r/MoralityScaling • u/TheFollower62 • 13d ago
Morality Ranking Morality of being a US soldier who liberated Dachau and letting the inmates beat the Nazi guards to death?
332
u/ProposalRecent2292 13d ago
what would batman say about this
512
u/_Vard_ 13d ago
"If you kill a killer, the number of killers remains the same"
"OK if you kill 100, it goes down by 99"
181
u/KHWD_av8r 13d ago
Killing isn’t inherently immoral, murder is. Sometimes it’s self defense, sometimes it’s justice.
42
u/Last-Soil9700 13d ago
thats where you have to decide what is justice and what is vengeance
30
u/Temporal-Affairs221 13d ago
Justice is done coldly and clinically after all the evidence and facts are heard. Vengeance act swiftly and In the Heat of the Moment.
19
u/KHWD_av8r 13d ago edited 13d ago
Operating through a formal justice system is but one form of justice. Sometimes it’s just “the principle or ideal of fair treatment or right action”. Given the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, giving their victims the opportunity to punish them for their evil can be justice.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/justice
Vengeance is punishment inflicted in retaliation for an injury or offense.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vengeance
Vengeance and justice are not mutually exclusive concepts. A death sentence, prison sentence, compulsory restitution, corporal punishment, etc., given by a court, is still vengeance.
→ More replies (2)7
u/Punch_yo_bunz 13d ago
That’s where I feel as though vengeance in the heat of the moment kind of murder is the only semi understandable cause and effect, though after the fact the person who did it may even feel regret. Where it’s their choice to deliver their justice.
Whereas I feel capital punishment is bleak and perverse in its moral cognitive dissonance. People watching someone die in front of them as a pure matter of choice is so barbaric to me.
It we believe people in ancient times were barbaric with their violence, how much worse are we that we know about that, and don’t know better. Or we do and we still choose to commit the unthinkable by prioritizing morality on our biases.
6
u/WarzonePacketLoss 13d ago
Yeah I don't think you need a trial when you personally watch your wife and child's body tossed in a mass grave
3
u/much_longer_username 12d ago
"Yeah so what we did is we got a dozen people together and held a trial, but it was very short because all the jurors were also eyewitnesses and victims."
3
→ More replies (2)2
u/iskelebones 12d ago
Not necessarily. I think vengeance is more about how personal the killing is. Vengeance can be cold, calculated, and based on evidence.
→ More replies (9)2
u/psychocabbage 13d ago
If you were there daily and witnessed what they had done, I'm sure you have enough boxes ticked to justify ending them.
5
→ More replies (20)2
u/the_lazy_lizardfolk 11d ago
Justice is a balance of the scales. It does not mean a moral act was committed, just an appropriate response to some other act was given in answer.
These can be inherently immoral. Often it is "justified" to immorally treat immoral people. That does not stop it from being immoral, merely dismissed out of hands due to the subject having thought to "deserve" it.
I do not know. I have been to war, and also been a law enforcement. It is all very difficult when we truly examine the ethics.
→ More replies (13)20
u/catmanten 13d ago
Dexter is the morally correct way to be a murderer
5
→ More replies (3)2
u/EskilPotet 13d ago
Is it though? He ended up killing innocent people, the photographer for example. Isn't it morally incorrect do kill without due process
→ More replies (2)4
u/Klldarkness 13d ago
I think he killed 3 people that were innocent?
Oscar, the photographer, the guy in the bathroom.
I could be missing someone...it's been a few months since my most recent rewatch.
He did also cause a few innocent people to die...Maria, Rita, Debra...
2
14
u/Ozzie_the_tiger_cat 13d ago
I'm not going to kill you...but I don't have to save you.
→ More replies (1)14
u/TheFollower62 13d ago edited 13d ago
No kill rule? He spared people just as bad or worse
→ More replies (14)→ More replies (31)2
1.1k
u/blac_sheep90 13d ago
Immoral but...
176
67
u/The_Carnivore44 13d ago
I mean. I think every prisoner gets a pass since ya know suffered a systematic genocide and probably saw death daily as well as live in some of the most inhumane conditions you could possibly manufacture and being treated like you are subhuman on the daily for multiple months or maybe years.
