Never thought I would be posting a lemmygrad user here but here we are.
Never thought I would be posting a lemmygrad user here but here we are.
"Not all", and i cannot emphasize this enough, literal fucking SS men.
The entire organization was judged guilty for it's critical role in the holocaust, to say nothing of the millions upon millions of people they murdered beyond the holocaust. The case was tried decades ago.
The interesting bit about the guilt is that Canadian courts did a "Ukrainian SS are no big deal" defense, there were decades of organized white washing for them. This can also be seen in wikipedia and the empirical work of historians who did in fact link Ukrainian volunteer SS units to war crimes are diminished there or not even mentioned.
the people who I feel like could have a case of not being executed are those who just joined and thus did not participate in any actions falling under crimes against humanity and can prove they joined either due to large pressure from others or to gather intelligence.
as I said in another comment, I don't know much about about the SS aside from surface level information, so I admit it may be the case that there are no people who fufill both requirements I gave.
No investigation, no right to speak.
Look 80 years hard labor in Siberia I think is an acceptable compromise
Lmao they said in like 4 different comments that they only have a surface level understanding of what the SS was.
Could they have spent that time looking into who the SS was and what they did?
Of course, instead they keep double and tripling down, choosing to die on a hill defending the fucking Nazis.
Sorry, I thought "surface level understanding of what the SS was" conveyed something else than you clearly understood it as.
I know the SS ran death camps, I've been at one. I know that members of the SS executed people for little to no reason. that's what I consider surface level information about the SS.
What I meant is I didn't know how people were recruted to the SS. I assumed that as the war progressed it changed from purely voluntary to, at least for some new recruits, to done under threat of death, which, according to @Tankiedesantski@lemmygrad.ml did happen.
I am talking only about those who fall in this group and furthermore either deserted or did not participate in any crimes against humanity for a different reason. And I don't think they should be considered members of the organization. Some of them could still support the Nazi government but should be tried as citizens. Those for whom there is no information to suggest have supported or voluntary collaborated with the Nazi government are then innocent.
Even those who didn't committed atrocities are guilty. Even liberal German courts are that opinion. With the SS you have to proof your innocence when you were member of it or even a volunteer (which is more damning).
At least 60k Ukrainians were volunteers for the Nazis SS or army or alike. They were important contributors to the genocides that were happening there.
Even after 1943 you had the extremely problematic UPA (Banderitas) which did commit massacres which were complementary to the ones of the Nazis and the SS (which orders they did follow). Then again the individual innocence not guilt of members has to be proofed here. One reason for that is that there was pretty much no war crime free unit, no forced press ganging and the victims can hardly identify people.
Before you defend Nazis do at least research about the individual people and their units and listen to experts.
Early in the war, the SS had extremely high standards for recruits for racial purity and ideological commitment. Anyone who joined during this period can basically be safely shot without trial.
Late into 1944 and 1945 the SS was very much in the practice of conscripting people at gunpoint so that's where it gets murkey to shoot all of them out of hand. Not necessarily wrong, I think there's shakier justification for executing a conscript vs a hardened fanatic.
Probably best to just give the conscripts hard corrective labor like the Wehrmacht prisoners. Maybe a longer term or harder work since they were still SS.
Late into 1944 and 1945 the SS was very much in the practice of conscripting people at gunpoint
Only if we're talking areas outside of Germany. I know that's the case here, but it's important to clarify because "i was forced to join the nazis or i would've been shot" is a very common justification that is very often blatantly false.
yup! that is what I was thinking about. especially if someone was not in the organization long enough so they did not commit any crimes against humanity or war crimes.
absolutely every single one of them should have been shot
It should be a case by case basis between
or 
If someone joined the SS to spy on them, you would think that one of the allies or partisan groups would have claimed them as their own sometime in the past 80 years.
Whew! It wasn't me. Ok.
Even lemmygrad fears our power.
Meh read that comment didn't think it was worth a dunk post entirely for it. Don't let rage bait define your online persona its all I'll say about this.
To be clear I only say this because I'd rather give other leftist instances even a small bit of chance, you know internet, text, nuance and all that. Anyone else? Yeah go ahead.
SS is used so often as a stand in for any Nazi military person that... this kinda makes sense. its still wrong but I can understand the confusion.
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economically? yes.
by force or threat of death? as long as that person did not participate in any crimes against humanity committed by the SS (which likely only happened at the end of the war, though also with those who deserted), then I don't think they should be considered members of the SS. and those are the only people who I mean.
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Not sure where to put this, so I'm putting this here: I am not going to respond further to comments about this as I want to limit the effect this has on my mental state, which is not amazing even not including this. I don't really care what you think about me, I just think killing people for being Nazis if that person did not actively chose to be a Nazi does nothing aside kill a person.
