A former SS member, now aged eighty- eight, goes on trial in Germany for the murder of three dutch civilians in 1944. Heinrich Boere will along with John Demjanjuk , who has been extradited from the US to Germany just recently most likely be the last person to be tried for Nazi war crimes.......
In August, another former SS member has been sentenced to life in Germany ( at ninety years old!) for a massacre in an italian village in 1944 that he evidently took part in........


War Crimes: Nazi Assassin Goes on Trial in Germany - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

What do you think the odds are that most of these former nazis were known to German authorities for many years and allowed to live quietly?

Reading the article might give you a clue.

Anyway don't know what to make of this; murderers getting their trail is always good, but somehow it has a sour taste to it as well, when one compares the charges and rulings this old men (back then totaly low, unimportant figures) get, with the ones higher up Nazi/ more involved war criminals got in the 60's/70's.

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"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

I guess your talking about Lieutenant Scheungraber and for starters he was a member of the Wehrmacht 1st Mountain Division and not of the Waffen SS.

I truely have problems with this ruling against him and I guess he must surely regret that the German airforce was in shambles during that stage of the war, as otherwise he could have just asked for an airstrike as an retailiation for the terrorists activities in the area and he would have never ever had to face trial.

Guess stupid and out of touch with war reality rulings like this are the result, when the generation of grandchildren judge their grandfathers.

__________________
"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

Well Scheungraber has been sentenced for forcing civilians into a house that has been dynamited and blown up with them, and for ordering revenge killings of civilians for partisan attacks. Four cases seem to possible to trace back to him.
The sentence against him seems reasonable to me accordingly.

Eye witnesses? None. (Sorry for questioning the value of the memories of a back then 15 year old, non German speaking) Written orders? None. Convesion of doing it ? None

Apart from that, nowadays it would be a war crime, back then it was normal conduct of war.

Due to the German lack of airpower, soldiers like him had to do it, with the allies you had massive, indifferent airstrikes against civilian/military targets as soon as a thinny bit of restistance was recieved or Russian rape/plunder squads running amok.

By the way in another thread goober repeated the claim that US airstrikes were allowed to be ordered as long as no more than 29 civilians were harmed in Iraq /Afghanistan (have no idea whether it's true), just saying. Scheungraber probably would have prefered to serve in such an enviorment as well.

WW2 was different and can't be judged by nowadays standards. There are real cases (guys involved in the holocaust or higher ups ordering retaliation) and there are phantom cases, like this.

__________________
"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

Well, I don´t know for sure which testimonies were used in the trial except the then fifteen year old who survived, but some things seem to be clear :

1. It was a specific german unit who did this.

2. Scheungraber was the commanding officer in the village of Falzano di Cortona, where the massacre took place.

2. The victims were civilians and clearly neither partisans nor terrorists, aged between 15 and 74.

3. German soldiers at that time were disciplined enough to wait for a commanders order to engage in such acts. That they would have committed the killing without Scheungarber knowing and ordering them is rather unlikely.

4. Scheungraber has been talking proudly about his involvement to friends already decades ago.

And lastly I am happy this has NOT been tried by WW II standards. At least this asshole will die in prison.

First of all I believe he propably did what he's accused of, but I'm not sure whether the trial against him really meets the standards a case of murderer should have. It's one thing to believe that this case happened as it was described, but it's a totaly different thing to proof personal misconduct and intention in a trail. I can't see how such a proof could have been established in this case, without a confession or vital witnesses.

Anyway in a more abstract, not realated to this case point of view your point Nr. 3 stated everything one needs to know about such cases:

Guys like Scheungraber and his unit followed the usual German conduct of anti-partisan/terrorists warfare.

They did so according to their rules of engagement and the standards applied back then, which is all one can and should ask form disciplined soldiers to do.

Fact is there was terrorist activity with German KIAs, fact is such terrorists acts automatically caused German retaliation and so a German unit delivered it.

If you want to blame someone, do so with the higher ups making the rules or the fucking Eyetie's terrorists, who had chosen this area for their operations, knowing what would happen to by standers due to their "war".

