslavia pose to mighty Germany? Hitler
> >> attacked these places and others on the theory that "might makes right."
> > Please this is for the discussion of WWII not morality. The discussion here
> > should be limited to strategic reasons for such attacks. . . .
> > A proper moral judgement has to be based upon actual facts
> > not upon opinions of facts.
> > No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war
> > itself) ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
> > This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto
> > Law and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
> But Jimiden's logic is not wholly convincing e.g.:
Those were statements of fact, not an exercise in logic. You do not disagree
with any of the statements of fact.
> (a) "The issue here is justice under law and nothing else."
> (b) ". . . this is for the discussion of WWII not morality."
>
> Fortunately the facts about Nuremberg seem reasonably clear.
[a slight reordering in the interests of clarity]
> ## 1-3 were all offences under national law, common law or
> international law.
National law
National laws are enforced by the nation that passes them. No nation has the
chain of authority to enforce the laws of another nation.
Common law
I can find no way to address this suggestion without something that could
appear to be a personal attack. Suffice to say, no one has ever been
convicted of violating common law.
International law
International law exists only in the form of treaties and agreements. Treaty
violations were not cited in the charges, therefore there were no treaty
violations.
To be tried for violation of a law, any of the above forms, one "should be"
informed of exactly what law one is accused of violating. If there was to be
an invocation of treaty violation then there would have been a specific
reference to the treaty provision they were charged with violating. There was
none.
To the charges themselves
> There were four charges:
Which could, by virtue of losing the war, only be applied to Germany and
again without an impartial adjudication of who started the war.
> 1. Conspiracy to commit crimes in indictments 2-4.
All planning in secret can be called a conspiracy. All war planning is done
is secret spies willing, ergo not a crime.
> 2. Crimes against peace, i.e. invading Poland, Holland, Russia etc.
Those were not crimes and clearly Britain intended to invade Finland but
Germany got there first and Britain did invade Iceland. Invasions per se was
not a crime UNLESS it violated the provisions of a specific treaty to which
both parties were signatories.
More directly unless there was a treaty between Germany and Poland that both
had signed and said that one invading the other was a crime then there was no
crime. There was no such treaty therefore there was no crime. That is the
basic principle of international law, without mutual agreement nothing
exists, nothing is presumed to exist.
In that regard, Russia may have had a gripe BUT there was no impartial
judicial determination of who started that war therefore there was not a just
basis for the accusation of Germany.
> 3. War crimes, e.g. shooting prisoners, as after the Sagan "Great
> Escape," 1944.
Again the matter of the existance of a treaty governs. Shooting prisoners was
not a crime per se, rather shooting prisoners for other than the permitted
reasons was a crime between signatories to the agreement.
More specific to the facts of the treaties that would have governed had they
been invoked, they did not apply to countries not a signatory (Poland) nor to
any county allied to a country not a signatory, Britain and France and by
extension the US. That is the way the treaty read and rationally so. That
made the treaties not only a protection but gave nations an inducement to
sign them and made their potential allies who had signed a source of pressure
on them to sign.
Thus 1-3 were ex post facto crimes. If the issue had been treaty violations
then the treaties could have been invoked and the people charged with those
crimes could have been tried and punished under the provisions of those
treaties.
> 4. Crimes against humanity, e.g. extermination camps, SS "medical"
> experiments etc.
> "Crimes against humanity" were indeed ex post facto
> i.e. defined as a crime only after the events they condemn. So if
> the phenomenon of post-facto law were by itself enough to make
> a trial "unjust" we would have to deal selectively with the
> results: only 2 men among 18 convicted (and
> 3 acquitted) were convicted on count 4 alone. All the others
> were also convicted of crimes defined in law before 1945.
To go further, the IMT lacked jurisdiction even in the enforcement of the
treaties even if treaty violations had been invoked. Treaty violations would
be adjudicated under the terms provided in the treaties and mutually agreed.
I am saying nothing more than the way things were at the time prior to the
creation of this hanging tribunal and the way things returned to AFTER the
dissolution of this hanging tribunal.
Specific to #3 and #4, there was the plain, old-fashioned crime of murder
which was not invoked. One or a million, the penalty is the same.
> The two were Baldur von Schirach and Julius Streicher. Observers
> agreed Streicher may have been unjustly convicted, being in
> 1945-46 possibly even less sane than Hess.
Streicher's crime was exercising freedom of the press. Convicting him was a
crime in itself. However, an insanity defense has to be both an approved plea
and allowed by the court. As to insanity, I am unaware of any professional
diagnosis of insanity regarding anyone involved. Without a legitimate
diagnosis there is no basis for considering it. And they were in fact
observed by a psychiatrist.
> But the ex post
> facto law phenomenon, if accepted, would not much help 16 of
> the 18 men convicted.
I am speaking of the law. You are not. Rather you are creating things "ex
post facto" that do not apply to the discussion that only give an veneer of
acceptability.
Additionally any just law has a stated penalty, requires the person in fact
commit the crimes and generally has degrees of culpability.
There were no penalties attached to these crimes. The penalties were at the
whim of the tribunal. There was no attempt to demonstrate personal
culpability in fact the foundation of the country was the Fuehrerstadt, one
man rule.
The fiction that orders should have been disobeyed is one of the shallowest.
"I refuse to invade Poland." "Why?" "Because in seven years it will be
considered a war crime."
"I refuse to invade Finland." "Why?" "Because in seven years we can hang
Churchill for doing it."
Gord McFee
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
[deleted]
> No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war itself)
> ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
>
> This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
> and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
That provocative argument has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
American courts, including appellate courts. The reason is that the
argument is patently false. Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
of war is in violation of international law, and murder of innocent
civilians, such as the extermination of the Jews, is in violation of the
law in every country where it took place.
--
Gord McFee
I'll write no line before its time
Visit the Holocaust History Project
http://www.holocaust-history.org
Visit the Nizkor site
http://www.nizkor.org
George Hardy
>But the essential feature of the IMT is not whether or not it was
>a "legal" proceeding.
>
>The essential feature is whether or not the procedures used by the
>IMT can be reasonably expected to result in justice.
>
>Civilization has spent many thousands of years in arriving at processes
>that will lead to what the people who matter will perceive as justice.
I will bypass the point that one important result of the "many thousands
of years in arriving at process" has been the establishment of rules,
laws, constitutions, the Magna Carta, declarations and bills of Rights
-- all aimed protecting the individual from the excesses of governments.
The point important to this board is that the procedures of the IMT
trials were intended to *not* "be reasonably expected to result in
justice." The IMT was planned from the beginning to result in
injustice.
The war crimes trials and the IMT were not a sudden, last minute
idea. If we can believe Elliot Roosevelt, who was there, but who
was obviously biased, the idea came up at the Teheran Conference.
Stalin suggested a great purge of "at least 50,000". WC objected
(not to the number) that the British people would demand "a proper
legal trial". FDR suggested 50,000 was perhaps too large a number,
and suggested 49,500 instead. (WC, six years after the conference
and three years after Elliot's account was published, came out with
an alternative version, which, however, concurred with the 50,000
execution suggestion by Stalin.) The way to satisfy both Stalin
and WC was to be a show trial, on some sort of pseudo-legal basis.
I should be noted that the terms "war-criminal" and "war crime" had
been long recognized to have precise and definite meanings, both in
military manuals of all involved countries and international treaties.
After the Teheran Conference Law Officers of the Crown (British) met
with American, Russian and French legal authorities in order to plan
the trials. Legal precedents and legal basis were sought. (It was
they, not I, who brought up the 329 B.C. trial of Bessos by Alexander
the Great, at Zariaspa in Bactria. It was a precedent for the prosecutor
and judge being the same party.)
The result of this effort was the London Agreement, which included
"The Charter", which contained the procedure and powers. Rules
had been determined, such as "the tribunal should not be bound by
technical rules of evidence". New crimes were invented -- the
first was "Crimes against peace", defined as "planning, preparing
or waging a war of aggression or a war in violation of international
treaties." After great effort, the term "aggression" was left
undefined, as it was not possible to come up with one which Germany
had violated and one or more of the Allies had not. The IMT was
required "to take judicial notice of facts of common knowledge" and
"to rule out irrelevant issues". (Common knowledge saved Otto
Skorzany, as has been recently mentioned.) This combination allowed
the IMT to reject the defense that the Allies did likewise if it was
not "common knowledge". (The planned UK invasion of Norway is such
an example. This cost Raeder his conviction.) Also the IMT was
strictly limited "to crimes committed in the interest of the Axis
Powers."
It seems clear that "trials", within the understanding of the Anglo-
Saxon tradition, was never the intent.
John D Salt
In article <6qbdu5$lli$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
<jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> [big snips everywhere]
>National laws are enforced by the nation that passes them. No nation has the
>chain of authority to enforce the laws of another nation.
Wrong. There are several counter-examples, most obviously in the
laws of British Commonwealth countries.
>Common law
>
>I can find no way to address this suggestion without something that could
>appear to be a personal attack. Suffice to say, no one has ever been
>convicted of violating common law.
Not only wrong, but so wildly incorrect as to leave me gasping. Please
check a definition of "common law" in Anglo-Saxon jurispridence. English
courts convict people daily for violating the common law.
>All planning in secret can be called a conspiracy. All war planning is done
>is secret spies willing, ergo not a crime.
This is badly flawed logic. From the fact that something legal can be
done in secret, it does not follow at all that anything done in secret is
therefore legal.
>More directly unless there was a treaty between Germany and Poland that both
>had signed and said that one invading the other was a crime then there was no
>crime. There was no such treaty therefore there was no crime.
When did Germany announce its abrogation of the Kellogg-Briand pact?
When did Germany announce its abrogation of the German-Polish non-
aggression pact?
[I can't find the answer to either question.]
>In that regard, Russia may have had a gripe BUT there was no impartial
>judicial determination of who started that war therefore there was not a just
>basis for the accusation of Germany.
There is a principle in English law of "reasonableness". I would be
utterly fascinated to know what test of "reasonableness" you can use
under which it is not clear that Germany attacked Russia. No
"judicial determination" is required; res ipsa loquitur.
>> 3. War crimes, e.g. shooting prisoners, as after the Sagan "Great
>> Escape," 1944.
>
>Again the matter of the existance of a treaty governs. Shooting prisoners was
>not a crime per se, rather shooting prisoners for other than the permitted
>reasons was a crime between signatories to the agreement.
I don't see your point here; the act remains, clearly, a war crime, in
violation of accepted practice, international treaties to which Germany
was a signatory, and German military law.
>More specific to the facts of the treaties that would have governed had they
>been invoked, they did not apply to countries not a signatory (Poland) nor to
>any county allied to a country not a signatory, Britain and France and by
>extension the US. That is the way the treaty read and rationally so.
This is not by any means true of all treaties; which ones do you have in
mind?
>There were no penalties attached to these crimes. The penalties were at the
>whim of the tribunal. There was no attempt to demonstrate personal
>culpability in fact the foundation of the country was the Fuehrerstadt, one
>man rule.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Still, it should be
borne in mind that one of the principles established at Nuremburg
was that individuals, not countries, commit crimes.
>The fiction that orders should have been disobeyed is one of the shallowest.
It is not in any sense a "fiction". It is sufficiently shallow to have
been a part of the German military tradition since at least the war of
1870, after which a Prussian officer was cashiered words to the effect
that "The Kaiser made you a Major because he thought you would know when
to disobey an order".
Kevin Douglas
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<6qbdu5$lli$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>I am speaking of the law. You are not. Rather you are creating things "ex
>post facto" that do not apply to the discussion that only give an veneer of
>acceptability.
So the mistake the Allies made was putting the Germans on trial, if they'd
just shot them maybe they would have committed a crime but it would have
been one no one had grounds to adjudicate?
jim...@my-dejanews.com
>In <6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, on 5 Aug 1998 04:45:47 GMT,
>jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>[deleted]
>> No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war itself)
>> ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
>> This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
>> and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
>That provocative argument
It is not provocative in the least. It is not even an argument. It is a
statement of fact.
>has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
>ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
>American courts, including appellate courts.
Nuremberg has never been reviewed in any other court. The IMT could not
review itself.
>The reason is that the argument is patently false.
It is patently true that laws were created after the commission of the act
and were tailored to Germany and could only be applied to Germany. The laws
were clearly ex post facto. They could only be applied to Germany and as such
there very existance was the presumption of guilt.
>Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
>of war is in violation of international law,
Was not a violation of international law at the time of its occurance.
International law binds only signatories to the agreement. The IMT was an ad
hoc creation and therefore could not possibly have been given jurisdiction.
A legitimate court can act upon cases where it has been delegated a priori
authority by those who will be tried under it.
>and murder of innocent civilians,
No one was charged with murder, an obvious charge, a clear crime in all five
countries involved.
>such as the extermination of the Jews, is in violation of the
>law in every country where it took place.
And no one was charged with it. One can draw the obvious conclusion that the
chain of evidence required to establish murder could not be constructed for
such a prosecution.
Again, we are talking law not morality.
The hanging court at Nuremberg may make people who seek vengence rather than
justice feel good but the subject here is law and justice, not morality, not
feeling good.
Kevin Douglas
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<6qe1o0$l66$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>The hanging court at Nuremberg may make people who seek vengence rather
than
>justice feel good but the subject here is law and justice, not morality,
not
>feeling good.
Law and justice are similar but the two aren't identical. You can't name a
system of law which came into existence overnight. Of course this is
developed over years, decades, centuries, and circumstances create needs
which are filled.
In the US constitution, for instance, there is no mention of the the
princple of judicial review, doesn't exist, the Supreme Court was just an
agency which ruled on law and every other branch was free to ignore what it
said. Then Justice Marshall concluded this didn't make sense, he "grabbed"
for power, asserted that the court could nullify acts of Congress and the
president.
And out of this came one of the bedrock principles of American
constitutional government, the Supreme Court has the last word. This wasn't
just an improvement but in no small way was essential to the American
system. And yet Justice Marshall acted "illegally", there was no amendment
to the constitution, he basically wrote this into the law on his own
authority.
That's not an isolated incident, law works this way. One can argue strict
or broad constructionist positions in any system but if you look at law it
does react, needs are filled, when a situation has to be addressed and
there's no easy way to do that people step in and history makes its
judgement.
I have no doubt what history will decide about Nuremberg. Faced with the
choice of doing nothing and what they did the Allies were right to hold the
trials. That's already history's judgement but five hundred years from now
I'm confident people will think the same thing.
George Hardy
says:
>
>In <6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, on 5 Aug 1998 04:45:47 GMT,
>jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>> The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law and therefore
>> Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
>
>That provocative argument has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
>ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
>American courts, including appellate courts.
True. Politics overshadowed the merits of the case. Not unknown
in western justice, whether the US, UK or France. But the dissenting
opinions were quite scathing. And their position would have carried
the day if it were not for the 'hot blood' of the desire for
retribution and revenge.
>Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
>of war is in violation of international law,
Oh? Like the Russian invasion of Finland in 1940?
>and murder of innocent civilians,
Often not nearly as innocent as you want to believe. I point
to the partisan activities in the USSR (behind the German
lines) of a clear example of many, many not-so-innocent civilians
being killed.
>such as the extermination of the Jews,
Sorry, I am not allowed to go there.
>is in violation of the law in every country where it took place.
Which laws? In the eastern countries? Murder by the ruling
authorities illegal? There are far too many examples of exactly
the opposite to sustain that position.
Kevin Douglas
Osmo Ronkanen
Gord McFee <gmc...@ibm.net> wrote:
>
>That provocative argument has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
>ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
>argument is patently false. Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
>of war is in violation of international law, and murder of innocent
>civilians, such as the extermination of the Jews, is in violation of the
>law in every country where it took place.
Please show me a quote from the law book on basis of which the
defendants on Nuremberg were tried. There is no question whatsoever that
the trials were based on ex-post-facto law.
Osmo
jim...@my-dejanews.com
>jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
><6qe1o0$l66$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>>The hanging court at Nuremberg may make people who seek vengence rather
>than justice feel good but the subject here is law and justice, not morality,
>>not feeling good.
>Law and justice are similar but the two aren't identical. You can't name a
>system of law which came into existence overnight. Of course this is
>developed over years, decades, centuries, and circumstances create needs
>which are filled.
Quite correct BUT as in an earlier post, the methods of law have been
developed to arrive at what the people who matter will perceive as justice.
Over lots of thousands of years there have been attempts to develop such a
system. It comes in two parts, the creation of laws that are perceived as
just and the other part the method by which a violation of the law is
established.
The matter of Nuremberg that I am raising here hinges upon the first, the
creation of laws perceived as just. Without this being achieved, all the rest
fails.
The law in the matter of Nuremberg fails in that it criminalized actions that
were not crimes at the time of the actions. And the manner of criminalizing
actions was such that only Germans could have committed those crimes. There
are other problems with the newly created laws, for example the carried no
penalties to them, no degrees of culpability.
It has been raised that there were existing treaties under which the matters
of Nuremberg were considered crimes. That is untrue. Existing treaties were
nation to nation. Their internal codes of military justice implemented the
laws within the countries. Penalties were applied by the nation to the
individuals who violated the laws. Nuremberg bears no relationship to this.
As I have noted, that is the way it was before Nuremberg and the way it
reverted to after Nuremberg. I am saying nothing that should surprise anyone
here. Only in the last few years has there been talk of a standing war crimes
court. It should be in effect in a few months. The US objection to it was
specifically US troops being tried by other than US military courts.
>In the US constitution, for instance, there is no mention of the the
>princple of judicial review, doesn't exist, the Supreme Court was just an
>agency which ruled on law and every other branch was free to ignore what it
>said. Then Justice Marshall concluded this didn't make sense, he "grabbed"
>for power, asserted that the court could nullify acts of Congress and the
>president.
>And out of this came one of the bedrock principles of American
>constitutional government, the Supreme Court has the last word. This wasn't
>just an improvement but in no small way was essential to the American
>system. And yet Justice Marshall acted "illegally", there was no amendment
>to the constitution, he basically wrote this into the law on his own
>authority.
>That's not an isolated incident, law works this way. One can argue strict
>or broad constructionist positions in any system but if you look at law it
>does react, needs are filled, when a situation has to be addressed and
>there's no easy way to do that people step in and history makes its
>judgement.
All of the above is based upon one premise that was lacking at Nuremberg,
agreement to an overarching constitution in the first place.
>I have no doubt what history will decide about Nuremberg. Faced with the
>choice of doing nothing and what they did the Allies were right to hold the
>trials. That's already history's judgement but five hundred years from now
>I'm confident people will think the same thing.
It is difficult to see how criminalizing actions after the fact and tailoring
the laws so only Germans could be guilty is "right." Impartiality of the
judges was clearly lacking, directly parallelling the worst corruptions of
western law that we otherwise view with distaste.
And if you destroy the law to get to the devil what will there be to protect
you?
As to the judgement of history when the generation that fought it begins
voting in Valhalla instead of here the view of the war will shift much more
rapidly. The spirit of vengence will disappear. All of us born after the war
have a very simple perspective, they never did anything to me. Hitler,
Milosovic both the same to me. If there is going to be punishment at least
put the laws up front and find a chain of authority which makes them
applicable.
That ex-LBJ guy making a general nuisance of himself has been trying to get
Bush personally before a war crimes court over Panama invasion for years now.
Ortega even has POW status so he is half way to his case, it was a war.
As I have noted many facts of the war including discussions of who really
started the war were common in the 1950s. I remember hearing my elders who
had fought the war having them. I didn't hear that spirit again until the
Patton movie about drafting the Germans and attacking Russia, it brought back
memories.
Some time between the fifties and maybe early this decade there was a revival
of chauvanist war propaganda as the only legitimate terms for discussing that
war. I consider that sloganeering, labeling in place of understanding.
Understanding does not indicate agreement, concurrance or an interest in
resurgance.
That is now going away even though simply pointing out "he who declares the
war starts the war" can still bring about vehement attacks of the most
unscrupulous kind on unmoderated newsgroups.
In this newsgroup there is a refreshing freedom from such things as well as
more people than usual who are capable of talking about it in terms that are
generally devoid of sloganeering.
George Hardy
In article <6qf615$reg$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, "Kevin Douglas"
<kev...@earthlink.net> says:
>I have no doubt what history will decide about Nuremberg. Faced
>with the choice of doing nothing and what they did the Allies were
>right to hold the trials. That's already history's judgement but
>five hundred years from now I'm confident people will think the
>same thing.
I, too, have no doubt about the judgement of history on the Nuremberg
Process. That judgement was rendered, partially, in the two subsequent
Diplomatic Conferences on revising the Geneva Convention. Several of
the main principles were rejected.
The further away from the war we get, the more easy it has become
for the victorious Allies to admit much of what was done. Looting
is a good example. Alford's The Spoils of World war II could not
have been published 30 years ago. Today it is no longer heresy.
Even this discussion is evidence of the second thoughts about the
war crimes trials. One by one, people admit that, yes, that trial
was an injustice. Yamashita was mentioned within the last few days.
And he was hanged. Homma will take longer.
Even today, there is strong anti-German feeling. It is hard to
get agreement that obvious failures in justice (Raeder, Reder,
Ramcke -- to stick with the Rs) were errors. I find it hard to
understand why, but it is a fact. Despite continuing anti-German
propaganda, the world is beginning to look at both sides of WWII
in Europe.
Randy
>From: jim...@my-dejanews.com
>Subject: Re: Law at Nuremberg
>Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 01:15:32 GMT
>
>I have yet to see a war where there is a truly innocent participant. What did
>Germany do to the national interests of Britain and France that caused them
>to declare war on Germany? >
But don't France and Great Britain get to decide what's in their national
interest? Seems like you'd want to let Germany decide what's in her
national interest (i.e. attacking Poland) and you'd also like to let
Germany decide what's in France's and Britain's national interest (i.e. not
declaring war on Germany because no British and French interests were
threatened).
