Rearmament without the Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht

[AJE]

Eh, not really - one way or the other West Germany needed self-defence forces at a minimum, unless they managed to get 'Finlandised'.

Even that need would be overridden by understanding what had happened:

To be honest, lads, when it comes to popular culture the Clean Wehrmacht myth is still alive. I can't think of that many recent war movies where there hasn't been at least some stoic professional German character - only ones that spring to mind are Fury, and Dunkirk (where we never really see the Germans anyway).

I mean, granted, there've been a lot less WWII movies than there used to be anyway, but still...

If they had really understood what had happened, there would have to be no concept of a "good German" as described above in their mindset- it would need to be accepted that every German was bad. There could not have been any rehabilitated or clean Germans who could be allowed to lead any sort of military- they were all criminals and should have been punished. Even the concept of needing self-defense forces would have not worked since Germany was bad, it would not do the right thing with any sort of authority or dignity it was given.

 

[Belisarius II]

Agreed with the other points others have made re needing to be able to justify rearmament @Quintuplicate , thought I'd also point out: there was no whitewashing of Japanese war crimes, everyone knew all about those (and watching or reading pretty much any war story set in the Far East from the 50s onwards, they made damn sure to remind you), but the Japan Self-Defence Forces were being organised and established around the same time as the Bundeswehr. So I really don't think the lack of a Clean Wehrmacht myth would have stopped the Allies from rearming Germany. Public reception of rearmament, I agree it could have effected...though OTOH, even OTL popular pacifism has kept the military pretty unpopular.

And far fewer of the Japanese were ever punished for their crimes. Unlike the Germans the Japanese have made almost no effort to come to terms with their time past. Everything was forced on them, and they had no choice but to do the things they did. Everyone basically forced them to attack them, because they wouldn't meet their demands, and all the subsequent brutality was of their own making. In short they accept no responsibility for their own actions.

 

[Belisarius II]

Agreed, in part. Knowing what was happening is different from taking part, if that is the standard then the entire WAllied Leadership should have gone to the gallows simply for not dedicating every effort to destroy the Camps. Knowing is not a war crime, taking part is. You may have failed to note my comments regarding rape in earlier postings.

Taking of food, especially in the East, was a serious offense, less so in the West/Italy/North Africa. It should, however, be noted, that WAllied personnel were far from pure on this issue. If an egg survived the arrival of any Allied infantry unit it was a miracle of the 2nd Order. Chickens, pigs and cattle were also regularly turned into meals by WAllied forces, sometimes they even paid for them, although the owner may have preferred to retain the animal. Soldiers eat. Full Stop. If there is enough food for a soldier or a civilian it is the rare human, regardless of nationality, who will starve while allowing an absolute stranger to eat. They drink too, pillaging of liquor was rampant to the point that the main concern of the officers was that they got the "good stuff". Western personnel were, in general, kept under vastly better control than German forces (or Soviet/Japanese personnel for that matter) and, overall, had a much better supply system that reduced the urgency to pillage.

This being said, even if one stretches the definition of war criminal to include anyone who didn't intervene with lethal force to prevent looting or pillaging that leaves at least half of the total Wehrmacht out. Luftwaffe units, excepting, as noted earlier, the ground components, had little opportunity and even less need to loot/pillage. Those personnel who served their entire war in Germany (including the huge number of AAA gun crews and ground crews responsible for keeping the Luftwaffe fighters in the air against the CBO, had virtually no opportunity. U-boat crews, and the rest of the KM served mainly in the West, like their Luftwaffe counterparts their food supply was never in much doubt. War crimes were far from common by Heer personnel in the West, not unheard of by any means, but uncommon (eggs were, however, commonly stolen, as was milk, often straight from the tap).

I will happily compare my long posting history here regarding war crimes, the depravity of the Reich, the utter evil the Nazis inflicted on this Earth, and inexplicable willingness of "ordinary Germans" to take part in heinous acts in support of the Nazi government. That, however, does not mean that I am incapable of discerning the difference between a Luftwaffe mechanic who spent the entire war changing the oil on Fw-200s flying out of northern Norway and members of the SS.

Unsurprisingly, given the question under discussion of the "clean Wehrmacht" and how it was possible for it to have begun, and be accepted, it is necessary to acknowledge that every Wehrmacht conscript was not a Gobbles in waiting. Without that degree of discernment it is impossible to even begin the discussion.

I guess we are talking about a question of degrees. The kind of pillaging your talking about, that was carried out by the Allies wasn't systematic, and happened when they first moved in. Civilians in Populated Allied rear areas weren't starving, the local economy was actually encouraged to keep working, and self government restarted. The British People were never occupied, except the Channel Islands, and never starved, but their diet was pretty lean. For the Germans everything, and everyone was for the taking, the whole time they were there, and all justice was summary. True Luftwaffe mechanics, (the Blackbirds) didn't engage in many war crimes, but the field service divisions did, and not just the elite Panzer Divisions. Luftwaffe infantry divisions engaged heavily in anti partisan operations in the East, hanging large numbers of women & children.

