The Paradoxes of a Death Penalty Stance (Germans banned it to protect Nazi war criminals)

The Washington Post, ^ | June 4, 2005 | Charles Lane

[quidnunc]

In the debate between Europe and the United States over the death penalty, no country is more vocal than Germany. German media regularly decry executions in Texas. A recent U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the rights, under international law, of foreign defendants in capital cases grew in part out of a German lawsuit before the World Court on behalf of two German citizens on death row in Arizona. (The Supreme Court dismissed the case on May 23 for technical reasons.) German objections to capital punishment slowed Berlin's cooperation with the U.S. prosecution of alleged al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, who faces the possibility of the death penalty — though the two countries eventually worked out an agreement.

Contrasting their nation's policy with that of the Americans, Germans point proudly to Article 102 of their Basic Law, adopted in 1949. It reads, simply: "The death penalty is abolished." They often say that this 56-year-old provision shows how thoroughly the postwar Federal Republic has learned — and applied — the lessons of Nazi state-sponsored killing. (Communist East Germany kept the death penalty until 1987.)

But the actual history of the German death penalty ban casts this claim in a different light. Article 102 was in fact the brainchild of a right-wing politician who sympathized with convicted Nazi war criminals — and sought to prevent their execution by British and American occupation authorities. Far from intending to repudiate the barbarism of Hitler, the author of Article 102 wanted to make a statement about the supposed excesses of Allied victors' justice.

-snip-

[Che Chihuahua]

This is why the liberals are anti-death penalty. They are protecting the various traitors within the democrat party. Especially the one that took campaign contributions from Chi-com generals and gave critical missile guidance technology to the Red Chinese.

[Patti_ORiley]

Liberals fight the death penalty arguing that some of those condemned to death might be innocent, while at the same time arguing for the death penalty for nearly 1.5 million unborn babies annually in the US alone. Quite a paradox indeed.

[STFrancis]

Kind of a German Ping...

Don't have the entire list of names... if you do send it to me and I'll start keeping up with it...

[americanbychoice2]

thanks,
I wonder what happened to Longjack?

[STFrancis]

I do not know... ????!!!

Anyone else that wants on the German List let me know.. I know for instance that I am missing Michaeldus???!

Thanks..

[americanbychoice2]

michael81dus.

[GOP_1900AD]

I wouldn't doubt it ... the thought of the snapping ropes at Nuremberg resonates in their minds ...

[jer2911tx]

i thought liberals opposed the death penalty as a part of their plan to return the right to vote to convicted felons and shore up that block vote.

[ZULU]

I'm kind of suspicious of anything the Washngton Post has to say.

Even in 1949, Germany was an occupied country. Its always been my understanding that the allies were responsible for banning the death penalty in Italy and Germany and Japan as they wanted to prevent human rights abuses in the future in countries which had a recent record of such abuse.

[Revenge of Sith]

Japan still has the death penalty today.

[ZULU]

I thought Japan didn't have a death penalty.

[Revenge of Sith]

Japan still has the death penalty and so does Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines, which refutes the lie peddled by opponents of the death penalty that the US is the only civilized country that still uses it.