There are Wehrmacht soldiers who defected to the Red Army. I think it would have been a mistake to turn them all away (though they obviously must be investigated). If someone recognizes that they were on the wrong side and want to join the right side, they generally should be able to.
Ok? I don't care what they did afterwards. Unless they find some way to retroactively undo their actions this is irrelevant, they can face the same tribunal as everyone else. Maybe mitigating factors can be considered.
I cannot blame them for feeling that way, but it by no means makes them correct.
There it is, the patronizing western leftist attitude. Try not committing war crimes next time, ok? Maybe you can head on over and lecture their victims directly when the time comes.
You are making literally the same argument from anger and outrage that Republicans do to defend the death penalty.
I believe in the death penalty for Nazis, yes. But if you insist I'll compromise for life imprisonment. And besides, I doubt paper-pushers would be sentenced to death. There are punishments between literally nothing and being executed; you know this, right? You also know that punishments should generally be accorded in proportion to the severity of the offense, right? I don't need to advocate for the execution of US soldiers to recognize that being one is bad and that they aren't blameless.
Ok? I don't care what they did afterwards. Unless they find some way to retroactively undo their actions this is irrelevant, they can face the same tribunal as everyone else. Maybe mitigating factors can be considered.
If you further agree that that tribunal can typically wait until the war is over and they have finished serving in the Red Army, then we agree on everything but sentencing.
There it is, the patronizing western leftist attitude. Try not committing war crimes next time, ok? Maybe you can head on over and lecture their victims directly when the time comes
I would (and do) say the same things of the families of murder victims here in America. Their sense of retributive justice is a problem in them,* not a problem out in the world being corrected by their sense of satisfaction. They don't need to forgive anyone, but they should come to understand that punitive justice is reactionary, sadistic, and bad for society.
*I expect this turn of phrase will upset you, but I mean it and I mean it very specifically. Consider the families of murder victims who are not interested in punitive justice. Imagining they are the only people who survived the victim, would it still be correct to kill the convict anyway? I don't think so, and yet this is a difference not in the world at large, nor in the convict, but in the surviving family. It is effectively an illness, one that we should not blame them for, if they feel anger and pursue vengeance, but that does not make it correct.
Regarding your last point, here's a new one for you: what is done to convicts should be bound to the severity of the crime, it should accord with what is useful to society. There will certainly be a great deal of correlation between the two -- someone who commits a greater crime probably needs a greater intervention -- but we must understand that it's not the basic causal mechanism at play.
When the Nazis lost, the Germans didn't get to decide for themselves what punishment they should face. Well, in the East, anyway. It was right when the victims then pursued vengeance against their oppressors and it was also right if they didn't. How this vengeance manifests in a courtroom setting is heavily dependent on context, and until we have war crimes tribunals for the US, it's useless to speculate on how that might happen.
And you can't have it both ways. You can't just ignore what the victims want when what they want is severe punishment and then be all about listening to their wishes when they express forgiveness. If they do, ok then, but what about everyone else they harmed? If you're dealing with a paper-pusher you can't possibly track down every single person who might have been affected by their actions and tally the score. In the rare instance that there is like one victim and they forgive the soldier, then fine. But I don't think it's possible to have such heavily localized effects. If you serve in the military the likelihood that you've only ever impacted those you've directly met is near-zero.
Imperialism is just wrong. Re-education should be the very, very least of postwar justice.
And anyway, I believe that when you kill somebody the only person with the right to forgive you is the person you just killed.
Ok? I don't care what they did afterwards. Unless they find some way to retroactively undo their actions this is irrelevant, they can face the same tribunal as everyone else. Maybe mitigating factors can be considered.
There it is, the patronizing western leftist attitude. Try not committing war crimes next time, ok? Maybe you can head on over and lecture their victims directly when the time comes.
I believe in the death penalty for Nazis, yes. But if you insist I'll compromise for life imprisonment. And besides, I doubt paper-pushers would be sentenced to death. There are punishments between literally nothing and being executed; you know this, right? You also know that punishments should generally be accorded in proportion to the severity of the offense, right? I don't need to advocate for the execution of US soldiers to recognize that being one is bad and that they aren't blameless.
If you further agree that that tribunal can typically wait until the war is over and they have finished serving in the Red Army, then we agree on everything but sentencing.
I would (and do) say the same things of the families of murder victims here in America. Their sense of retributive justice is a problem in them,* not a problem out in the world being corrected by their sense of satisfaction. They don't need to forgive anyone, but they should come to understand that punitive justice is reactionary, sadistic, and bad for society.
*I expect this turn of phrase will upset you, but I mean it and I mean it very specifically. Consider the families of murder victims who are not interested in punitive justice. Imagining they are the only people who survived the victim, would it still be correct to kill the convict anyway? I don't think so, and yet this is a difference not in the world at large, nor in the convict, but in the surviving family. It is effectively an illness, one that we should not blame them for, if they feel anger and pursue vengeance, but that does not make it correct.
Regarding your last point, here's a new one for you: what is done to convicts should be bound to the severity of the crime, it should accord with what is useful to society. There will certainly be a great deal of correlation between the two -- someone who commits a greater crime probably needs a greater intervention -- but we must understand that it's not the basic causal mechanism at play.
There is no account to balance.
When the Nazis lost, the Germans didn't get to decide for themselves what punishment they should face. Well, in the East, anyway. It was right when the victims then pursued vengeance against their oppressors and it was also right if they didn't. How this vengeance manifests in a courtroom setting is heavily dependent on context, and until we have war crimes tribunals for the US, it's useless to speculate on how that might happen.
And you can't have it both ways. You can't just ignore what the victims want when what they want is severe punishment and then be all about listening to their wishes when they express forgiveness. If they do, ok then, but what about everyone else they harmed? If you're dealing with a paper-pusher you can't possibly track down every single person who might have been affected by their actions and tally the score. In the rare instance that there is like one victim and they forgive the soldier, then fine. But I don't think it's possible to have such heavily localized effects. If you serve in the military the likelihood that you've only ever impacted those you've directly met is near-zero.
Imperialism is just wrong. Re-education should be the very, very least of postwar justice.
And anyway, I believe that when you kill somebody the only person with the right to forgive you is the person you just killed.