If we're talking about looting, and stealing no one was a bigger thief then Herman Goering. But then the whole leadership from Hitler on down, with few exception thought it was their right of conquest to steal artworks. Before the war in Germany anything of course owned by a Jew was for the taking, or at the least at a big markdown. During the war what would Jews need with property after they were deed?

So I would never accuse you of making apologies for these war crimes, but I think your underestimating just how widespread these activities went. Especially in the East it's hard to find many units of the Army, Luftwaffe, and certainly the SS who didn't commit war crimes. These crimes happened because the leadership encouraged it. I'm sure you know from many psychological studies how hard it is for an individual to keep to his moral principles when authority is pressuring them to do things they know are wrong. The power of group think can create a lynch mob mentality, where all reason, and morality go out the window. Germans are no less moral then other human beings, but in the Nazi Period humanity was tested, and found wanting.

 

[Belisarius II]

Even that need would be overridden by understanding what had happened:

If they had really understood what had happened, there would have to be no concept of a "good German" as described above in their mindset- it would need to be accepted that every German was bad. There could not have been any rehabilitated or clean Germans who could be allowed to lead any sort of military- they were all criminals and should have been punished. Even the concept of needing self-defense forces would have not worked since Germany was bad, it would not do the right thing with any sort of authority or dignity it was given.

I think the key question isn't were all Germans bad, clearly they weren't. What happened to Germany wasn't that the people were bad, it's that evil was allowed to reign, and impose it's values on society. Germany isn't the only country this has happened to, and it won't be the last. In Gibbon's Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire he talks about how when the Romans had virtuous emperors a sort of cycle of virtue spread though government, and down to the people. But when the emperor was a corrupt madman a cycle of the worst behavior spread downward.

It's timeless lesson, as old has mankind. History is the story of crimes, and follies, and the only thing we can do is try to learn from them, do better, and move on. The Germans after all aren't morally worse then other human beings. After those most responsible for the crimes of the Nazis were punished the Germans needed to absorb their lessons, and move on.

 

[CalBear]

I guess we are talking about a question of degrees. The kind of pillaging your talking about, that was carried out by the Allies wasn't systematic, and happened when they first moved in. Civilians in Populated Allied rear areas weren't starving, the local economy was actually encouraged to keep working, and self government restarted. The British People were never occupied, except the Channel Islands, and never starved, but their diet was pretty lean. For the Germans everything, and everyone was for the taking, the whole time they were there, and all justice was summary. True Luftwaffe mechanics, (the Blackbirds) didn't engage in many war crimes, but the field service divisions did, and not just the elite Panzer Divisions. Luftwaffe infantry divisions engaged heavily in anti partisan operations in the East, hanging large numbers of women & children.

If we're talking about looting, and stealing no one was a bigger thief then Herman Goering. But then the whole leadership from Hitler on down, with few exception thought it was their right of conquest to steal artworks. Before the war in Germany anything of course owned by a Jew was for the taking, or at the least at a big markdown. During the war what would Jews need with property after they were deed?

So I would never accuse you of making apologies for these war crimes, but I think your underestimating just how widespread these activities went. Especially in the East it's hard to find many units of the Army, Luftwaffe, and certainly the SS who didn't commit war crimes. These crimes happened because the leadership encouraged it. I'm sure you know from many psychological studies how hard it is for an individual to keep to his moral principles when authority is pressuring them to do things they know are wrong. The power of group think can create a lynch mob mentality, where all reason, and morality go out the window. Germans are no less moral then other human beings, but in the Nazi Period humanity was tested, and found wanting.

Thanks for understanding that I am trying to explain the "how" of how the Absurd "clean Wehrmacht" myth began, and why reasonable people could come to believe it.

I have no illusions about the depredations of the Heer (distinct from the Wehrmacht) as an organization conducted. Between those who happily assisted death squads in their work, to those who would decend upon a region like gray uniformed locust, and I hope has been illustrated many times over. That said, even in the Heer, even in the East, there were plenty of personnel whose great goal was simply to get home alive, and dedicated every waking moment to achieving that goal. They may have witnessed war crimes, certainly head about them, but didn't actually commit them (this, however, is dependent on if they chose to frequent the Official Brothels set up by the Heer command, which featured their own brand of kidnapped women/girls held against their will as comfort women, if they did they then fall into the war criminal sack, although into a pocket that most people don't even realize, or don't like to admit, exists).

 

[Johnrankins]

I think that you could be confusing 'socialist tendencies' with the Nazi Regime 'welfare/demagogic' politics that, of course, were intended only for a selected part of the German population: the Regime 'loyal citizens'.

