Should German WWII vets be arrested?[W:260]

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Superfly said:

How can they be prosecuted if they were following a direct order from their commanding officer? Honestly, I understand that this was a horrible circumstance, but if these guys are brought to justice, in my opinion, anyway, it'd make more soldiers hesitant about signing up, if they can be prosecuted for following an order they were forced to do.

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"Crimes Against Humanity" stand void of rank and discipline and address only the person. Orders or no orders mean nothing.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

AlbqOwl said:

Would you? Even if it meant leaving behind family who could be suspect or persecuted or shot as you surely would have been? Or would the wiser course be to obey orders but do what you could to relieve the pain and suffering of those in the camps? What if Oscar Schindler had chosen to be a good Nazi and just shrug and/or look away instead of pretending to be an upstanding Nazi dignitary while quietly saving as many as he could? The many thousands of descendants of the "Schindler Jews" would certainly know how to answer that. And Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, is prominently memorialized as a humanitarian and great man in every Holocaust and Intolerance museum across the country.

Unless there is somebody to come forward and accuse those three German soldiers of committing atrocities and cruelty, I say the fact that they were assigned to the Jewish holding or extermination centers is not sufficient to condemn them now.

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This constant lie to defend him is just that - a lie. Not one German was forced to join the SS. They were death squads. To lie is absolute and you have nothing to support it.

You can not point to even one example where any German - civilian or soldier or officer - was persecuted, court martialed, shot nor any action of any kind against his family.

If he is claiming he joined the SS and volunteered to go to slaughter ("exterminate") Jews for the purpose of trying to save them, he can present that defense. What is a lie is to claim that he didn't want to be, was forced to be there, or would have been punished if he refused or wanted a transfer. Working in an extermination camp was an assignment of high honor, there was no shortage of SS and others willing and wanting to do so.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

RabidAlpaca said:

4th refusal for a link.

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Lies upon lies and now just diversion from the fact that in your defense of mass murderers and sadists and attempts to trivialize it to nothing you have yet to prove one thing you claim. Between us, who has refused to provide any link or documentation of anything is only you.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Wiggen said:

Yeah, the difference is that most of us have evolved. There's a reason why we're the only country in the Western world without a miserable history of persecution of the Jews. Have you ever visited the city of York, where you can visit the spot where they gathered all the Jews together and burned them?

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The two largest Jewish populations at the start of WWII was #1 Poland (Warsaw) and #2 NYC. Jews were totally eradicated from Poland and Germany. The very few to return to Germany immediately after the war were killed/murdered by their German neighbors.

Now the 2 largest Jewish populations are #1 Israel and #2 New York.

There is no - zero, none - moral equivalency between dislike of Jews, Catholics, Blacks, Latinos, Italians, Northerners, Southerners and all the other dislikes different people have of each other in the USA, and the German holocaust.

Only a true defender of mass murder and torture on a genocidal and societal level would even suggest there was any similarity. In fact, the United States was THE primary shelter and place of refuge for Jews and those who could afford it sent their children and families here.

My wife's family knows an elderly Jewish man very well who was sent to the USA as an infant from Germany. That was all his family could afford. Even his twin brother had to stay behind. His entire family was murdered. The United States was the least prejudiced country against Jews in the world. The USA was Jews safe haven.

There is reason to feel contempt and even hatred towards those who defend those of the holocaust and of those who try to declare there was one iota of similarity between Americans attitudes towards Jews to that of Germans, or the actions of the USA government to that of the German government towards Jews. Those who do are more than just horrific bigoted liars. They are such people of such immorality and amorality the was those of the holocaust.

Sometimes I do question free speech when the intent of it is murderous bigotry and hatred at its core. I am reading this on this thread.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

joko104 said:

This constant lie to defend him is just that - a lie. Not one German was forced to join the SS. They were death squads. To lie is absolute and you have nothing to support it.

You can not point to even one example where any German - civilian or soldier or officer - was persecuted, court martialed, shot nor any action of any kind against his family.

If he is claiming he joined the SS and volunteered to go to slaughter ("exterminate") Jews for the purpose of trying to save them, he can present that defense. What is a lie is to claim that he didn't want to be, was forced to be there, or would have been punished if he refused or wanted a transfer. Working in an extermination camp was an assignment of high honor, there was no shortage of SS and others willing and wanting to do so.