Eye for and eye and the world goes blind but the natzis and people who still idolize it’s ideals are so immoral that any immoral act committed against them is a grain of sand in comparison to the desert of evil they created.
21
u/PunkPirate56364 13d ago
If it was eye for an eye, millions of German civilians would be killed in concentration camps, or entire German population would be erased for trying to erase other races, ethnicities.
Killing some Nazi which were directly responsible... that's vanilla as fuck.
→ More replies (1)7
u/Glitchy-Mech 12d ago
To be fair, there were some concentration camp survivors who tried to do that. There was a relatively minor terrorist group after the war dedicated to the idea of killing six million Germans
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (42)5
u/Beginning_Ad8663 13d ago
So should Stephen miller be convicted should we send him to the prison in Ecuador that no one comes out of?
→ More replies (4)4
u/Same-Traffic-285 13d ago
Yes
4
2
u/HeadyBunkShwag 13d ago
75
u/Inevitable-Design107 13d ago
This literally never happened.
What beatings?37
u/TheOsirisOfThisShit_ 13d ago
I believe the real story is that the soldiers shot the guards.
35
u/MonsieurDrole 13d ago
From what I've read they shot the guards, and let the inmates take care of the director (or commander, or oberstormsomething, whatever his title was)
8
u/ragingfuzzywuzz 13d ago
It's immoral but we get it and don't care.
How it is sometimes.
→ More replies (1)3
u/YouLegitimate4400 12d ago
It wasn't immoral. We only say that because they didn't get a trial while recognizing that this was justice.
When this happened, "just following" orders was still a valid legal defense. There was every reason to believe these guys would get off without a punishment.
The punishment they got was death which was promotional to the crime this was justice even if it was illegal.
We already recognize that legality and morality are separate things. The holocaust was legal within Germany. We wouldn't say that it was morally good. Or that resisting it which, was illegal, was morally bad.
This was justice, and we can say justice is a moral good. This was moral. With hindsight we know that they might have actually been tried convicted and punished but at this moment none of the participants have any reason to believe that will be true.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)6
→ More replies (3)5
u/WarlockOfDoom 13d ago
Soldiers shooting the guards is arguably immoral. Prisoners beating them to death is the most moral thing there is.
8
u/EqualImprovement942 13d ago
Sure it happened. Maybe not in that exact instance but it was very common. After the regime collapsed there was a short period of anarchy before the allied forces established a new order. Wild things happened.
My grandma used to tell me stories about how she still remembers that after the war, the freed forced laborers from a local factory lynched their guards and the local police force, dragging them through the street and hitting them until they were dead. She distinctly remembered them having a beet root forced in their mouth before the lynching ensued. All of the anger that built up over years of captivity unloaded over the course of a few weeks. In her city only the police officers who hid in the forest before the war ended, survived. They hid there for months before returning.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (2)3
6
u/Unlikely_Flower_138 13d ago
Immoral? Says who
6
u/blac_sheep90 13d ago
It's technically a warcrime...but General Patton and Col. Decker just said fuck it. Which is understandable.
→ More replies (1)3
→ More replies (9)2
u/GroundbreakingAd8310 13d ago
Ur right they shouldnt make those prisoners swing so hard when they brought boynettes
170
u/Expert_Obligation_79 13d ago
Many of the guards responsible for everything in Dachau had escaped or deserted. The auxiliary troops were mainly Hungarian and fresh conscripts. Neither wanted to be responsible but forced to garrison the camp.
However Heinrich Wicker, their Junior SS leader, was responsible for death marches, personal executions, various acts of cruelty and all around a POS. He was however 23 and indoctrinated into the nazi regime when he was 12. Essentially being brain washed by a country in desperate need of loyal terrorists. Destroying a human and creating a puppet to enact its will. His death is moral as it is just.
Perhaps immoral for the conscripted Hungarians and unlucky citizens forced to defend the fatherland.
52
u/Majakowski 13d ago
The Hungarians themselves sent about half a million jews to Auschwitz or at least facilitated their deportation by the Germans. You didn't serve in a concentration camp and be unguilty. That just didn't happen. As one of the Yugoslavian military attorneys in the trials against German war criminals said, it would have been their duty to decline being part of these atrocities even at risk to their own life as their life wasn't worth more than that of the prisoners in these camps.
These guards were armed, they had the chance to turn their guns at their superiors had they found themselves to be forced to do unjust atrocities. They didn't. So they willingly participated. Also they wouldn't have been immediately killed, had they refused their duty in the camps, they would just have found another place to serve. Be it at the front or whatever. But they chose the "safe" hinterland where they found not enemies but victims.
Just because you are conscripted doesn't mean you can't be a monster. And just being conscripted doesn't automatically mean you are at odds with your orders. And even if we consider everything, it still stands that the holocaust was such an all-encompassing monstrous atrocity with almost entire peoples willing to keep the extermination machinery running, that individual guilt in the very centers of extermination is merely an academic statement. Death was facilitated at every level of the German nation. In the chemical factories producing the poison gas, in the doctor's offices participating in the "euthanization" crimes, in the factories producing ammunition, weapons and machinery used for the massacres, in the railway offices organizing the transports to the camps, in the town offices compiling lists of people to be persecuted and many many many of these people never saw justice where they should have. So being at the very center of these horrors where you have no excuse to "not have known anything" (which was always a lie) carries with it that you are at the mercy of every gram of revenge and retribution.
Had they turned their weapons against their superiors, their fate would have been the same. But they would have it to their credit that they at least tried. But they didn't. They thought, their life was worth more than that of the inmates and that they would get away with their lame conscription excuse while being an integral part of this murderous horror machine.
23
u/TributeBands_areSHIT 13d ago
While I think in a vacuum this is right, it just doesn’t capture the complexity of a fight for survival in a complex human society.
It’s easy to say they should have rebelled but very different to experience it and have to make a choice of life and death or being sent to a war zone worse then anything in documented human history.
7
u/bteh 12d ago
These people sacrificed their humanity for their temporary safety.
The bill later came due.
They got no more than they deserved.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (31)3
u/Expert_Obligation_79 12d ago
Exactly and we have to remember this is the 1930s-40s. The people around you may very well be your entire world. Especially when denying to serve or to participate meant you and your family became a target.
I don't 100% believe the guards are innocent. But I am also not 100% they all were there willingly. I feel the individual guards at least should have their stories heard. If not to prove innocence then to make sense of it all
→ More replies (1)3
u/mate1mistico 12d ago
dentro de la policía alemana desplegada en los territorios ocupados hubo casos documentados de oficiales y agentes que se negaron a participar directamente en ejecuciones de civiles y judíos. En algunos casos, quienes se negaban podían ser apartados de esas tareas y destinados a funciones auxiliares, como mantenimiento, cocina, limpieza o cuidado del equipo.
En casos de disputas constantes o peleas, simplemente los derivaban a otras unidades para cumplir otras funciones, o los mandaban a hacer entrenamientos militares para ir al frente, está todo escrito y hay hasta documentales de oficiales y muchas decenas de soldados q se negaban.
Él único castigo por negarte a ser un genocida, era simplemente ser humillado por tus compañeros, capaz una reducción de tú salario con mala suerte, y en el peor de los casos ir al ejército regular.
No hay documentación ni registros de que alguna familia de estas personas que no quisieron matar inocentes fue ejecutada o asesinada. Absolutamente nada, de hecho es lo contrario hay registros de que muchas de estas sobrevivieron a la guerra.
→ More replies (1)7
→ More replies (30)4
u/Fruit4Th0t 13d ago
Oh and not to mention the German civilians that stole Jewish property, houses and lands and when the Holocaust was over, they killed and chased away many of the Jewish owners that came back to reclaim their lost stuff.
Never let the German people try to say that their ancestors if they had them were just civilians all the civilians took part in the Holocaust every single part from the ground up it would not have been able to happen it had it not been for the German public.
They were weak-willed and a weak-minded people that needed a strong man to lead them because they had no concept of a democracy and had no idea how to function as one which is why the initial Republic failed and they embraced Nazism so readily don't ever let any German try to lie and change that part of their history they need to start owning that too.
4
u/CapableLanguage5480 12d ago
absolutely, and history will judge many modern peoples as equally weak-willed and complicit in their governments' actions. If something bad happens to us, there will be a fair argument that we deserved it too
→ More replies (7)9
u/Key_Check5753 13d ago
That's the thing.... I don't care WHY a person did something bad. I care IF they did something bad.