Which was a solid majority. A pretty solid majority of people living in Germany at the time were ethnic Germans under the Nuremberg laws. Nazism "worked" by making the downtrodden a big enough of a minority to be a visible scapegoat but small enough that it wouldn't apply to a pretty sizable majority.

 

[Paternas]

I have no illusions about the depredations of the Heer (distinct from the Wehrmacht) as an organization conducted. Between those who happily assisted death squads in their work, to those who would decend upon a region like gray uniformed locust, and I hope has been illustrated many times over. That said, even in the Heer, even in the East, there were plenty of personnel whose great goal was simply to get home alive, and dedicated every waking moment to achieving that goal. They may have witnessed war crimes, certainly head about them, but didn't actually commit them (this, however, is dependent on if they chose to frequent the Official Brothels set up by the Heer command, which featured their own brand of kidnapped women/girls held against their will as comfort women, if they did they then fall into the war criminal sack, although into a pocket that most people don't even realize, or don't like to admit, exists).

Have you read about the relatively recent research carried out based on recorded conversations between German prisoners of war? It's pretty clear that rape by German soldiers in the East was widespread and not only in Brothels. Given the level of crimes commited I tend to lean towards believing that a large part of the "clean" Wehrmacht just did not have the opportunity to commit them, not that they would not.

As others have said, even without a Clean Wehrmacht myth, the Bundeswehr will come into existence. There might be more vetting of officers and a larger allied involvement though.

 

[CalBear]

Have you read about the relatively recent research carried out based on recorded conversations between German prisoners of war? It's pretty clear that rape by German soldiers in the East was widespread and not only in Brothels. Given the level of crimes commited I tend to lean towards believing that a large part of the "clean" Wehrmacht just did not have the opportunity to commit them, not that they would not.

As others have said, even without a Clean Wehrmacht myth, the Bundeswehr will come into existence. There might be more vetting of officers and a larger allied involvement though.

It is really disturbing how even an already appalling record of behavior can simply get worse.

Jesus wept!

 

[Deleted member 94680]

At what point did not preventing a War Crime from being carried out become complicity in War Crimes? When allowing illegal orders to be carried out become as bad as following illegal orders?

These days, if you know an order to be illegal, you’re meant to do all you can to prevent it being carried out. “We were only following orders” is no longer a valid excuse. Is that a post-Nuremberg thing?

 

[El Pip]

At what point did not preventing a War Crime from being carried out become complicity in War Crimes? When allowing illegal orders to be carried out become as bad as following illegal orders

These days, if you know an order to be illegal, you’re meant to do all you can to prevent it being carried out. “We were only following orders” is no longer a valid excuse. Is that a post-Nuremberg thing?

I believe pretty much everyone in the world thought "only following orders" was no defence at all even pre-Nuremberg. Everyone except Germany obviously. For example a WW1 German U-boat captain deliberately sunk a clearly marked hospital ship, but proved he had an order from above saying he should do so and so the German court let him off. Obviously the senior who issued that order was never prosecuted, because the Leipzig War Crimes Trials were a sham.

Indeed I wonder if that was part of the problem. Germans "knew" you could carry out a clear and blatant war crime and, even if Germany lost, nothing bad would happen to you, because nothing bad happened last time. Maybe if Germany's WW1 war crimes had been properly (or at all) punished they wouldn't have committed so many in WW2?

 

[Locke01]

And far fewer of the Japanese were ever punished for their crimes.

The statistics are too murky and unreliable to reach any definitive conclusion on this issue. Certainly, the Americans executed far more German war criminals (277) than Japanese (141), and international military tribunals likewise show a disparity (10 Germans hanged at Nuremberg, 7 Japanese at Tokyo). But the British executed at least 225 Japanese in comparison to about 175 Germans, while the Dutch likewise executed over 200 Japanese but about twenty Germans. Not included in the British accounting are 148 Japanese war criminals executed by Australian authorities. No one knows how many Japanese were executed or imprisoned by the Soviet Union, China or even France. The accounting leaves something to be desired. Probably fewer Japanese than Germans were punished, but we really do not know for certain.

 

[CHKeeley]

Here we go again. A command economy isn't laissez faire Capitalism. Central planning, wage & price controls, and all workers in a State controlled labor front aren't free market economics. The Nazis controlled where you went, and what you did on vacation, and had full control of the media, just like the Communists do. Just because the Nazis ran a managerial muddle, like the Communists doesn't mean anyone could ignore the State, without running the risk of ending up in a Concentration Camp. The appeal of the Nazis to the middle & upper classes was that they weren't going to steal their property, just tell them what to do with it. The Nazis wanted everyone to shut up, and follow orders, that's what Nazis do, just like Communists tell everyone to shut up and follow orders. The main difference is Nazis justify their control of everything by saying it's all for the defense of the Master Race, and Communists say it's for the victory of the Proletariat in the Class Struggle. Both believe it's all for your own good.