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??? I don't see how this relates to my post at all. I know it is popular to say that German soldiers did not have to accept assignment to the concentration camps, and those who opted out suffered no negative consequences, but I have not found a single testimony of a German soldier who opted out. And common sense should tell us that it would take a very brave soul to say no to Himmler who, in the wake of the attempted assassination of Hitler, ordered the execution of roughly 5000 Germans accused of opposing Hitler and his policies. There are, however, testimonies from the survivors of acts of random kindness or mercy extended by German guards--very rare for sure--but remembered when they happened.

My point was that we do not always accomplish the highest goals by direct frontal confrontation and/or self righteous indignation.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

AlbqOwl said:

??? I don't see how this relates to my post at all. I know it is popular to say that German soldiers did not have to accept assignment to the concentration camps, and those who opted out suffered no negative consequences, but I have not found a single testimony of a German soldier who opted out. And common sense should tell us that it would take a very brave soul to say no to Himmler who, in the wake of the attempted assassination of Hitler, ordered the execution of roughly 5000 Germans accused of opposing Hitler and his policies. There are, however, testimonies from the survivors of acts of random kindness or mercy extended by German guards--very rare for sure--but remembered when they happened.

My point was that we do not always accomplish the highest goals by direct frontal confrontation and/or self righteous indignation.

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In fact, strangely maybe, the only known act of Himmler taking any adverse action in relation to brutality and murder of Jews was not against anyone for refusing. It was for refusing to set aside a court verdict that someone who, on his own, set up to put together people to kill 20,000 Jews - and in those killings first did sadistic, brutal acts and did so in public. He was sentenced to 10 years. The court stressed it was not for killing Jews as that was patriotic. It was because of how disorganized and unruly it was done without authorization.

His wife appealed to Himmler personally. While Himmler refused to overrule the sentence, he did assure she had housing and food. She then appealed to Himmler that one of her children had back problems and needed medical care. He instructed the child be medically examined. It was determined the back problem was co-genital. For this, the child was euthanized under German policy.

I have no posted this many times as it is true. No German was ever punished for refusing to participate in ANY action against Jews nor for refusing to participate in any war crimes otherwise.

I disagree with "the highest goal." It was not only Jews unthinkable victims of the most organized and fine oiled persecution and killing design (not the greatest genocide), but such atrocities occurred by the SS in virtually every town, village and city German occupied. It is known the SS not only was entirely voluntarily, but prestigious to be in it - for which it known their tasks were such atrocities. A German who qualified for and joined the SS did so for the purpose of being part of that which did atrocities - it was the known purpose.

I think the highest goal is to make it absolutely clear that there is zero tolerance for such as the holocaust, that ever effort will be made to search down and punish anyone and everyone who participated even if take decades, and that shugging our shoulders to pretend we didn't know what SS or concentration/death camp Germans did it 100% unacceptable. IF he claims he was there in some covert sense to help the Jews, let him make his defense for it.

Finally, "small or random acts of kinds" do not erase guilt for great acts of evil. Mass rapists and murders probably also occasionally did "random acts of kindness." It is known who and what German guards at concentration camps did. Citing generic platitudes to eliminate or reduce this to nothingness is not acceptable. Nor is this about American absolute presumption of innocence as this is NOT a civilian issue. It is a war crimes military issue of someone who volunteered specifically to be in the SS, which was declared therefore an ineligibility to claim prisoner of war status because 1.) it was voluntary and 2.) in every village, town and city, plus every concentration camp, it known exact what the SS was and what those of it volunteered wanting to do.

Yet even in civil criminal law, being along for the ride in criminal acts is equal criminal liability. If a person wants to claim they were there against their will, that is an affirmative defense question. Under your theory, if a carload of KKK members drove thru a neighborhood shooting blacks, and the police pulled them over, in your claim not one of them could be prosecuted because you can't prove who actually pulled the trigger. Your theory doesn't even work in American criminal law.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

I will add the United States can claim self righteous indignation. The American military was the most civilized decent military in WWII in the history of earth. It is the first time a military had not raped, murdered and pillaged across it's path. We did liberate people. We did not steal their possessions but returned them to them. We did prohibit our soldiers from committing crimes civilians. No military had ever treated its prisoners so well.

