There’s something seldom discussed about the surviving guards. There is a general but unspoken conventional wisdom that they were just eeevill people and that was why they did what they did in the camps.
Yet by all accounts most if not all of them promptly disappeared back into society and lived unexceptional and non-criminal lives, in fact often quite admirable lives.
Couple thoughts:
Liberals are constantly claiming that imprisonment should be for purposes of rehabilitation, not revenge/punishment. Yet the great majority of the camp guards appear to have rehabilitated themselves, by liberal standards. So why prosecute elderly men now?
Does the fact that brutality and criminality does not appear to have been root elements in their personalities, as seen by their abandonment of them once the war is over, mean that many if not most people are capable of similar behavior under the same circumstances? Is that sneaking suspicion part of the reason for the apparently unreasonable pursuit of them?
I will simply state this:
THERE ARE NO MAJOR NAZI WAR CRIMINALS ALIVE TODAY. PERIOD.
Anyone alive today was a low level cog in a very big machine, more likely than not conscripted into service and following orders.
I think we should close this chapter on WWII. There is no more need for Nazi war crime hunters....although I do suggest you tune into the Military Channel tonight where they are beginning tonight with a new series on this subject. Tonight I think it will be about Martin Bormann...whose remains were found in Berlin in the 1990s.