As is brought up countless times, the problem with this argument is that the Nazi state in practice was not a monolith. As with other 'fascisms', it was never a static economic state throughout its existence and people are always trying to force it into a neat binary of 'capitalism' or 'socialism' when it is never that simple. The Nazi state went through phases of privatization, concessions to business/industrial elites, and kowtowing to German industrialists. At other periods, it showed a willingness to take measures to appease the working class by instituting price controls to hold onto power or by forcing business to make itself subservient to the state in the interests of the war effort. Saying that Nazism is a type of communism because they made everyone shut up and follow orders is the most reductive logic I've ever heard. Its like claiming that everything in the American political spectrum is the exact same because its upholds capitalism. When you boil things down to their most basic logic, you lose sight of the whole thing.

I started writing a new response to this, but I figure I'll save myself some time by quoting from some of my earlier posts:

It's a bit cliche, but I'll trot out the most well accredited definition of Fascism in recent years - coming from Robert Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism:

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Ian Kershaw and co. also constitutes an important facet in the study of the Nazi German state as (quoting from Wikipedia for the sake of brevity):

"[...] the Nazi dictatorship was not a totalitarian monolith, but rather an unstable coalition of several blocs in a "power cartel" comprising the NSDAP, big business, the German state bureaucracy, the Army and SS/police agencies (and moreover, each of the "power blocs" in turn were divided into several factions). In Kershaw's opinion, the more "radical" blocs such as the SS/police and the Nazi Party gained increasing ascendancy over the other blocs after the 1936 economic crisis, and from then onwards increased their power at the expense of the other blocs."

Fascism tends to manifest itself in uneasy coalitions of many bases of power working together, generally with the tension of a grassroots based "street-movement" (Squadrismo, Sturmabteilung, etc.) with factions of big business and conservative/militarist government. There's another discussion to be had on the social-revolutionary elements of the grassroots parties and continuation of the "redemptive violence" on the street level that becomes an embarrassment to the parliamentary fascists (one which I find intensely interesting), but it's only tangentially related here. The fact of the matter is that fascist governments have historically gone through a variety of transitory phases where, as Kershaw and Mommsen write, the regimes either moderate or go through a process of cumulative radicalization. Mussolini's economic policies in 1923 look entirely different from 1938 which looks entirely different from 1944, and this can all be seen easily through the rhetoric. For instance, Mussolini's rhetoric on social-revolutionary aspects were toned down hard during the crackdown of "excessive" Squadristi violence in the mid 1920's to reassure the King and his business associates that they were not revolutionary, but when they abandoned him for the Allies, the Social Republic once again brought it to the fore of their propaganda because it was convenient as a tool to demonize the enemies of Mussolini. Hitler too - the term privatization was coined to describe Germany dismantling the public sector after the rise to Nazi rule and the business allies for Germany were huge. They then went on and off when intervening in the economy until, by the end of the war, economic intervention was quite high as a result. The Nazis also were forced to embark on some restrictions of business such as price controls to appease the working class supporters of the NSDAP because, after all, much of early Nazi policy can be characterized by an intense fear of losing their hold on Germany's working class and being seen as just another bourgeois party. Essentially, you cannot classify any fascism as wholly "capitalism" or "socialism", because the big fascisms we saw were very beholden to their political and economic circumstances. Fascism, if anything, is supremely adaptable and we saw changes in policy and rhetoric both towards and away from the free market depending on whatever was "good" for the Volksgemeinschaft...

Related to this discussion is viewing Nazism distinctly through the lens of anti-intellectualism and the German concept of the weltanschauung or worldview. This emphasizes not so much principles and theories, but simply the act of doing in the interest of the nation. Fascist policy therefore, as I stated, was driven by expediencies and circumstances, not by any codified plan or theory for state or economy. This can especially be seen by how Germany was run, mostly as a series of faction against faction and bureaucracy and bureaucracy in a Hobbesian "war of all against all" where the whims of the Führer was decisive. Describing Nazi economic policy as socialist, or command, or statist or what have you ignores the fact that it was above all an ad-hoc and chaotic system where policy was shaped by whoever had the Führers ear and the means to carry it out. Describing it as socialist implies there was some sort of plan, vision, or even principle behind it - but any comprehensive study on the fascist state in Germany will tell you literally none of this existed. You are projecting our views of economy and politics, and a sense of overall coherence, backwards to a historical moment where it did not exist. The idea that Nazi Germany was a totalitarian monolithic state that sought more and more control over both society and economy and was completely independent of any outside influence/did not have coalitions and interests to tend to is a trope at this point and its best to do away with that analysis of fascism. I personally find Arendt's Totalitarian Model pretty outdated both in discussions of fascism and communism and gladly a fair amount of historians agree with this sentiment.

