Literal Nazi apologia? Upvoted on Lemmy.world? Color me shocked!
Yeah,I really don’t care how many Nazis got worked to death after that they did, it’s a shame they let so many of them right back into the west german government afterwards.
Wonder what the world would look like today if Germany had been thoroughly purged of Nazism, rather than a slap on the wrists.
It would have been really funny if they had given like Austria or half of Germany to be “Israel” on top of actually removing the Nazis
Funny and probably would have dramatically changed the world stage as it exists today.
I hate to break it to yall what those nazis were doing before they were imprisoned.
I think most people here are aware of the mass genocide and countless atrocities commited by the nazi regime. I just wanted to shine the light on an atrocity (violated human rights, and the original 1864 geneva convention) commited by the soviet union.
That’s an EXTREME oversimplification of history.
“German military personnel” were also known as Nazis.
I see no problem here, sucks to suck, should have thought of the consequences when they took up arms for a nation who was liquidating every Jewish man, woman, and child they could stick on cattle cars and gas to death.
While there is a lot of argument (in both directions) on the culpability of the average german soldier to the Nazis: The way you punish that is through trials. I hear Nuremburg had a few of those.
This was russia abducting enemy combatants and using them as slave labor for a decade. And, like most of stalin’s purges and enslavements, had very little to do with whatever crimes the slaves were accused of.
There is no argument about the culpability of the Wehrmacht.
Organisation ≠ person.
Lots of Wermacht soldiers did horrible things, and should have gone to trial for them. Lots of other Wermacht soldiers were forced and did not want the role. Maybe they even surrendered at the first chance they got, and this is what happened to them, died in labour camps.
The vast majority of POW captures were in the final year of the war, when it was teenagers and middle aged people who were quickly trained and sent to the front lines, in many places.
Yup.
It is not an exoneration of the average soldier. A lot did some really heinous shit… like all soldiers in all wars. But a lot were also just there because they were drafted and had no choice. And that is what investigations are for.
People like the black and white of “You wore a uniform, you are pure evil”. And governments ESPECIALLY love that and a lot of media has been funded to specifically reinforce that so it is super easy to Other the other guys (We have always been at war with Eastasia and all that). But when you actually think things through? What is the difference between a conscript terrified in their bunk at night and a civillian who gleefully makes shells and tanks in a factory?
All of which is kind of moot. Because, to reference the great dril: You do not “gotta hand it to them” to ISIS, Nazi German, or Stalin and his cronies in the USSR.
The vast majority of POW captures were in the final year of the war, when it was teenagers and middle aged people who were quickly trained and sent to the front lines, in many places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)
High-ranking fascists and Nazis who escaped from Europe via the ratlines after World War II: Ante Pavelić, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele
:-/
More the opposite. The teenagers and war-wounded were forced to fight until the bitter end, buying time for the senior officers to surrender or flee. The POWs that were captured were bureaucrats and administrators, central to the functioning of the German industrial war machine but never responsible for pulling a trigger on the front lines. The surrendered or went underground en mass only after their children and grandchildren had been fed as cannon fodder into the maw of the encroaching American and Russian armies.
Your quote from wikipedia doesn’t corroborate your claim. Prisoners of war were in large majority soldiers, and not bureaucrats.
Yes, these soldiers fighting on the front did exactly that, they bought time for the Nazi regime. If the soldiers were aware of that, who knows. But the average soldier that became a POW has little to do with the high ranking bureaucrats who escaped through the rat lines.
In fact, while the soviet union, was murdering ordinary soldiers in its labour camps it was already offering amnesty and intelligence agency roles to many former high ranking Nazis.
Prisoners of war were in large majority soldiers, and not bureaucrats.
They were military personal. And the military is flush with bureaucrats.
But the average soldier that became a POW has little to do with the high ranking bureaucrats who escaped through the rat lines.
Nuremberg Defense ass response.
Yes the military are flush with bureaucrats, but bureaucrats tend not to be on the front lines, where most POW are captured.
The Nuremberg trials were specifically the trial of 22 of the most high ranking Nazis. Specifically bureaucrats.
Would you say they were just following orders?
When the orders are “come with us, or we kill your family” backed up by, “they did it to the next town over, and 1/4 of the town is now dead or on a train to a camp”. Yes. They were following orders.
Agreed fuck Nazis.
But also fuck those who mistreat their POWs.
USSR had a chance to take the high road and instead commited pseudo-genocide in Ukraine and killed millions of their own citizens in gulag.
Nice, double genocide theory.
Take the high road? As in let all the Nazis fuck off to Argentina?
7/10 Nazis killed were at the hands of the red army. We have the soviets to thank for ending WWII and curbing German Nazism, plain as. They literally saved the world.
Nice whitewashing of russian crimes with buzzwords
So it your mind there’s no middle ground between letting every Nazi go off scot free and murdering a third of your prisoners of war indiscriminately?
They deserved to go on trial. Not be indiscriminately worked to death.
Post war Nazi career paths
Get job (allies) 😀
Get job (Soviets) 💀
On another note I just had a thought about the German scientists who fled the Reich pre WW2 due to prosecution and the German scientists who were employed post WW2. Did they ever meet and work on projects together lmao.
“Remember that time you hunted me and my family, wanting to execute us through forced labor? Haha, good times. Those sure were the good ol days.”
And if you were a Nazi who was “employed” by the Soviet Union you were most likely not a scientist
My grandfather jumped down from the train that was supposed to bring him to a gulag (he was a soldier (vehicle driver) in ww2, just like all other German males at that time) with six others and walked 800 000 km home over many nights (at daytime they’d be seen and captured to be brought to a gulag, which basically equalled death), before dawn broke they always went to a farm and asked if they could hide there for the day (the farmers were very friendly despite having been enemies not long ago (enemies in wars usually exist on a political level, but not on a personal one), most didn’t reject them and let them sleep, usually also gave them something to eat and if they were lucky something to take with them for the next night).