"He murdered 5 people in a drive by, but he grew up in a tough neighborhood. He a good boy!" -death penalty
"She strangled her 3 kids, but she had depression and was on med!" -death penalty
10
u/NukaCooler 13d ago
Can't believe someone on /r/MoralityScaling is genuinely a proponent of the death penalty.
→ More replies (6)6
u/beruon 13d ago
I'm also supportive of it. There is no universal morality in the world. I think morality is just as fluid as any man-made concept in this world. And this is not "moral of the times" thing here.
Killing someone for no reason is bad.
Killing someone in self defence is at most neutral.
Killing someone so we remove them from the potential future offenders is good.→ More replies (12)→ More replies (1)4
713
u/EvilStan101 13d ago
Moral and based
https://giphy.com/gifs/HMnrvi0FfS932
77
u/Confident_Example_73 13d ago
Now, now.
I say technically immoral because in their weakened physical state they might seriously injure themselves if they use their fists or sledgehammers while attempting to beat the guards and that would be immoral and negligent by us in not providing proper workplace safety.
Which is why the beating should be carried out by a mechanical, button-operated Nazi-Whacker 3000 OR by some volunteers. Lets not lose sight of health and safety.
19
u/Prior_Pickle1758 13d ago
immoral to take the choice away from the survivors. they don’t need managed they need freedom.
→ More replies (1)7
11
u/PureBullz 13d ago
Man if I just got done being tortured starved etc. I would dream of my death being from exhaustion through killing one of those demonic guards to death.
5
18
u/magos_with_a_glock 13d ago edited 13d ago
I believe the nazis build that kind of device themselves. Call it the "88 flak gun". Just remember to put enough space between the gun and the nazi if you don't want to have to clean it each time.
8
6
10
u/Physical-Network3006 13d ago
“Hey Donny, we got us a German who wants to die for country, oblige him.”
→ More replies (4)2
u/OrnerySnoflake 13d ago
My granddad would thank you if he was still alive. He passed in 2000. He was always my favorite grandparent, I still miss him deeply.
147
u/Takeguru 13d ago
Whenever anyone asked my grandpa about his time over there, the first story he would always tell was turning over officers to the civilians in any towns they liberated.
Moral, imho
→ More replies (18)71
u/TheOGStonewall 13d ago
My great grandfather had a bunch of stuff he brought back. Amongst what he collected were a bunch of letters in German. When asked what they were and where/why he had them he responded simply: “Nazis don’t get closure.”
25
→ More replies (47)2
20
u/ThoughtPhysical7457 13d ago
Listen what happens on that soldiers lunch break isn't his responsibility
308
u/Advective_Noun_8841 13d ago
Its objectively wrong.
But you don't always have to be right.
163
u/jointheclockwork 13d ago
General: Hey, what happened to those Nazi guards?
Soldier: Fell down some stares.
General: And the stab wounds?
Soldier: Sharp stares, I guess...
82
24
u/BauserDominates 13d ago
"How did the nazi guards get shot in the head?"
"It was suicide, sir"
"They shot themselves in the back of the head?"
"It was an assisted suicide"
7
4
4
u/Kissthecomplex 13d ago
The nazis all committed suicide, sir.
ALL of them?
Yes sir!
I heard they were stabbed to death...
Very passionate about suicide and no bullets left, Sir
...in the back...
VERY passionate about suicide, Sir!
...
...
...
...
Ok, suicide... the cowards way out.
The cowards way indeed, sir!
Dismissed.
→ More replies (4)3
32
u/Expert-Mental25 13d ago
Where is the objectivity coming from? Genuine question.
28
u/BiscuitsTheory 13d ago
It's the equivalent of executing a prisoner without trial.
27
u/ProfessionalBug7399 13d ago
Normally I'm all against this type of stuff..
But the guards would be very identifiable and were staffed with some of the most brutal of the Nazis. It's almost guaranteed they directly killed a prisoner and its guaranteed that they caused immense suffering if they did not.
If it were a random German soldier... Now that would be different.
→ More replies (2)11
→ More replies (28)4
u/Mad_Maddin 13d ago
The question to me is. When guilt is already crystal clear, is a trial actually needed from a morality perspective?
