Zero tolerance for Nazis in Germany

Under a retroactive law passed in Germany in 2011 it is considered a crime to have worked in any capacity at one of the Nazi death camps. Although it was quite easy for former SS officers to go on to make lucrative careers in West Germany after the war in the professions and as entrepreneurs, now that they are almost all dead, the Bundesrepublik passed a law a few years ago to go after a handful of very elderly former very low ranking individuals who had been assigned to work at a Nazi extermination camp in any capacity. The latest to be caught in the net is 94 year-old former SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) Reinhold Hanning who was put on trial on Tuesday this week in Detmold, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Questioned why Hanning who worked as a guard in Auschwitz I Concentration Camp for political prisoners and not Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was arrested, the the diligent prosecutor, Andreas Brendel, said he might have been told to go over to help at the death camp so, for this reason, he should be charged as an accessory to the murder of 170,000 Hungarian Jews who were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the time Hanning was at Auschwitz I.
Ex-SS guard on trial in late push to punish Nazi crimes | The Times of Israel


SS-Unterscharführer Reinhold Hanning

Having allowed senior officers who ran various departments involved in the Final Solution to make new and successful lives in West Germany for decades, to be dragging old men in their 90s into court, in this case because he might have, at some time, been ordered to duty at a death camp should impress no one. For the West Germans who did nothing for so long and are now are all righteous about catching a few feeble old men who were never important is dishonorable.

Good riddance. Better late than never I suppose.

Poor Nazi bastards.

Seems silly to me, to be honest. What's the damn point this late in the game, just to be able to pat yourself on the back for a token gesture?

Far too much of that kind of thing going on in general these days.

What even bother at this point? It's like they are just looking for anyone even slightly involved to boost their image of caring about their past. Let it go, the guy is small fry and he is on deaths door.

Gathomas88 said:

Seems silly to me, to be honest. What the damn point this late in the game, just to be able to pat yourself on the back for a token gesture?

Far too much of that kind of thing going on these days in general.

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Well, it is some kind of consolation. I mean the bastard got to live 71 years longer than he deserved to live. Sadly, if he get's thrown in the cooler, ( :lamo ) he will just be a drain on society keeping him alive. He should have met a .30 cal carbine a long, long time ago. My heart bleeds peanut butter for him.

But, you right. Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on pure evil. But I ain't gonna lead the charge. I hope he gets as much hell as they can give him for whatever life he has left.

But that's just me. Popcorn anyone? :2wave:

Henrin said:

What even bother at this point? It's like they are just looking for anyone even slightly involved to boost their image of caring about their past. Let it go, the guy is small fry and he is on deaths door.

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The West Germans missed the boat on taking responsibility for the past.

Heinrich said:

Under a retroactive law passed in Germany in 2011 it is considered a crime to have worked in any capacity at one of the Nazi death camps. Although it was quite easy for former SS officers to go on to make lucrative careers in West Germany after the war in the professions and as entrepreneurs, now that they are almost all dead, the Bundesrepublik passed a law a few years ago to go after a handful of very elderly former very low ranking individuals who had been assigned to work at a Nazi extermination camp in any capacity. The latest to be caught in the net is 94 year-old former SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) Reinhold Hanning who was put on trial on Tuesday this week in Detmold, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Questioned why Hanning who worked as a guard in Auschwitz I Concentration Camp for political prisoners and not Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was arrested, the the diligent prosecutor, Andreas Brendel, said he might have been told to go over to help at the death camp so, for this reason, he should be charged as an accessory to the murder of 170,000 Hungarian Jews who were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the time Hanning was at Auschwitz I.
Ex-SS guard on trial in late push to punish Nazi crimes | The Times of Israel

SS-Unterscharführer Reinhold Hanning

Having allowed senior officers who ran various departments involved in the Final Solution to make new and successful lives in West Germany for decades, to be dragging old men in their 90s into court, in this case because he might have, at some time, been ordered to duty at a death camp should impress no one.