[...] I did not dispute that market and price controls were implemented at various phases in the Nazi regime. Just as you discuss this, the Nazis also granted many privileges to private industry and dismantled large parts of the public sector to sell off on the market, as well as loosening direct state regulation on business. It all depends on the circumstances and period we are looking at. As I pointed out, sections of the NSDAP and factions within bureaucracies probably demanded state control to regulate and oversee, but equally other factions demanded the opposite. The Nazi state was rife with agencies warring against each other and it did not have a coherent set of economic policies, it was dictated by knee-jerk reaction and infighting, as was its foreign policy to a large extent. Additionally, as someone else in the thread pointed out, a lot of these measures are in line with implementing a war economy and conditioning the Volksgemeinschaft to warfare conditions. Explicitly allying oneself with the existing industrial and right-wing political elite and then giving German conglomerates like IG-Farben extensive privileges/contracts to produce goods all hardly seem to fit the definition of socialism either.

This is why my central point is that you cannot try and jam a square peg into a round hole - fascism was a nuanced and complicated international phenomenon that manifested itself differently in place and time, even within the same country at different times it could vary wildly. You can't peg it squarely on some 2D chart into either "capitalism" or "socialism" because reality and history isn't always going to fit into our neat little conceptions and categorizations. Fascism fits neither category very well at all.

In bringing up Röhm "Second Revolution" you raise an interesting point, namely the revolutionary impulses of fascism. I've written a little bit about it last year:

There's been a lot of ink spilled over this, and you are only correct here in some respects. It was genuinely revolutionary at some periods of time, and genuinely serving to preserve the status quo for in others. The Italian fascios formed just after the First World War, Primo de Rivera's FE de las JONS (before the FET y de las JONS/Francoist merger), sections of Röhm's Brownshirts prior to Kolibri, etc. all borrowed significantly from communist revolutionary praxis and rhetoric. These groups sought a radical restructuring of society in their nationalist/harmonious/Völkisch vision that would include the toppling of traditional elites. The problem is that fascism is extremely pliable, and Mussolini's movement for instance underwent multiple different stages of development over its lifetime. Italian fascism looked radically different from 1926 to 1936 and from 1936 to 1944... From what we saw play out in history, the fascists distinguished themselves from similar radical groups by their adaptability to power and their usefulness to ruling elites. Italian fascists got their "in" by acting as strikebreakers and hired thugs for rural landowners and industrialists. The powers that be then deemed the March on Rome as acceptable to stave off a revolution. Italian fascism then adopted a far more amenable "corporatism" that suited its cooperation with King and Business. This collapsed when they defected in 1943, and the Social Republic once again adopted a revolutionary praxis and rhetoric because it was backed solely by German power. In the case of Germany, the Nazis had to purge their vanguardist wing with Kolibri because it was inconvenient with their business/establishment alliance. This cooperation with the German ruling class continued on until the aims of wartime Germany began to fray and the war turned against them, but by that time the two were inextricably linked so there wasn't really much the latter could do without threatening its own interests. In Spain, we can see a similar case with Franco acting as a paternal unifier between the traditional centers of reaction in Spain (Carlists, CEDA, and sections of the military elite that supported the old Primo de Rivera regime) and the formerly revolutionary fascists of the FE de las JONS. Franco merged the FE de las JONS with the reactionaries and managed to weld it into a broad front of right wing groups to form a state party FET y de las JONS which essentially was only pseudo-fascist/had the trappings of fascism but was in character staunchly reactionary.

I agree with you that fascism possessed some revolutionary character, but that is only part of the story and that is the part of the story before power in most cases. The user you are replying to is mostly correct in stating that the fascism we know from history became a force to be reckoned with only because of its abandonment of revolutionary praxis and it offering its services to traditional societal elites and thereby finding a way to power.

TLDR: The entire premise of the 'capitalism or socialism' debate is bunk - fascism is supremely adaptable and lacks coherence and theory - it goes through many stages in its lifetime and institutes seemingly contradictory economic policies generally - it can't be shoved into a binary

 

[CalBear]

At what point did not preventing a War Crime from being carried out become complicity in War Crimes? When allowing illegal orders to be carried out become as bad as following illegal orders?

These days, if you know an order to be illegal, you’re meant to do all you can to prevent it being carried out. “We were only following orders” is no longer a valid excuse. Is that a post-Nuremberg thing?

Although I'm not sure you were looking for an answer, there is one.

Nuremberg Trials.

The Laws of War, especially regarding responsibility of commanders, totally changed based on the Nuremberg Principals. American troops (and I suspect NATO and most "Western" militaries) now undergo training, starting during initial recruit "boot camp" instruction on the differences between a legal and illegal order while senior NCO and Officers get much more extensive instruction on the subject, especially their RESPONSIBILITY to disobey an illegal order. Clearly it is asking a lot to have a 19 year old boot understand all the subtleties of the subject (although some things, like "line up all these little kids and shoot them in the back of the head" is fairly easy to understand an as illegal order) but by the time your get through OCS or a Service Academy you damned well better understand it, same goes for E-7s and higher.