Maybe its because I value rehabilitation over punishment? I don't know and I don't really care.
I don't hold a grudge about anyone here, again I don't really care, aside from the mental drain of arguing on the internet.
Just in case this is incredible ignorance.
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You're doing the Clean Wehrmacht myth, which people would dunk on you for if it were about them.
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It's not even the fucking Wehrmacht. You're doing it for the fucking SS. The ideologically most committed core of nazism. The most loyal and evil fucking footsoldiers.
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The average nazi deserved to be thrown in a pit. The SS deserve much much worse.
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I don't really care what you think about me, I just think killing people for being Nazis if that person did not actively chose to be a Nazi does nothing aside kill a person.
The SS is completely voluntary. It isn't like the Wehrmacht where conscripts went to. To become part of the SS, you had to prove your ancestors up to the 1800, 1750 for officers, weren't Jewish. This is stricter than the rest of Nazi society where the Nuremberg laws were in effect.
Like come on.
Rehabilitation of former SS members.
Retroactive abortion of former SS members.I hope the door smashes your tailbone into a million little pieces on the way out
I appreciate your position and your response even if I think you're wrong. Even then, I don't think you're completely off base. Ideally, this kind of thing needs to be accounted for on a case-by-case basis whenever that's possible. But 99.99% of those cases still deserve the fucking wall. There is a line crossed where if a person consciously chooses to support the things that Nazis support enough to actually become one, coerced or not (and join the SS no less), that person forfeits the same right to life they would deny others and so deserve whatever comes to them as a result, including death, execution.
That said, a lot of people around here have no conception of justice beyond "my side = good and justified no matter what and any killing in support of the revolution is 'good.'" They advocate even for the explicit murder of children (that post is good, but many of the comments are disgusting), completely innocent of any crime, so long as they might be some nebulas potential threat. There is a very gross, anti-humanism streak that a lot of posters around these parts fall victim to, and I hate to see it. I'm glad there are still people here who recognize the gravity of actually executing another human being and are rightly reluctant to just throw caution to the wind and go all in in support. So again, thank you for posting this, and try not to let the cynicism of the frothing "kill 'em all!1!!" contingent get you down.
While it's true that this is something that should be done on a case by case basis, as you pointed out, "99.99% of those cases still deserve the fucking wall". It's a generalization that's true of so many SS members that it's pretty odd that someone would so quickly think "what if this is one of the 0.01% that didn't do horrific things to people?" The case is a lot closer to black and white than the handling of the tzarspawn.
It's not strictly impossible that you are right and this guy is the one good SS member, but it's so implausible that this is just a really weird hill to die on.
Werr they conscripting weirmacht soldiers into the SS or civilians? I have a hard time believing that they'd tell a baker to join the atrocities division out of the gate. I think that ideological buy in to the, according to the verdict of the Nuremberg trials, criminal organization that committed atrocities would make you, at best, intolerant with no place in society. If you were haunted by a ghost who wails at you "oh, so just because I was fighting for the intolerant in the war, you killed me?" I think you could live a normal, happy life. Find me the single case of a kindly civilian who didn't endorse Nazi ideology, who went straight to being conscripted to the SS in 44 or 45, and who killed no allied soldier. I'd be shocked to find them. I don't know how you could even prove it, frankly. I see where you're coming from but holy fuck are you looking for a hay in a needle stack. Seems like a convenient way to transition to that Parenti quote about how the revolution isn't perfect on day 1. If you told me that the Nuremberg trials killed off three kindly bakers conscripted to the SS, I wouldn't have called the post-war effort a farce. I'd go big book of communism on you and blame the Nazis who were lying about their non-involvement for muddying the waters for the 3 kindly bakers.
If you told me that the Nuremberg trials killed off three kindly bakers conscripted to the SS
The Nuremberg Trials only killed 10 guys, from Nazi leadership, so there was literally zero chance of that, even if such people really existed (extremely dubious).
:(
It's okay to have a shit take once in a while but just own up to it. That goes a long way.
This one just happened to be an all timer and had to be posted.
Like come the fuck on you literally did a "not all Nazis"
This is beyond clean wehrmacht type shit. You were whitewashing the fucking SS.
Let me make this more abundantly clear: Every single person in the SS deserves to be shot in the head.
Yeah I know, however my point was not that not all Nazis should be executed, but rather that someone being in the ranks of the SS means that person is a Nazi. most of them, of course, are. I believe this is similar, though more should be more strict, to Nazi party members, as membership of the Nazi party was virtually mandatory for many people.
If someone was pressured to join the SS and did not commit any crimes against humanity or war crimes, they should be treated the same as if they did not join the SS.
though admittedly I don't exactly know much of how people would be recruited to the SS so maybe there is no people who fit into this category.