For the West Germans who did nothing for so long and are now are all righteous about catching a few feeble old men who were never important is dishonorable.

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I doubt that any of the millions of people who were killed by the Nazis will shed tears for any of them.

I know that I won't. They chose to join the Nazis.

Henrin said:

What even bother at this point?

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It's like they are just looking for anyone even slightly involved to boost their image of caring about their past. Let it go, the guy is small fry and he is on deaths door.

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The Nazis that did the crime need to do the time. Their age is no excuse.

I have zero sympathy for this guy, he's lucky that he's not going to the gas chamber.

Captain America said:

Well, it is some kind of consolation. I mean the bastard got to live 71 years longer than he deserved to live. Sadly, if he get's thrown in the cooler, ( :lamo ) he will just be a drain on society keeping him alive. He should have met a .30 cal carbine a long, long time ago. My heart bleeds peanut butter for him.

But, you right. Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on pure evil. But I ain't gonna lead the charge. I hope he gets as much hell as they can give him for whatever life he has left.

But that's just me. Popcorn anyone? :2wave:

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Eh. My thing here is that this isn't any kind of "mastermind" we're dealing with. He was a lowly foot soldier, only a single rank above private. He was also only 23 when the war ended as well (17 when it started), which means that he was almost certainly brought up in the Hitler Youth, and indoctrinated into Nazi ideology regardless of whether he wanted to be or not from a very young age.

We don't have any evidence to suggest that he specifically volunteered to work at a concentration camp either. He was in the military, so he might have simply been assigned there. We also don't have any evidence to suggest that he necessarily did anything all that "evil" while he was on station. He wasn't in the "death camp" portion of the facility, after all. He was looking after political prisoners on the other side. He might have simply spent his entire tour hanging out in a guard tower, not necessarily abusing or murdering anyone.

I'm sorry, but I'm not really seeing where this guy is particularly "culpable" here. He might be guilty by means of participation, sure. However, that's true of just about every damn German alive at that point in time.

We're not going to prosecute all of them, now are we? I certainly hope not, at the very least.

This whole line of reasoning here just makes me uneasy. For one thing, it's rarely in any sense productive. For another, it's often not even really meant to be. It's just meant to allow self-righteous a-holes to feel "good" about themselves, in spite of the fact that they haven't done anything of any actual value. What's more, in doing so, they often go overboard.

I mean... Suppose some whack-a-doodle like Bernie Sanders on steroids gets elected President 20 years from now, and retroactively declares the entire Vietnam War to have been a "war crime," and starts jailing all of the remaining veterans of the conflict. In many regards, that really wouldn't be any less silly than what we're seeing here. Even if you agreed with him, it wouldn't be any less pointless either.

shrubnose said:

I doubt that any of the millions of people who were killed by the Nazis will shed tears for any of them.

I know that I won't. They chose to join the Nazis.

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A young working class lad who became an apprentice as a teenager and then went straight to work in a factory had not much choice during wartime. He had been wounded on the eastern front and after a few months recuperation was assigned to a prison camp. You seem to see the world in black-and-white terms and sound judgmental.

Some good points there Gathomas.

America has their past with the Native Americans too.

But seriously, **** a nazi. I simply don't care what befalls them.

Heinrich said:

A young working class lad who became an apprentice as a teenager and then went straight to work in a factory had not much choice during wartime. He had been wounded on the eastern front and after a few months recuperation was assigned to a prison camp.

You seem to see the world in black-and-white terms and sound judgmental.

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If you feel sorry enough for this war criminal you have my permission to do his time for him.

:lol:

Gathomas88 said:

Eh. My thing here is that this isn't any kind of "mastermind" we're dealing with. He was a lowly foot soldier, only a single rank above private. He was also only 23 when the war ended as well (17 when it started), which means that he was almost certainly brought up in the Hitler Youth, and indoctrinated into Nazi ideology regardless of whether he wanted to be or not from a very young age.