Apart from that, if a guy like Scheungraber went bersek on his own, due to alcoholism or moral and ethical brutalization, his comanding officers could have trailed him as well.
As much as people like to ignore it, but acts of military justice aimed against Germans misconducting ( theft, robberies, murderer) happened in the German Wehrmacht as well and given the e.g British wiretapping records of German POW officers; the Nazi trails against such soldiers had been viewed as too soft; instead of being put into punishment units/suicidal missions the death penalty was considered the best punsihment, at least by some officers.

Anyway Voland maybe I'll lose my resistance against trails focusing on back then young, ordinary soldiers, as soon as a single, surviving terrorists/"partisan" will be trialed for his crimes as well.

We both know it won't happen so I continue to view such late trails as a farce.

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"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

Funny thing I noticed recently is how many Wehrmacht generals worked behind the scenes as consultants, if you will, to the post-war West German government of the 1950's in the rebuilding of the military. For political reasons they kept a low profile but these people were experts in their field. Most of them served briefly in POW camps and then wrote books (unless they were unlucky enough to be captured by the Soviets).

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"I am no Martin Luther King or Ghandi motherfucker. I have no idea what those guys were talking about. You spit on my ass, I will knock you out. No motherfucking marching and singing in the street for me." - Jim Brown, NFL Hall-of-Famer and Cleveland Browns running back, 1957-1965

A perfect example, Rich, would be Erich Hartmann. He is the highest scoring fighter ace of all time and flew for the Luftwaffe during the war, spending pretty much all of his time on the Eastern Front. In fact, he is one of only 27 Germans to recieve the Knights Cross with Oakleaves, Swords and Diamonds (Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten). After the war he was a member of the new German Air Force (Bundesluftwaffe) and basically rebuilt the German fighter-arm.

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance

I read about Hartmann when i was a kid. I could understand his downing literally hundreds of Soviet aircraft, since their aircraft and their pilots were no match for a good ME-109 pilot, but what really impressed me was how well he did against P-51 pilots, proving his true skill. I did not know he was one of the lucky few that survived in a Soviet POW camp until Adenuer's trip to Moscow in 1955 secured his release along with several thousand other POW's, the last release I believe.

__________________
"I am no Martin Luther King or Ghandi motherfucker. I have no idea what those guys were talking about. You spit on my ass, I will knock you out. No motherfucking marching and singing in the street for me." - Jim Brown, NFL Hall-of-Famer and Cleveland Browns running back, 1957-1965

I remember reading about his first encounter with P-51s. Over Romania and his aircraft was totally outclassed. All he could do was swing back and fourth in the air, trying to give the Amis no chance to draw a solid bead on him. Finally ran out of fuel. Popped the canopy, and slammed his plane upside-down, dumping himself out.

__________________
I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance

Hopefully not too far off track of the OP, but I always had mixed feeling about Von Braun's treatment by the US after the war.

On one hand, a brilliant man, and probably the primary reason the US had success in manned space. The line that he had little choice other than to get involved with the Nazis, more or less againts his will, is convienient and relieves guilt.

OTOH, not only was he a Nazi, but a member of the SS as well. I have no doubt he was aware of what occurred at the Dora camp near Nordhausen, Germany.

Carry on.

With the last time witnesses dying away german prosecutors apparently make a last effort to bring as many perpetrators as possible to justice still. A ninety year old former SS soldier from the city of Duisburg ( western Germany) will be charged with the murder of 58 jewish slave labourers in early 1945. The case came up after a university student in Austria was researching the massacre and was surprised to find out that one of the assasins was still alive :

SS Massacre: Former Nazi Charged with Murder of 58 Jewish Laborers - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Well the article is kinda short and lacks details to truely know, whether it will be possible to succesfully trail him.

I mean there are 2 living witnesses for the murder case he's accused of and not enough information to know how good the evidance is, which was used/uncovered in the former trail the article mentions and so to bring the death of 58 Jews into court proven connection with him.

Apart from that his health status might be the most important factor in hindering him being truely trailed. He might just die before a sentence can be reached.

Anyway we'll have to wait and see, if a trial will take place and what the outcome will be.

__________________
"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes