Clearly most people, my self included, recognize the Nazi regime as inherently wicked, as were regimes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
I don't think the crews who dropped the A-Bombs were evil and I don't think they thought they were doing evil.
However, there were unecessary measures taken after the war in Operation Keelhaul in which about a million Russians were repatriated by the U.S. and Britain. These Russians faced death by and large, and our side knew it. Those who took part in Operation Keelhaul knew it was a terrible thing they doing and felt very guilty about it for the most part, I imagine. I think they are very comparable to German soldiers involved in deporting innocent people to concentration camps. I think the analogy is very apt. I think both the German soldiers (and Ukrainians, Latvians, etc.) AND ours did what was morally wrong in these instances. I don't think we should hunting those people because they are "evil" because they are no more evil than their American and British counterparts in these two similar crimes. To be fair, the guiltiest in Operation Keelhaul were our top commanders, and I don't think it would serve any purpose to try them post-mortem for a terrible crime that somehow they excused themselves of in their own minds. They, however, committed as serious a crime against humanity as almost all the "Nazi war criminals" being pursued today.
I feel I ought to clarify some of my thoughts on this matter.
First, I don't think we should be trying to put our own veterans who may have taken part in atrocities in WWII on trial. In the heat of battle and war, bad and morally confused decisions are made. Even though Operation Keelhaul occurred after the war ended, it could be considered to be part of the war, a terrible thing, in its own right, though it was.
The point I am trying to make about pursuing people designated by some as "Nazi war criminals" is that any crimes they may have committed were done over 60 years ago. They almost certainly didn't think they were committing crimes that they would be punished for 60 years after the fact. Their cause was wrong and evil, I believe. But that fact does not make them evil in itself.
Leaving them alone is far more just than pursuing them
because they are NOT, in my opinion, the human devils some think them to be or, in fact, necessarily particularly wicked at all.
In my lifetime I have heard from a teacher, a co-worker, and a retired Army Colonel, stories of specific atrocities committed by our guys during and after the war.
1) My high school Latin teacher told us how his commanding officer told one of his men, who had just lost his best friend in battle to take a German prisoner out for a walk. What he meant was: "I'm giving you license to kill this German in cold blood." And that's exactly what happened.
2) A retired U.S. Army Colonel told me of his brother witnessing, during Operation Keelhaul, Russian deportees breaking the glass windows of the trains they were in with their heads and then cutting their own throats on the broken glass. He said his brother felt terrible about this. But what could he do to stop the deportation of these innocent people and their ghastly fate? (See any parallels here?)
3) A co-worker of mine who served in Japan in the USAF during the Korean War told me of a U.S. G.I. who befriended, if that's the word, a Japanese family of five after the war. For some reason the father of the family said something that offended him, and he proceeded to shoot the entire family. He was punished by receiving literally lowest form of reprimand from his commanding officer for committing this appalling quintuple murder, in other words, the mildest slap on the wrist.
My point is evil acts were committed by individuals on our side and their side. I am not defending the evil policies of mass murder of the Hitler regime. I can understand how some people still want revenge, although they say and may think it's justice. What the "Nazi-hunters" are doing is wrong, though, and they should cease and desist in committing the cruel and incredibly vindictive (and short-sighted) campaign they are on.
I hope this gets my point across a little better.