>While Germany may appear innocent on the surface,
>it was in fact reconstructing a central european empire that could challenge
>their hegemony over Europe.
Which central European Empire would that be?
>In Europe for centuries, attempting to challenge
>hegemony was considered a cause of war.
So, World War 2 was fought not to stop Germany from conquering the rest of
Europe, or from murdering millions of people that were already inhabiting
the bits of Europe that Germany wished to possess, it was really all
Britain's and France's fault for wishing to preserve their hegemony over
Europe?
Gord McFee
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> On 6 Aug 1998 14:29:13 -0700, gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee) wrote:
>
> >In <6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, on 5 Aug 1998 04:45:47 GMT,
> >jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >[deleted]
>
> >> No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war itself)
> >> ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
>
> >> This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
> >> and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
>
> >That provocative argument
>
> It is not provocative in the least. It is not even an argument. It is a
> statement of fact.
Matt, it is far from a statement of fact. You obviously don't
understand the difference between retroactive and retrospective law, and
you don't understand international or national law. Might I suggest
Telford Taylor's _The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials_ and Robert
Conot's _Justice at Nuremberg_ for starters?
> >has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
> >ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
> >American courts, including appellate courts.
>
> Nuremberg has never been reviewed in any other court. The IMT could not
> review itself.
Nuremberg has been reviewed by courts in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s,
by courts in Canada as recently as 1998, and by courts in the United
States in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, as recently as an *appellate*
court decision in 1997 and another in 1998. The principles used at
Nuremberg and the admissibility of evidence have been upheld by *all* of
those courts. In fact, they have never been rejected by any court in
the world.
> >The reason is that the argument is patently false.
>
> It is patently true that laws were created after the commission of the act
> and were tailored to Germany and could only be applied to Germany. The laws
> were clearly ex post facto. They could only be applied to Germany and as such
> there very existance was the presumption of guilt.
All wrong. The laws existed before Nuremberg. Take a look back to 1919
for information on trials of war criminals and read the Treaty of
Versailles for a clause on trials of war criminals. The general laws on
murder of civilians and acts of war have existed for centuries.
> >Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
> >of war is in violation of international law,
>
> Was not a violation of international law at the time of its occurance.
> International law binds only signatories to the agreement. The IMT was an ad
> hoc creation and therefore could not possibly have been given jurisdiction.
That is nonsense. I said "unprovoked aggression *without* a declaration
of war".
> A legitimate court can act upon cases where it has been delegated a priori
> authority by those who will be tried under it.
Rubbish. May I recommend _Black's Law Dictionary_ for a complete
refutation of that nonsense.
> >and murder of innocent civilians,
>
> No one was charged with murder, an obvious charge, a clear crime in all five
> countries involved.
Read the above books and learn a bit about this subject.
> >such as the extermination of the Jews, is in violation of the
> >law in every country where it took place.
>
> And no one was charged with it. One can draw the obvious conclusion that the
> chain of evidence required to establish murder could not be constructed for
> such a prosecution.
Read the above books and learn a bit about this subject.
> Again, we are talking law not morality.
>
> The hanging court at Nuremberg may make people who seek vengence rather than
> justice feel good but the subject here is law and justice, not morality, not
> feeling good.
And that is the subject about which you demonstrably know nothing.
Please educate yourself before making wild assertions.
Kevin Douglas
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<6qfnk6$n5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>All of the above is based upon one premise that was lacking at Nuremberg,
>agreement to an overarching constitution in the first place.
Maybe a better analogy is the Civil War. The Confederacy asserted that it
had the right to secede. The Union said it didn't. There was no clear
resolution to this question. The two fought a war, the Union won, its
position prevailed. There is still nothing in the constitution which says
that secession is illegal and yet it's clearly an accepted assumption.
There were no trials at Nuremberg which weren't based on some concept of law
which existed before the trial (eg. the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the various
Hague treaties, the League of Nations). Your argument seems to be that
Germany didn't accept the jurisdiction of the Allies, not that the
principles which formed the basis of the trials were wrong.
Fine, you're entitled to that argument, I understand what you're saying and
on some level even agree with that. And I think it's one of those
situations where history will judge. To use the above example, the Union
won the civil war, "might", to some extent, determined the outcome, and yet
the only way you can argue "might makes right" is if you include some
argument that the outcome as "wrong".
Sometimes "might" is just the means by which "right" comes into existence.
One has to judge the thing. I have no doubt people will judge Nuremberg as
having done "right" in the future (since, according to your argument, the
alternative was to do nothing, you're not arguing that the Allies misapplied
procedure but that such a procedure didn't exist, fine, so the Allies
created one).
>It is difficult to see how criminalizing actions after the fact and
tailoring
>the laws so only Germans could be guilty is "right." Impartiality of the
>judges was clearly lacking, directly parallelling the worst corruptions of
>western law that we otherwise view with distaste.
No, not the worst corruptions of western law, if you really believe that you
have a pristine view of how the system can be twisted and warped (as was
done by the Nazis during the war). I'm willing to conceed your point, by
the way, that if you take a strict view there are aspects of Nuremberg which
were ex post facto (in other words, it's not that I don't understand your
argument). And I still think the Allies did the right thing.
Your point that Nuremberg didn't happen in a context of national law is my
point as well. One can't pretend that international law is the same as law
within one country. There is no legislative authority, mechanism for
enforcing contracts, punishing people who do wrong, places were people can
appeal, there isn't even, strictly, a concept of equality before the law.
If any of these things existed a country like Czecheslovakia could have sued
Nazi Germany in 1938 and stopped the whole thing there, the Germans would
have been handed a cease or desist order or, failing to honor that, would
have been tossed in jail.
So there is this quality to international law which does make it the "law of
the jungle". That's not something the Allies invented. In fact many
countries and statesmen did try to create some kind of international court
system during the interwar period. It failed miserably, had no ability to
punish those who flouted its rules.
So I'll conceed "ex post facto" to some extent if you agree on the
following: international law is not the same thing as domestic law, the
fact that countries can go to war with each other without consequences is
proof of that, so treating an international treaty as if it has the same
force of law as a domestic contract, ie., as if the two are the same, that
both are backed up by the same systems of legislative authorities, courts,
arbitrating powers, etc., is silly. The two are different in fundamental
ways.
Lastly, a point I think you're missing, an Allied victory was a necessary
precondition to Germans being tried. If Germany had won there would have
been no trials. You can't address the above without getting into the
substance of what happened on both sides. If Germany hadn't started every
war it had gotten into, hadn't perpetrated the Holocaust, etc., I'm sure
Nuremberg would look different today.
You're concerned about procedural issues. I don't think those will be on
people's minds first and foremost when they ask whether justice was done.
If there had been another mechanism available to the Allies you'd have a
much better argument. There wasn't so the Allies had to invent one.
>And if you destroy the law to get to the devil what will there be to
protect
>you?
Nuremberg didn't destroy the law. That seems clear.
>As to the judgement of history when the generation that fought it begins
>voting in Valhalla instead of here the view of the war will shift much more
>rapidly. The spirit of vengence will disappear. All of us born after the
war
>have a very simple perspective, they never did anything to me. Hitler,
>Milosovic both the same to me. If there is going to be punishment at least
>put the laws up front and find a chain of authority which makes them
>applicable.
I was born well after the war. I think future generations will have no
problem seeing World War II for what it was. They'll know that the Germans
were the "bad guys" and those who were tried at Nuremberg, in some general
sense, were guilty of what they were charged with. And the procedural
arguments now will be less important to them because their concept of
justice, being distant from events, will go beyond "did the Allies strictly
adhere to procedure".
That is how people tend to look at historical events. We look at the civil
war today in the same way. In the first hundred years or so after the civil
war people wrote long books about the south had the right to secede, whether
the confict was about states rights, did Lincoln have the power to force the
confederacy back into the union, would it mean the end of the Republic, etc.
Today most people see it as the war which ended slavery. History makes
these larger issues of "what is justice", I'd argue, more clear.
>Some time between the fifties and maybe early this decade there was a
revival
>of chauvanist war propaganda as the only legitimate terms for discussing
that
>war. I consider that sloganeering, labeling in place of understanding.
>Understanding does not indicate agreement, concurrance or an interest in
>resurgance.
Participants are invested in events, that affects their clarity of mind, of
course people aren't going to have a clear sense of what happened for what
reason, what was justifiable and what wasn't, until the dust settles, and
that usually takes time, maybe three generations at a minimum. I think a
large part of the explenation for the Second World War, in fact, does have
to do with people's difficulty in "processing" the first. Why did Germans
think that declaring war was fine? Or that killing civillians was just
something which happens? In no small part it's because I think their
notions of what is right, their sensibilities, etc., were affected by the
brutality of the First World War. In some ways I think Hitler's whole aim
during the second was to get the first one right.
Time passes, the dust settles. And then comes clarity. I think most people
do see justice as being about more than just following legal procedure.
That's an important part of how society tries to bring justice about but
it's not the thing itself. And, just to mention one argument raised by a
previous poster, I don't think there are going to be many people not
connected to events who consider the career of Hermann Goering and conclude,
"You know, he might have done some rotton things but the Allies really had
no procedure in place to try him, they should have let him off". No.
They'll study what he did, who he hurt, what was his punishment was, and
then they'll make some broad judgement about whether justice was done.
The Allies, I suppose, did take a gamble at Nuremberg. They were risking
that future generations would look back at what the Allies were fighting
for, consider what the Germans had done, examine the facts of the specific
trials, whether procedure was adhered to, whether those on trial had an
ability to defend themselves, etc., and conclude that justice was done. Not
perfect justice, I don't think that exists in this world, but some basic
sense of justice. And you know what? I think that is going to be history's
judgement.
Now there's an argument which goes something like this: "Of course that's
going to be history's judgement, the victors are the ones who write the
histories, future generations won't know what happened, won't care all that
much, and because the Allies won they have the advantage of "position", the
world of the future will be so much built upon that consequence that future
generations won't have a sense of perspective to judge for themselves."
It's an interesting argument, I don't buy it for one moment. The dust does
settle and when enough time passes clarity does emerge. If the Germans had
won the Second World War, for instance, do you think history, let's say
three generations pass, would have looked back kindly on Hitler and the
Nazis? That is, of course, what the Nazis thought. I don't. Future
generations would have recognized that it was a criminal and murderous
regime. We're starting to see the same thing happen now in Russia, China,
even Europe and the United States when it comes to such things as
imperialism, the situation of minorities, etc.
If the Nazis had won, I'm arguing, the verdict of history about people such
as Hitler, Goering, etc., wouldn't be all that different, it would just make
more time for this to become clear (although not that much time, that's the
point I'm trying to make, there do seem to be universal concepts of
justice).
So you can make your procedural arguments. It's possible you can be right
point for point and still end up with the wrong conclusion (ie. by which I
mean the outcome where justice wasn't done). Granted, these are large
issues. I'll end there.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> <6qfnk6$n5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> >All of the above is based upon one premise that was lacking at Nuremberg,
> >agreement to an overarching constitution in the first place.
> Maybe a better analogy is the Civil War. The Confederacy asserted that it
> had the right to secede. The Union said it didn't. There was no clear
> resolution to this question. The two fought a war, the Union won, its
> position prevailed. There is still nothing in the constitution which says
> that secession is illegal and yet it's clearly an accepted assumption.
In that case there was a pre-existing agreement, the constitution. There was
a difference over interpretation. The war started four months after the
Confederacy was formed after Fort Sumter which was taken as a pretext for
claiming the states were in rebellion rather than a separate nation.
> There were no trials at Nuremberg which weren't based on some concept of law
> which existed before the trial (eg. the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the various
> Hague treaties, the League of Nations). Your argument seems to be that
> Germany didn't accept the jurisdiction of the Allies, not that the
> principles which formed the basis of the trials were wrong.
My statements are not arguments. I still do not see why there is such
interest in objecting to what are facts. Germans were NOT charged under
treaty violations. When one is charged with violating a law it is only the
law that is cited in the charge. The laws under which they were charged did
not exist at the time of acts that were later criminalized. Therefore the
laws were ex post facto. Ex post facto laws are not considered a means of
arriving a justice in law.
Those are statements. They are true statements. So far no one has objected to
the truth of those statements.
Since you are responding, what are you responding to? You are not challenging
the truth of those statements.
I have also mentioned the presumption of guilt, the lack of impartiality, and
I have alluded to the classic judge, jury and executioner nature of the IMT.
No one is objecting to those statements either but I keep getting replies,
lengthy replies that do not take exception in the least.
Please, what are you responding to?
> Fine, you're entitled to that argument, I understand what you're saying and
> on some level even agree with that.
If you think those statements are an argument then you do not understand at
all.
> And I think it's one of those situations where history will judge.
The future is the judge, this is the future, we are judging now. There is
nothing incorrect in my statements. There is nothing to judge in regard to
them. They are true and correct.
> To use the above example, the Union
> won the civil war, "might", to some extent, determined the outcome, and yet
> the only way you can argue "might makes right" is if you include some
> argument that the outcome as "wrong".
Right is a moral term. We are talking law here. Look back at the subject.
There is a morality thread in existance at this time if you want to post
there.
> Sometimes "might" is just the means by which "right" comes into existence.
> One has to judge the thing. I have no doubt people will judge Nuremberg as
> having done "right" in the future (since, according to your argument, the
> alternative was to do nothing, you're not arguing that the Allies misapplied
> procedure but that such a procedure didn't exist, fine, so the Allies
> created one).
Again you are talking morality, not law. They are not the same thing unless
on stone tablets (conveniently lost else the lawyers would have a field day.)
> >It is difficult to see how criminalizing actions after the fact and
> >tailoring
> >the laws so only Germans could be guilty is "right." Impartiality of the
> >judges was clearly lacking, directly parallelling the worst corruptions of
> >western law that we otherwise view with distaste.
> No, not the worst corruptions of western law, if you really believe that you
> have a pristine view of how the system can be twisted and warped (as was
> done by the Nazis during the war).
As they could only be applied to Germans that is a presumption of guilt.
Judge, jury and executioner the people presuming the guilt of Germans clearly
were.
> I'm willing to conceed your point,
What is there to be convinced of? Do you hold anything I have said to be
untrue? I have listed them again. Which ones do you find to be untrue?
> by
> the way, that if you take a strict view there are aspects of Nuremberg which
> were ex post facto (in other words, it's not that I don't understand your
> argument). And I still think the Allies did the right thing.
That is a moral judgement. I can not hold that what was clearly a deliberate
set of actions and procedures that we know do not lead to justice to be
morally correct. It raises one of the oldest of questions, can immoral means
obtain a moral result?
And would it have been so hard to actually give them fair trials? Would the
result have been different? If you wish to invoke morality what was the
purpose in using immoral means when moral means could have been used?
> Your point that Nuremberg didn't happen in a context of national law is my
> point as well. One can't pretend that international law is the same as law
> within one country.
It did not happen in context of international law either.
> There is no legislative authority, mechanism for
> enforcing contracts, punishing people who do wrong, places were people can
> appeal, there isn't even, strictly, a concept of equality before the law.
There is exactly what the particular agreement contains that is mutually
agreed. That is international law. No one was charged with any treaty
violation.
> If any of these things existed a country like Czecheslovakia could have sued
> Nazi Germany in 1938 and stopped the whole thing there, the Germans would
> have been handed a cease or desist order or, failing to honor that, would
> have been tossed in jail.
If there was in fact a governing treaty between of course. But there was not
therefore there was no law governing the matter. If there is no law in the
matter there is nothing to violate. That is one of the reasons nations have
armies.
> So there is this quality to international law which does make it the "law of
> the jungle". That's not something the Allies invented. In fact many
> countries and statesmen did try to create some kind of international court
> system during the interwar period. It failed miserably, had no ability to
> punish those who flouted its rules.
No one is bound by any international law or court unless they have agreed to
be bound by it. That is the way it has always been and still is today.
> So I'll conceed "ex post facto" to some extent if you agree on the
> following: international law is not the same thing as domestic law, the
> fact that countries can go to war with each other without consequences is
> proof of that, so treating an international treaty as if it has the same
> force of law as a domestic contract, ie., as if the two are the same, that
> both are backed up by the same systems of legislative authorities, courts,
> arbitrating powers, etc., is silly. The two are different in fundamental
> ways.
To repeat, it was not tried under international law either. The crimes remain
ex post facto regardless of any attempt at any color of law to ascribe to
them.
> Lastly, a point I think you're missing, an Allied victory was a necessary
> precondition to Germans being tried. If Germany had won there would have
> been no trials.
At least not in Germany but Butcher Harris and Churchill might have done a
little dance under the same rules, probably Monty also. Of course those being
on the assumption of simple role reversal.
But more than that it was not simply victory but the Allied insistance upon
unconditional surrender that made it possible and likely kept the war going
an extra six to eight months. If it had not been unconditional surrender war
crimes could have been tried under German military law and all this nonsense
avoided.
> You can't address the above without getting into the
> substance of what happened on both sides. If Germany hadn't started every
> war it had gotten into,
Every war? That is straight out of Kaufmann's sterilize all the Germans'
plan. That is patently false on its face. I hope you just were thinking.
> hadn't perpetrated the Holocaust, etc., I'm sure Nuremberg would look > different today.
Matters holocaustian are off topic last I read. Or rather there is only one
opinion permitted here so it can not be discussed here. Lets leave it alone
or adjurn to another newsgroup.
> You're concerned about procedural issues. I don't think those will be on
> people's minds first and foremost when they ask whether justice was done.
That is the difference between justice in law and justice in morality. There
was clearly no justice in law any place it the matter. And taking all we know
by evidenciary fact there was only a modicum of moral justice administered to
one side.
Again evidenciary fact, not opinion of facts, not testimony, not hearsay.
There is a great difference between what we know and what we believe. Law is
based upon what we know, morality is based upon what we believe. And even
with law we have preponderance of the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt.
Those are crucially different criteria.
> If there had been another mechanism available to the Allies you'd have a
> much better argument. There wasn't so the Allies had to invent one.
Fair trials were available. Being charged with treaty violations was
available. Lots of things were available.
> >And if you destroy the law to get to the devil what will there be to
> >protect you?
> Nuremberg didn't destroy the law. That seems clear.
The "principles" of Nuremberg were immediately discarded and faster than they
were adopted, that is correct. What but victory was there to protect
Churchill from dancing for bombing civilians, FDR for his treatment of
Blacks, Stalin for existing?
jim...@my-dejanews.com
>>From: jim...@my-dejanews.com
>>Subject: Re: Law at Nuremberg
>>Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 01:15:32 GMT
>>I have yet to see a war where there is a truly innocent participant. What did
>>Germany do to the national interests of Britain and France that caused them
>>to declare war on Germany?
>But don't France and Great Britain get to decide what's in their national
>interest?
Certainly, as does every nation including Germany. Simply that impartial
observers do not give them a walk on starting WWII in Europe.
>Seems like you'd want to let
What does "let" have to do with it. It happened. It is not a matter of
permission. No one give sovereign nations permission.
>Germany decide what's in her national interest (i.e. attacking Poland)
Reclaiming Upper Silesia was certainly in their national interest and still
is today for that matter. Whether it is still worth the hassle after several
million ethnic Germans were marched out of Poland after the war is another
matter. That completed what Poland had been doing since 1920 but simply got
it all over at once instead of piecemeal.
>and you'd also like to let
>Germany decide what's in France's and Britain's national interest (i.e. not
>declaring war on Germany because no British and French interests were
>threatened).
I have been saying from the beginning that the national interests of B&F were
threatened. I have repeated to the point where they moderators should be on
the verge of saying the thread is going no where because no one is addressing
the issue raised.
One more time in case you missed it. Their national interests were hegemony
over central Europe. That is what was being threatened. I have no problem in
looking at the causes of WWII as they were without the propaganda.
If B&F had not declared war on Germany what was the worst possible result in
the short term? WWII. What was the result of declaring war? WWII. The former
was a crystal ball possibility even probability. The latter was a fact.
>>While Germany may appear innocent on the surface,
>>it was in fact reconstructing a central european empire that could challenge
>>their hegemony over Europe.
>Which central European Empire would that be?
The Austro-Hungarian Empire of course. Have there been any other in recent
memory? Once the Anschluss that became a natural political interest of
Germany. Go search soc.history.what-if and find several reconstructions on
how if the Nazis had done their thing in Austria and Germany had stayed
neutral it would all have been reconstructed, including taking half of Poland
and not a damn thing B&F could have done about it.
>>In Europe for centuries, attempting to challenge
>>hegemony was considered a cause of war.
>So, World War 2 was fought not to stop Germany from conquering the rest of
>Europe, or from murdering millions of people that were already inhabiting
>the bits of Europe that Germany wished to possess, it was really all
>Britain's and France's fault for wishing to preserve their hegemony over
>Europe?
I am talking facts not moral judgements. There is not fault there are only
events and causes for events.
At the time of the B&F DoWs there had been ZERO murders in anyone's book. War
is not legal murder. So the "murdering millions" is propaganda only,
hindsight at best. Even AFTER Poland surrendered there are no claims of
murders until after the war started with Russia. That is twenty months of no
murders claimed even today. So no justification for DoWs two days later even
in hindsight.
As to conquering the rest of Europe, even after fifty three years we do not
have the least factual evidence of any plan, intention or desire to conquer
all of Europe. What has surfaced is in fact to the contrary, rather limited
objectives in central Europe. So again after 53 years we can not justify
actions two days later.
You have given two justifications but neither could have possibly applied to
3 Sept 1939. It is clearly time for so many to discard all the sloganeering
and take a look at what really happened; to look at the facts not opinions of
facts.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
>
> >The issue here is justice under law and nothing else. If you wish to go into
> >the theology of a just war there are certainly religion newsgroups for such
> >discussions. Attacking other countries, big or small, was not a crime at the
> >time of the attacks. Therefore there can not be justice in convicting anyone
> >of a crime that did not exist at the time of the acts.