We don't have any evidence to suggest that he specifically volunteered to work at a concentration camp either. He was in the military, so he might have simply been assigned there. We also don't have any evidence to suggest that he necessarily did anything all that "evil" while he was on station. He wasn't in the "death camp" portion of the facility, after all. He was looking after political prisoners on the other side. He might have simply spent his entire tour hanging out in a guard tower, not necessarily abusing or murdering anyone.

I'm sorry, but I'm not really seeing where this guy is particularly "culpable" here. He might be guilty by means of participation, sure. However, that's true of just about every damn German alive at that point in time.

We're not going to prosecute all of them, now are we? I certainly hope not, at the very least.

This whole line of reasoning here just makes me uneasy. For one thing, it's rarely in any sense productive. For another, it's often not even really meant to be. It's just meant to allow self-righteous a-holes to feel "good" about themselves, in spite of the fact that they haven't done anything of any actual value. What's more, in doing so, they often go overboard.

I mean...

Suppose some whack-a-doodle like Bernie Sanders on steroids gets elected President 20 years from now, and retroactively declares the entire Vietnam War to have been a "war crime," and starts jailing all of the remaining veterans of the conflict.

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In many regards, that really wouldn't be any less silly than what we're seeing here. Even if you agreed with him, it wouldn't be any less pointless either.

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You can suppose that if that's how your mind works, I'm sure that won't happen.

Heinrich said:

Under a retroactive law passed in Germany in 2011 it is considered a crime to have worked in any capacity at one of the Nazi death camps. Although it was quite easy for former SS officers to go on to make lucrative careers in West Germany after the war in the professions and as entrepreneurs, now that they are almost all dead, the Bundesrepublik passed a law a few years ago to go after a handful of very elderly former very low ranking individuals who had been assigned to work at a Nazi extermination camp in any capacity. The latest to be caught in the net is 94 year-old former SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) Reinhold Hanning who was put on trial on Tuesday this week in Detmold, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Questioned why Hanning who worked as a guard in Auschwitz I Concentration Camp for political prisoners and not Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was arrested, the the diligent prosecutor, Andreas Brendel, said he might have been told to go over to help at the death camp so, for this reason, he should be charged as an accessory to the murder of 170,000 Hungarian Jews who were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the time Hanning was at Auschwitz I.
Ex-SS guard on trial in late push to punish Nazi crimes | The Times of Israel

SS-Unterscharführer Reinhold Hanning

Having allowed senior officers who ran various departments involved in the Final Solution to make new and successful lives in West Germany for decades, to be dragging old men in their 90s into court, in this case because he might have, at some time, been ordered to duty at a death camp should impress no one. For the West Germans who did nothing for so long and are now are all righteous about catching a few feeble old men who were never important is dishonorable.

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It should be embarrassing to living Germans that there were so few persons adequately punished for their participation in the administration of the Third Reich, its finance or profited from its policies. The judges went on judging, the owners of confiscated trade companies went on trading and the owners of companies that had used the slaves went on producing.

shrubnose said:

You can suppose that if that's how your mind works, I'm sure that won't happen.

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True. But there is some reality in the thinking. Punishment on the basis of retroactive legislation or "noble values" is problematic and has been practiced quite often.

shrubnose said:

I doubt that any of the millions of people who were killed by the Nazis will shed tears for any of them.

I know that I won't. They chose to join the Nazis.

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The choosing is quite clear. What was more problematic was the mental segregation of the bad apples. Though, the German post war constitution does stipulate that a citizen should resist the state if it goes afoul of the constitutional order (Grundgesetz, article 20) the culture never accepted the responsibility of the arms-length participants that enabled the Nazi mob to do its magic.