 

[Belisarius II]

The statistics are too murky and unreliable to reach any definitive conclusion on this issue. Certainly, the Americans executed far more German war criminals (277) than Japanese (141), and international military tribunals likewise show a disparity (10 Germans hanged at Nuremberg, 7 Japanese at Tokyo). But the British executed at least 225 Japanese in comparison to about 175 Germans, while the Dutch likewise executed over 200 Japanese but about twenty Germans. Not included in the British accounting are 148 Japanese war criminals executed by Australian authorities. No one knows how many Japanese were executed or imprisoned by the Soviet Union, China or even France. The accounting leaves something to be desired. Probably fewer Japanese than Germans were punished, but we really do not know for certain.

Your only talking about the immediate post war trials. Over the decades the Germans, Israeli's, and Europeans tried many Nazis. The Japanese never tried their own people, and no Japanese criminals to my knowledge were ever extradited. Once the American Occupation ended the trials, and the graves were closed. No Japanese war criminals ever lived in fear that someone would be looking for them, because there was no one looking for them. Members of Unit 731 preformed monstrous human experiments, but the Americans covered the crimes up, and shipped the technicians to the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

That was a national disgrace. Most of those victims were Chinese, but some were British, and American POWs, which makes it even more shameful that the Allies did that. Those men should've been shipped off to the tender mercies of the Chinese, in 1947. Too this day Japan accepts no responsibility for the Rape of Nanking. In Japanese school textbooks it's described as just one of the bad things that happen in war.

 

[CalBear]

The statistics are too murky and unreliable to reach any definitive conclusion on this issue. Certainly, the Americans executed far more German war criminals (277) than Japanese (141), and international military tribunals likewise show a disparity (10 Germans hanged at Nuremberg, 7 Japanese at Tokyo). But the British executed at least 225 Japanese in comparison to about 175 Germans, while the Dutch likewise executed over 200 Japanese but about twenty Germans. Not included in the British accounting are 148 Japanese war criminals executed by Australian authorities. No one knows how many Japanese were executed or imprisoned by the Soviet Union, China or even France. The accounting leaves something to be desired. Probably fewer Japanese than Germans were punished, but we really do not know for certain.

The real variable is China. The Chinese had more crimes committed against their population by the Japanese than anyone else, and their records are far from complete, and many of the trials were likely conducted in... expedited fashion. The post-war trials in the Pacific were also much more questionable in the manner that they were conducted, as an example the sentences handed down to Homma and Yamashita positively reek of "victor's justice." compared to those handed down to any number of "second tier" Nazi/Heer personnel (von Mainstein being a shining example of an offiicer who was at least as responsible as Homma for act committed by personnel inside the AO).

There is also the reality that many Japanese war criminals never made it to the end of the war thanks to the way the perversion of Bushido led to hopeless charges into machine gun fire or trying to crash aircraft into American warships*. That was the fate of many of the officers and enlisted who really deserved to die in the most dishonorable of manner or spend a few decades in dishonorable confinement. Hard to try someone who, after killing PoWs by sheer mistreatment, dies in a Banzai Charge on Leyte.

*That is how the officer who came up with the whole Kamikaze program went out, after the Emperor's broadcast he strapped into the rear seat of a kamikaze and headed out to make his death plunge to glory. His aircraft never even approached any Allied shipping, no kamikaze attacks were recorded that day, so he died at the hands of an unknown Hellcat or Corsair pilot, which seems proper, no glory, just blown out of the sky.

 

[CalBear]

Your only talking about the immediate post war trials. Over the decades the Germans, Israeli's, and Europeans tried many Nazis. The Japanese never tried their own people, and no Japanese criminals to my knowledge were ever extradited. Once the American Occupation ended the trials, and the graves were closed. No Japanese war criminals ever lived in fear that someone would be looking for them, because there was no one looking for them. Members of Unit 731 preformed monstrous human experiments, but the Americans covered the crimes up, and shipped the technicians to the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

That was a national disgrace. Most of those victims were Chinese, but some were British, and American POWs, which makes it even more shameful that the Allies did that. Those men should've been shipped off to the tender mercies of the Chinese, in 1947. Too this day Japan accepts no responsibility for the Rape of Nanking. In Japanese school textbooks it's described as just one of the bad things that happen in war.

While very true, and something that has been discussed at length in other threads, it might be best to move any discussion of Japanese War Crimes, and the way it pales in comparison to how successive German governments have handled their legacy to a different thread lest it derail the current issue under discussion.

 

[Deleted member 94680]

Although I'm not sure you were looking for an answer, there is one.

Why would I not be looking for an answer? I thought I’d worded it clearly as a question.