> I'm not sure you're right as a matter of law. After World War I most
> countries, including Germany, signed the the Lacarno Pact and a few other
> treaties which explicitly forbade countries from waging aggressive war.
Germany was not charged with violating that Pact so the issue is not relevent
to this discussion.
> Hitler withdrew from those treaties but so what? I don't think the treaties
> had a mechanism for leaving, in fact I think Hitler just renounced them.
> >Such considerations are not relevant to the war. Again the morality of a just
> >or unjust war is murky and best and there is no theological agreement on WWII
> >in any direction. A proper moral judgement has to be based upon actual facts
> >not upon opinions of facts.
> If there's no theological agreement about WWII then such a consensus is
> imposible.
Consensus on WWII is only based upon war propaganda, one side's opinion of
the facts, not the facts themselves. For example, many have the unspoken
assumption that B&F were justified in declaring war on Germany. That is an
opinion of the fact not a fact itself.
> You're making a very strange argument, that the Allies were
> required out of their respect for law to tolerate German actions which
> stemmed from no respect for law. Why?
Germany was NOT charged with violating any law existing at the time of the
act so it is not relevent.
> If that's the calculus why are the Allies held to a different standard?
Why were the ex post facto laws not applied to the Allies? Clearly the IMT
did have a double standard in the presumption of German guilt.
The standard of starting WWII in Europe over half of a military dictatorship?
To save General Sikorsky's cajones?
What about the other half of Poland? A different standard? Why wasn't Stalin
hung?
> >No matter what happened in the war, no matter how damnable (as is war itself)
> >ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
> >This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
> >and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
> The law is an instrument of justice, it's not the thing itself.
That is why ex post facto laws are considered the tool of tyrants.
> There was
> no appropriate mechanism to deal with what happened during World War II,
You opened your post by saying there was, the Lacarno Pact. There either is
or there is not.
> in
> no small part because law is generally thought of as an instrument of
> national sovereignty and the war, of course, was international.
That is why there are international agreements, treaties and, as you point
out, pacts.
> Justice, however, is a different subject. Even within a particular country
> there are all sorts of situations where the law and justice can collide.
> Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s, for instance, was very legal. It wasn't
> just.
Nor are ex posto facto laws.
> I'd be curious if you could cite a case at Nuremberg which wasn't based upon
> some principles and standards of international law which had been
> articulated before. Geneva, Lacarno, the League of Nations, etc., these
> were the institutions which established what international standards were.
Germans were not charged under any of those. They only applied between
signatories. They did not apply to allies of non-signatories. That is the way
it was and remains.
> And if you look at the Geneva treaties, by the way, you'll find they go
> beyond explicit descriptions of what was permissable and not, a phrase which
> shows up all of the time is "according to the accepted customs of war",
> which shows rather clearly that countries recognized these to exist.
They were not charged with violating treaties. Therefore no applicable.
> If you were a lawyer fighting a traffic ticket within a single jurisdiction
> and faced the kinds of technicalities found at Nuremberg if I were the judge
> I'd agree with you, you deserved to get off.
If the traffic law were created after the act, the judge would throw it out
of court and admonish the prosecutor never to do that again.
> The Nazis, by the way, knew they were committing war crimes, that shows up
> in German documents all over the place. We know more about what the Nazis
> did and thought than any of the prosecutors in 1946.
It is flat out impossible for anyone to know they were in violation of laws
which had not been created.
> But it does still comes back to justice. What you think is simple in fact
> raises very complicated issue even within our own system. A fault in
> procedure, for instance, doesn't usually lead to acquittal but a retrial.
> Why? Because the law is concerned with justice.
A retrial under a newly created law?
jim...@my-dejanews.com
gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee) wrote:
> In <6qe1o0$l66$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, on 7 Aug 1998 05:01:52 GMT,
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> > On 6 Aug 1998 14:29:13 -0700, gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee) wrote:
> >
> > >In <6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, on 5 Aug 1998 04:45:47 GMT,
> > >jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >
> > >[deleted]
> >
> > >> ex post facto laws can not be elevated to justice.
> >
> > >> This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
> > >> and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
> >
> >
> > It is not provocative in the least. It is not even an argument. It is a
> > statement of fact.
>
> Matt, it is far from a statement of fact. You obviously don't
> understand the difference between retroactive and retrospective law, and
> you don't understand international or national law. Might I suggest
> Telford Taylor's _The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials_ and Robert
> Conot's _Justice at Nuremberg_ for starters?
I would much prefer you to present your position here. While I would be
interested in legal texts in this matter, actual citations would be more
productive, your suggested reading qualifies as neither.
In the mean time, the acts which were presented at Nuremberg were clearly
criminalized after the fact. They were not charged with any law that existed
at the time of the commission of the acts.
They remain the criminalization of prior acts and were selectively applied
only to Germans under a clear presumption of sole guilt.
As I have noted, there has yet to be an impartial judicial determination of
the responsibility for the start of that war. Under the principle of "he who
declares the war starts the war" (I can't think of what could be more clear
than that) it was clearly started by B&F.
> > >has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
> > >ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
> > >American courts, including appellate courts.
> > Nuremberg has never been reviewed in any other court. The IMT could not
> > review itself.
> Nuremberg has been reviewed by courts in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s,
> by courts in Canada as recently as 1998, and by courts in the United
> States in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, as recently as an *appellate*
> court decision in 1997 and another in 1998.
Case citations and summaries please. To be a proper response it must have
been a review of the validity of ex post facto laws specifically at
Nuremberg. It can not be of other war crimes trials which are not under
discussion here.
To be more explicite review in this context means a judicial review can only
be conducted by an appelate court having jurisdiction over the lower court.
There is not such court having jurisdiction over the IMT.
> The principles used at
> Nuremberg and the admissibility of evidence have been upheld by *all* of
> those courts. In fact, they have never been rejected by any court in
> the world.
The issue is criminalizing acts after their commission. The issue is not
admissibility of evidence or "principles." Ex post facto crimes are rejected
in every civilized country.
> > >The reason is that the argument is patently false.
> > It is patently true that laws were created after the commission of the act
> > and were tailored to Germany and could only be applied to Germany. The laws
> > were clearly ex post facto. They could only be applied to Germany and as
> > such there very existance was the presumption of guilt.
> All wrong. The laws existed before Nuremberg. Take a look back to 1919
> for information on trials of war criminals and read the Treaty of
> Versailles for a clause on trials of war criminals. The general laws on
> murder of civilians and acts of war have existed for centuries.
They were not charged under any 1919 laws. That other laws might have existed
does not change the fact that what they were charged with did not exist. It
would have been perfectly legitimate to make charges under the terms and
conditions of treaties that existed at the time the acts were committed. That
was not done.
> > >Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
> > >of war is in violation of international law,
> > Was not a violation of international law at the time of its occurance.
> > International law binds only signatories to the agreement. The IMT was an ad
> > hoc creation and therefore could not possibly have been given jurisdiction.
> That is nonsense. I said "unprovoked aggression *without* a declaration
> of war".
It was still not a violation of any treaty between Germany and Poland.
International laws apply only to signatories to it. And they were not charged
with violating any prior existing international laws.
> > A legitimate court can act upon cases where it has been delegated a priori
> > authority by those who will be tried under it.
> Rubbish. May I recommend _Black's Law Dictionary_ for a complete
> refutation of that nonsense.
There is no call to deteriorate the exchange to name calling, please. To
properly participate in this discussion quote from that source is desirable.
> > >and murder of innocent civilians,
> > No one was charged with murder, an obvious charge, a clear crime in all five
> > countries involved.
> Read the above books and learn a bit about this subject.
Again, no need to deteriorate this exchange.
The fact remains they were not charged with the crime of murder. The crime of
murder is defined in the law. The sin of murder is morality. We are
discussing law not morality.
> > >such as the extermination of the Jews, is in violation of the
> > >law in every country where it took place.
> > And no one was charged with it. One can draw the obvious conclusion that the
> > chain of evidence required to establish murder could not be constructed for
> > such a prosecution.
> Read the above books and learn a bit about this subject.
Legal murder not sinful murder. The law can not judge a sin nor can courts
try it. Nor can justice presume that only one party can violate either the
morality nor the law.
> > Again, we are talking law not morality.
> > The hanging court at Nuremberg may make people who seek vengence rather than
> > justice feel good but the subject here is law and justice, not morality, not
> > feeling good.
> And that is the subject about which you demonstrably know nothing.
> Please educate yourself before making wild assertions.
That is non-responsive and borders upon name calling or fight picking. I
would rather not indulge you in that.
You have responded in no manner to the fundamental injustice of Nuremberg.
Kevin Douglas
George Hardy wrote in message <6qiqd0$j...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>...
>Despite continuing anti-German
>propaganda, the world is beginning to look at both sides of WWII
>in Europe.
And that's good. But in its broadest sense you still have the fact that
Germany started all of the wars it got into and killed millions of
civillians. That's always going to be a part of the German side of WWII.
Ramcke, Reader, Reder, were three men. A million and a half people died at
Auschwitz.
One obstacle to making comparisons, ironicly, is that it's hard for people
to grasp the immensity of the Holocaust. I'm writing this right now in an
office overlooking downtown Los Angeles, if every person within eye's
distance were to be killed that would equal what Germans did in cities like
Warsaw.
There's something perverse, I think, about even elevating questions of due
process in trials which affected a hundred men, most of whom were not found
guilty of capital crimes, to the point where it even approaches the this
other kind of atrocity.
You can do it. I can't.
So yes, to the extent people look at all sides of WWII I think they'll get a
better sense of what happened. I wrote in a previous post about how the
Allies "gambled" when they set up that international tribunal because they
knew that whatever happened history would render its verdict (which is why
you know so much about them, of course, they were public trials).
Hitler and the Nazis during WWII, of course, made a different kind of
gamble. It was really the belief of the the Nazis duirng WWII that they
could kill every jew in Europe, for instance, and the world wouldn't notice.
Over time history would just forget.
That's not speculation on my part. That's part of the documentary record as
well.
I think the Nazis were fooling themselves. To the extent people consider
that human life has value the Nazis are never going to come out looking very
good (to put it mildly).
jim...@my-dejanews.com
John...@brunel.ac.uk (John D Salt) wrote:
> In article <6qbdu5$lli$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> <jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> > [big snips everywhere]
> >National laws are enforced by the nation that passes them. No nation has the
> >chain of authority to enforce the laws of another nation.
> Wrong. There are several counter-examples, most obviously in the
> laws of British Commonwealth countries.
The laws which may appertain within the British Commonwealth are not the
subject here. The US has no authority to try anyone under the laws of another
nation. Mutually held laws are dealt with by extradition to the jurisdiction
of commission IF there is such a treaty. The common condition of the
execution of any treaty is that it is illegal in both countries.
> >Common law
> >I can find no way to address this suggestion without something that could
> >appear to be a personal attack. Suffice to say, no one has ever been
> >convicted of violating common law.
> Not only wrong, but so wildly incorrect as to leave me gasping. Please
> check a definition of "common law" in Anglo-Saxon jurispridence. English
> courts convict people daily for violating the common law.
For example? Under which laws are there convictions that have never been
passed by parliament? I am very interested in this. How do the court
determine the penalty should be different from the rather draconian penalties
of 1066?
> >All planning in secret can be called a conspiracy. All war planning is done
> >is secret spies willing, ergo not a crime.
> This is badly flawed logic. From the fact that something legal can be
> done in secret, it does not follow at all that anything done in secret is
> therefore legal.
I said CAN BE called conspiracy. The point, as stated several times in this
thread, is the ex post facto crimes at Nuremberg confabulated planning with
conspiracy in order to create the connotation of illegality.
> >More directly unless there was a treaty between Germany and Poland that both
> >had signed and said that one invading the other was a crime then there was no
> >crime. There was no such treaty therefore there was no crime.
> When did Germany announce its abrogation of the Kellogg-Briand pact?
> When did Germany announce its abrogation of the German-Polish non-
> aggression pact?
Good questions but back to the point. No one was CHARGED with violating
either. Therefore they are inapplicable.
Have you ever been in court for at least a traffic violation? Or whatever
they have in England. The officer reads the charge by citing the traffic law
that was violated. That citation is the only charge. Even if the law has been
superceded between the violation and the trial, the charge is still the
violation of the law that was in effect at the time of the violation.
> [I can't find the answer to either question.]
It does not matter. They were not the charges.
> >In that regard, Russia may have had a gripe BUT there was no impartial
> >judicial determination of who started that war therefore there was not a just
> >basis for the accusation of Germany.
> There is a principle in English law of "reasonableness". I would be
> utterly fascinated to know what test of "reasonableness" you can use
> under which it is not clear that Germany attacked Russia. No
> "judicial determination" is required; res ipsa loquitur.
The issue there is quite simple again. They were not charged with the crime
of violating that agreement with Russia. They may have done it but were not
charged under it. If not charged under it, then it is inapplicable. If they
were charged under it then it could only be tried under the mutually agreed
auspices set forth in it and only the penalties in it could be applied.
> >> 3. War crimes, e.g. shooting prisoners, as after the Sagan "Great
> >> Escape," 1944.
> >Again the matter of the existance of a treaty governs. Shooting prisoners was
> >not a crime per se, rather shooting prisoners for other than the permitted
> >reasons was a crime between signatories to the agreement.
> I don't see your point here; the act remains, clearly, a war crime, in
> violation of accepted practice, international treaties to which Germany
> was a signatory, and German military law.
The point is that shooting prisoners is not a crime per se. If a prisoner
kills a guard he is tried, found guilty and executed. That execution is not a
crime. There were specific and permissable reasons for killing POWs.
However if in fact it was a crime in the manner it was done then clearly they
were not charged under those treaties. If it were a crime in the manner it
occurred under German military law then yes, the German military courts had
jurisdiction.
What they were charged with was not a crime at the time. It may have been a
crime under some treaty but that was not the crime they were charged with.
> >More specific to the facts of the treaties that would have governed had they
> >been invoked, they did not apply to countries not a signatory (Poland) nor to
> >any county allied to a country not a signatory, Britain and France and by
> >extension the US. That is the way the treaty read and rationally so.
> This is not by any means true of all treaties; which ones do you have in
> mind?
The Hague and Geneva conventions in effect in 1939 for example. A country can
not claim protection under a treaty or be extended protection under if it
refused to sign.
> >There were no penalties attached to these crimes. The penalties were at the
> >whim of the tribunal. There was no attempt to demonstrate personal
> >culpability in fact the foundation of the country was the Fuehrerstadt, one
> >man rule.
> I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Still, it should be
> borne in mind that one of the principles established at Nuremburg
> was that individuals, not countries, commit crimes.
You aren't thinking this through. Individuals were always responsible for war
crimes, crimes spelled out in their military law and responsible to their
military courts. We have something entirely different here and I have spelled
it out so many times, the repetition is getting boring. There are only so
many ways to say it.
> >The fiction that orders should have been disobeyed is one of the shallowest.
> It is not in any sense a "fiction". It is sufficiently shallow to have
> been a part of the German military tradition since at least the war of
> 1870, after which a Prussian officer was cashiered words to the effect
> that "The Kaiser made you a Major because he thought you would know when
> to disobey an order".
An unlawful order under the military law of Prussia at the time. Other than
that I would have to review the case.
ut_web...@hotmail.com
George Hardy <geo...@ankerstein.org> wrote:
> In article <35cf0121....@news3.ibm.net>, gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee)
> says:
> >
> >jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >> Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
> >
> >ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
> >American courts, including appellate courts.
>
> in western justice, whether the US, UK or France. But the dissenting
> opinions were quite scathing. And their position would have carried
> the day if it were not for the 'hot blood' of the desire for
> retribution and revenge.
Which dissenting opinions, pertaining to which defendents? To the
extent that a desire for retribution against Nazi leaders and the
individual Germans who played criminal roles in the genocidal policies
and other war crimes, the desire was well grounded in fact as well as in
normative legal values.
>
> >and murder of innocent civilians,
>
> Often not nearly as innocent as you want to believe. I point
> to the partisan activities in the USSR (behind the German
> lines) of a clear example of many, many not-so-innocent civilians
> being killed.
You are aware, of course, that Hitler initially welcolmed news of
incipient Russian partisan activity in 1941 as "cover" for the activity
of the SS Ensatzgruppen (the SS formations charged with killing all the
jews, communists, and gypsies), which were following the German Army
into Russia, as they had into Poland. These SS groups murdered an
estimated 700,000 people in the first couple of years of the war, and
very few of the victims (in percentage terms) carried weapons. Besides
jews, they included large numbers of disarmed Russian POWS. The SS
commanders of these detachments were among the *victims* of Nuremburg.
Steve Michaels
> Even today, there is strong anti-German feeling. It is hard to
> get agreement that obvious failures in justice (Raeder, Reder,
> Ramcke -- to stick with the Rs) were errors. I find it hard to
> understand why, but it is a fact. Despite continuing anti-German
> propaganda, the world is beginning to look at both sides of WWII
> in Europe.
>
> GFH
I don't beleive that it is anti-German as much as it is anti-nazi. While
we can sit here till the cows come home and debate injustices done by
the Allies or the Germans, the fact remains that Germany started the
war. Sure France and England could have sat it out but then again, at
the rate Hitler was going, both seemed like the next likely targets
anyway.
Before we start admonishing the Allies for 'injustices' lets take a look
at what the Nazi regime was. When the smoke clears, they were murderers
plain and simple. If you want to shed a tear for Ramecke and the others,
feel free. When you think of the number of people killed because of
Hitler's goals of 'lebensraum' and the 'Jewish Problem', my tears are
saved for them.
--
Steve Michaels
Company A 1st Battalion
19th US Infantry, Regulars By God!
http://members.xoom.com/BillyYank
Generals can do anything, there's nothing so much like a god on earth as
a General on a battlefield. Jeff Daniels "Gettysburg" 1993
George F. Hardy
says:
>Hitler initially welcolmed news of incipient Russian partisan
>activity in 1941 as "cover" for the activity of the SS
I do not think we will be allowed to go here, but IIRC that
the four small (less than 1,000 each) SS police units (Ein-
satzgruppen) were first established during the Polish campaign
and were intended to secure the rear areas from partisan
attack. The religion of an attacker is of no consequence.
In the effort, they did use reprisals in an attempt to stop the
partisan activity. A well established, though extreme, measure.
One threatened, if not actually carried out, by the USA (200:1)
and the British (25:1).
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> <6qfnk6$n5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
jim...@my-dejanews.com
Gord McFee
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> In article <6qgid9$rom$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee) wrote:
[deleted]
> > > >> This thread is "Law at Nuremberg." The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law
> > > >> and therefore Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
> > >
> > > >That provocative argument
> > >
> > > It is not provocative in the least. It is not even an argument. It is a
> > > statement of fact.
> >
> > Matt, it is far from a statement of fact. You obviously don't
> > understand the difference between retroactive and retrospective law, and
> > you don't understand international or national law. Might I suggest
> > Telford Taylor's _The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials_ and Robert
> > Conot's _Justice at Nuremberg_ for starters?
>
> I would much prefer you to present your position here. While I would be
> interested in legal texts in this matter, actual citations would be more
> productive, your suggested reading qualifies as neither.
I have presented my position here and I have referred you to sources
that will substantiate my position. Obviously, you have not bestirred
yourself to check those sources, or you would not say much of what you
are saying in this post, which frankly is starting to smell like a
troll. My suggested reading includes a long analysis of the issue under
discussion by Telford Taylor, who was a lawyer and very familiar with
the _ex post facto_ argument. He was also a prosecutor at the main and
subsequent Nuremberg trials. I have no intention of transcribing 2
complete chapters of his book because you choose to make groundless
assertions while refusing to provide any substantiation, nor to do any
research at all. In other words, I am not doing your research for you.
> In the mean time, the acts which were presented at Nuremberg were clearly
> criminalized after the fact. They were not charged with any law that existed
> at the time of the commission of the acts.
You can say that until you turn blue in the face, but it is still wrong.
> They remain the criminalization of prior acts and were selectively applied
> only to Germans under a clear presumption of sole guilt.
That is completely erroneous.
> As I have noted, there has yet to be an impartial judicial determination of
> the responsibility for the start of that war. Under the principle of "he who
> declares the war starts the war" (I can't think of what could be more clear
> than that) it was clearly started by B&F.
That is a very silly statement. "He who declares the war starts the
war" means that the United States started the war with Japan and England
and France and dozens of other countries started the war with Germany.
It conveniently ignores the fact that unprovoked aggressions occurred in
both cases, and that such aggressions, in the absence of s declaration
of war, are themselves acts of war. You really should read up on this
stuff before making such incorrect statements.
> > > >has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
> > > >ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
> > > >American courts, including appellate courts.
>
> > > Nuremberg has never been reviewed in any other court. The IMT could not
> > > review itself.
>
> > Nuremberg has been reviewed by courts in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s,
> > by courts in Canada as recently as 1998, and by courts in the United
> > States in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, as recently as an *appellate*
> > court decision in 1997 and another in 1998.
>
> Case citations and summaries please. To be a proper response it must have
> been a review of the validity of ex post facto laws specifically at
> Nuremberg. It can not be of other war crimes trials which are not under
> discussion here.
That is exactly what it was. If you want case citations and summaries,
you can find them quite quickly on the Internet. May I suggest
http://www.lawcrawler.com for starters?
> To be more explicite review in this context means a judicial review can only
> be conducted by an appelate court having jurisdiction over the lower court.
> There is not such court having jurisdiction over the IMT.
Your knowledge of judicial review is somewhat lacking. Might I suggest
you reference the above-mentioned sources and learn the subject you are
trying to speak about.
[deleted]
> > > >The reason is that the argument is patently false.
>
> > > It is patently true that laws were created after the commission of the act
> > > and were tailored to Germany and could only be applied to Germany. The laws
> > > were clearly ex post facto. They could only be applied to Germany and as
> > > such there very existance was the presumption of guilt.
>
> > All wrong. The laws existed before Nuremberg. Take a look back to 1919
> > for information on trials of war criminals and read the Treaty of
> > Versailles for a clause on trials of war criminals. The general laws on
> > murder of civilians and acts of war have existed for centuries.
>
> They were not charged under any 1919 laws. That other laws might have existed
> does not change the fact that what they were charged with did not exist. It
> would have been perfectly legitimate to make charges under the terms and
> conditions of treaties that existed at the time the acts were committed. That
> was not done.
Please reread what I said and do the research before writing such
bunkum.
[rest deleted]
jim...@my-dejanews.com
>George Hardy wrote:
>> Even today, there is strong anti-German feeling. It is hard to
>> get agreement that obvious failures in justice (Raeder, Reder,
>> Ramcke -- to stick with the Rs) were errors. I find it hard to
>> understand why, but it is a fact. Despite continuing anti-German
>> propaganda, the world is beginning to look at both sides of WWII
>> in Europe.
>I don't beleive that it is anti-German as much as it is anti-nazi.
It is clearly anti-german and there have been examples of it here in "Germany
started every war it was involved in" and the like. There have been
stereotypes invoked such as "obeying orders" that have their origins in WW I
(One) propaganda.
>While
>we can sit here till the cows come home and debate injustices done by
>the Allies or the Germans, the fact remains that Germany started the
>war. Sure France and England could have sat it out but then again, at
>the rate Hitler was going, both seemed like the next likely targets
>anyway.
So you argue that it was a premptive strike then? But then if premptive they
still started it.
Likely, the future, it makes no difference. In our timeline, Britain and
France started the war by declaring the war. Whether or not you accept their
justification for doing so is your business. Many of us do not accept it.
"We had to start a war to prevent a war" is no different from "We had to
destroy the village in order to save it."
>Before we start admonishing the Allies for 'injustices' lets take a look
>at what the Nazi regime was. When the smoke clears, they were murderers
>plain and simple.
No more than the Brits under Sir Butcher Harris or Joe Stalin.
>If you want to shed a tear for Ramecke and the others,
>feel free.
The issue is not emotional responses. The issue is that with which you appear
to agree, injustice. If one or one million die from injustice it is still the
same injustice, still the same murder, and the penalty is the same.
There is no logical basis for making a distinction between one and one
million as the death penalty can only be applied once. There may be a
difference in emotional impact but there is nothing rational in making a
difference.
>When you think of the number of people killed because of
>Hitler's goals of 'lebensraum'
As otherwise noted, I am looking for an indication that was more than a
political slogan for speeches. Do you know of any?
>and the 'Jewish Problem',
While that is off topic and can not be considered here There should be no
problem with putting it into a bit of perspective.
The proper phrasing of it was the Jewish Question not problem. You are
invited to review the literature if you do not believe me. Here are some
examples.
"The Northwestern University Library catalog lists a 1950 book entitled
Die Losung des Weltsprachenproblemes, and a 1908 book Die Losung des
modernen theater-problems. For that matter, it lists a 1917 book
entitled Die Losung der Judenfrage im Deutschland. Also, the Jewish
journalist A. Glanz published a book in German in 1913 entitled Der
Territorialismus ist der einzige Losung der Judenfrage (Zurich 1913)."
As you can see, the Judenfrage predated the NSDAP and even Jews were seeking
a solution to it.
>my tears are saved for them.
I never met them. I don't miss people I never knew. I certianly don't cry
over them.
Inwit
<<At the time of the B&F DoWs [British & French declarations of war] there had
been ZERO murders in anyone's book.>>
Not my book.
Why aren't you counting the Jews murdered on Kristallnacht? Or those
beaten to death by the Sturmabteilung? How about the other "enemies" of Hitler
murdered regularly in prisons and concentration camps, starting with the "Night
of Long Knives" in 1934?
Internal German affairs, would you say? Not if you take the moral
teachings of most religions seriously. And not when it becomes clear that the
murderous psychopath responsible for these "internal" murders is bent on
extending his rule over much of Europe.
Thomas Buell
: >Germany decide what's in her national interest (i.e. attacking Poland)
:
: Reclaiming Upper Silesia was certainly in their national interest and still
^^^^^^^^
Dear Sir,
the statement made in the second half of that sentence is certainly false.
Thomas Büll, Germany
jim...@my-dejanews.com
>jimeden wrote:
><<At the time of the B&F DoWs [British & French declarations of war] there had
>been ZERO murders in anyone's book.>>
>
> Not my book.
> Why aren't you counting the Jews
That can have no bearing upon any discussion in this newsgroup as it can not
be discussed. But I do direct your attention to Blacks in the US for separate
consideration.
>How about the other "enemies" of Hitler
>murdered regularly in prisons and concentration camps,
What murders? Please, references, not stories. I am not even aware of stories
of that prior to the date I have given.
>starting with the "Night of Long Knives" in 1934?
Caught in the act of the capital crime of sodomy with minors, yes, I have
heard of that. The NSDAP inherited that law.
But if you are arguing that it is not within the purview of a soveign nation
to execute its own citizens then I think we have a long way to go before we
have even a minimal basis for discussion.
> Internal German affairs, would you say? Not if you take the moral
>teachings of most religions seriously.
No, I do not take them seriously at all. And they have no bearing upon
nations and law in the first place. Try an atheist conference and request
some citations on mass slaughters that have been ordered by at least one of
the gods. If you to invoke religion you have to name the one that addressed
the behavior of nations.
>And not when it becomes clear that the
>murderous psychopath responsible for these "internal" murders is bent on
>extending his rule over much of Europe.
There has never been a clinical diagnosis of any psychopathology therefore
psychopath is a pejorative in this case, having no discussable meaning.
But the way you describe him he doesn't sound different from Napolean, simply
less successful.
Mark Brandt, Ph.D.
> >But don't France and Great Britain get to decide what's in their national
> >interest?
>
> Certainly, as does every nation including Germany. Simply that impartial
> observers do not give them a walk on starting WWII in Europe.
Actually, most impartial observers note that Germany started WWII in Europe.
> If B&F had not declared war on Germany what was the worst possible result in
> the short term? WWII.
No.
The worst possible result was a stronger Germany defeating the Soviet
Union, and then turning around and defeating both France and Britain.
The German army was (in general) becoming stronger during the early part of
the war. Allowing Germany to fight a series of short single-front wars in
succession was a recipe for allowing Germany to conquer all of Europe.
>What was the result of declaring war? WWII. The former
> was a crystal ball possibility even probability. The latter was a fact.
The "fact" is that Germany was defeated historically. Changing the course
of events might very well also result in changing the outcome.
> >>While Germany may appear innocent on the surface,
> >>it was in fact reconstructing a central european empire that could challenge
> >>their hegemony over Europe.
> >Which central European Empire would that be?
>
> The Austro-Hungarian Empire of course.
And what, other than Austria, did Germany have in common with the
Austro-Hungarian Empire?
Germany was, in effect, a decendant of Prussia. Prussia and Austria were
allies and enemies at different times, but neither had been part of the
other's empire.
Germany had no more right to Czechoslovakia or Poland or (list of countries
conquered by Germany) than it did to conquer the Ukraine simply because it
(briefly) annexed the Ukraine after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
In addition, Britain *never* had "hegemony" over Europe. It was
historically interested in maintaining a balance of power. France had tried
in the past, and had essentially given up.
Germany was acting as a thug, and Britain and France were attempting to
stop the Germans before it was too late.
> At the time of the B&F DoWs there had been ZERO murders in anyone's book.
Wrong.
The "border incident" with Poland that Hitler used in propaganda involved
murdered concentration camp inmates. This is merely one incident in a
series.
Germany was killing political prisoners and Jews by September of 1939. It
was not yet an organized process but it was occurring. Perhaps the murders
were retail instead of wholesale, but to each individual, any murder is
pretty much the same.
Criminals need to be stopped, or they have a remarkable tendency to
continue committing crimes. Czechoslovakia was a crime (twice). Poland was
a crime. Britain and France acted correctly, *even* if the Nazis had
murdered no one.
--
Mark Brandt, Ph.D.
My opinions are my own, but I tend to give them away to anyone who fails to
flee fast enough.
W. Darwin
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in article
<6qkpj9$kpq$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
> In article <6qftn8$g...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>,
> "Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> > <6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
> > >The issue here is justice under law and nothing else. If you wish to
> > >go into the theology of a just war there are certainly religion
> > >newsgroups for such discussions.
This is disingenuous, because the "laws of war" or war convention are
nothing more than principles diluted from the doctrine of just war. If war
stands outside the law (as defined as a system of codes), then the just
war theory informs justice in war.
W. Darwin
<6qisod$k...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>...
> >From: jim...@my-dejanews.com
> >Subject: Re: Law at Nuremberg
> >Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 01:15:32 GMT
> >I have yet to see a war where there is a truly innocent participant.
> >What did Germany do to the national interests of Britain and France
> >that caused them to declare war on Germany?
The absence of total innocence does not imply total guilt. The Third Reich
behaved in a significantly more unjust fashion than Britain or France.
> >While Germany may appear innocent on the surface, it was in fact
> >reconstructing a central european empire that could challenge their
> >hegemony over Europe.
> Which central European Empire would that be?
Which Franco-British hegemony is a better question? The German idea of
"Mitteleuropa" dated from the First World War and into the inter-war
period.
W. Darwin
clearly
> > criminalized after the fact. They were not charged with any law that
existed
> > at the time of the commission of the acts.
> You can say that until you turn blue in the face, but it is still wrong.
I wonder if the two of you mean different things by law. The Hague and
Geneva Conventions were not laws analogous to a criminal act but
conventions to which like-minded states could subscribe and thus by mutual
observance limit themselves to the norms of civilised warfare. There was
nothing new in the content of the Nuremburg charges. "Waging aggressive
war" is a breach of traditional ius ad bellum requirements. Similarly, war
crimes reflected breaches of ius in bello conduct. Where Nuremburg was
revolutionary was in the way that it translated traditional conventions
into concrete laws. There was no precedent for trying the other side (one
could try one's own generals under one's own military law). Such
suspensions of sovereignty were anathema to international society before
the Second World War.
> > As I have noted, there has yet to be an impartial judicial
determination of
> > the responsibility for the start of that war. Under the principle of
"he who
> > declares the war starts the war" (I can't think of what could be more
clear
> > than that) it was clearly started by B&F.
> That is a very silly statement. "He who declares the war starts the
> war" means that the United States started the war with Japan and England
> and France and dozens of other countries started the war with Germany.
> It conveniently ignores the fact that unprovoked aggressions occurred in
> both cases, and that such aggressions, in the absence of s declaration
> of war, are themselves acts of war.
True. Britain did not start the war because she intervened on behalf of an
ally who was attacked two days earlier. A declaration of war in the face of
aggression may, under the doctrine of the just war, be a duty if the
liberty of an ally is at stake.
> > > All wrong. The laws existed before Nuremberg. Take a look back to
1919
> > > for information on trials of war criminals and read the Treaty of
> > > Versailles for a clause on trials of war criminals. The general laws
on
> > > murder of civilians and acts of war have existed for centuries.
Please elaborate. I hope you are not confusing the war-guilt clause with
any steps to hold leaders individually responsible for their conduct. The
former was a statement of collective German guilt, used to jutify a breach
of precedent in 1919 by which the treaty was unilaterally drafted by the
victorious side.
The "laws of war" were not laws (in the usual, criminal sense) until 1945.
They were conventions, which did not bind the parties or hold them in any
way accountable for their behaviour. Prior to 1907, they were not
formalised and prior to 1648, they existed largely as a philosophichal and
theological debate. A breach of the war convention was deemed "unjust" or
"illegitimate" rather than "illegal". For a good single volume discussion,
see M. Walzer, "Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical
Illustrations".
jim...@my-dejanews.com
Buell) wrote:
>Dear Sir,
Additional resources, population, industrial capability are always in the
interests of a nation. Before you tell me reasons why it would not be, read
the rest of my post.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee) wrote:
> In <6qkpji$sq0$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, on 9 Aug 1998 18:25:54 GMT,
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> > In article <6qgid9$rom$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> > gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee) wrote:
> > > Matt, it is far from a statement of fact. You obviously don't
> > > understand the difference between retroactive and retrospective law, and
> > > you don't understand international or national law. Might I suggest
> > > Telford Taylor's _The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials_ and Robert
> > > Conot's _Justice at Nuremberg_ for starters?
> > I would much prefer you to present your position here. While I would be
> > interested in legal texts in this matter, actual citations would be more
> > productive, your suggested reading qualifies as neither.
> I have presented my position here and I have referred you to sources
> that will substantiate my position. Obviously, you have not bestirred
> yourself to check those sources, or you would not say much of what you
> are saying in this post, which frankly is starting to smell like a
> troll. My suggested reading includes a long analysis of the issue under
> discussion by Telford Taylor, who was a lawyer and very familiar with
> the _ex post facto_ argument. He was also a prosecutor at the main and
> subsequent Nuremberg trials. I have no intention of transcribing 2
> complete chapters of his book because you choose to make groundless
> assertions while refusing to provide any substantiation, nor to do any
> research at all. In other words, I am not doing your research for you.
And I am not used to holding public discussion in the manner you are
proposing, appeal to authority that happened to have convinced you. I am
familiar with people providing summaries are the arguements along with
references. Therefore, not without some indication of what I will find, I
will not "bestir" myself on anyone's appeal to authority. In your original
post you did not cite which book and still here you have not cited even which
two chapters.
And it would certainly NOT be of interest to me to type in the two chapters
to respond to them nor would it in fact matter to this group as it would not
be part of any thread. If you can get the authors to participate (dead most
likely), someone with the appropriate legal background, something relevant
who wishes to support your position, I will be more than happy to discuss
matters with them.
Similarly I could simply say to you, Go read Chief Justice Douglas's opinion
an the matter and you will find he agrees with me. I have not done that as
that is a fallacious appeal to authority.
And to repeat the obvious, those are not legal studies. They are not
analysis' of the legal aspects of the IMT. Even if the authors were lawyers
you have not noted most likely they have not included LLD after their names
so they are not invoking it. As such they are either in no position to make
legal commentary or chose not to put their professional reputations behind
it.
Anybody can write a book. That does not make their position correct or even
of merit.
I can get all the opinions I want for free and you have just given me your
opinion, not position. And that it might have convinced you is a separate
issue but if it was so convincing then you could simply summarize the
arguments.
My assertion is the obvious. The crimes with which they were charged did not
exist at the time the act were committed. The acts were criminalized after
they were committed, therefore clearly they were ex post facto.
> > In the mean time, the acts which were presented at Nuremberg were clearly
> > criminalized after the fact. They were not charged with any law that existed
> > at the time of the commission of the acts.
> You can say that until you turn blue in the face, but it is still wrong.
As you will.
I will continue to discourse with anyone who is interested in the usual
manner of public discussion. Not with you.
Thank you for your time.
Guenter A. Scholz
>been ZERO murders in anyone's book.>>
>
> Why aren't you counting the Jews murdered on Kristallnacht? Or those
possibly you could enlighten us _exactly_ how many were killed or
beaten to death on Kristallnacht. I wasn't aware of any. nazi thugs broke
windows - thats why 'kristall' ie 'crystal'night. You could compare this to
numerous riots in the US today without anyone evoking the notion of war.
-guenter
Bingo
wrote:
>In article <6qkq1r$nfm$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, ut_web...@hotmail.com
>says:
>>Hitler initially welcolmed news of incipient Russian partisan
>>activity in 1941 as "cover" for the activity of the SS
>>Ensatzgruppen (snip)
>
>I do not think we will be allowed to go here, but IIRC that
>the four small (less than 1,000 each) SS police units (Ein-
>satzgruppen) were first established during the Polish campaign
>and were intended to secure the rear areas from partisan
>attack. The religion of an attacker is of no consequence.
As I understand the newsgroup charter we can "go there" as long as we
don't deny that history happened, that the Einsatzgruppen, in addition
to the duties that you outline, also murdered many hundreds of
thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and Russian POW's.
There may have been less than 1,000 men in each of the Einsatzgruppen
detachments, as you state but they gave a good account of themselves,
if you view success in numbers of people killed.
I think it's a denial of history to say that the religion of most of
the people killed by the Einsatzgruppen had no bearing in their
deaths.
Stephen Graham
>The Austro-Hungarian Empire of course. Have there been any other in recent
>memory?
Besides the German Empire (Prussia) and the Holy Roman Empire? Both of
which are much more applicable to the Germany of the mid-20th century.
And both had absolutely nothing to do with the Slavic states of the
Balkans.
As for Poland, Prussian possession of Polish territories other than East
Prussia was an artifact of the late 18th century. For instance, Danzig
was not incorporated into Prussia until 1793.
--
Stephen Graham
gra...@ee.washington.edu
gra...@eskimo.com
Gord McFee
George Hardy <geo...@ankerstein.org> wrote:
> In article <35cf0121....@news3.ibm.net>, gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee)
> says:
> >
> >In <6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, on 5 Aug 1998 04:45:47 GMT,
> >jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
>
> >> The law at Nuremberg was Ex Post Facto Law and therefore
> >> Nuremberg was not an instrument of justice.
> >
> >That provocative argument has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
> >ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
> >American courts, including appellate courts.
>
> True. Politics overshadowed the merits of the case. Not unknown
> in western justice, whether the US, UK or France. But the dissenting
> opinions were quite scathing. And their position would have carried
> the day if it were not for the 'hot blood' of the desire for
> retribution and revenge.
You should read the court decisions, Mr Hardy, and you would see that
the decisions were based on legal precedent, jurisprudence and
principles of common law. Unless you are complaining that there is some
kind of conspiracy that perverted justice in virtually every democratic
western court, including Germany, you cannot ignore this reality. In
one recent American decision, the evidentiary and other procedures
employed at Nuremberg were analyzed, including chains of evidence and
other such matters, and found to be wholly satisfactory.
> >Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
> >of war is in violation of international law,
>
> Oh? Like the Russian invasion of Finland in 1940?
Yes, but for obvious reasons, the Russians were not on trial at
Nuremberg.
> >and murder of innocent civilians,
>
> Often not nearly as innocent as you want to believe. I point
> to the partisan activities in the USSR (behind the German
> lines) of a clear example of many, many not-so-innocent civilians
> being killed.
Partisan activities are one thing. The murder of a million *children*
by the Einsatzgruppen is quite another.
> >such as the extermination of the Jews,
>
> Sorry, I am not allowed to go there.
You are not allowed to deny it here because this is a history newsgroup.
> >is in violation of the law in every country where it took place.
>
> Which laws? In the eastern countries? Murder by the ruling
> authorities illegal? There are far too many examples of exactly
> the opposite to sustain that position.
None of which you have named of course. Am I surprised?
Randy
>>From: jim...@my-dejanews.com
>>Subject: Re: Law at Nuremberg
>>Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 01:15:32 GMT
First you said this:
>>I have yet to see a war where there is a truly innocent participant. What
did
>>Germany do to the national interests of Britain and France that caused
them
>>to declare war on Germany?
Then you said this:
>One more time in case you missed it. Their national interests were
hegemony
>over central Europe. That is what was being threatened. I have no problem
in
>looking at the causes of WWII as they were without the propaganda.
Your opinion of the interests of France and Great Britain that were
threatened by the Germans in 1939 is your opinion only and seems to be
based on a pretty tortured reading of history. Regardless, you asked 1st
"what did germany do to the national interest of Britain and France..." and
you imply that France and Great Britain had no legitimate national interest
that was threatened by Germany in 1939. You seem to be saying that if
France and Great Britain had just sat still and given the Germans a free
hand in the East, that everything would have been fine. I think any
reasonable person would conclude, after the 4th or 5th time that the
Germans broke their word and broke solemn agreements they had entered with
other countries, that it was only a matter of time before Hitler turned to
France to try to regain something he felt that the Germans lost in WW1
unjustly, whether it be territory or national pride. I don't think we're
ever going to agree on this point, so we can drop this now.
<snip>
>>Which central European Empire would that be?
>
>The Austro-Hungarian Empire of course. Have there been any other in recent
>memory?
Ahh, the same empire that the Germans helped bring down by their actions in
1914. Ok, I figured you meant that, but I wasn't sure.
<snip>
>>So, World War 2 was fought not to stop Germany from conquering the rest
of
>>Europe, or from murdering millions of people that were already inhabiting
>>the bits of Europe that Germany wished to possess, it was really all
>>Britain's and France's fault for wishing to preserve their hegemony over
>>Europe?
>
>I am talking facts not moral judgements. There is not fault there are only
>events and causes for events.
>
>At the time of the B&F DoWs there had been ZERO murders in anyone's book.
War
>is not legal murder.
I wonder if there were not some German citizens in 1939 who could argue
with you. No wait, they were already dead. Perhaps millions hadn't been
murdered by the Germans yet, by 1939, but they were well on their way.
>So the "murdering millions" is propaganda only,
>hindsight at best.
Why do I suddenly think you believe the former part of your statement, that
murdering millions is propaganda only?
<snip>
>As to conquering the rest of Europe, even after fifty three years we do
not
>have the least factual evidence of any plan, intention or desire to
conquer
>all of Europe.