The USA was the great safe refuge that Jews fled to. It was the United States that went to great efforts to return all pillaged and stolen property to Jews or their heirs - to this day. It was the United States that lead for TRIALS of accused SS and Germans of war crimes, rather than summary executions, torture and murder such as the Russians.

So I say the USA can, in fact, rightly have "self righteous indignation." The USA was, by ever measure, "the good guys." America, Americans and our soldiers were the heroes and saviors. In blood and fortune, this country earned such self righteousness and EVERYONE should feel total "indignation" for every aspect of the atrocities of the German military and in many regards German society.

You can off point if you want to make accusations against the Soviets - not one of which I would dispute. Or you can try to find any wrong against any Jew by any American and declare moral equivalency, which I think is such an unthinkable lie only a true bigot and person who hates Jews and secretly admires the holocaust and Himmler would claim.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

NoC_T said:

Why didn't you quote me? Were you hoping I wouldn't notice?

It makes as much sense as implying I'm an antisemite for daring to mention Tel Aviv in a thread about fugitive Nazi camp guards. Because it's such a stretch. You're a sub-par contributor, Wiggen. Emotionality and conditioned victimhood are all you have.

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Well, at least I'm not a blatant liar who denies his previous posts. I'd suggest you look at your post (#8) on page one of this thread, where you ignorantly opine that if the Israelis had managed to get Hitler, they'd have taken him to Tel Aviv, 'lynched' him, and probably televised the lynching.

I suppose its too much to expect you to keep track of your own posts. Even us sub-par posters manage to do that.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

joko104 said:

I will add the United States can claim self righteous indignation. The American military was the most civilized decent military in WWII in the history of earth. .

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Except for the U.S. Marines in the Pacific. They didn't take prisoners during battle. But neither did the Japanese.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

The level of atrocities by the SS is beyond want anyone can imagine. Some people want to declare it only happened secretly in concentration camps and only towards Jews. Rather, it was a total rein of terror against foremost Jews as a totality of genocide, but against essentially everyone. In every village, town, city, countryside, the SS routinely executed and tortured people, even just randomly, to establish the terror. Deliberate sadism done as routine to establish the terror. People forced to assault and kill their own neighbors and family members. People tortured just to be tortured, accused of nothing. Across all conquered lands, this was done. None of which was secret, including to Germans.

The SS was the prestigious place to be. They were given honors and power, status and rewards. It wasn't merely voluntarily, but highly sought and had to be qualified to be in. Its purpose was terror. Terror over civilians. Terror over politicians. Even terror over the military. The SS was not hated by Germans, but admired. They were Germany's greatest heroes.

Service at a concentration camp was not a punishment. It was not random. It was a high honor with status and benefits. All the claims that some Germans were forced to be their against their wishes and stayed there opposing what was happening has no foundation in truth. It is exactly opposite from the truth.

Many feared own quickly the rein of terror of the Germans in WWII would be forgotten, buried away or excused. They were correct. That generation still exists, yet also nearly all of it trivialized to nothing, excused, or denied by so many.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

I don't imagine the Bataan death march helped the Marines attitude.

APACHERAT said:

Except for the U.S. Marines in the Pacific..

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Aliens and the Third Reich is currently on H2.
Last hour showed Today's Nazis in Germany celebrating those WW2 Vets w3ho are still living .

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

APACHERAT said:

Except for the U.S. Marines in the Pacific. They didn't take prisoners during battle. But neither did the Japanese.

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That is true. However, even in that context I will state the American military even against the Japanese were extraordinarily humane given knowledge of what the Japanese did not only to Americans, but to the peoples of who they conquered. If a Japanese soldier came walking across the field with his hands up? He would be shot, no question.

But we never lined up captured prisoners and mowed then down with machine guns. We did not torture and starve to death those Japanese in POW camps. If a unit did offer to surrender, their surrender was accepted. Rare, but that is what would then happen. Often, we did capture Japanese prisoners and did not brutalize or torture them to death.

I think some things shouldn't be forgotten and with how much people curse actions of the USA military (sometimes even I do), the USA military's conduct in WWII had never occurred before in the history of warfare. We did not just replace subjugated people with our own subjugation. Our troops were not urged on with promises of rape and pillage. We actually did liberate people. We did not torment and terrorize those whose lands our military rolled over. This was unheard of prior in warfare.

They call that generation of Americans "THE GREAT GENERATION" - and they were. It is too bad they are dying off now rapidly and soon few will remain. I wish they are who controlled this country and our military now. They deserve all the cheering and praise they deserve. Not because they were victorious. But because they were the saviors and rescuers to more tens of thousands of villages, towns and cities and hundreds of millions of people - all which we could have plundered, raped, tortured and stolen everything they had - and instead we rescued and restored them.

I am not hesitant to criticize and condemn many things about this country, this government, Americans and the military. But the USA, Americans and the American military in WWII deserved only the highest possible praises. Because of them, because of that generation, the world became a better place and because of them the world did not permanently become an unthinkable level of sadism, degradation, slavery and murder.

It is sad how quickly this is being forgotten and trivialize. They were the GREATEST generation of Americans. This was American's high water mark in which the USA - the people, the government and the military - shined in glory and in morality and decency such as the world had never seen before in earth's history. I suspect not to return again.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

NIMBY said:

I don't imagine the Bataan death march helped the Marines attitude.
Aliens and the Third Reich is currently on H2.
Last hour showed Today's Nazis in Germany celebrating those WW2 Vets w3ho are still living .

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It wasn't just the Bataan death march. I suspect it was as much also how they saw the way the Japanese had treated civilians in the territories the conquered and stories coming out of how they treated Chinese civilians.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

joko104 said:

The German population knew about the holocaust.

The German population knew the holocaust was happening.

Germans knew of Holocaust horror about death camps | UK news | The Guardian


"The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitler's Holocaust, according to a new research study. They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatised as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand.

They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of officially-inspired German media articles and posters according to the study, which is due to be published simultaneously in Britain and the US early next month and which was described as ground-breaking by Oxford University Press yesterday and already hailed by other historians.

The reports, in newspapers and magazines all over the country were phases in a public process of "desensitisation" which worked all too well, culminating in the killing of 6m Jews, says Robert Gellately. His book, Backing Hitler, is based on the first systematic analysis by a historian of surviving German newspaper and magazine archives since 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor. The survey took hundreds of hours and yielded dozens of folders of photocopies, many of them from the 24 main newspapers and magazines of the period."

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The mass of ordinary Germans is not 100% of Germans. And at the time they might (because this is a study and not the know all and end all of history because it is nothing more than a study) have known something was up, but what were they to do? Kill Hitler? Stauffenberg tried that and it did not work. Protest? Sure, and get a one way ticket to the eastern front or a concentration camp. Rise up? How, every able bodied man was fighting outside of Germany against the Russians and the Allied forces. Germany was left with women, children and older non-front ready men, in a country in which had become a police/military state. A state in which different opinions were about as popular as bubonic plague. A country in which parents could not denounce Hitler even in private because Adolf had bread a generation of little traitors though the Hitler youth and the equivalent girls organization. Public criticism of Hitler was not to be recommended either, the Gestapo was a formidable foe and the consequences for speaking out could be fatal.

Germans ought to have known better than to elect Adolf Hitler but guess what, they thought with their stomachs because they were starving. They bought into Hitlers image rather than the person that he actually was. And let's be honest, Hitler was an ace at deceiving people and leading them on. He lead a country on a path to war and they were no longer to stop the roller coaster that was Adolf Hitler after 1933. They might have wanted too because more Germans voted against Adolf than for him, but the damage had been done. Add to that years and years of indoctrination and the removal from Jews out of the public eye (by deporting them, by stuffing them into ghettos) and you have a recipe for disaster. A mad man with a whole network of zealots who will do anything their Fuhrer wants them to do and a populous who might know but is not in a position to stop that mad man.

Maybe Germans pretended they did not know. But the Nazi's did not openly promote or admit their misdeeds. They were sneaky monsters on top of efficient monsters. They built their murder camps outside of Germany. Most of them were in Poland or other eastern European countries. How will a person in Hamburg know exactly what is happening in Krakow? Do you really think the news papers reported on the misdeeds of the Nazi's? There was no free press in Germany, no internet that would have reported on such misdeeds. No camera phones to sneakily make shots that would prove crimes were happening and an independent news media to make it public.

You present it as a black or white issue and it is not. There is a whole lot of gray in the mix there where people might have known but were unable to act, etc.

I am all for prosecuting the actual perpetrators of the holocaust, even after all these years, convict them and jail them if you can prove it honestly and not just based purely on eye witness accounts from 70 years ago. You need to have additional evidence of their guilt. And Germany will prosecute evil bastards from the second world war, even today if there is enough evidence. And that is how it should be, the perpetrators have to be punished but the German people as a whole needs to be given a break after about 70 years. This generation of Germans cannot be blamed for the sins of their parents, they were the ones who elected Hitler to power, not the Germans of today.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Peter King said:

The mass of ordinary Germans is not 100% of Germans. And at the time they might (because this is a study and not the know all and end all of history because it is nothing more than a study) have known something was up, but what were they to do? Kill Hitler? Stauffenberg tried that and it did not work. Protest? Sure, and get a one way ticket to the eastern front or a concentration camp. Rise up? How, every able bodied man was fighting outside of Germany against the Russians and the Allied forces. Germany was left with women, children and older non-front ready men, in a country in which had become a police/military state. A state in which different opinions were about as popular as bubonic plague. A country in which parents could not denounce Hitler even in private because Adolf had bread a generation of little traitors though the Hitler youth and the equivalent girls organization. Public criticism of Hitler was not to be recommended either, the Gestapo was a formidable foe and the consequences for speaking out could be fatal.

Germans ought to have known better than to elect Adolf Hitler but guess what, they thought with their stomachs because they were starving. They bought into Hitlers image rather than the person that he actually was. And let's be honest, Hitler was an ace at deceiving people and leading them on. He lead a country on a path to war and they were no longer to stop the roller coaster that was Adolf Hitler after 1933. They might have wanted too because more Germans voted against Adolf than for him, but the damage had been done. Add to that years and years of indoctrination and the removal from Jews out of the public eye (by deporting them, by stuffing them into ghettos) and you have a recipe for disaster. A mad man with a whole network of zealots who will do anything their Fuhrer wants them to do and a populous who might know but is not in a position to stop that mad man.

Maybe Germans pretended they did not know. But the Nazi's did not openly promote or admit their misdeeds. They were sneaky monsters on top of efficient monsters. They built their murder camps outside of Germany. Most of them were in Poland or other eastern European countries. How will a person in Hamburg know exactly what is happening in Krakow? Do you really think the news papers reported on the misdeeds of the Nazi's? There was no free press in Germany, no internet that would have reported on such misdeeds. No camera phones to sneakily make shots that would prove crimes were happening and an independent news media to make it public.

You present it as a black or white issue and it is not. There is a whole lot of gray in the mix there where people might have known but were unable to act, etc.

I am all for prosecuting the actual perpetrators of the holocaust, even after all these years, convict them and jail them if you can prove it honestly and not just based purely on eye witness accounts from 70 years ago. You need to have additional evidence of their guilt. And Germany will prosecute evil bastards from the second world war, even today if there is enough evidence. And that is how it should be, the perpetrators have to be punished but the German people as a whole needs to be given a break after about 70 years. This generation of Germans cannot be blamed for the sins of their parents, they were the ones who elected Hitler to power, not the Germans of today.

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I certainly agree that not ALL Germans approved of Hitler, voted for Hitler nor liked what was done to people. The secret police were everywhere and any criticism severely punished. I only claim that yes, Germans knew what was happening. They all knew. I do not claim they all liked it, all wanted it or any of that. Some very much did not and many (but a small minority) of Germans actively worked against it in may ways.

The fluxes that causes Hitler to survive that assassination attempt (window open, one armed Col. unable to activate both bombs, the bomb moved on the other side of a heavy leg of the table) was tragic. The German Army had not sent its tanks to Normandy because of Hitler. They did not send them because they were holding them to take out the SS in Berlin when Hitler dead, planning to accuse the SS for the assassination given Hitler's popularity. They planned to surrender to the Americans and British, rushing all their resources to stop the Russians from obliterating Germany. Yes, many Germans opposed the holocaust and Hitler.

I oppose sympathy for SS at death camps. Feeling sorry for them or making rationalizations or excuses for them is totally unacceptable to me, nor is there immunity for having gotten away with not getting caught for so long an exemption from punishment and justice.

Is Germany - the generation now - culpable in any way? Personally, no. Economically and politically? To some extent possibly. Jews were never returned their land, their homes, their business nor their wealth. Hundreds of thousands of silver sets, china sets and everything else take from Jews are in their homes and their possessions and wealth now. Germans still have their homes, their land and their businesses - rather than their own heirs. Jews were never invited back to Germany. Among the few who returned, most were murdered.