I know full well it’s part of military training ‘today’ (or at least in the last 23 years in my experience) but if it were part of normal military training pre-WWII then that makes ‘normal’ German soldiers’ (and naval and airforce personnel) culpability in War Crimes indefensible. If it was standard practice to follow orders, and the responsibility fell with those issuing the orders, then the case is more confused. For what it’s worth, I think @El Pip makes an interesting point about the German WWI experience when it comes to War Crimes shaping their views come WWII.

The point I was trying to make was I didn’t know if it was a widely accepted revision to military justice post-WWII (and hence in the light of Nuremberg) or if it already existed as a ethical norm pre-WWII.

However,

Nuremberg Trials.

The Laws of War, especially regarding responsibility of commanders, totally changed based on the Nuremberg Principals.

makes it seem that our current understanding of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when it comes to military activity is a post-War construct. Shaped by the experience of WWII and “how it can all go wrong” maybe, but shaped by the War Crimes Trials nonetheless.

 

[Belisarius II]

As is brought up countless times, the problem with this argument is that the Nazi state in practice was not a monolith. As with other 'fascisms', it was never a static economic state throughout its existence and people are always trying to force it into a neat binary of 'capitalism' or 'socialism' when it is never that simple. The Nazi state went through phases of privatization, concessions to business/industrial elites, and kowtowing to German industrialists. At other periods, it showed a willingness to take measures to appease the working class by instituting price controls to hold onto power or by forcing business to make itself subservient to the state in the interests of the war effort. Saying that Nazism is a type of communism because they made everyone shut up and follow orders is the most reductive logic I've ever heard. Its like claiming that everything in the American political spectrum is the exact same because its upholds capitalism. When you boil things down to their most basic logic, you lose sight of the whole thing.

I started writing a new response to this, but I figure I'll save myself some time by quoting from some of my earlier posts:





In bringing up Röhm "Second Revolution" you raise an interesting point, namely the revolutionary impulses of fascism. I've written a little bit about it last year:



TLDR: The entire premise of the 'capitalism or socialism' debate is bunk - fascism is supremely adaptable and lacks coherence and theory - it goes through many stages in its lifetime and institutes seemingly contradictory economic policies generally - it can't be shoved into a binary

Wow. It would also be true to say that Socialism is supremely adaptable, lacks coherence, and theory-it goes though many stages in it's lifetime, and institutes seemingly contradictory economic polices generally. Since Socialism has so many forms, and Marxism so many versions it's impossible to define what a Socialist State would, or should be. The only thing we can say with any assurance is that the closer one gets to Socialism on a spectrum, the less functional a country becomes.

Now in a Capitalist State we can swing from the Ferengi Alliance, where everything goes, to Nazi Germany, with total State economic control. Now if you want to insist that any economy that has private ownership of the means of production is a fully Capitalist State fine, but it is sure ain't a Free Market System, and has more in common with Socialism. Where did you think the Fascists got their ideas from? Mostly from Socialists, just like Bismarck got his ideas for the first Welfare State, it was a compromise with Socialism.

Most of the world has mixed economies. The United States has a minimum wage, Earned Income Tax Credits, Social Security, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and regulated markets. In Alaska everyone gets a check from the oil companies. So the U.S. has more Socialism then many on the Right want to imagine, but it's mostly a market economy. So if someone on the Left rightly hates Fascism, and is so offended by the thought Nazi Germany had anything to do with Socialism you need to think again, it did.

 

[CalBear]

Why would I not be looking for an answer? I thought I’d worded it clearly as a question.

I know full well it’s part of military training ‘today’ (or at least in the last 23 years in my experience) but if it were part of normal military training pre-WWII then that makes ‘normal’ German soldiers’ (and naval and airforce personnel) culpability in War Crimes indefensible. If it was standard practice to follow orders, and the responsibility fell with those issuing the orders, then the case is more confused. For what it’s worth, I think @El Pip makes an interesting point about the German WWI experience when it comes to War Crimes shaping their views come WWII.

The point I was trying to make was I didn’t know if it was a widely accepted revision to military justice post-WWII (and hence in the light of Nuremberg) or if it already existed as a ethical norm pre-WWII.

However,

makes it seem that our current understanding of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when it comes to military activity is a post-War construct. Shaped by the experience of WWII and “how it can all go wrong” maybe, but shaped by the War Crimes Trials nonetheless.

I can't speak to the training that U.S. troops received pre WW II. Sadly my Uncles and cousins who were part of the U.S. military during WW II (including both naval and marine personnel) and people I knew through my parents or my early years of work, have all passed on. I do know that all American personnel were trained on the PoW elements of the Geneva and Hague Conventions (exemplified by the oft seen "Name, Rank, and Serial Number, scenes in films, in practice they would also have been required under Hague to provide "regiment" or Division information, something that they would already have shown by shoulder patches in most cases).

