Joseph Goebbels at Nuremberg?

[Captain Homicide]

if many of the big heads had made it all the way through the process, if they wouldn't have elected to give them life instead of the death sentence.

Which “big heads” are you referring to?

 

[Geon]

I would love to read this.

I on the other hand would not. Anything Goebbels wrote on the Third Reich would make "Springtime for Hitler" look critical by comparison!!

 

[The Tai-Pan]

All of this is based on what happened with Speer and given Goebbels seemingly demonic grasp of how to manipulate the human psyche.

I don't like this.

Reading about the trials at Nuremberg hardly give one the impression of demonic supermen. They instead portray a diverse group of bitter, defeated and (in many cases) sickly men. The Nazi's were not demons, devils or other outlandish stereotypes. They were just bad people given an environment where such badness floated to the top and was given full play. There were no magic words or verbal trickery that would have let Goebbels walk out of Nuremberg alive.

Speer got away with it because he was a lower level official (or at least was perceived at the time) and leaned heavily on his supposed technocratic role. He was also aided by the fact that the Allies were determined to actually give the former Nazi officials actual trials, instead of the show trials that would have sufficed for many.

None of this would have helped Goebbels who was not only one of the most famous high ranking Nazis ever, but whom the trials were (in some ways) literally set up to punish. Those who instigated and directed, rather then actually killed people.

 

[Glory2Cabinda]

You know the opening court scene from the first episode of Better Call Saul. This trial would play out in a very similar manner.

 

[Post]

I don't know much about the Nuremberg trials, I just voted death because I want that Nazi bastard to get what he diserves.

Banishment to the Nazi's antarctic base. In his swimwear. "What do you mean, it doesn't exist? I'm sure an aryan superman like you can build one."

 

[Captain Homicide]

The Nazi's were not demons, devils or other outlandish stereotypes. They were just bad people given an environment where such badness floated to the top and was given full play.

It seems like you’re debunking one misconception with another. There’s no reason to think that the defendants at the first Nuremberg trial were inherently evil/bad people from the start. The psychologist that meticulously examined them explicitly said they were normal people from every corner of society, not sadists, psychopaths or lunatics. Even if this was somehow true it wouldn’t explain why millions of Germans in the Party, state and military helped carry out their orders whether it be foreign conquest, repression or mass murder.

They did evil things because they were true believers in Nazism to one degree or another and held beliefs that made the various atrocities they committed and ordered just, right and necessary. We know this from both their public and private statements. As an example Himmler constantly spoke about how “decent” Germans and the SS were to commit grisly, violent acts on an unprecedented scale for the greater good yet not become deranged or brutalized by it. The above goes for basically any evil political leadership in history whether it be Stalin’s USSR, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, ISIS or the Confederacy. It may be comforting to think that only bad people do bad things but human history tells us otherwise. If only the sadistic, psychopathic and deranged did bad things the world would be much better off because they only make up a single digit percentage of the population.

Here’s a relevant quote from Arthur Koestler:

No historian would deny that the part played by crimes committed for personal motives is very small compared to the vast populations slaughtered in unselfish loyalty to a jealous god, king, country, or political system. The crimes of Caligula shrink to insignificance compared to the havoc wrought by Torquemada. The number of people killed by robbers, highwaymen, gangsters and other asocial elements is negligible compared to the masses cheerfully slain in the name of the true religion, the righteous cause. Heretics were tortured and burned alive not in anger but in sorrow, for the good of their immortal souls. The Russian and Chinese purges were represented as operations of social hygiene, to prepare man for the golden age of the classless society. The gas chambers and crematoria worked towards the advent of a different type of millennium. To say it once more: throughout human history, the ravages caused by excesses of individual self-assertion are quantitatively negligible compared to the numbers slain ad majorem gloriam out of a self-transcending devotion to a flag, a leader, a religious faith or political conviction. Man has always been prepared not only to kill, but also to die for good, bad, or completely hare-brained causes. What can be a more valid proof for the reality of the urge towards self-transcendence?

Thus the historical record confronts us with the paradox that the tragedy of man originates not his aggressiveness but in his devotion to transpersonal ideals; not in an excess of individual self-assertiveness but in a malfunction of the integrative tendencies in our species. I think it was Pascal who said: man is neither angel nor devil, but when he tries to act the angel he turns into a devil.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

It seems like you’re debunking one misconception with another. There’s no reason to think that the defendants at the first Nuremberg trial were inherently evil/bad people from the start. The psychologist that meticulously examined them explicitly said they were normal people from every corner of society, not sadists, psychopaths or lunatics. Even if this was somehow true it wouldn’t explain why millions of Germans in the Party, state and military helped carry out their orders whether it be foreign conquest, repression or mass murder.

They did evil things because they were true believers in Nazism to one degree or another and held beliefs that made the various atrocities they committed and ordered just, right and necessary. We know this from both their public and private statements. As an example Himmler constantly spoke about how “decent” Germans and the SS were to commit grisly, violent acts on an unprecedented scale for the greater good yet not become deranged or brutalized by it. The above goes for basically any evil political leadership in history whether it be Stalin’s USSR, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, ISIS or the Confederacy.

Oh, I was describing them by 1945. Just bad old men.

 

[Eivind]

Strange question. As if there is any doubt.