Of course the senior officers and civilian officials can't claim they didn't know.But how about the privates,corporals and junior clerks? It seems to me that a corporal who does something bad could,perhaps,reasonably claim "I was only following orders" because the penalty for a corporal failing to follow orders was surely execution.
It's been a while since I've seen "Judgment at Nuremburg" and,of course,the men on trail then were judges...not corporals or junior clerks.
I know this topic has been discussed before...often.I'm just keeping my fingers occupied by posting this!
He reportedly confessed to being a guard at Treblinka. He claimed refuge status on his immigration application. Good riddance.
> I’ve sometimes pondered the general subject of culpability...*moral* culpability...of individuals like German soldiers/guards during WWII. <
That would make an interesting topic in a law school or ethics class.
Follow orders, and risk execution as a war criminal.
Don’t follow orders, and risk execution as a traitor.
It’s also worth noting that the private soldier is also flying blind, so to speak. He’s probably a kid who has been fed all sorts of racial nonsense and propaganda. He’s at the point where he thinks 1+1=3.
Perhaps it should all come down to command authority, and brutality. The camp commandants gave the orders, and were quite brutal. No one questions that they deserved to be executed after the war.
But what about the guard who never brutalized an inmate, but who nevertheless murdered children day after day, year after year?
Should he be hanged? Tough question, as he was in that no-win situation. If I were the judge, I wouldn’t sentence him to death. but I wouldn’t give him a slap on the wrist either. 10 years in prison, maybe. And he serves every day.