He was the only one who arrived back home, all others either were captured or died.
There he went to the American zone since he had heard his chances for survival were best there. They threw him into a pit (went a few meters down, he broke his arm from falling down), gave him some stray, water and bread (apart from the bread basically like many animals are kept). After eight years (including frequent physical and psychological torture (= for example telling him to lay off all clothes and stand at a wall, pointing a gun at him telling him it’s time to die like once per month)) he was so ill that they expected him to die within a few days so they set him free so he could visit his wife and children one last time.
He recovered and lived to become 90 years old.
Just because one side was very bad it doesn’t mean the other sides were angels. I’m not defending the Nazis in any way, but I’m sure there were many cases such as his. And he didn’t do anything special as far as I know, didn’t have a high rank or anything, he just was a normal vehicle driver in his country’s army.
Edit: Another example: https://lemmy.world/comment/12283788
Not just Germans. Lots of Frenchmen and Alsatians too! Some had to wait until 1956.
Nice, Lemmy is finally not a leftist echo chamber, we can have Nazi apologia!
Imagine seeing the world so black and white that detailing a Soviet War crime in world war two is the same as apologising for the Nazis.
The Nazis were absolutely horrible genociders who commited countless atrocities. Now, does that mean we should just ignore other countries atrocities. No it doesn’t.
Theoretically it’s possible that somebody randomly chose a war crime from 7 decades ago to soapbox about.
In reality its almost always a Nazi apologist. It also happens far more often than somebody making posts for things like the Rwanda genocide
I was reading through wikipedia on world war two, and found out that over half a million german prisoners of war died in soviet gulags after the end of the war.
I’m pretty well read on world war two and I’d never heard that before, so I decided to post it on “today I learned”.
There’s a real problem with Neo-nazis, less on lemmy, but it’s increasing worldwide. But you’re accusing the wrong person.
Were you really under any impression that the comment section on a post about war crimes against Nazis was going to go any other way? You knew exactly what you were getting into.
Rules for thee, but not for me
Yes I was to be honest. I didn’t imagine I would be accused of being a nazi because I detailed war crimes against them.
Not to mention I’ve made similar posts in the past about nazi war crimes against the allies, I believe one was specifically about the soviets, and people were quite respectful and intelligent in the comments.
I definitely get what you were going for, and you’re not wrong. Unfortunately the internet isn’t the most objective place, and the thought process for most is just going to stop at, “Bad thing happened to Nazis… Meh.”
For context, the Nazis took 6 million POWs and murdered 3 million. Far higher death rate, far higher in totality. The Nazis destroyed large parts of the USSR and murdered millions of Soviet civilians and POWs.
I’ve heard a lot about the Rwandan genocide, but this is my first time hearing of OP’s thing. It’s more interesting to read about something novel, which is probably why you see more of this being shared.
The west didn’t purge the Nazis hard enough.
It actually rules that they worked all those Nazis to death digging a ditch between the Don and the Volga.
The source of your quoted text is from Erich Maschke, a literal dyed-in-the-wool Nazi.
He joined the SA in 1933, the Nazi party in 1937, and was in charge of training the Wehrmacht general staff in Poland during WW2. He was publically in favor of German colonization and domination of the “Eastern territory”.So allow me to disregard his opinion on the treatment of German POWs by those he wished to have eradicated.
– regards, a German, whose grandfather lost a leg in a Russian POW camp and returned as an alcoholic who beat his wife and kids daily.
When you fight literal Nazis and still can’t come away looking like the good guys.
Wild that they let some nazis survive. Hope they at least put them to good use for labor as reparations.
In the capitalist countries they were given cushy leadership positions instead lmao as you’d expect
Won’t shed a tear
My mother worked in Germany in the late 60s (We are Norwegian) and her boss’ (and life long friend of the family) husband was 16 when he was literally drafted from HJ to the SS in early 45. He was a good jugend and it was an “honor” and such BS. But having spent all his childhood in nazi Germany he knew nothing else. He was captured by the Russians in Czechoslovakia and spent 5 years as a POW and the only reason he made it as far as becoming a POW was his age and because the SS NCOs made sure he didn’t get the SS serial number tattoo since he was so young.
God knows how he manages to survive, but I never knew him to not eat every morsel of food on his plate, and he never talked about his experience.
I shed no tears for Nazis, but I do shed tears for the duped and the “innocents” of any conflict.
War crimes are war crimes.
Oh, so when do you take to the court half of western Germany? Up to late 70s justice ministry officials were in 30% ex nazi party members. Not mentioning BND ( ex org Gehlen ) which was nazi organization run by nazi army officer.
Did the Germans return robbed pieces of art? Did the Germans repay restitution to the victims of German nazi camps ( yes, German because first nazi camps were created in Germamy like in Dachau 1933, then in Austria )
Did Germans repay for the victims of Intelligenzaktion ( killing action of Polish elite, educates people like doctors, academics, politicians and members of police and army )
Did Germans repay for intentionally robbing and demolishing any industrial or even cities like Warsaw?
Please let’s talk seriously about war crimes
The only mistake was releasing them
Love posting nazi propaganda
Nazis are victims!! /s
Well yeah. Stalin was at least as evil as Hitler, he just executed his enemies (real or perceived) - Jews included - via gulags. TBH the only practical difference between them was their core ideologies and which ones were sides with the Allies when the war ended.