We do, of course, have the actual fact that the Germans did try to conquer
all of Europe. You're saying, though, that if the French and British
didn't declare war, that the Germans wouldn't have tried that? On the one
hand we have the clear fact that the Germans conquered most of Europe by
1941, on the other hand we have your assertion that there was no plan for
such a conquest and that if France and Great Britain had just "played nice"
that nothing too bad would have happened, unless you happened to be a Slav,
a Jew or a Gypsy or unless you happened to live on land in the East that
Hitler thought rightly belonged to Germany. One hand, a fact, on the
other, your blandishments to the contrary, which carries more weight?
>You have given two justifications but neither could have possibly applied
to
>3 Sept 1939. It is clearly time for so many to discard all the
sloganeering
>and take a look at what really happened; to look at the facts not opinions
of
>facts.
The only justification France and Great Britain had or needed was that
Germany invaded Poland, in violation of treaty. France and Great Britain
had acted in their own national interest when they entered into the treaty
with Poland and they acted in their own national interest in adhering to
the strictures of the treaty. You seem to want to assign blame, in spite
of your protestations about "facts" and "moral judgements", for WW2 and you
want to assign the blame to France and Great Britain. Is this the one of
the axes that you wish to grind?
Gord McFee
geo...@mail.rlc.net (George F. Hardy) wrote:
[deleted]
> I do not think we will be allowed to go here, but IIRC that
> the four small (less than 1,000 each) SS police units (Ein-
> satzgruppen) were first established during the Polish campaign
> and were intended to secure the rear areas from partisan
> attack. The religion of an attacker is of no consequence.
You might be interested in the words of Mr Justice Musmanno, who
presided at the trials of 23 of the Einsatzgruppen leaders and
presumably therefore was in a pretty good position to know what they
did. He said that the purpose of these 4 paramilitary units was:
<quote>
...to murder Jews and deprive them of their property.
</quote>
Inwit
<<That [the Jews] can have no bearing upon any discussion in this newsgroup as
it can not
be discussed. But I do direct your attention to Blacks in the US for separate
consideration.>>
In other words, you do NOT consider the murder of Jews to be real murder?
You reject this as something the British and American governments could have
given any thought to, in their appraisal of Nazi-led Germany?
If you are trying to say that the situation of Blacks in America (which
I, as a liberal Democrat, do not excuse or minimize) has *ever* been comparable
to that of Jews in Nazi Germany -- who were the target of horrifying
government-sponsored demonization, followed by **genocide** -- then I would
have to suggest that you read a book about the Holocaust. Almost any book
would do, but HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is
especially effective.
<<What murders [of Hitler's enemies in concentration camps]? .... I am not even
aware of stories of that prior to the date I have given.>>
I'm sorry, but the fact that you are not aware of something does not mean
that it did not occur as a matter of historical fact. If you'd like
references, try THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH by William L. Shirer.
<<>starting with the "Night of Long Knives" in 1934?
<<Caught in the act of the capital crime of sodomy with minors, yes, I have
heard of that. >>
It is to laugh. You are the *only* person I have ever heard of who
actually accepts the Nazi "explanation" of this incident at face value. I
suppose you are blissfully unaware of the fact that, in addition to Rohm and
company, Hitler used this occasion to murder a long list of people who had
opposed him since the early 20's, including numerous former government
officials? If you'd like a reference here, try WHERE GHOSTS WALKED: MUNICH'S
ROAD TO THE THIRD REICH by David C. Large.
<< >Not if you take the moral teachings of most religions seriously.
<<No, I do not take them seriously at all. And they have no bearing upon
nations and law in the first place. >>
Now here, I think, is where you are failing to grasp something big and
important.
There are many things that motivate people -- both ordinary citizens and
political leaders -- to act as they do. There are economic concerns. There
are concerns having to do with personal (or national) opportunities. There are
fears for one's security. And there are baser motives like greed, envy, thirst
for revenge.
There are also, for many people -- and I include myself here -- morality
and religion. There is a deeply held sense of right and wrong, an apprehension
of the ultimate meaning of human existence. Perhaps this sort of thing is too
squishy or fuzzy-headed or -- in the pejorative sense -- "liberal" for you.
But you must understand that for many of us, now as in the 1930's and at all
times in between, this is not the case.
When Ronald Reagan spoke about the "empire of evil," I honestly think he
was expressing a heartfelt conviction. He opposed the Soviet Union -- and
mobilized the resources of the United States to win the Cold War -- not simply
out of geopolitical design, but because he believed the Communist system was
wrong and immoral. In exactly this way, I believe that what motivated the
majority of people in Britain and the United States to oppose the Nazis in
Germany was *not* any calculation of national interests, of hegemony or
anything of the sort. It was a sense that what the Nazis were doing --
especially to the Jews -- was WRONG. It was immoral. The Nazis were bad
people, and they should be opposed, if necessary by force of arms.
As to "having no bearing on nations and law," again I think you're just
not getting it. What is a nation? What is the basis of law? These things
arise from people, individual people, coming together and creating a structure
of order and government expressive of their collective beliefs, their ideals,
their sense of what is in everybody's best interest. Trying to draw a firm
line between a law -- for instance against murder -- and the moral or religious
sense that murder is wrong, is a sterile intellectual exercise. In the same
way, trying to draw a line between the decision of the United States to enter
World War II on the side of the Allies -- and after the war, to bring the
leaders of the Third Reich to trial at Nuremberg -- from the sense of most
ordinary Americans that the Nazis had performed evil deeds (a sense again
largely deriving from religious convictions), is once more a sterile and
misguided enterprise.
You can dismiss this all you like -- and you can live your own life in
disregard of moral concerns -- but you cannot oblige *me* to do so. And to the
extent that my feelings *do* represent the way most people felt during, say,
1941 in America -- or 1939 in Britain and France -- then it's obvious that to
understand what happened then, and why the Nuremberg trials happened later,
morality and religion must be taken into account.
And if you'd like a reference for *that*, try my last novel: IN THE LAND
OF WINTER, by Richard Grant.
"Of schir heort & clean inwit & trewe bileaue." _Ancren riwle_, 1225
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> <6qbdu5$lli$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
> >I am speaking of the law. You are not. Rather you are creating things "ex
> >post facto" that do not apply to the discussion that only give an veneer of
> >acceptability.
> So the mistake the Allies made was putting the Germans on trial, if they'd
> just shot them
That is essentially what was done. They just pulled the law through the mud
to do it.
> maybe they would have committed a crime but it would have
> been one no one had grounds to adjudicate?
According to the principles you are expressing, any nation could have created
a "crimes against war" defined as doing exactly that and carried out
clandestine executions.
Donald Phillipson
> In article <35cf0121....@news3.ibm.net>, gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee)
> says:
>
>>Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
>>of war is in violation of international law,
> . . .
>>is in violation of the law in every country where it took place.
>
> Which laws? In the eastern countries? Murder by the ruling
> authorities illegal? There are far too many examples of exactly
> the opposite to sustain that position.
The answer is "common law," as integral to the constitutions
and legal codes of Germany, Britain and the USA but not necessarily
in all countries (cf. Roman/Napoleonic law and Sharia/Islamic
law.) Germans and Americans alike recognize unwritten common
law as real and relevant -- though relevance must be
proved in each individual case, just as the relevance of a
particular statute must be proved.
The most familiar international example is piracy on the high
seas, which international law has always recognized as
"extraterritorial," where no national constitutions apply
(except aboard national-flag ships.) Common law holds that
sinking or capturing ships and killing or kidnapping people on
the high seas is always a crime, and pirates may be apprehended
and tried and punished by any national power. Pirates may not
legally ask "Which laws?", i.e. plead that no written statute
forbids precisely what they did, or applies to that particular
patch of international waters, so they did no crime.
The principle of common law was internationally recognized
a century before the WW2 war crimes prosecutions and is still
recognized. Americans are particularly committed to common
law because it is integral to the US Declaration of Independence
and other constitutional documents.
--
| Donald Phillipson, 4180 Boundary Road, Carlsbad Springs, |
| Ontario, Canada, K0A 1K0, tel. 613 822 0734 |
Thomas Buell
[reclaiming Silesia, Germany's national interests today]
: Additional resources, population, industrial capability are always in the
: interests of a nation.
Sure, but violence as a means to achieve that isn't. Especially if importing
coal from Upper Silesia is cheaper than mining coal in Germany.
: Before you tell me reasons why it would not be, read
: the rest of my post.
I just did, again, so what?
If, as you wrote, reclaiming Upper Silesia _today_ were in German interest,
then why was the Oder-Neiße line confirmed as Germany's border during the
reunification?
For information regarding war of aggression:
As a result of the difficulties discussed elsewhere in this thread, preparing
a war of aggression is a crime by Federal Germany's constitution (GG Art. 26)
and criminal code (§ 80 StGB) and is punishable by life or at least ten years
imprisonment.
Thomas
Brad Meyer
>The issue here is justice under law and nothing else.
I disagree, The first question that comes to mind is "Whose law, the
US's, the Brits, Soviets, French, German, Czech, etc., etc. One cannot
have "justice under the law" without a functioning set of laws.
>Therefore there can not be justice in convicting anyone
>of a crime that did not exist at the time of the acts.
You are assuming the American system of justice. Some countries have
systems wherein laws can be applied retroactively.
Brad Meyer
"It is history that teaches us to hope"
-- R.E. Lee
Kevin Douglas
>
>>starting with the "Night of Long Knives" in 1934?
>
>Caught in the act of the capital crime of sodomy with minors, yes, I have
Rohm wasn't the only person killed during the Night of the Long Knives. And
I'm sure you know that.
Rather than go back and forth about details, denials, all of the rest, maybe
you can address one issue. What do you make of Hitler's guarantee of Czech
borders in the Munich agreement and his decision, a few months later, to
tear up that treaty and declare Bohemia and Moravia a protectorate?
Because that was an agreement signed by Hitler, not Weimar.
--
soc.culture.japan.moderated Moderator on duty
scj...@eyrie.org
Kevin Douglas
<6q8kv2$89g$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>And still, even fighting
>a two front war against both Germany and Russia, Poland held out longer
than
>France. That might have been the most equal confrontation of the war.
You seem to be implying that Poland chose to fight that war in some way.
>To reiterate the point I am making, even unprovoked attack was not a crime
>between Germany and Poland at the time under any construction of any treaty
>to which both were signatories at the time. Even if it were, the charge at
>Nuremberg made no reference to any treaty violation.
In 1870 Germany held France responsible for the Franco-Prussian war and
forced it to pay reparations. In 1918 the French did the reverse to
Germany. Perhaps the Allies at Nuremberg were in a stronger position to
enact something like the Morgenthau Plan since that would have been
consistent with how things were done in the past.
>The charge was a crime created after the war. Therefore ex post facto.
>Therefore unjust. Convictions under ex post facto laws are unjust. This is
a
>very straightforward subject. I don't see why it is getting such a
response.
I'm interested in the subject because I see a myopia in your response.
Suppose I agree with you and say that Nuremberg was victor's justice. Don't
you think it was better than than the alternatives? A "more just" version
of victor's justice? You seem to be arguing that the Allies should have let
everyone go home. And that, to me, is a strange position
>
>> Nuremberg did set an important precedent. It used to be true that war
was
>> an accepted practice by governments. In the 18th century when one
country
>> attacked another and lost no one really questioned whether the attack was
>> legitimate or not, that's just what countries did.
>
>That is what countries, groups, tribes, kingdoms, whatever did as far back
as
>there is a recorded history of Europe, the world even. There is no cause to
>limit it to the 18th century.
I picked the 18th century because that was the latest period, I think, when
war was just considered a matter of the state and who started what wasn't
seen as all that important. Was thinking of European wars during the age of
Vauban when a king might send his army with some cannon to surround a
fortress, pound it for a while, a few months later the fortress would
surrender, the survivors would be allowed to march away, and that would be
the end of the war.
That was the 18th century. I think everything changed with the French
revolution and mass conscription. Wars didn't just concern governments
anymore, they involved entire nations. The part I might be having
difficulty understanding, now that I think of it, is if war isn't wrong what
makes "victor's justice", in your eyes, wrong? The Allies won the war. Why
weren't they free to do whatever they wanted?
If you want to rephrase your argument to mean this: "Okay, the Allies won,
they could have killed whoever they wanted, enacted whatever reparations
they wanted, turned Germany into a parking lot for all I care, I just don't
like the hypocrisy of their pretending that they were punishing the Germans
according to some set of legal principles which were set out in advance"...
...then you might have a point.
If you're suggesting the Allies couldn't do either, enact victor's justice
or hold trials, they had to just go home, then I think you're being silly.
If you want to call Nuremberg victor's justice you might acknowledge that it
was one of the tamest manifestations of that in modern history (at least in
West Germany).
Which reminds me, there's another aspect to this which hasn't made it into
general conversation. The USSR, of course, won the war as well. How they
handled their occupation was a bit different. Same with how they conducted
themselves during the war.
>It is not a legitimate precedent to hold that unjust acts can be
perpetrated
>upon the loser simply because they lost.
I'm actually willing to conceed this point, Nuremberg was victor's justice
of a sort. Problem is there was no other kind of justice available. The
question history will ask, I submit, is how "just" was this victor's
justice? And again, I think history will draw a favorable conclusion.
>Reparations were assessed upon the loser REGARDLESS of who started the war.
>That is no different than creating crimes after the war to fit the actions
of
>the losers.
There's a huge practical difference, countries aren't "locked in" to
payments and animosities which span generations. There's also the question
some other posters have debated in other threads. Were the Nazis
responsible for things such as the holocaust or was this something done by
the German people? One big advantage of Nuremberg is it let the Germans off
the hook. If someone wasn't linked to a specific crime they weren't held
"responsible".
>Under a similar war crimes concept, had Britain lost the Battle of Britain
>and had to surrender, Churchill and his senior war staff would have been on
>trial.
>trial.
That might have happened. There's no way to discuss this issue, though,
without getting into questions of who started the war, why, what were they
planning to do, etc. Let me ask a question, do you agree with this
statement: "If Hitler stopped in 1938, abided by the Munich agreement,
there would have been no Second World War as we know it". If you disagree,
why?
>Now we can go into who started the war in another thread if you wish. Here
we
>need note only that there has never been an impartial judicial review of
who
>started WWII. Therefore the primary test of culpability was not met, rather
>only victor's justice.
This doesn't do it for me because the facts, by that time, were rather
obvious.
>Since the end of that war Germans have been educated solely in terms of the
>victors' view of the war, as though there were only one side to any
subject.
>I can understand the victors sticking by their side of things as least as
>long as registered voters are still alive but that the losers are stuck
with
>the victors' side of it is not realistic.
The Nazi version of the war is not that different from Allied version, at
least if we're talking about the chronology. What's different is the Nazis
were quite proud of those things which the Allied version considers, ummm, a
bit shakey. Such as Germany's right to knock countries out of existence.
Or to try to kill every Jew in Europe. These aren't inventions, they aren't
even controversial, there are wars where one can argue "who was responsible"
until the end of time (eg. World War I) but the Second World War, I think,
was rather straight forward. The only way one can endorse a "loser's view
of the war" is if one buys into the assumptions of Nazism. I'm not sure
you're doing that but I'm not sure how else it makes sense.
>That is law. Morality is best discussed in religion newsgroups.
There's no separating law and morality when the issues are big and you're
discussing an international situation (eg. one where there is no higher
authority which nations can appeal to, in some ways international law is the
law of the jungle).
>I can not agree that it is ever a good idea to adopt the tools of tyrants,
to
>disregard the principles of law that can arrive at justice, even in a good
>cause. (After you have destroyed the law to get to the Devil what will
there
>be to protect you? -- some novel or other paraphrased from memory)
It's a fascinating argument but I think history has shown the opposite, if
the Allies bent the law in 1946 it did so in a way that preserved what some
essential concepts of justice and the world hasn't gone to hell in a
handbasket. If I had more time I'd go into a more detailed argument about
why law exists in the first place. We don't have courts, judges, lawyers,
etc., to serve the law, there's a higher purpose there.
>I am afraid I am unaware of any planning documents ever having been
>discovered much less introduced into evidence at Nuremberg. Perhaps you
could
>point to some. Now if you are saying that you can determine their plans
from
>war propaganda, I have to disagree. I would like to read the documents
>themselves.
We have a very good idea of what the Germans were planning to do if they won
the war. This might be cause for some of our difference. You might be
assuming that "events took their course" and there's no predicting what the
Germans might have done had the British not declared war, for instance, in
1939, or if the Germans had defeated Russia in 1941, or whatever.
In fact the Germans did plan out their postwar regime while the war was
going on. They even started to implement what parts of it they could.
Every jew in Europe was going to be killed, for instance. Large parts of
Eastern Europe were going to be "aryanized" (shorthand for "kill and
relocate the population and then resettle the area with Germans, Poland and
much of western Russia was going to "disappear", be incorporated into the
Reich). Germany was going to do what it could to make sure that all
countries in Europe were governed by fascist or authoritarian governments.
The German view of race was going to be written into law (so Germans were on
the top, Swedes, Danes, other Nordic types near the middle but still okay,
big trouble if you're French, Belgian, some other latin), if you were a
slave it basically meant you were a slave, and if you were Jewish or Gypsy,
of course, you no longer existed.
This isn't speculation on my part. Far from being some plan on paper
Germany did start to do every one of the things I'm talking about. Far from
being propoganda the Allies couldn't believe that the Germans were really
committed to the above during the war. We have a much better sense of what
the Nazis were doing during the second world war than any of the prosecutors
at Nuremberg. My opinion, the Germans got off easy.
Lastly. If you look at documents it's easy to see that the Nazis were
planning the above BEFORE 1939, by which I mean before the war started.
That's why it's pointless to talk about what Poland did during the crisis
over the corridor, for instance. In Hitler's world view it was a country
marked for destruction before the issue officially came up.
>The only document I am aware of is between Germany and Japan, a preliminary
>agreement to agree which laid out spheres of influence and which countries
>would be garrisoned (advanced forces like US bases in Europe against
Russia)
>and such. No more than an agreement to agree. I am aware of no follow on
>meetings or documentation of them.
You really have to do some more reading, this is a big gap in your
knowledge.
>And if there is a squabble between two other people (Germany and Poland)...
What you're describing isn't exactly a squabble.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
wrote:
>George Hardy (geo...@ankerstein.org) writes:
>> In article <35cf0121....@news3.ibm.net>, gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee)
>> says:
>>>Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
>>>of war is in violation of international law,
>> . . .
>>>is in violation of the law in every country where it took place.
>> Which laws? In the eastern countries? Murder by the ruling
>> authorities illegal? There are far too many examples of exactly
>> the opposite to sustain that position.
>The answer is "common law," as integral to the constitutions
>and legal codes of Germany, Britain and the USA but not necessarily
I have challenged a claim to common law before. I was assured it existed in
Britain, it does not in the US, you may start the search at Cornell or Thomas
on the web. I have found nothing regarding "common law" having any force in
Britain either. At the moment that it two out three. It does not exist save
in the popular mind.
>in all countries (cf. Roman/Napoleonic law and Sharia/Islamic
>law.) Germans and Americans alike recognize unwritten common
>law as real and relevant -- though relevance must be
>proved in each individual case, just as the relevance of a
>particular statute must be proved.
Put succinctly, NO ONE recognizes common law. At this point until someone
provides evidence it has the weight and force of real law it has no place in
this discussion.
>The most familiar international example is piracy on the high
>seas, which international law has always recognized as
>"extraterritorial," where no national constitutions apply
>(except aboard national-flag ships.) Common law holds that
>sinking or capturing ships and killing or kidnapping people on
>the high seas is always a crime, and pirates may be apprehended
>and tried and punished by any national power. Pirates may not
>legally ask "Which laws?", i.e. plead that no written statute
>forbids precisely what they did, or applies to that particular
>patch of international waters, so they did no crime.
I hate to break this to you but there was in fact an international agreement,
just like we have been talking about in this case, that declared pirates "the
enemies of all mankind" and thus legalized actions taken against them without
the "pirate" being able to appeal to his national origin. It has been a long
time since I had the name of it, it was not universal, and some 150 years
ago.
>The principle of common law was internationally recognized
>a century before the WW2 war crimes prosecutions and is still
>recognized. Americans are particularly committed to common
>law because it is integral to the US Declaration of Independence
>and other constitutional documents.
I am perfectly willing to read any, repeat any, discussion of the US
Constitution that makes reference to "common law." I have done a lot of such
reading including the Federalist and have found none. Nor have I come across
any reference to it regard to the DoI which is not a constitutional document.
There is only one consitutional document, the constitution itself.
But here is a test, Please post the first and second common laws and a source
for them. Better yet, post the common law and a source for the one(s) that
applied at Nuremberg.
And a hint, it is ain't in writing, it don't exist.
Kevin Douglas
Thomas Buell wrote in message <6qqa5m$vii$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>For information regarding war of aggression:
>As a result of the difficulties discussed elsewhere in this thread,
preparing
>a war of aggression is a crime by Federal Germany's constitution (GG Art.
26)
>and criminal code (§ 80 StGB) and is punishable by life or at least ten
years
>imprisonment.
>
> Thomas
A similar clause was written into the treaty of Versailles. In some ways I
think it's the most basic argument one can make that Germany violated
international law during World War II. Hitler didn't have some inviolable
right to suspend this part of the Versailles treaty. If the Allies had just
tried the Nazis on these grounds, "You had a treaty commitment, you broke
it", that was enough if one only considers legal issues.
Stephen Graham
<jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>I have challenged a claim to common law before. I was assured it existed in
>Britain, it does not in the US, you may start the search at Cornell or Thomas
>on the web. I have found nothing regarding "common law" having any force in
>Britain either. At the moment that it two out three. It does not exist save
>in the popular mind.
You could only have given the most cursory of glances at either Thomas
or Cornell's LLI site to miss references to common law. Searches on both
sites turned up references to the common law quickly and in large
numbers. As an example, I typed "common law" into the search box on the
first page of Thomas <thomas.loc.gov> and got 50 hits.