Like sure from a legal and overarching societal perspective, vigilante justice cannot be allowed. Because it breaks the governments power balance and will result in innocent people coming to harm through it sooner or later.
But is it wrong on principle? When guilt is known and not punishing the guilty party might result in their escape from judgement?
→ More replies (2)3
u/piratecheese13 13d ago
A: while these were the guards actively guarding the concentration camps, which is proof enough, they still deserved SOME level of documentation and assessment of actual guilt and culpability before punishment can be sentenced for. Here the US Military were the police, judge and jury. The prisoners are the executioner.
B: while these camps did have cruel and unusual experiments performed on the prisoners, not every guard was participating directly and may not have been aware of the atrocities committed.
C: on top of all the trauma of being in the camps, taking a life changes you. It’s the kind of thing that either wakes up something dark, or kills something bright. You go the rest of your life knowing you are capable of it. Knowing that whatever afterlife awaits for the person you killed, you’ll be who they think of as they burn.
That being said, if you self identify is a member of a group who’s primary platform is the systematic killing of out-groups, a whole lot of new morals come into play when dealing with you.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (43)5
u/Warm-Appointment-494 13d ago
This is an incredibly good question actually. Probably better for [r/askphilosophy](r/askphilosophy) or something, I think a lot of people here won’t even really know what what you’re asking
Edit: fwiw I don’t agree that it’s morally wrong
→ More replies (1)11
u/FunGuy8618 13d ago
You'll get waaaaaay more in depth answers over at r/PhilosophyMemes though. Wrong answers, but highly entertaining ones.
→ More replies (55)3
u/Godlynanders 13d ago
How is it objectively wrong? Sure its a warcrime but id argue it would be immoral to stop them. When you systematically murder thousands upon thosands then you should be sentenced to death.
→ More replies (13)
13
u/gypsytron 13d ago
All you have to do is read the testimony of the soldiers who did the liberating. Morality left that place long ago. All that was left was pain, sorrow… and rage.
→ More replies (3)5
u/WanderingPilot- 13d ago
Pisses me off how many wanted quarter and rights the second the gun was on them, but they never cared a lick about giving others quarter.
28
u/SquirrelSuspicious 13d ago
Whats that one pic with the blue man?
Without condoning or condemning, I understand.
Like I wanna condone the fuck out of it because deserved but if we ignore the law for our enemies then as soon as we can label someone as an enemy than we get to ignore the law for them and that never goes well.
→ More replies (20)2
u/greentiger79 13d ago
To your question, the blue guy is Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen comic book series who does not judge the actions humans.
43
u/NarwhalsAreSick 13d ago
Immoral. They should be offered something they didn't, a fair trial. But that's coming from a perspective so many degrees removed from the emotion. I can't honestly say I'd have done different.
11
u/Mammoth_Reach_6366 13d ago
That's what Polish people did with the commander of Auschwitz. He went to jail, awaiting trial, and he wrote how surprised he was by being treated like a human by the guards. This made him think a lot about his own actions and I think he was one of the few Nazis who truly accepted the reality of what he had done.
He was sentenced to death and hanged but he wasn't lynched by a mob. I'm sure it took a lot of restraint on the part of Polish people but that's how it should be done.
4
u/Prometheus-is-vulcan 12d ago
When your enemies call you uncivilized to justify their brutality, its sometimes very powerful to disprove them and act civilized. Especially when you gain a position of relative strength.
→ More replies (1)4
u/durandal688 12d ago
If it’s who I think you mean… his written statement is evidence against the deniers…and he testified at Nuremberg.
Justice was served by not just killing him…but by damn better people than me
9
3
u/Pleasant-Basket-7526 13d ago
That wasn't the US, and US laws didn't apply. The only government that was there was a lawless atrocity, and the Permanent Court of International Justice migh have had jurisdiction but the soldiers wouldn't probably know that. I don't think they had any idea what justice would happen or if trials were a possibility. There is no morally appropriate authority to hand it over to in this situation is there?
→ More replies (3)3
→ More replies (12)2
u/Godlynanders 13d ago
I dont think i could ever kill someone but if i were in their shoes id be the first to line up ti beat them to death
15
u/Josykay89 12d ago
That did not happen. The guards were just very clumsy men, unfortunatly falling down the stair.