Senior officers clearly knew of the limitations, they were a subject of curriculum in Service Academies, and were discussed at senior levels during discussions of strategy. It was the responsibility of those officers to provide instruction down the chain of command (which is the exact policy today) with General Staff providing instruction to Corps and Army Level or Fleet commanders, who in turn would provide it to division or force commanders, all the way down to the private soldier. Of course, most war crimes were blindingly obvious regardless of detailed instruction of where they appeared in field manuals. A trooper does not need to ne informed that rape is a crime, or that murder of civilian hostages is a crime, or beheading and enemy prisoner when you are done interrogating him is a crime, or throwing children off a bridge is a crime, or denying medical treatment to an prisoner is a crime, or any number of other malum in se actions are crimes under any code of civilized behavior. This was actually the core of the reasoning behind Nuremberg. One is not absolved of all actions simply because it is ordered; certain actions are such obvious offenses against humanity as a whole (see aforementioned throwing of children from bridges and rape as examples) that committing them is a crime.

The Nuremberg process also made clear that the higher the rank/authority level of the accused the greater the responsibility for and jeopardy resulting from criminal actions. This principal was "understood" to be a common part of civilized behavior, but the Nuremberg trials, and the immediately following Genevra Conventions of 1949 codified the "understanding" in written law. A member of the General Staff can be hald accountable for waging aggressive war in violation of the Hague/Geneva 1929 Conventions, a company commander can not since he is not in a position to know that the order to advance is not legal. However, that same company commander is liable for ordering his troops to herd all the resident of a village into a barn and then set the barn on fire (as are his troops, although their culpability is somewhat reduced by the orders given, provided they protest that the order is improper and take advantage of the chain of command to report it). The senior NCO of the company is liable if he permits or encourages his platoon to "have some fun" with the female hostages, even if he does not directly participate, before they are locked in the barn. The private soldier is liable for committing the rape. Again, it does not require hours of instruction on the Laws of Land Warfare to know that rape is a crime, it part of generally accepted common knowledge.

 

[CHKeeley]

At risk of derailing the thread, I'll give it one more response:

Wow. It would also be true to say that Socialism is supremely adaptable, lacks coherence, and theory-it goes though many stages in it's lifetime, and institutes seemingly contradictory economic polices generally. Since Socialism has so many forms, and Marxism so many versions it's impossible to define what a Socialist State would, or should be. The only thing we can say with any assurance is that the closer one gets to Socialism on a spectrum, the less functional a country becomes.

Hardly. We can play the game of 'oh I don't know what socialism is' if you want, but the fact of the matter is that historical socialist states operate within written canon (whether that be Mao, Lenin, Marx, etc.) and leave copious written texts justifying themselves within a self-contained set of theories. Nazism and fascism at large does no such thing - fascism is studied much more as the 'doing' of fascism and the German word of weltanschauung or worldview encapsulates the fact that it does not actually operate within the same theoretical frameworks as capitalism and socialism (essentially, not as a bone fide ideology). I was emphasizing the lack of coherence and contradictory economic policies within the framework of fascists working in uneasy coalition with many power blocs/cartels in the government with wildly different interests. Communist states do not historically have this - it usually is contained within the monopoly of the ruling party and any splits are usually hair-splits between sects of the same ideological convictions. It really is not 'impossible to define a socialist state' and all existing socialist states have common themes, just as fascist ones do. I was not claiming that it is impossible to define fascism, I'm claiming it is impossible to wedge it into your perception of economics.

Now in a Capitalist State we can swing from the Ferengi Alliance, where everything goes, to Nazi Germany, with total State economic control. Now if you want to insist that any economy that has private ownership of the means of production is a fully Capitalist State fine, but it is sure ain't a Free Market System, and has more in common with Socialism. Where did you think the Fascists got their ideas from? Mostly from Socialists, just like Bismarck got his ideas for the first Welfare State, it was a compromise with Socialism. Most of the world has mixed economies. The United States has a minimum wage, Earned Income Tax Credits, Social Security, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and regulated markets. In Alaska everyone gets a check from the oil companies. So the U.S. has more Socialism then many on the Right want to imagine, but it's mostly a market economy. So if someone on the Left rightly hates Fascism, and is so offended by the thought Nazi Germany had anything to do with Socialism you need to think again, it did.

As with the last argument I had on the subject in this forum, the problem usually just boils down to us having differing definitions for what constitutes a free market system/capitalist economy. I'm not a proponent of socialism being "when government does government things" and capitalism being "when government does less things" on a 2D slider, so I'm not sure we are gonna be able to agree.

It's not really about me being "offended" by the thought of socialist influence on Nazi Germany... the influences that early fascism took from the left is objective and undeniable. What I'm saying is this worldview in which fascism is shoved into a broad "totalitarian" box with the Soviet Union and friends with no further inspection of how the state functioned, who it catered to, how it shifted, and how it fundamentally differed from similar states bothers me. This has been a fundamental problem in Soviet historiography too with older historians from the 50s and 60s choosing to portray both states has having complete and total control over society when the reality is very far from that.