this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Well, killing all Nazis isn't genocide, it's just mass murder.
And it isn't about a scale of how bad various regimes have been before or since.
And yes, that's the entire thing. They should have killed every last SS, Gestapo, every brown shirt and soldier, no matter how young. The motivation of the victims of killing every nazi wouldn't matter because the point is to eradicate every last one of them, and there's no way to prove they didn't believe in what they were doing other than their actions. There weren't very many Schindlers that showed by their actions that they actively resisted from the inside. And if it took their deaths to achieve the goal, then it was a mistake to not do it then.
TBH, despite being against the death penalty for several reasons, I'm worried we might be faced with such a decision again in my lifetime because they didn't do it then.
Obviously, eradicating the nazis wouldn't prevent the kind of insanity and hatred that exists as part of the human mind. It would have changed the face of that hatred though, and it would have sent the message that some things will not be forgiven or forgotten. It would have meant less rallying points, less bullshit. And it would have set the precedent that if humans behave like that, they can be put down like a rabid animal to protect the rest of us.
Again, I'm aware of exactly how ugly this opinion is. I do not like looking at the world and thinking that there wasn't enough death done back then. I do not like looking at the world now and wondering when it is going to happen again. But it's an ugly fucking world, and they're coming back. They're coming back exactly the same way they did before because they were allowed to survive.
At the end of the war literal children were being drafted. Are you seriously arguing that we should kill a 13 year old because he got a threatening letter and followed it's instructions?
Ahh, I'm not arguing we, as in humanity today, should do anything yet.
I'm saying that the people alive and in charge at the time made a mistake in not wiping out every nazi they could find.
Age is no barrier to such things at all. A 13 year old can be tried as an adult in many places for extreme crimes. Child soldiers have been sent to war for millennia, and still are today. Children are quite capable of committing atrocities. I wouldn't want to do it, I wouldn't want to see it get that far. But it was a mistake not to go as far as necessary to eradicate anyone that served the nazis because there's absolutely no way other than actions to prove what the individuals believed, and even that has flaws.
How many children had already been killed? I'm not even talking about by the nazis. Look up the Dresden fire bombing. Plenty of children were burnt to ash there. Hiroshima, Nagasaki. The are just the famous ones. The allies had already killed children of all ages by the end of the war. Pretending that there's a moral difference between that and executing them is not useful. Executions would even be arguably less horrible since it would only target those that were in the armed forces.
But what good would it have done? Those boys were victims themselves.
Well, this discussion has been less contentious than in the past, so I've actually had a chance to cover this.
Before I go copy/pasting things already covered, would it be too much to ask that you give a quick scroll through the thread and see if any of that changes your question, or if there's follow ups that you might have? It would help streamline the thread overall if there's not a lot of repeats.
I read the whole thread and didn’t see a single argument about what good would have come from that. I think you’re looking at this from a very removed point of view that lets you forget the actual individuals involved. I’m German. Let me introduce you to my grandparents and let’s see how they would’ve fared under your proposed processing:
Grandpa A was drafted at the end of the war, he was 13. He didn’t want to be there and plotted a “genius” plan with his two buddies two lie to his general about a super important mission from the general next town and run off. He probably only survived that because his general wasn’t in the mood to shoot him on the spot.
Grandma B wasn’t drafted obviously, she worked in (basically) social services while WWII because she actually was a supporter of the Nazi party and felt like that’s how she could do her part. She didn’t commit any atrocities, probably simply because as a woman she never got anywhere close to the front.
Grandpa C was a party member. He didn’t want to join at first – we still own a news paper page where he (and a few others) were openly shamed for refusing to join party and front. After his brother, who had turned down an SS position, was transferred to an extra risky combat unit as cannon fodder and died on his second day, he caved. I can only assume that, as a soldier, he actively participated in the fighting. He tried to disobey where easily possible, but he didn’t desert. When his general told him to “take care” of a woman he abused, he brought her away from the front, pointed her to the nearest town and told her to flee.
Grandma D didn’t do any of that, but she was proudly engaged to a Hitler Youth leader (who thankfully died, so she met my grandpa after the war). While WWII she absolutely was a Nazi, but she didn’t actively do anything that would mark her as such. She got into a personal crisis after the war when she stopped lying to herself about this horrible system she had supported. Until the day she died she was convinced she would go to hell.
Killing every active supporter, as you suggested, would have both my grandpas executed, although they both condemned what was happening and, limited by their sparce abilities to do so, tried to disobey. My grandmas would’ve ironically been spared, even though they were (when it comes to their attitude) more Nazis than my grandpas. Neither of the four were Nazis at later points in their life, I’d like to add. And the generation after them would have never existed - an anti-nationalistic, anti-patriotic, highly political, highly critical and socially active family, influenced by traumatized men and rueful women.
So it would have achieved nothing. I'd argue the world would be even worse if that would have been humanity's answer to WWII back then.
I think you are kinda insane, at the wars end most German soldiers where literally underage, there is no justice in killing them, not the smallest bit.