Heinrich said:

Under a retroactive law passed in Germany in 2011 it is considered a crime to have worked in any capacity at one of the Nazi death camps. Although it was quite easy for former SS officers to go on to make lucrative careers in West Germany after the war in the professions and as entrepreneurs, now that they are almost all dead, the Bundesrepublik passed a law a few years ago to go after a handful of very elderly former very low ranking individuals who had been assigned to work at a Nazi extermination camp in any capacity. The latest to be caught in the net is 94 year-old former SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) Reinhold Hanning who was put on trial on Tuesday this week in Detmold, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Questioned why Hanning who worked as a guard in Auschwitz I Concentration Camp for political prisoners and not Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was arrested, the the diligent prosecutor, Andreas Brendel, said he might have been told to go over to help at the death camp so, for this reason, he should be charged as an accessory to the murder of 170,000 Hungarian Jews who were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the time Hanning was at Auschwitz I.
Ex-SS guard on trial in late push to punish Nazi crimes | The Times of Israel

SS-Unterscharführer Reinhold Hanning

Having allowed senior officers who ran various departments involved in the Final Solution to make new and successful lives in West Germany for decades, to be dragging old men in their 90s into court, in this case because he might have, at some time, been ordered to duty at a death camp should impress no one. For the West Germans who did nothing for so long and are now are all righteous about catching a few feeble old men who were never important is dishonorable.

Click to expand...

Too little too late IMHO. Now most of these swines are dead or incapable of standing trial.

Example, Klaas Carel Faber, a Dutch citizen who committed numerous murders while serving for the Germans in the second world war had been sentenced to death which later was changed into live in jail, fled to Germany in 1952 where he lived in freedom until his death in 2012 because Germany refused to extradite war criminals who had the German nationality (and even though he was Dutch, he got the German nationality for serving in the German army during the war). But he was also not prosecuted in Germany, Faber was in 2012 even the second most wanted Nazi war criminal by the Simon Wiesenthal center in Jerusalem so it was not like he was small potatoes. But as said, Germany refused to do anything about it. Which until this day angers the victims of Faber's war crimes.

Several war criminals from other countries were protected from their just punishments due to the refusal of Germany to extradite people from those countries, simply because the Germans were of the opinion that they were German citizens due to serving in the Nazi armies.

shrubnose said:

The Nazis that did the crime need to do the time. Their age is no excuse.

I have zero sympathy for this guy, he's lucky that he's not going to the gas chamber.

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Although I rarely agree with Heinrich, I do here. It was one thing to go after the higher-ups during the Nuremberg Trials, but another thing totally to go after every single Nazi who worked at a death camp. They were not there, by choice, but by order.

The world didn't hunt down every Japanese involved in the torture of prisoners, just as the US did not hunt down the bombers of Dresden.

Very, very bad things happened in WWII, but this is going too far, in my opinion.

HowardBThiname said:

Although I rarely agree with Heinrich, I do here. It was one thing to go after the higher-ups during the Nuremberg Trials, but another thing totally to go after every single Nazi who worked at a death camp. They were not there, by choice, but by order.

The world didn't hunt down every Japanese involved in the torture of prisoners, just as the US did not hunt down the bombers of Dresden.

Very, very bad things happened in WWII, but this is going too far, in my opinion.

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Though, I understand why people would bow and let such horror persist, I absolutely disagree that punishing only the leaders is the precedence, that democracy requires.
Supervising slaves being worked to death in one's factory that paid the bills, the car, the house or watching the Polish laborer being hanged without trail on the old oak tree in the commons, because he slept with the farmer's daughter do not demonstrate a culturally firm basis for democracy and rule of law. Such deeds should be stopped immediately and where they are not, each individual has co-committed a crime.

War is another beast and while I have never really looked into the Japanese situation, I have at the Dresden question and would tend again to disagree.

joG said:

War is another beast and while I have never really looked into the Japanese situation, I have at the Dresden question and would tend again to disagree.

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Are you saying we should go after the Dresden bombers (or their memories) still today?