→ More replies (1)5
5
u/JunkTheFox 13d ago
Immoral purely through technicality. Fuck them right up though
→ More replies (1)
6
15
10
5
u/Alternative-Swing118 13d ago
Morality is not a word to be used with Nazis.
Nazis deserve every beating they got and so much more
21
u/TentacleFist 13d ago edited 13d ago
*edit: lol didn't expect to start a comment war over a funny meme. I support drinking Nazi tears, not Stallin. I encourage you all to debate the morality of OPs prompt rather than Stallin vs Nazis. We're all human and all genocide is bad ❤️
4
u/DovahFish_ 13d ago
Ah yes, lets just support another dictatorship with millions of victims under its regime instead. Goofy
25
u/Ginganinja2308 13d ago
Nazis are probably the worst group of people we've seen, but Stalins up there.
→ More replies (43)2
2
u/CurrentSensorStatus 12d ago
The Russians suffered by far the most casualties during WWII among all the allies. Consequently, the Russians also treated the German civilians and German POW's far worse than any of the allies. So a meme of Stalin drinking Nazi tears seems appropriate.
4
5
3
u/Logical_Bumblebee617 12d ago
If the soldiers had killed them, it would be immoral. They accepted their surrender. I don't think they had a moral duty to protect them from the people whom they tortured endlessly for months end.
One of the strongest argument against mob justice is that without due process, it can kill the wrong people. This was not the case here.
Let's all remember that it happened in Dachau. It's not within the bounds of a functioning society with a firmly established justice system. They were government officials, and this was part of a total war. Asymetrical warfare was fought, with french partisans sometimes killing civilians while targeting nazis, often because they associated with nazis.
We're not talking Mandela having dinner with his prison guard here. There was no truth and reconciliation between jews and their nazis torturers. A lot of the moral principles we hold true now didn't quite apply to this situation
4
u/Glittering-Coyote140 12d ago
Yes? I see no issue whatsoever. The only thing we cannot tolerate, is intolerance.
Especially not the intolerance that scales itself up to holocaust levels of death.
13
u/NN11ght 13d ago edited 13d ago
Is it immoral to remove a disgusting creature from society before it can do more harm?
Edit. To those comparing my words to the justification of genocide.
You can't choose who your parents are. But you can chose to be or not to be a Nazi
→ More replies (25)7
3
5
11
u/ProfessorAllenRitard 13d ago edited 13d ago
Immoral. There's no question about it. POWs are protected under the Geneva Convention, the UCMJ, and common sense.
If rather have surrendering prisoners than ones that fight to the death. On the eastern front it was beyond awful if you were captured. ISIS level. On the Western front, you'd be less likely to be brutalized if you surrenderd.
Either way, don't beat your prisoners.
→ More replies (21)2
u/requiemguy 12d ago edited 1d ago
The liberated inmates were not soldiers and therefore not beholden to agreements like the Geneva convention.
The majority of concentration camps were outside of Germany.
Your whole post is the same as people who think the First Amendment protects you from other citizens.
→ More replies (3)
19
u/ShipEqual2321 13d ago
Immoral but understandable. The people on this subreddit seem to think that just because someone does something evil that vengeance is morally good. When in reality it’s not. There is a difference between vengeance and justice. Justice is what is required for evil doers. But not everyone is qualified to enact justice. When people try to “punish” others outside the perimeters of the law and the established codes of justice then they take it too far. Because it’s only done with hate.
An eye for an eye only makes the world blind. Vengeance doesn’t only kill or destroy the perpetrators. It also destroys the victims who enact it. Even if they are able to kill the people who severely wronged them, they will only want to kill them again and again and again. Vengeance is not the answer. Justice is.
I’m not saying the Nazis at the concentration camps didn’t deserve severe punishment. I’m saying that the wrong people were the ones ending up doing it. It’s understandable. Anger at murder and tyranny is very strong. These people had their whole families murdered and their lives completely ruined. I wouldn’t punish the inmates at all for avenging themselves oh the guards. But it’s still wrong and it’s sad. Because in the end vengeance makes you no better than them. Not worse. But no better than they are.