I don't know what reparations Germany every made, and of course could not after the war. Do they own reparations now? Or political obligation? I believe they do in some regards. For example, I believe Germany has a strict duty to defend Israel. It was Germany and Germans who made it a necessity for Jews to flee and form their own safe haven, unable to return after the war. Europe and Germany was the ancestral home to most Jewish families going back for centuries - this totally and forever stolen from them.

If my father kills your father, steals all he has and gives it to me, I can't claim its rightly mine and tough luck to you because I didn't do it.

So I don't think the grandchildren of SS have any criminal liability or individual civil liability. But I do think Germany had a collective obligation. This was NOT that long ago for the scale of the slaughter and theft.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

joko104 said:

Lies upon lies and now just diversion from the fact that in your defense of mass murderers and sadists and attempts to trivialize it to nothing you have yet to prove one thing you claim. Between us, who has refused to provide any link or documentation of anything is only you.

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5th refusal for a link.

You claimed to have a link, I called you on it, you refused to provide the link. I think it's pretty obvious that you're a liar.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Wiggen said:

The mass execution of hundreds of thousands - perhaps as many as a million - Jews by the Einsatzgrupen in Russia was not a holocaust? God, you anti-Israeli Eurolefties live in an interesting world.

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Since when is Russia = Germany and since when would German citizens know what is going on in Russian streets? The whole thing started out with the claim that German citizens in Germany knew what was going on against the Jews including the holocaust. Historical fact shows they in most of Germany did not know the full extent of the issue.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Wiggen said:

Well, at least I'm not a blatant liar who denies his previous posts. I'd suggest you look at your post (#8) on page one of this thread, where you ignorantly opine that if the Israelis had managed to get Hitler, they'd have taken him to Tel Aviv, 'lynched' him, and probably televised the lynching.

I suppose its too much to expect you to keep track of your own posts. Even us sub-par posters manage to do that.

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Stop gibbering. Show me where I've lied.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Proud South Korean said:

Then the whole situation wouldn't make sense. If you didn't want to commit murder then you simply didn't have to volunteer. I thought we were discussing under the hypothesis if people were forced to participate in mass murder.

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I said that they choose to follow orders not that they choose to volunteer.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Red_Dave said:

I said that they choose to follow orders not that they choose to volunteer.

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Have it your way then

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

NoC_T said:

Stop gibbering. Show me where I've lied.

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Oh come on. If I'm gibbering its only because I pointed out your anti-Semitic post to you. It's hard to remain totally coherent when discussing issues like this with people who have -uh - hangups - about Jews. You're the one who talked about televised lynchings in Tel Aviv and then played innocent. Own it.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

PeteEU said:

Since when is Russia = Germany and since when would German citizens know what is going on in Russian streets? The whole thing started out with the claim that German citizens in Germany knew what was going on against the Jews including the holocaust. Historical fact shows they in most of Germany did not know the full extent of the issue.

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History shows nothing of the sort - unless you believe the fiction that the only Nazis in Germany were killed during World War II, and the remainder were as pure as the driven snow. Not even the Germans at the time claimed they didn't know about the holocaust.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Wiggen said:

History shows nothing of the sort - unless you believe the fiction that the only Nazis in Germany were killed during World War II, and the remainder were as pure as the driven snow. Not even the Germans at the time claimed they didn't know about the holocaust.

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I would imagine, that unless they were involved with the military or they lived in close proximity to one of the camps, the average german civilian knew little about the holocaust at the time.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

OscarB63 said:

I would imagine, that unless they were involved with the military or they lived in close proximity to one of the camps, the average german civilian knew little about the holocaust at the time.

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Well, assuming they never read a newspaper, listened to Herr Goebbels on the radio, or assumed that all of those missing Jews were at summer camp, you're probably right.

Re: Should German WWII vets be arrested?

Wiggen said:

Well, assuming they never read a newspaper, listened to Herr Goebbels on the radio, or assumed that all of those missing Jews were at summer camp, you're probably right.

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you have to remember that this was the 1940s. unless they lived in a big city, access to newspapers and media was very limited. Hell, half my neighbors could disappear overnight and I wouldn't notice.