I have a hard time with that because, just as the nazis, they were products of an extremely disturbing event. What they did was wrong, and history has recognized that wrong but (in my opinion) when we pursue these actors into their old age, we are effectively still "fighting" the war.

There is a time for war, and that time (for WWII) is long past. Our mistake, as a world society, has been in forcing humanity to relive the horrors of war for way too long. Until that stops, true healing can't occur.

My late father told the story of sitting in a bombed out building during the Battle of the Bulge. They thought they'd secured the area, and pretty much had, but my father and his crew (he drove a tank) decided to eat their rations, sitting in the destroyed building. I don't remember if they heard a sound or what, but they looked up, the three of them, and two nazi soldiers stood in doorway, guns trained on them...and then, the nazis left without shooting them. My dad said he realized at that moment that no one, other than the leaders, really wanted that war.

Punishing this long after the fact does nothing to promote peace -- it only opens old wounds.

HowardBThiname said:

Are you saying we should go after the Dresden bombers (or their memories) still today?

I have a hard time with that because, just as the nazis, they were products of an extremely disturbing event. What they did was wrong, and history has recognized that wrong but (in my opinion) when we pursue these actors into their old age, we are effectively still "fighting" the war.

There is a time for war, and that time (for WWII) is long past. Our mistake, as a world society, has been in forcing humanity to relive the horrors of war for way too long. Until that stops, true healing can't occur.

My late father told the story of sitting in a bombed out building during the Battle of the Bulge. They thought they'd secured the area, and pretty much had, but my father and his crew (he drove a tank) decided to eat their rations, sitting in the destroyed building. I don't remember if they heard a sound or what, but they looked up, the three of them, and two nazi soldiers stood in doorway, guns trained on them...and then, the nazis left without shooting them. My dad said he realized at that moment that no one, other than the leaders, really wanted that war.

Punishing this long after the fact does nothing to promote peace -- it only opens old wounds.

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Oh, I am sorry to have been too little clear. I do not really believe that Dresden was a crime.

I agree with others, I do not think there is much room for sympathy simply because of this age. There is simply no good way to defend the actions of even a corporal at these death camps. Better late than never is a good way to put this.

Peter King said:

Too little too late IMHO. Now most of these swines are dead or incapable of standing trial.

Example, Klaas Carel Faber, a Dutch citizen who committed numerous murders while serving for the Germans in the second world war had been sentenced to death which later was changed into live in jail, fled to Germany in 1952 where he lived in freedom until his death in 2012 because Germany refused to extradite war criminals who had the German nationality (and even though he was Dutch, he got the German nationality for serving in the German army during the war). But he was also not prosecuted in Germany, Faber was in 2012 even the second most wanted Nazi war criminal by the Simon Wiesenthal center in Jerusalem so it was not like he was small potatoes. But as said, Germany refused to do anything about it. Which until this day angers the victims of Faber's war crimes.

Several war criminals from other countries were protected from their just punishments due to the refusal of Germany to extradite people from those countries, simply because the Germans were of the opinion that they were German citizens due to serving in the Nazi armies.

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West Germany provided opportunities and protection for many educated and committed Nazis after the war. Seamlessly, doctors who were involved in the race hygiene program which euthanized the handicapped, performed experiments on prisoners, and assisted in selections at death camps went on to become family doctors in the Bundesrepublik and researchers, SS officers who enjoyed careers as lawyers and judges in West Germany, others who put their Gestapo training and experience to climb the ranks of the West German police, and those who confiscated resources, money, and property from Jews continued to make a mint as entrepreneurs, art dealers, and realtors in West Germany. This retrospective law to go after the minnows is shameless hypocrisy.

The self-righteous hypocrisy is astounding. The only logical extension of this is that EVERY living German citizen from the war era (civilian included) is complicit, and hence guilty, simply because they did not rise up and stop it.

Examples like this are why I do not approve of retroactive laws.