To make it easy on you, I'll give you exactly one reference to the
common law from the US Code: 18 USC 216. That happens to be part of the
Federal criminal code covering conflict of interest and government
employees.
About 30 seconds with an encyclopedia would begin to explain the use and
existence of common law in the United States. A competent library should
be able to inundate you with information.
Gord McFee
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> In article <6qn6ka$k8k$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee) wrote:
[deleted]
> > I have presented my position here and I have referred you to sources
> > that will substantiate my position. Obviously, you have not bestirred
> > yourself to check those sources, or you would not say much of what you
> > are saying in this post, which frankly is starting to smell like a
> > troll. My suggested reading includes a long analysis of the issue under
> > discussion by Telford Taylor, who was a lawyer and very familiar with
> > the _ex post facto_ argument. He was also a prosecutor at the main and
> > subsequent Nuremberg trials. I have no intention of transcribing 2
> > complete chapters of his book because you choose to make groundless
> > assertions while refusing to provide any substantiation, nor to do any
> > research at all. In other words, I am not doing your research for you.
>
> And I am not used to holding public discussion in the manner you are
> proposing, appeal to authority that happened to have convinced you.
That might fool some of the people in this newsgroup, Matt -- those who
mistakenly think you desire anything approaching a serious discussion on
this subject. But it won't fool anyone who knows you, and it certainly
won't fool me. You only want to troll and start arguments and that is
why you consistently refuse to check the three books -- available at any
library -- and the URL -- available a mouse click away -- that
substantiate my position. I have given four sources that anyone can
check; you have given none, except to continue to say "Am so right!"
That may cut it in a flame newsgroup, but this is a serious newsgroup.
I was one of the first moderators and I won't sit idly by and see you
ruin it.
Please therefore face up to the responsibility that a disciplined
newsgroup imposes on anyone who cares to debate honestly: support your
statements or withdraw them.
> I am
> familiar with people providing summaries are the arguements along with
> references. Therefore, not without some indication of what I will find, I
> will not "bestir" myself on anyone's appeal to authority. In your original
> post you did not cite which book and still here you have not cited even which
> two chapters.
Heavens no. In the post to Mr Hardy, I mentioned chapters 1 and 2.
They should be found quite close to the beginning of the book.
> And it would certainly NOT be of interest to me to type in the two chapters
> to respond to them nor would it in fact matter to this group as it would not
> be part of any thread. If you can get the authors to participate (dead most
> likely), someone with the appropriate legal background, something relevant
> who wishes to support your position, I will be more than happy to discuss
> matters with them.
All you have to do is read them, and then you can present your opinion
as to why you agree or disagree. For those who have forgotten because
of your wiggling, allow me to remind them the thread here is supposed to
deal with the issue of _ex post facto_ laws. I cited 4 sources that
confirm the _ex post facto_ argument is rubbish. You refused to examine
them. You then said that the Nuremberg Trials had never been reviewed
by any courts. I showed that at least 5 courts have reviewed them in
America alone and all have upheld the legality of what they did and how
they did it. You refused to verify that either.
You have addressed neither of these points, preferring instead to avoid
the issue. It is easy to see why that is: your bluff has been called
and you refuse to admit it. Denial, Matt, it's a very unscholarly
thing.
> Similarly I could simply say to you, Go read Chief Justice Douglas's opinion
> an the matter and you will find he agrees with me.
You could do that, except that there was no Chief Justice Douglas, so I
would have a rough time reading his opinion.
> I have not done that as
> that is a fallacious appeal to authority.
It's just plain fallacious, Matt, since the man never existed.
[trolling deleted]
> My assertion is the obvious. The crimes with which they were charged did not
> exist at the time the act were committed. The acts were criminalized after
> they were committed, therefore clearly they were ex post facto.
You are still wrong, but don't let that stop you.
[deleted]
> I will continue to discourse with anyone who is interested in the usual
> manner of public discussion. Not with you.
I knew you would run away. I didn't expect it quite that fast.
But you and I both know that the last thing you want is a proper
discussion. I have made my point and I expect the intelligent readers
will now ignore you.
BTW, I have warned you about e-mailing me. Do not do so again.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
gra...@maxwell.ee.washington.edu (Stephen Graham) wrote:
> In article <6qlutt$p...@dgs.dgsys.com>, <jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> >The Austro-Hungarian Empire of course. Have there been any other in recent
> >memory?
> Besides the German Empire (Prussia) and the Holy Roman Empire? Both of
> which are much more applicable to the Germany of the mid-20th century.
Three reasons instead of one then.
> And both had absolutely nothing to do with the Slavic states of the
> Balkans.
You mean as in Yugoslavia?
> As for Poland, Prussian possession of Polish territories other than East
> Prussia was an artifact of the late 18th century. For instance, Danzig
> was not incorporated into Prussia until 1793.
Nation building in central Europe did come a bit late. Yes it was generally
based upon the concept of shared language and culture.
Thomas Buell
: In article <6qnohv$3...@dgs.dgsys.com>, Inwit <in...@aol.com> wrote:
(...)
: > Why aren't you counting the Jews murdered on Kristallnacht? Or those
: >beaten to death by the Sturmabteilung? How about the other "enemies" of Hitler
:
: beaten to death on Kristallnacht. I wasn't aware of any. nazi thugs broke
: windows - thats why 'kristall' ie 'crystal'night.
Besides broken windows there were
* 91 Jews killed,
* 25,000 Jewish men arrested and later sent to KZs,
* 7500 businesses destroyed,
* 267 synagogues burnt with 177 totally destroyed,
according to what Heydrich reported.
These numbers can be found at
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/knacht.htm
: You could compare this to
: numerous riots in the US today without anyone evoking the notion of war.
Don't think so,
Thomas
George Hardy
> So the mistake the Allies made was putting the Germans on trial,
>if they'd just shot them
Quite right. If the Allies had just shot the Germans, the system
of justice in the USA (I am beginning to doubt the British system,
as they seem to have no fixed rules, like a constitution) would
have not been damaged. Everyone understands a vengeance killing.
Whether it is right or not, it does not compromise the legal
system. A lot of people died in WWII. If a few more died, few
would have noticed. But the violence done to a long cherished
system of justice is noticed, and will be continued to be noticed.
I have not been arguing for the lives of Yamashita, Ramcke, Reder,
von Manstein, Kesselring, Raeder, etc. I have been arguing for our
system of justice, with its "protections", such as due process and
no ex-post-facto laws.
GFH
***************************************************************
http://www.ankerstein.org/
The Anchor Stone Building Set (Anker-Steinbaukasten) Home Page
See what makes me tick.
***************************************************************
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"W. Darwin" <wda...@easynet.co.uk> wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in article
> <6qkpj9$kpq$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
> > In article <6qftn8$g...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>,
> > "Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> > > <6q8o1r$iq4$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
> > > >The issue here is justice under law and nothing else. If you wish to
> > > >go into the theology of a just war there are certainly religion
> > > >newsgroups for such discussions.
> This is disingenuous, because the "laws of war" or war convention are
> nothing more than principles diluted from the doctrine of just war. If war
> stands outside the law (as defined as a system of codes), then the just
> war theory informs justice in war.
I am beginning to despair of anyone reading the thread here either before
they jump in or while participating. This has been addressed.
The idea of a just war is a theological concept. There is NO agreement among
theologians as to what constitutes a just war. There is no agreement that any
war was just or unjust, not even WWII.
Since there is no such agreement there can not even be MORAL condemnation of
any side in that war.
But in fact we are talking about the law which has no relation to theology or
a moral code.
Nothing exists between nations save if it is mutually agreed between nations.
That is what sovereign means.
Stephen Graham
<jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>In article <6qq420$jk0$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> gra...@maxwell.ee.washington.edu (Stephen Graham) wrote:
>> In article <6qlutt$p...@dgs.dgsys.com>, <jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>
>> >The Austro-Hungarian Empire of course. Have there been any other in recent
>> >memory?
>
>> Besides the German Empire (Prussia) and the Holy Roman Empire? Both of
>> which are much more applicable to the Germany of the mid-20th century.
>
>Three reasons instead of one then.
Then you have absolutely no understanding of German history.
The Holy Roman Empire, such as it was, would have absolutely nothing to
do with the Slavic nations, other than Bohemia, nor any of the German
settlements in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Prussia was interested in building a strong German empire in opposition
to Austria-Hungary and France. To do so, it united the existing German
states, with the exception of Austria. It had an interest in Poland but
no other Slavic state. And that interest was mere land-hunger.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was not a German empire per se. Much of the
tradition of expansion derived from the Hungarian component, which was
very much an independent factor within the larger state.
>> And both had absolutely nothing to do with the Slavic states of the
>> Balkans.
>
>You mean as in Yugoslavia?
As in Yugoslavia, Roumelia, Slovakia, Ruthenia, and numerous other
Slavic states.
>> As for Poland, Prussian possession of Polish territories other than East
>> Prussia was an artifact of the late 18th century. For instance, Danzig
>> was not incorporated into Prussia until 1793.
>
>Nation building in central Europe did come a bit late. Yes it was generally
>based upon the concept of shared language and culture.
Which, of course, is why Prussia annexed Polish-speaking areas.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
> >The issue here is justice under law and nothing else.
> I disagree, The first question that comes to mind is "Whose law, the
> US's, the Brits, Soviets, French, German, Czech, etc., etc. One cannot
> have "justice under the law" without a functioning set of laws.
As I started in this thread (you may find it on dejanews) the issue is as
follows.
Humans have spent thousands of known years developing methods that will
result in a method of arriving at justice. Over those years some of them we
have learned do not work. Some of them we have learned are given the color of
law by tyrants. One of those given color of law by tyrants is the
criminalizing an act after it has occurred. This is, per the US
constitutional prohibition, refered to as ex post facto law.
The acts tried at Nuremberg were criminalized after their occurrance.
Therefore the experience of the millenia applies to them.
I hope we now have the same hymnal.
> >Therefore there can not be justice in convicting anyone
> >of a crime that did not exist at the time of the acts.
> You are assuming the American system of justice. Some countries have
> systems wherein laws can be applied retroactively.
That does not negate the above. Certainly there are such tyrannies. That is
not in question.
> "It is history that teaches us to hope"
and to pray.
-- James Eden
Kevin Douglas
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<6qpo2m$lri$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>>Dear Sir,
>
>>the statement made in the second half of that sentence is certainly false.
>
>Additional resources, population, industrial capability are always in the
>interests of a nation. Before you tell me reasons why it would not be, read
>the rest of my post.
I don't know if you've figured this out yet but European politics didn't
stop in 1945. Germany is a part of NATO and the EC. Germany doesn't have a
national economy anymore. Additional resources, population, etc., mean
nothing in a world where Europe has a common currency, tariff border, etc.
And the military situation is much the same.
Germany, along with the other EC countries, has about as much control over
its national sovereingnty as New York does within the United States. I
don't think that's an exaggeration. Not a bad situation, either, for most
Europeans. What you consider to be in Germany's national interest, though,
is the sort of thing which hasn't been relevant for years.
ph...@cantva.canterbury.ac.nz
On 11 Aug 1998, Guenter A. Scholz wrote:
> possibly you could enlighten us _exactly_ how many were killed or
> beaten to death on Kristallnacht.
A figure of 800 was quoted in The Nazis: A Warning from history.
--Peter Metcalfe
jim...@my-dejanews.com
Thomas...@heim1.tu-clausthal.de (Thomas Buell) wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> [reclaiming Silesia, Germany's national interests today]
>
> : interests of a nation.
> Sure, but violence as a means to achieve that isn't.
I admonished some one, hopefully not you, to read the rest of my post before
responding. In that there were words to the effect of the other penalties or
costs or something. Violence would be one of them but not the greatest of
them so I left it general.
> Especially if importing coal from Upper Silesia is cheaper than mining coal in > Germany.
That is a separate consideration and off topic here unless I can use it as
background. But a government, unless bought by the vested coal interests,
could care less. The more coal the better, let free enterprise sort it out.
Ship it out of Danzig (to work it back on topic.)
> : Before you tell me reasons why it would not be, read
> : the rest of my post.
> I just did, again, so what?
> If, as you wrote, reclaiming Upper Silesia _today_ were in German interest,
> then why was the Oder-Neiße line confirmed as Germany's border during the
> reunification?
Because Poland and what was left of the Russian block was going to raise
every diplomatic, political and military threat against it unless it was
renounced. Specifically Poland demanded the renunciation prior to its
concurance in reunification and West Germany, not East, gave it.
It is still in their interests simply not worth the hassle of war with Poland
again. And since the millions of ethnic Germans were frog-marched out of
Poland in 1945 there is no longer an ethic base there for reunification with
that part of Germany.
If people could get passed insisting post Russian war events started
post-poland invasion there are probably more than enough wierd things that
happened to explain a lot of the war propaganda that did happen.
All of those phrenology stories, determining ethnicity by head measurements
that most everyone has assumed happened in Germany? It only happened in
Poland. In Germany it was birth records. In Poland there was intermarriage
and that is where all the BS measurements started to decide aryan enough or
slavic enough. If you suspend your conclusions long enough you can learn
something here.
And yes, they frog marched out all of the "germans" who had taken advantage
of being moved to Upper Silesia from elsewhere who then took over homes and
businesses from those judged to be Poles not Germans. (Or Slavs not Aryans in
their terminology.) Perfectly justified as long as it was limited to those
who took advantage of it.
Why people refuse to consider what really happened and deprive themselves of
understanding of events in context I do not understand.
> For information regarding war of aggression:
> As a result of the difficulties discussed elsewhere in this thread, preparing
> a war of aggression is a crime by Federal Germany's constitution (GG Art. 26)
> and criminal code (§ 80 StGB) and is punishable by life or at least ten years
> imprisonment.
You are not giving me enough references to identify what you are talking
about. If you are talking about the constitution of the Weimar Republic that
was put in abeyance when a referendum of 90% gave Hilter absolute power in
1933. If the people can not nullify their own constition/government, the
constitution is a tyranny.
Nothing else is relevant that I can see.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
ma...@indy-lv.biomol.uci.edu (Mark Brandt, Ph.D.) wrote:
> In article <6qkclv$l...@dgs.dgsys.com>, jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> > >But don't France and Great Britain get to decide what's in their national
> > >interest?
> > Certainly, as does every nation including Germany. Simply that impartial
> > observers do not give them a walk on starting WWII in Europe.
> Actually, most impartial observers note that Germany started WWII in Europe.
Good sir, I have been over all the possibilities here and no one disagrees
with any of them. No one will say that, Yes the sovereign nation of Germany
had to obey B&F. No one will say, He wouldn't do what I told him so he made
me hit him, is a valid excuse. No one will say that defending half of a
fascist dictatorship from another fascist dictatorship was a just cause. No
one will say B&F had to make defense treaties with Poland.
So tell me, what is YOUR impartial basis for saying Germany started it?
I would really like to know from the perspective of the times just how they
started it. I have heard lots of "they intended to" and such but every time I
ask for the evidence and I never get a response. I have suggested all the
possible sources, captured documents, plans and no one points to anything
save the Hossback memorandum which is the only thing I know of existing.
So please, WHAT is your impartial basis?
> > If B&F had not declared war on Germany what was the worst possible result in
> > the short term? WWII.
> No.
> The worst possible result was a stronger Germany defeating the Soviet
> Union,
Beat the crap out of the Soviet Union? GREAT! That was a noble and worthy
objective. What is wrong with that?
> and then turning around and defeating both France and Britain.
Contrary to the only applicable document we have. As above, I keep asking for
known documentation that says otherwise. I have looked. I don't find it or
reference to it. It appears no one else has either.
> The German army was (in general) becoming stronger during the early part of
> the war. Allowing Germany to fight a series of short single-front wars in
> succession was a recipe for allowing Germany to conquer all of Europe.
Again, the only known documentation shows limited objects in central Europe
and a specific consideration that Germany's population was not large enough
to have an empire of that size.
Just because it was war propaganda does not make it true.
> >What was the result of declaring war? WWII. The former
> > was a crystal ball possibility even probability. The latter was a fact.
> The "fact" is that Germany was defeated historically. Changing the course
> of events might very well also result in changing the outcome.
Of course it would. So? But as the outcome could not be known at the start it
has no bearing upon the subject.
> > >>While Germany may appear innocent on the surface,
> > >>it was in fact reconstructing a central european empire that could challenge
> > >>their hegemony over Europe.
> > >Which central European Empire would that be?
> > The Austro-Hungarian Empire of course.
> And what, other than Austria, did Germany have in common with the
> Austro-Hungarian Empire?
Does it matter? Allies in WWI for a start. Did it not owe something to a
former Ally such as reconstruction? Facetious of course but clearly an
interest. Most of the leadership of the NSDAP including the THE himself were
Austrians. They had the chance to restore the land of their birth to what it
was.
And the general objective to undo Versailles something most WWI German
veterans wanted to do. They were doing it. Versailles was not sacred. Taking
it apart had no moral difference from putting it back together.
> Germany was, in effect, a decendant of Prussia. Prussia and Austria were
> allies and enemies at different times, but neither had been part of the
> other's empire.
> Germany had no more right
"right" has nothing to do with it.
> to Czechoslovakia or Poland or (list of countries
> conquered by Germany)
You folks keep saying this but it is untrue. Czechoslovakia was a creation of
Versailles not the "will of the people." The western part shared a common
language and culture with Austria and Germany. ONLY that part was annexed.
Slovakia was not annexed.
And they damned well didn't want to be together in the first place no matter
how nice Versailles was in forcing it and they separated as soon as possible.
Yes, Upper Silesia was taken from Germany at Versailles. Germany took it back
and a few other things that take a while just to go over.
> than it did to conquer the Ukraine simply because it
> (briefly) annexed the Ukraine after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Nor did Russia have an interest in it. But remember the millions of ethnic
Germans there who had been persecuted, starved, stolen from, and otherwise
treated like shit by the communists for over 20 years. Besides, getting rid
of communism was a very noble objective for which they are to be applauded
and praised.
I find no problem with anything Germany might have done to Russia. German
troops didn't have guns at their backs to force them to fight. And please
lets not bring up German treatment of Russian POWs. When they got back to
Russia Stalin had them shot or gulaged to death.
> In addition, Britain *never* had "hegemony" over Europe. It was
> historically interested in maintaining a balance of power. France had tried
> in the past, and had essentially given up.
Hah! If not then just how did both countries manage creating all those
countries in central Europe? They were deliberately created with the stated
intention to prevent a central european power from rising again. They
deliberately put peoples together such that the government would have to
expend much of its time keeping the peace and be unable to unite them into a
national force.
You pick a term for it. Certainly it has to have some name. I chose hegemony.
What strikes your fancy?
> Germany was acting as a thug, and Britain and France were attempting to
> stop the Germans before it was too late.
Thug? I am aware they were charged with being a criminal organization but
that was all rhetoric without substance. As for acting like a thug did you
ever look at a non-british view England in India? Perhaps someone should have
stopped Britain?
But they were uniting peoples with german language and culture despite what
noone but me appears to know about the Czech Republic area.
>From all you have posted here, your "too late" involves saving communist
tyranny. Sorry, think that was a great idea.
> > At the time of the B&F DoWs there had been ZERO murders in anyone's book.
> Wrong.
Cite them.
> The "border incident" with Poland that Hitler used in propaganda involved
> murdered concentration camp inmates. This is merely one incident in a
> series.
It was an attack on a radio station for god's sake.
If you are talking about Prime Minister General Sikorsky expelling ethnic
Germans and Jews into Germany since 1922 and Germany running relocation camps
for them, yes that was true. They were not concentration camps. No one was
being murdered in them in the sense of legal murder save by other inmates.
The whole damned Krystallnacht issue started with them expelling jews.
What might you be talking about?
> Germany was killing political prisoners and Jews by September of 1939.
We can not talk about jews here but I invite DOCUMENTATION not stories. I
have read the stories. They all agree it started after the war started with
Russia.
> It
> was not yet an organized process but it was occurring. Perhaps the murders
> were retail instead of wholesale, but to each individual, any murder is
> pretty much the same.
I am more than happy to have references to the documentation.
> Criminals need to be stopped, or they have a remarkable tendency to
> continue committing crimes.
Cite the laws being broken. The name calling and labeling leaves no rational
basis for discussion.
> Czechoslovakia was a crime (twice). Poland was a crime.
Now that you know they were only putting back together what B&F had taken
apart, do you still have the same opinion? If so, why?
> Britain and France acted correctly, *even* if the Nazis had murdered no one.
What is correct about starting a world war when the worst consequence would
have been the end of communism? Preserving communism in itself is sufficient
grounds for condemning the actions of Britain and France.
Why do you feel communism should have been preserved?
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"W. Darwin" <wda...@easynet.co.uk> wrote:
> Randy <ran...@tansoft.com> wrote in article
> <6qisod$k...@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>...
> > >From: jim...@my-dejanews.com
> > >Subject: Re: Law at Nuremberg
> > >Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 01:15:32 GMT
> > >I have yet to see a war where there is a truly innocent participant.
> > >What did Germany do to the national interests of Britain and France
> > >that caused them to declare war on Germany?
> The absence of total innocence does not imply total guilt. The Third Reich
> behaved in a significantly more unjust fashion than Britain or France.
And what is justice? Pilate should have asked and waited for an answer.
OPINION of national just or unjust behavior does not justify a declaring war.
More unjust? Have you ever read Ghandi's opinion of British justice? And that
injustice to something like a quarter of a billion people.
Ever read Ho Chi Minh's opinion of French justice?
But let me read the FACTS at the time upon which you base your opinion. I am
interested.
> > >While Germany may appear innocent on the surface, it was in fact
> > >reconstructing a central european empire that could challenge their
> > >hegemony over Europe.
> > Which central European Empire would that be?
> Which Franco-British hegemony is a better question?
The one that deliberately created weak nations in central Europe at
Versailles, ones that were open invitation to civil war absent dictatorships
running them like Tito's.
> The German idea of
> "Mitteleuropa" dated from the First World War and into the inter-war
> period.
And?
jim...@my-dejanews.com
> >As to the judgement of history when the generation that fought it begins
> >voting in Valhalla instead of here the view of the war will shift much more
> >rapidly. The spirit of vengence will disappear. All of us born after the
> >war
> >have a very simple perspective, they never did anything to me. Hitler,
> >Milosovic both the same to me. If there is going to be punishment at least
> >put the laws up front and find a chain of authority which makes them
> >applicable.
> I was born well after the war. I think future generations will have no
> problem seeing World War II for what it was. They'll know that the Germans
> were the "bad guys" and those who were tried at Nuremberg, in some general
> sense, were guilty of what they were charged with. And the procedural
> arguments now will be less important to them because their concept of
> justice, being distant from events, will go beyond "did the Allies strictly
> adhere to procedure".
I would like to point out that the opinion of Hitler and WWII today is not
materially different from the opinion of Napolean after the Napoleanic wars.
Originally the writings about him had obligatory descriptions of him as "that
Satanic Corisican." The French were the bad guys. Meetings of admirers of
Napolean were banned as was collection of memorabilia.
You will find nothing like that today. In fact it is rather hard to find
anything condemnatory about him. I don't see any reason why it will be any
different.
When all the propaganda goes away and we look at the facts even today we find
little to support the war propaganda. Take away B&F's crystal balls, admit
their interest in controlling Europe, look at what Poland really was and we
can not ascribe blame we can only discuss causes.
> That is how people tend to look at historical events. We look at the civil
> war today in the same way. In the first hundred years or so after the civil
> war people wrote long books about the south had the right to secede, whether
> the confict was about states rights, did Lincoln have the power to force the
> confederacy back into the union, would it mean the end of the Republic, etc.
> Today most people see it as the war which ended slavery. History makes
> these larger issues of "what is justice", I'd argue, more clear.
If we are talking popular opinion that is one thing but this is a specialized
newsgroup where we put aside such things as irrelevent. But consider how long
it took Andersonville to change from a death camp (with a hung commandant)
into a camp that was doing the best it could under the circumstances? His
desencdants got his conviction overturned and a pardon only a few years ago.
Things change, emotions go away, propaganda dies out for lack of interest.
> >Some time between the fifties and maybe early this decade there was a
> >revival of chauvanist war propaganda as the only legitimate terms for > >discussing
> >that war. I consider that sloganeering, labeling in place of understanding.
> >Understanding does not indicate agreement, concurrance or an interest in
> >resurgance.
> Participants are invested in events, that affects their clarity of mind, of
> course people aren't going to have a clear sense of what happened for what
> reason, what was justifiable and what wasn't, until the dust settles, and
> that usually takes time, maybe three generations at a minimum.
I'm ready now. Why aren't you?
> I think a
> large part of the explenation for the Second World War, in fact, does have
> to do with people's difficulty in "processing" the first.
I will demonstrate what happens. People start asking different questions.
> Why did Germans think that declaring war was fine?
Why did Britain and France get a walk for starting the war?
> Or that killing civillians was just something which happens?
Why did Britain start bombing civilians?
And then it dawns on them, just as it did after the WWI propaganda died down,
Germany was no more responsible than the other nations for anything. They all
had their clever little foibles. The Axis shot POWs, the Allies shot POWs.
Everybody was bombing civilians. How did Italy get written out of Nuremberg
and Russia out of the Allies?
> In no small part it's because I think their
> notions of what is right, their sensibilities, etc., were affected by the
> brutality of the First World War. In some ways I think Hitler's whole aim
> during the second was to get the first one right.
I was not around during either world war. Neither were you. What prevents you
from looking at facts without opinions? And I suggest you look into the first
or do you somehow still hold the propaganda position that Germany started
that war and your last was not a mistake?
> Time passes, the dust settles. And then comes clarity. I think most people
> do see justice as being about more than just following legal procedure.
Then hope for civilization is lost.
> That's an important part of how society tries to bring justice about but
> it's not the thing itself. And, just to mention one argument raised by a
> previous poster, I don't think there are going to be many people not
> connected to events who consider the career of Hermann Goering and conclude,
> "You know, he might have done some rotton things but the Allies really had
> no procedure in place to try him, they should have let him off". No.
But honest people will have to conclude that he was not guilty of the charges
against him as no one can be convicted of a crime before it was a crime. As
there were no other charges that in fact he is innocent before the law.
> They'll study what he did, who he hurt, what was his punishment was, and
> then they'll make some broad judgement about whether justice was done.
That will only be opinion, not law, not a conviction. And if they look into
the way the IMT was conducted, which we can go into if you like, they will
conclude as does any impartial observer, whatever we know about that war,
Nuremberg is to be disgarded as hopelessly biased.
> The Allies, I suppose, did take a gamble at Nuremberg. They were risking
> that future generations would look back at what the Allies were fighting
> for, consider what the Germans had done, examine the facts of the specific
> trials, whether procedure was adhered to, whether those on trial had an
> ability to defend themselves, etc., and conclude that justice was done. Not
> perfect justice, I don't think that exists in this world, but some basic
> sense of justice. And you know what? I think that is going to be history's
> judgement.
We are history. Our judgment. Fact is, most people who know anything about it
all, not even the basics of it that few know, dimiss it as victor's justice
and go on. People do not really give a damn about the opinion of historians.
If they are interested enough to read they are interested enough to form
their own opinions. And they do. People I know who fought in Europe have
dismissed it as far back as I can remember under "Hell, we were doing the
same thing."
And in line with interim resurgeance of war propaganda, during the war people
didn't really believe it. For no other reason that most of it was crude,
cheer leader stuff. Most of it of no better quality than Donald Duck throwing
tomatoes.
Give your parents and grandparents some credit. It was as laughable to them
as it is to us.
> Now there's an argument which goes something like this: "Of course that's
> going to be history's judgement, the victors are the ones who write the
> histories, future generations won't know what happened, won't care all that
> much, and because the Allies won they have the advantage of "position", the
> world of the future will be so much built upon that consequence that future
> generations won't have a sense of perspective to judge for themselves."
> It's an interesting argument, I don't buy it for one moment.
You should not because that is not what happened regarding Napoean.
> The dust does
> settle and when enough time passes clarity does emerge. If the Germans had
> won the Second World War, for instance, do you think history, let's say
> three generations pass, would have looked back kindly on Hitler and the
> Nazis? That is, of course, what the Nazis thought. I don't. Future
> generations would have recognized that it was a criminal and murderous
> regime. We're starting to see the same thing happen now in Russia, China,
> even Europe and the United States when it comes to such things as
> imperialism, the situation of minorities, etc.
Your choice of the terms criminal and murderous are purely war propaganda
that can be more than equally applied to the allies in that war. There is
your mistake. They are meaningless in terms of nations. If you wish to talk
imperialism and minorities what do we say about our ally Britain over India
and South Africa? If the subject is murder what about ten million in the
Ukraine? What about that nostalgic feeling the Vietnamese have with they
think about losing the French? Where does Germany stand out in the least?
When it comes to impartially looking at history, when it comes to looking at
the players in that war, what do you do without scorecard?
> If the Nazis had won, I'm arguing, the verdict of history about people such
> as Hitler, Goering, etc., wouldn't be all that different, it would just make
> more time for this to become clear (although not that much time, that's the
> point I'm trying to make, there do seem to be universal concepts of
> justice).
If they had won they would have ended communism fifty years early, been
instrumental in getting freedom for the British and French colonies. Its'
world dominance would have not roughly on the order of what the US enjoys
today, not having the manpower for much more than that. (If you have not
noticed, the entire "world dominance" thing is war propaganda. Read the
Hossbeck memorandum where he clearly defines the limits of empire pointing to
England's continuing problems in India.)
> So you can make your procedural arguments. It's possible you can be right
> point for point and still end up with the wrong conclusion (ie. by which I
> mean the outcome where justice wasn't done). Granted, these are large
> issues. I'll end there.
You have not challenged the facts I recite. You are avoiding changing your
opinion based upon the facts you are not challenging.
Guenter A. Scholz
>Your opinion of the interests of France and Great Britain that were
>threatened by the Germans in 1939 is your opinion only and seems to be
>based on a pretty tortured reading of history. Regardless, you asked 1st
I would think your conclusions to the contrary are tortured. In any
case, could you then make clear why France and GB would be indifferent to a
powerful germany. Seems not a sensible attitude to have ....
-regards
Jeff Heidman
> I do not think we will be allowed to go here, but IIRC that
> the four small (less than 1,000 each) SS police units (Ein-
> satzgruppen) were first established during the Polish campaign
> and were intended to secure the rear areas from partisan
> attack. The religion of an attacker is of no consequence.
There is a reason you thought you would not be allowed to go there. To make
the argument that the Einsatzgruppen where anything other than killing units
tasked with the murder of as many Jews as they could lay their hands is
nothing but the beginning of an attempt to claim that the Holocaust was not
what it has been purported to be by all credible historians.
The Einsatzgruppen where nothing but the first attempt at the extermination
of the Jews. Any attempt to paint their activities as "reprisals" is nothing
more than a clear indication of the posters true feelings towards the Nazis,
and the actions of the Nazis in reference to their "Jewish problem" and
"Final Solution".
Jeff Heidman
Mike Fester
: > Why did Germans think that declaring war was fine?
:
: Why did Britain and France get a walk for starting the war?
They didn't start the war.
Germany did, with its invasion of Poland. Both France and the UK flatly
stated that they would honor their defense treaty with Poland. Germany, by
invading Poland, started the war. Your "defense" of the nazi actions is
similar to defending a criminal who gets into a shoot-out with the police
by stating "The CRIMINAL didn't first attempt to use force on the police."
BTW, in other posts you claim that the only "moral" agreements are those
entered into between nations. Such being the case, the fact that Great Britain
and France had an agreement with Poland means they were "morally" obligated
to honor that agreement.
Again, Germany started it. The Allies finished it.
: > Or that killing civillians was just something which happens?
: Why did Britain start bombing civilians?
Actually, why did GERMANY start bombing civilians? You DO remember Warsaw,
do you not?
: > Time passes, the dust settles. And then comes clarity. I think most people: > do see justice as being about more than just following legal procedure.
: Then hope for civilization is lost.
Really?
One might point out that "legal procedure" under Nazi thugs involved rounding
up civilians and gassing them.
I, however, do not find that "civilized".
Sad that you do.
: When it comes to impartially looking at history, when it comes to looking at
: the players in that war, what do you do without scorecard?
Well, something about 12 Million people rounded up in nazi-occupied territory
and gassed, shot, etc., draws a rather large picture of the distinctions in
intent.
: If they had won they would have ended communism fifty years early, been
: instrumental in getting freedom for the British and French colonies. Its'
Uh, no, the nazis wanted to assert control over those colonies themselves.
: You have not challenged the facts I recite.
You have few facts; you have misrepresentations.
Mike (remove "@eyrie.org" to reply)
Osmo Ronkanen
>I'm not sure you're right as a matter of law. After World War I most
>countries, including Germany, signed the the Lacarno Pact and a few other
>treaties which explicitly forbade countries from waging aggressive war.
>Hitler withdrew from those treaties but so what? I don't think the treaties
>had a mechanism for leaving, in fact I think Hitler just renounced them.
There is a big leap from having a treaty that bans something to
punishing those who break it as individuals.
Osmo
Kevin Douglas
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<6qj5fk$v04$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>I would like to point out that the opinion of Hitler and WWII today is not
>materially different from the opinion of Napolean after the Napoleanic
wars.
>Originally the writings about him had obligatory descriptions of him as
"that
>Satanic Corisican." The French were the bad guys. Meetings of admirers of
>Napolean were banned as was collection of memorabilia.
No, although I'm curious if you got this view from the book by John Lukacs,
"Hitler and History". He begins with a (I think) Belgian scholar writings
about Napoleon while the war was going on, this scholar then wondered how
people would write of Hitler a hundred years later. A hundred years has not
passed, of course, but there are already obvious differences which give
clues:
1) a heroic myth started in France as early as the 1830s about Napoleon,
developed passion throughout the century, in some ways is still going.
There is no heroic myth about Hitler in Germany (that's putting it mildly).
The Germans are so ashamed they don't know what to do with this history. Go
to Berlin today and they're not debating a museum about Hitler but a
memorial to the Holocaust.
2) the situation within Germany and Europe has changed so completely that
events have basically delegitimized all of Hitler's goals. Napoleon became
Emperor of France at the tail end of the French revolution, he presented
himself as the champion of democracy, what came after the monarchy, etc.,
it's not all that easy to separate all of this.
Hitler's rise to power was based on a nationalistic, racial, and fascistic
ideology which is completely discredited at the end of the 20th century.
Europe went in a different direction. I don't see any chance this is going
to change. There's no popular sentiment in Germany, for instance, for a
restoration of facism
3) Napoleon is just a better story. Even 200 years later there's a grandeur
to the French empire (now I'm totally separating style and substance),
France has the arch de Triomph, the Louvre, Malmaison, L'Invilades. Hitler
has Auschwitz and Dacau. Napoleon fell in love, Josephine, Marie-Louise,
and Madame Walewska (sp?) humanize him. Hitler had Eva Braun.
To the extent Hitler survives in the popular imagination it's as an icon of
evil. As a style Nazism survives
because people will always always be fascinated by its darkness. But that
doesn't reverse Hitler's reputation, that cements it. Remember the scene in
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" where Harrison Ford finds himself at a
storm trooper rally? "Nazi's...I hate 'em". Funny moment.
That's what Hitler is today.
>You will find nothing like that today. In fact it is rather hard to find
>anything condemnatory about him. I don't see any reason why it will be any
>different.
We're living on different planets. So how is the weather on Pluto?
>When all the propaganda goes away and we look at the facts even today we
find
>little to support the war propaganda. Take away B&F's crystal balls, admit
>their interest in controlling Europe, look at what Poland really was and we
>can not ascribe blame we can only discuss causes.
History does sort out events, the dust does settle, but I disagree, the more
time passes the less Nazism will "matter" and the more Hitler will be judged
by events such as the Holocaust. There is nothing in the modern European
situation which makes Hitler relevant. What is still true in Germany,
though, is you have a lot of people who were alive during the war (although
that generation is starting to pass), their children and grandchildren, and
so long as there is this direct attachment the Nazi period will always be an
uncomfortable subject within Germany. Which isn't endorsement. To the
contrary it's a means of establishing distance. Attempts by German
historians to "historicize" Hitler, for instance, are very much connected
with their inability to write about him in some objective fashion. They're
seeking an objective distance which, in some ways, is impossible given that
these events are just five decades old.
I know these are the words you don't want to hear, but any objective history
of Hitler will deal with three issues first, since they formed the core of
what made the Nazis so unusual: extreme nationalism, fascism, and the
Holocaust. All three will prevent any rehabilitation. Even those who are
members of right wing parties today make strenuous efforts to deny the third
because they have to, it's beyond the pale, there is no reconsideration
possible if it turns out those facts are true, extermination becomes
Hitler's legacy. And I have no doubt how history is going to rule on that
question. The extremists I find the most interesting, or silly might be a
better word, they're an infinitesimal minority, are those who argue that the
Holocaust didn't happen but the Jews were a threat to Germany so Hitler
would have been within his rights to take extreme action. There's no
reality check for some people, there will always be this segment who believe
what they want to believe, but the number who believe in ideas like this
will probably be equivilent, say, to the number who think Elvis is still
alive in the year 2050.
>If we are talking popular opinion that is one thing but this is a
specialized
>newsgroup where we put aside such things as irrelevent. But consider how
long
>it took Andersonville to change from a death camp (with a hung commandant)
>into a camp that was doing the best it could under the circumstances? His
>desencdants got his conviction overturned and a pardon only a few years
ago.
I wasn't aware that Wertz had his conviction overturned. I'd have to check
this out. I suspect what this shows is that people don't really care all
that much 130 years after events. I can't really comment on this until I
know how the conviction was overturned. Was this by a court? How could
they reopen the case? And who gave the pardon? The president? There's
something fishy about this, but I'll look into it.
>> Time passes, the dust settles. And then comes clarity. I think most
people
>> do see justice as being about more than just following legal procedure.
>
>Then hope for civilization is lost.
But if the Nazis had won then civilization would be just peachy? The reason
it's impossible to debate you is because you throw out some rather
contradictory assertions and then don't explore the contradictions, not
saying you can't but you don't. Rule of law is all important, the Nazis had
a right to redraw the map of central Europe though it meant breaking the
treaties they signed, civilization depended upon this, etc. That isn't a
coherent position.
>But honest people will have to conclude that he was not guilty of the
charges
>against him as no one can be convicted of a crime before it was a crime. As
>there were no other charges that in fact he is innocent before the law.
Ditto.
>You have not challenged the facts I recite. You are avoiding changing your
>opinion based upon the facts you are not challenging.
I'll leave that for readers to judge. I understand this about human nature,
though. There is NO convincing someone whose mind is already made up, and
for every idea that's out there, no matter how intelligent or stupid, there
will always be someone who gloms on and holds for dear life. In those
situations the debate is for the audience, whoever wants to listen. And
then when it gets boring people move on to something else.
Thomas Buell
: I admonished some one, hopefully not you, to read the rest of my post before
: responding. In that there were words to the effect of the other penalties or
: costs or something. Violence would be one of them but not the greatest of
: them so I left it general.
Well, then I suggest rereading Message-ID: <6qlutt$p...@dgs.dgsys.com>
yourself and making your point. Maybe it's just my English and your words
were too general for me to understand.
: > If, as you wrote, reclaiming Upper Silesia _today_ were in German interest,
: > then why was the Oder-Nei_e line confirmed as Germany's border during the
: > reunification?
:
: Because Poland and what was left of the Russian block was going to raise
: every diplomatic, political and military threat against it unless it was
: renounced.
No German interests involved here?
: It is still in their interests simply not worth the hassle of war with Poland
: again.
You said so, already. And I said that is nonsense.
Thanks for telling me what IYO should be in my and my country's interest.
Can you provide any numbers as to how many Germans really want back Germany
in the borders of 1937? I'm really interested. There is some small minority,
yes, but I personally don't know any of them. And I know a lot of people
who's families are from former Eastern Germany. Half of my own is from Pommern.
: And since the millions of ethnic Germans were frog-marched out of
: Poland in 1945 there is no longer an ethic base there for reunification with
: that part of Germany.
One could also say, that, as a result of the "Endsieg", it ceased to be a part
of Germany.
But what's your point? Is it in our interest, but lacking an ethic base?
Are ethics and interests independant of each other?
As long as you don't define your usage of "interest", I'll regard as
today's German national interest what results from democratic resolutions.
: > As a result of the difficulties discussed elsewhere in this thread, preparing
: > a war of aggression is a crime by Federal Germany's constitution (GG Art. 26)
: > and criminal code (' 80 StGB) and is punishable by life or at least ten years: > imprisonment.
:
: You are not giving me enough references to identify what you are talking
: about.
Well, insert "Republic of" in between of "Federal" and "Germany". The
abbreviations are the official ones: GG = Grundgesetz (our costitution),
StGB = Strafgesetzbuch. These can easily be found in W3, at least the GG
also in foreign languages.
So these laws were made postwar and are therefore not really an issue
regarding the trails of N|rnberg. I thought they just might be interesting,
nevertheless, as we were talking about Germany's interests today.
Thomas
Bill Shatzer
>In article <6qnohv$3...@dgs.dgsys.com>, Inwit <in...@aol.com> wrote:
>> Not my book.
>> Why aren't you counting the Jews murdered on Kristallnacht? Or those
>>beaten to death by the Sturmabteilung? How about the other "enemies" of Hitler
> possibly you could enlighten us _exactly_ how many were killed or
>beaten to death on Kristallnacht. I wasn't aware of any. nazi thugs broke
>windows - thats why 'kristall' ie 'crystal'night. You could compare this to
>numerous riots in the US today without anyone evoking the notion of war.
The "official" toll was 36 dead, 805 shops and 76 synagogues looted
and destroyed - many by arson.
Cheers and all,
--
Bill Shatzer - bsha...@orednet.org
Bill Shatzer
>On 10 Aug 1998 17:26:23 -0400, in...@aol.com (Inwit) wrote:
>>starting with the "Night of Long Knives" in 1934?
>Caught in the act of the capital crime of sodomy with minors, yes, I have
>heard of that. The NSDAP inherited that law.
This a troll, right?
Even had sodomy been a capital crime in Germany in 1934 (which it
wasn't), Roehm and his compatriots were _not_ arrested, tried, convicted
and executed; they were simply rounded up and murdered - no charges
were filed, no trial was held, no evidence was presented.
Roehm was shot on the orders, not of a judge, after trial
and verdict, but of Adolf Hitler who reportedly told Hans Frank,
then the Bavarian Minister of Justice, "I decide the fate of
criminals in the Reich, not you!"
And the prisoners were shot, not by any agency of the State but
by the SS - a strictly private NSDAP party organization
with no legal powers to execute _anyone_ under then German law.
But you knew all that, right? It was just a troll, right?
OtheRDAS
>interest in objecting to what are facts. Germans were NOT charged under
>treaty violations. When one is charged with violating a law it is only the
>law that is cited in the charge. The laws under which they were charged did
>not exist at the time of acts that were later criminalized. Therefore the
>laws were ex post facto. Ex post facto laws are not considered a means of
>arriving a justice in law.
>Those are statements. They are true statements. So far no one has objected to
>the truth of those statements.
>Since you are responding, what are you responding to? You are not challenging
>the truth of those statements.