10
12
u/MtheConfused 13d ago
Uh, hi, Jewish person here! No the fuck it does not make you as bad as them.
Did they also starve the guards and r*pe them repeatedly? Did they beat them within and inch of their life, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN? Did they torture them to give up their friends and family?Then no the fuck they were not as bad.
I’m against the death penalty too, but no, killing an ACTUAL NAZI does not make you as bad as them shut the actual fuck up.
“An eye for an eye makes the world blind” stops applying when we reach levels of atrocities like this.
This is like saying it would be morally wrong to kill Hitler.
At this point, killing those Nazis just prevented them from hurting more people. Preventing hurt to existing people is a moral good, no?
5
u/Rulebookboy1234567 13d ago
Don't argue with these people. This whole post is a dog whistle.
→ More replies (6)3
u/Crinjalonian 13d ago
Hitler was a direct military combatant and took the role of commander of the heer since December ‘41 so he was a legal target. Killing Hitler would be legally justified as far as the laws of war were concerned. Not morally wrong and not even illegal to kill Hitler.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (37)2
2
u/funginspace 13d ago
But at the same time moral/=legal so what actually makes justice valid?
→ More replies (3)2
u/BAPlaya 13d ago
Hundreds of thousands of people actively participated in the regime's machinery of mass murder. Estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands—potentially over a million—Germans and their collaborators served as concentration camp guards, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) members, military personnel, police units, and administrative bureaucrats who enabled the murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others.
Out of an estimated 200,000+ active major perpetrators and hundreds of thousands of others complicit in wartime atrocities, the vast majority ultimately avoided jail time due to cold war politics, lack of evidence, and the massive scale of the postwar chaos.
→ More replies (1)2
u/The_GodApollo 13d ago
I agree with you but I would like to know your criteria for being qualified to enact justice. I find this topic very interesting so I would appreciate your reply.
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (42)2
u/Diligent_Bar1244 13d ago
You forgot to mention the part where a lot of nazis escaped justice
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Heroic_Sheperd 13d ago
Immoral, all criminals should be tried in a court of law and then face their punishment.
Soldiers cannot be judge/jury and allow a mob to be executioner without due process.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
u/Atheizm 13d ago
The camp kommandant kept repeatedly falling on all those hammers and shovels, sir. There was nothing we could do. His suicide is tragic and messy.
2
u/Pretend-Literature35 13d ago
Don't you hate it when these kind of "accidents" happen. But what can you do?
2
2
2
u/InfiniteMonkeys157 13d ago
Societal (legal/commonly-accepted/treaty/...) ethics, are frameworks for individuals in a jurisdiction or for nations to act in what is usually, the best interests of smoothly operating society, i.e. peace, stability, respecting rights.
For such frameworks to be effective, they need mechanisms of 'due process'. You drive recklessly, you assault someone, you murder, you torture, it is the responsible entity (appropriate courts) to determine guilt and punishment.
That does not mean extralegal situations cannot occur. Situations the courts are not prepared to or are powerless to deal with. In the case of military action, prisoners of war, post-wartime, are expected to be turned over to civilian authorities.
Military also have frameworks of ethics, Geneva Convention, Military Code of Conduct, Chain of Command, Civilian oversight, Treaties, ... To kill and torture defenseless surrendered combatants is against almost all of these. To allow someone else to do it is not a loophole as surrendered combatants are under the protection of the military in control.
That's not to say war is not messy and gray areas exist. Situations like leaving soldiers you cannot detain for later civilian turnover, has led to soldiers determining they could not leave enemies alive. Bombing campaigns and other larger scale weapons have to accept certain collateral civilian casualties. But wartime ethics are expected to use the best available options in such situations.
All of these ethical frameworks are codified. They are different from broader personal ethics, whether deontological, golden rule based, virtue based, utilitiarian, or other. While these are the ones we think of most often, they are different. The first is 'render unto Caesar', the second is your, and your societies accepted ethics.
So, if you are a soldier, then your various codes of conduct 'ethics' would prevent such an action from being ethical. If you were a prisoner, it would depend on which personal accepted ethics you use. None are perfect and loopholes like this are the reason they are not perfect. In various extreme situations, all of those ethical systems fail.
2
2
849
u/SirKatzle 13d ago