>I have also mentioned the presumption of guilt, the lack of impartiality, and
>I have alluded to the classic judge, jury and executioner nature of the IMT.
>No one is objecting to those statements either but I keep getting replies,
>lengthy replies that do not take exception in the least.
>Please, what are you responding to?
Fine you want a specific response to your revisionist "facts"? Done....
1. Presumtions of guilt :
So what? Thats the way things are done in many free democratic countries
like France. It may not be that way here in the US for American citizens but
the international tribunal did things differently. This is the way German
courts at the time did things so basically the defendents were getting the
trial by thier standards. It does not make the IMT invalid because they did not
do it that specific way.
2. Judge Jury Executioner :
So what? Many trials are done without a jury. Even here in the US. Try
traffic court for one. Military trials are also done without some random jury
of people off the street. Just because the IMT did not do it the US way does
not make it invalid. By the way, last time I checked any and every power that
is Judge is also the same power that does the execution.
3. Ex post facto laws :
It is my understanding that the murder of millions of people has always been
wrong. Everyone new this. It had not been stated by some authority as Law but
it was understood that it was not legal. europe had for some time been familiar
with the concept that the only legitemate war was a "Just" one. A war of
agression by defualt be illegitemate and thus illegal. By the way I don't
recall any "Law" that said that a trial such as Nuremburg could not be done. So
please tell me what the Allies were wrong in doing? If you tell me they
violated the basic rights I will simply have to reply that under the nature and
understanding of those natural rights, the accused were charged with violating
natural rights and they got pretty much what they deserved under this system.
natural law is pretty clear on the subject....violate peoples right to life
and they are justified in doing what they must to stop you from commiting this
violation, including killing you... if they chose to have a trial asa a
verification procedure to make sure that there is no error so much the better
of them for trying to make sure they did not violate somebodys righs in the
process.
otherdas
OtheRDAS
France and UK to declare war on Germany. You
seem to imply it was to preserve thier own hegemony over central Europe... and
thus was not a valid reason, especially since they did not
yet know about Nazi crimes, which you state was hindsight propaganda. Well,
consider the reason to have been Germany's violation of Versaie[?] treaty they
had signed at the end of WW 1.
They had been warned before hand that the integrity of Poland had been
gauranteed by Britain and France. As soverign powers they have a right to make
a mutual defense treaty with whomever they to. Germany got stupid and started
the war out of greed and hate and insanity. Neo-nazi revision and blurring of
the issue does not alter that fact. The fact that it took 2 days to make their
DoW's has more to do with the speed at which democratic governments make
decisions.
For your information, if i recall correctly after the Polish attack Canada
was the first to declare war on Germany. Britain put the matter up to all
Common wealth countries to decide. You also seem to say that Germany did
nothing to threaten the national interset of France and Britain but those two
countries obviously thought very different from you. England has gone to war
several times against France to preseve the independence of Europe from
hegemony. Why did Germany think it was different?
As to claims that there is no proof they wanted to conquer the rest of
Europe....look at the fact they declared war on Russia... for no reason other
than those stated above. Look at the facts of what happend and you can see the
plan they implemented quite clearly.
juxta...@my-dejanews.com
6qpo36$14bs$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> My assertion is the obvious. The crimes with which they were charged did not
> exist at the time the act were committed. The acts were criminalized after
> they were committed, therefore clearly they were ex post facto.
Charges against Nuremberg defendents included
mass killing of non-combatants (> 5 million
Jews, Gypises, and others), mistreatment and
killing pows (including at least a couple of
million Russians) and making slave of millions of
other unwilling people from countries conquered
by Nazi Germany. These activities were clearly
illegal under international law when the crimes
were committed, and therefore are not "ex post
facto" in legal terms.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
ad...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Donald Phillipson) wrote:
> George Hardy (geo...@ankerstein.org) writes:
>
> > In article <35cf0121....@news3.ibm.net>, gmc...@ibm.net (Gord McFee)
> > says:
> >
> >>Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
> >>of war is in violation of international law,
> > . . .
> >>is in violation of the law in every country where it took place.
> >
> > Which laws? In the eastern countries? Murder by the ruling
> > authorities illegal? There are far too many examples of exactly
> > the opposite to sustain that position.
>
> The answer is "common law," as integral to the constitutions
> and legal codes of Germany, Britain and the USA but not necessarily
> in all countries (cf. Roman/Napoleonic law and Sharia/Islamic
> law.) Germans and Americans alike recognize unwritten common
> law as real and relevant -- though relevance must be
> proved in each individual case, just as the relevance of a
> particular statute must be proved.
For the fourth or so time, would you please post the applicable common law
you are talking about?
jim...@my-dejanews.com
gra...@maxwell.ee.washington.edu (Stephen Graham) wrote:
> In article <6qqj1j$j88$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> <jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> >I have challenged a claim to common law before. I was assured it existed in
> >Britain, it does not in the US, you may start the search at Cornell or Thomas
> >on the web. I have found nothing regarding "common law" having any force in
> >Britain either. At the moment that it two out three. It does not exist save
> >in the popular mind.
> You could only have given the most cursory of glances at either Thomas
> or Cornell's LLI site to miss references to common law. Searches on both
> sites turned up references to the common law quickly and in large
> numbers. As an example, I typed "common law" into the search box on the
> first page of Thomas <thomas.loc.gov> and got 50 hits.
> To make it easy on you, I'll give you exactly one reference to the
> common law from the US Code: 18 USC 216. That happens to be part of the
> Federal criminal code covering conflict of interest and government
> employees.
> About 30 seconds with an encyclopedia would begin to explain the use and
> existence of common law in the United States. A competent library should
> be able to inundate you with information.
I do not know why this is so hard to get across but let me try again.
I can find all the references to common law I want. I have gotten them here
for god's sake. That isn't hard. And I don't know how many times I have heard
people tell me of their common law right to fire a gun into the air on the
4th of July.
I can not find even one common law.
I did as you suggested. Yes, I found references to common law. But I did not
find even one common law.
To repeat the challenge, recite common laws number one and two and provide a
reference to them.
Or simply go back to your searching and find me a URL to a recitation of the
common laws. I can not find it. You did not point me to it.
I suggest it is in the interests of all of us to read them if we can be hung
for violating them. Don't you?
If ignorance of the common law is no excuse I damn well want to learn what
they are.
Jeff Heidman
> > Matt, it is far from a statement of fact. You obviously don't
> > understand the difference between retroactive and retrospective law, and
> > you don't understand international or national law. Might I suggest
> > Telford Taylor's _The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials_ and Robert
> > Conot's _Justice at Nuremberg_ for starters?
>
> I would much prefer you to present your position here. While I would be
> interested in legal texts in this matter, actual citations would be more
> productive, your suggested reading qualifies as neither.
You have not felt any need to make any actual citations, so it behooves
you to accept the idea that not everyone is going to spend their time
refuting clearly specious arguments.
> In the mean time, the acts which were presented at Nuremberg were clearly
> criminalized after the fact. They were not charged with any law that existed
> at the time of the commission of the acts.
To some extent this is true. It does not (and you consistently have not)
addressed the issue of a better solution. Apparently, your argument is
that after WWII the Nazis should have been allowed to go home and give it
another try later.
> They remain the criminalization of prior acts and were selectively applied
> only to Germans under a clear presumption of sole guilt.
This is a simplistic and innaccurate asessment. While there may be some
debate as to the specifics of what laws could be applied, there was
absolutely no debate as to whether the acts themselves where criminal. To
make the argument that it was ok to exterminate and/or enslave large
portions of the population of Poland because there was no specific law
forbidding it is specious at best, and a bald-faced attempt at neo-Nazi
revisionism at worst.
> As I have noted, there has yet to be an impartial judicial determination of
> the responsibility for the start of that war. Under the principle of "he who
> declares the war starts the war" (I can't think of what could be more clear
> than that) it was clearly started by B&F.
Except that no-one has ever made any such ridiculous claim other than
yourself. It has been refuted at least twice by other posters, and you
chose to ignore those refutations. A declaration of war is often an
acknowledgement of reality, and sometimes a statement of intent. It only
rarely defines an agressors intentions, since most aggressors are not
polite enough to let you know when they intend to invade.
I presume by your argument that Germany did not start ANY wars (except the
one against the US) during WWII? That the US "started" the war with Japan?
That ANY country can divest itself of any resposibility for any war-like
acts by the mere expedient of not formally declaring war? This argument is
so ridiculous it defies logic that anyone could even make an attempt to
make it, much less defend it (not that you have done the latter).
> > > >has been dismissed by every tribunal that has
> > > >ever considered it, including the Nuremberg Tribunal and several
> > > >American courts, including appellate courts.
> > > Nuremberg has never been reviewed in any other court. The IMT could not
> > > review itself.
> > Nuremberg has been reviewed by courts in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s,
> > by courts in Canada as recently as 1998, and by courts in the United
> > States in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, as recently as an *appellate*
> > court decision in 1997 and another in 1998.
>
> Case citations and summaries please.
Interesteing, I have not seen a SINGLE case citation from you, yet you are
quick to demand them from others. You have quoted YOURSELF right up above
making completely unfounded cliams.
> To be a proper response it must have
> been a review of the validity of ex post facto laws specifically at
> Nuremberg. It can not be of other war crimes trials which are not under
> discussion here.
So basically, it is not valid unless it comes to the conclusions that you
have reached.
> To be more explicite review in this context means a judicial review can only
> be conducted by an appelate court having jurisdiction over the lower court.
> There is not such court having jurisdiction over the IMT.
So your standard for acceptance is intentionally placed beyond the
possibility of reality. Essentially, you make a claim, then demand that
someone disprove it, but create a criteria for that disproof that is by
definition impossible to obtain.
> > The principles used at
> > Nuremberg and the admissibility of evidence have been upheld by *all* of
> > those courts. In fact, they have never been rejected by any court in
> > the world.
> The issue is criminalizing acts after their commission. The issue is not
> admissibility of evidence or "principles." Ex post facto crimes are rejected
> in every civilized country.
The argument is whether or not the crimes where truly "ex-posto-facto".
That has yet to be conclusively proven by yourself, or anyone else.
> They were not charged under any 1919 laws. That other laws might have existed
> does not change the fact that what they were charged with did not exist. It
> would have been perfectly legitimate to make charges under the terms and
> conditions of treaties that existed at the time the acts were committed. That
> was not done.
The treaties you are demnaded that they be charged under had no provisions
for enforcing legal repurcussions for their being broken. This is a
perfect example of the relaity that no matter what was done, there would
be those apologists who would question the process under which a very
small percentage of those resonsible for the travesty of WWII were
punished. The vast majority of those Germans accused in the various
Western Allied war crimes trials were never convicted. Yet there are
always those who will complain that there personal heroes were held to a
standard that they never allowed their victims.
> > > >Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
> > > >of war is in violation of international law,
> > > Was not a violation of international law at the time of its occurance.
> > > International law binds only signatories to the agreement. The IMT was an ad
> > > hoc creation and therefore could not possibly have been given jurisdiction.
> > That is nonsense. I said "unprovoked aggression *without* a declaration
> > of war".
> It was still not a violation of any treaty between Germany and Poland.
> International laws apply only to signatories to it. And they were not charged
> with violating any prior existing international laws.
And the treaties they broke had no provision for legal recourse. The
Kellogg-Briand agreemeent did not have a codicile specifying that breaking
it would result in a trial, because it is understood that such attempts
are patently ridiculous. Anyone breaking a treaty signed between countries
is certainly not willing to attend a trial. Your attempt to deflect the
issue by repeatedly refferring to the Nazis not being charged under the
treaties they broke is clearly suspect. Had they been charged for breking
the Municg agreement, you would be here today complaining that that was
illegal also.
> > > A legitimate court can act upon cases where it has been delegated a priori
> > > authority by those who will be tried under it.
> > Rubbish. May I recommend _Black's Law Dictionary_ for a complete
> > refutation of that nonsense.
> There is no call to deteriorate the exchange to name calling, please. To
> properly participate in this discussion quote from that source is desirable.
pot.kettle.black.
> > > >and murder of innocent civilians,
> > > No one was charged with murder, an obvious charge, a clear crime in all five
> > > countries involved.
> > Read the above books and learn a bit about this subject.
> Again, no need to deteriorate this exchange.
> The fact remains they were not charged with the crime of murder. The crime of
> murder is defined in the law. The sin of murder is morality. We are
> discussing law not morality.
Defined in whose law? Had they been charged with murder and convicted, you
would be here claiming that Goebbels never killed anyone himself, and that
if he had, the relevant Allies had no jurisdiction over acts committed in
Poland anyway. It is obvious that your argument is driven by a desire to
condone or excuse the actions of the Nazis.
> > > >such as the extermination of the Jews, is in violation of the
> > > >law in every country where it took place.
> > > And no one was charged with it. One can draw the obvious conclusion
> > > that the chain of evidence required to establish murder could not be
> > > constructed for such a prosecution.
> > Read the above books and learn a bit about this subject.
> Legal murder not sinful murder. The law can not judge a sin nor can courts
> try it. Nor can justice presume that only one party can violate either the
> morality nor the law.
You are the only person in this debate who has brought up the issue of
"sin". I suggest you ditch that red herring now. It is starting to smell
bad.
> > > Again, we are talking law not morality.
> > > The hanging court at Nuremberg may make people who seek vengence
> > > rather than justice feel good but the subject here is law and
> > > justice, not morality, not feeling good.
> > And that is the subject about which you demonstrably know nothing.
> > Please educate yourself before making wild assertions.
> That is non-responsive and borders upon name calling or fight picking. I
> would rather not indulge you in that.
> You have responded in no manner to the fundamental injustice of Nuremberg.
You have yet to show that there was any fundemental injustice. Before
responding, please cite specific court cases that have overturned
Nuremberg.
Jeff Heidman
ut_web...@hotmail.com
6qlmlp$krm$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
geo...@mail.rlc.net (George F. Hardy) wrote:
> In article <6qkq1r$nfm$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>, ut_web...@hotmail.com
> says:
> >Hitler initially welcolmed news of incipient Russian partisan
> >activity in 1941 as "cover" for the activity of the SS
> >Ensatzgruppen (snip)
>
> I do not think we will be allowed to go here, but IIRC that
> the four small (less than 1,000 each) SS police units (Ein-
> satzgruppen) were first established during the Polish campaign
> and were intended to secure the rear areas from partisan
> attack. The religion of an attacker is of no consequence.
It was to the Nazis: if you were a Jew, your
days were numbered. Whether you carried a
gun or acted as a partisan did not affect Hitler's
determination to make his new empire 'jew
free.' The SS Einsatzgruppen were one means
the Nazis employed to accomplish this in places
like Poland and Russia. In the USSR, these SS
detachments killed hundreds of thousands of
people in mass executions during the opening
months of the Russian campaign, BEFORE there
was much of a partisan threat to German rear
areas.
A well known example of this activity was
the action at Babi Yar, outside Kiev. The SS
detachment assigned to follow Army Group
South marched about 30,000 people (old and
young, men, women, kids) to a big ravine and
shot them all. These were civilians of the
jewish persuasion, and none of 'em was accused
of being a partisan. They were just jews. The
Einsatzgruppen were doing this sort of thing
throughout the conquered Eastern territories,
and made plenty of reports to their master
Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer SS, to document
the atrocities. Some of these reports were
captured by the allies at the end of the war.
Not only jews were the prey of the SS men.
Any communist party functionary or government
official and gypsies were summarily shot. Also
included were disarmed pows believed to be
communists, jews, etc. When partisan activity
did begin to pose a threat to German
communications, the SS detachments were
utilized to combat the guerrillas. However,
they were less effective in beating the bushes
for partisans than in shooting helpless people in
the back of the neck. So their usual method was
to kill anyone around the site of an attack on
Germans, and to burn down villages in the
vicinity. Some of the SS reports captured by the
allies note the numbers of alleged partisans or
"partisan sympathisers" killed by the SS. Often,
few weapons were captured in relation to the
size of the body count.
George Hardy
says:
>You should read the court decisions, Mr Hardy, and you would see that
>the decisions were based on legal precedent, jurisprudence and
>principles of common law.
I have. All three (majority, Murphy (dissenting) and Rudledge
(dissenting)) are quoted IN FULL in Reel's The Case of General
Yamashita. Have you?
>> >Unprovoked aggression without a declaration
>> >of war is in violation of international law,
>> Oh? Like the Russian invasion of Finland in 1940?
>Yes, but for obvious reasons, the Russians were not on trial at
>Nuremberg.
Right, only actions which benefited the Axis were allowed. But
how con you try one party for a crime and not try another for the
same crime? Easy, a kangaroo court.
>> Often not nearly as innocent as you want to believe. I point
>> to the partisan activities in the USSR (behind the German
>> lines) of a clear example of many, many not-so-innocent civilians
>> being killed.
>Partisan activities are one thing. The murder of a million *children*
>by the Einsatzgruppen is quite another.
I doubt that number.
Stephen Graham
<jim...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>I do not know why this is so hard to get across but let me try again.
>
>I can find all the references to common law I want. I have gotten them here
>for god's sake. That isn't hard. And I don't know how many times I have heard
>people tell me of their common law right to fire a gun into the air on the
>4th of July.
>
>I can not find even one common law.
Why don't you start by checking with your local public library, which
should have a copy of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of
England.
Then get used to the fact that there is no single compilation of the
common law. It's the fundamental structure of the British and American
legal systems.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
juxta...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> In article <
> 6qpo36$14bs$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >
> > My assertion is the obvious. The crimes with which they were charged did not
> > exist at the time the act were committed. The acts were criminalized after
> > they were committed, therefore clearly they were ex post facto.
> Charges against Nuremberg defendents
The following were not the charges. If murder had been the charge then it
would have been quite simple to pick any one of the TWELVE million dead and
get a conviction.
> included
> mass killing of non-combatants (> 5 million
> Jews, Gypises, and others), mistreatment and
> killing pows (including at least a couple of
> million Russians) and making slave of millions of
> other unwilling people from countries conquered
> by Nazi Germany. These activities were clearly
> illegal under international law when the crimes
> were committed, and therefore are not "ex post
> facto" in legal terms.
As it was there was only one conviction that can be considered legitimate at
Nuremberg under the brand spanking new crimes against humanity charge.
Therefore it does not bear upon any other conviction.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
> <6qpo2m$lri$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
> >>Dear Sir,
> >>the statement made in the second half of that sentence is certainly false.
It is a common salutation as in letters. I have recieved many of them.
> >Additional resources, population, industrial capability are always in the
> >interests of a nation. Before you tell me reasons why it would not be, read
> >the rest of my post.
> I don't know if you've figured this out yet but European politics didn't
> stop in 1945. Germany is a part of NATO and the EC. Germany doesn't have a
> national economy anymore. Additional resources, population, etc., mean
> nothing in a world where Europe has a common currency, tariff border, etc.
> And the military situation is much the same.
There should be a newsgroup for economists. If not perhaps we can get someone
to start one.
There I will discuss economics with you. You find and existing one and I will
join you there. Just post it.
Osmo Ronkanen
OtheRDAS <othe...@aol.com> wrote:
>1. Presumtions of guilt :
> So what? Thats the way things are done in many free democratic countries
>like France.
I wonder when will that urban legend die. France like rest of Europe is
bound by the convention on Human rights and it mandates resumption of
innocence.
>
>2. Judge Jury Executioner :
>
> So what? Many trials are done without a jury. Even here in the US. Try
>traffic court for one.
You are executed by a traffic court? I am not saying that one needs jury
trials to be fair, we do not have them here, but comparing a court that
passes death sentences to a traffic court is ludicrous.
>
>3. Ex post facto laws :
>
> It is my understanding that the murder of millions of people has always been
>wrong.
Sure wrong, but not illegal when it was done in a war. IMO one should
settle the issue and admit that those were ex-post-facto. Then one could
start the discussion whether ex-post-facto laws were justified in the
particular case. IMO they largely were, especially when dealing with
the Holocaust.
Osmo
jim...@my-dejanews.com
> Charges against Nuremberg defendents
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
George F. Hardy
juxta...@my-dejanews.com says:
>Charges against Nuremberg defendents included mass killing of
>non-combatants (> 5 million Jews, Gypises, and others),
>mistreatment and killing pows (including at least a couple of
>million Russians) and making slave of millions of other unwilling
>people from countries conquered by Nazi Germany. These activities
>were clearly illegal under international law when the crimes
>were committed, and therefore are not "ex post facto" in legal terms.
While not agreeing that your numbers are accurate (not important, as
not the number but the crime is the issue), the legal concept is
true. But the crimes most of the Nuremberg defendants were convicted
of were not the one you cite above. They were planning and waging a
war of aggression, "Crimes against Peace".
Goering? Raeder? Keitel? Speer? (here is a shot at it, but no,
not guilty). Hess? (He wasn't there.) Doentiz?
Perhaps you might name Himmer. No one likes cops anyway.
jim...@my-dejanews.com
"Kevin Douglas" <kev...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> jim...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message <6qpk9h$8...@dgs.dgsys.com>...
> >>starting with the "Night of Long Knives" in 1934?
> >Caught in the act of the capital crime of sodomy with minors, yes, I have
> >heard of that. The NSDAP inherited that law.
> Rohm wasn't the only person killed during the Night of the Long Knives. And
> I'm sure you know that.
Yes, a couple days later.
> Rather than go back and forth about details, denials, all of the rest, maybe
> you can address one issue. What do you make of Hitler's guarantee of Czech
> borders in the Munich agreement and his decision, a few months later, to
> tear up that treaty and declare Bohemia and Moravia a protectorate?
> Because that was an agreement signed by Hitler, not Weimar.
What bearing does that have on this discussion?
Hitler was dead by the time of Nuremberg. No one at Nuremberg was charged
with the violation of that treaty.
You have read the treaty, what what the penalty for violating it?