Should Joseph Goebbels have been executed for being propaganda minister?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Should Joseph Goebbels have been executed for being propaganda minister?

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

hakimashou posted:

I dont have a single kind word to say about the soviets. We probably should have gone to war against them after WW2.

At any rate, trying to confuse the issue from Allied fire/nuclear bombing to soviet rapists is a different argument altogether.

What we were justified in doing was killing as many Germans and Japanese as possible, and destroying as much of the material basis for their war effort as possible, until they surrendered unconditionally.

It was what we actually did, it was good, and it lead to good outcomes for Japan and Germany as well as the rest of the world. Both countries were rebuilt peaceful, free, and prosperous.

Allied mass rapists weren't OK either, you weirdo.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 23:29

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:57

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

hakimashou posted:

Who said they were? Hell is wrong with you?

Firebombing Germany and Japan were OK. Dropping nuclear bombs on Japan was OK.

Dude who said they weren't was wrong.

No he was not. Also Allied war crimes are not limited to firebombing and nuking German and Japanese civilians.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 23:36

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

hakimashou posted:

The Germans and Japanese were responsible for the deaths of more than sixty million people spangly.

Would you have preferred it was seventy? eighty? ninety? A hundred million people?

I'll leave you the honor of telling J�rgen M�ller and Hanae Takehara that the destruction of their homes and their subsequent senseless deaths prevented millions of other deaths.

EDIT never mind, it probably wouldn't be appropriate, since you'd be more than likely to develop at least a half-chub

Flowers For Algeria fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Feb 12, 2017

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 01:04

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

Kurtofan posted:

yeah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Brasillach

It's a good thing to know that there is precedent for sentencing fascists to death for intellectual crimes.
We'll have legal standing when the Grand Soir comes.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 19:57

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

hakimashou posted:

After having all their cities bombed to rubble neither the Germans nor the Japanese started any more wars. They were not left with the impression that they'd gotten away with it.

An idiotic approach. Are you advocating the firebombing of major American urban centers in order to stop America from starting new wars? Of course you're not.
Germany has not started any new wars mainly because of its integration into NATO and the EU and because it has so far remained a liberal democracy, two elements that are very good at disincentivizing wars. And also because for, like, 40 years, it was cut in half, and half of it was under Soviet control. As for Japan, Article 9 was forced upon it by the Americans. Article 9 is a very good provision, and the Japanese have naturally become very attached to it.

hakimashou posted:

It did take extraordinary moral courage to level whole cities.

It's like flipping the switch on death row. It's killing someone, it appears wrong on its face, but a person can take a moral leap of faith- if punishment is just, then the terrible act is right. To anyone who believes in moral judgment, this is a risk. To take the risk requires moral courage.

I'm pretty sure you're telling yourself that because you're fantasizing about doing it, and you'd like to paint yourself as a courageous man.
There's literally no "moral risk" if you've been able to rationalize it away.

hakimashou posted:

At any rate, as long as strategic bombing was done in good faith, which it was, then it wasn't wrong. Starting World War Two was wrong, ending it was right, no matter how many of the perpetrators were killed in the process.

Please read the thread.

hakimashou posted:

It's not any different at all from what the police call an 'active shooter.' If someone is shooting up a school or a shopping mall there is no level of force against the perpetrator that is inappropriate or immoral. It's not wrong to kill him to stop him. If he surrenders then it's different.

In your inept analogy, your argument is that it is moral to not only use overwhelming force to kill the "active shooter", even when alternate solutions exist, but also to murder his family and his friends.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 16:39

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

Whorelord posted:

always seemed weird that speer got 20 years but donitz only got 10

He had a yummy-sounding name.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 17:05

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

hakimashou posted:

When buddhism finally turns to violent fundamentalism we are all doomed.

You might not be aware of it but that's already the case in several parts of Asia.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 08:21

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

hakimashou posted:

Do they kill everyone to release them from the suffering of existence Flowers For Algeria?

That's Donald Trump's job.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 19:28

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

rudatron posted:

By putting allied commanders on trial besides nazis, you're saying that the two contexts are the same. They're not. Nazis did what they did regardless of strategic value or practical capacity. Allied commanders, including the soviets, had the goal of defeating the aggressor in a war of annihilation. An action committed in defense is not equivalent to an action committed aggressively.

Moreover, when it comes to rapes, it was never the policy of the soviet union that you must rape, or that rape was ever allowed - it wasn't, it was always a criminal act. But there were practical limits in actually policing that standard, on account of the eastern front being the most brutal battlefield to have ever existed, and on account of the soviet union by far being the biggest victim of the war as a whole.

That's not to say anything goes. But you cannot treat allied actions similar to axis actions, nor were they ever actually the same (when you take into account context), nor is this any kind of moral relativism.

There is absolutely no grounds for putting allied high command on trial.

Rape is never committed in defense. It should be aggressively prosecuted. Allied commanders who let it happen should have been put on trial.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 08:13

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

steinrokkan posted:

It was a byproduct of military actions. I don't even see what the argument is about, nobody is saying that rape was defensible, the argument seems to be about whether Soviet soldiers should be posthumously indicted as war criminals or something.

The whole point of this thread is to debate whether or not a long-dead man should have been executed.
Why shouldn't we indict Allied war criminals in the same manner? Nothing excuses war crimes, not even "war is hell, son".
(Also you should read the thread. Rape is by no means a necessary byproduct of war, and the mass rapes committed by Allied troops are especially remarkable in their systematic nature)

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 12:29

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

If only the generals had been as angry about rape than about traffic jams...

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 12:31

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

rudatron posted:

Do I have to post the ww2 casualties by country graphs again?

Like, If you can look at a country that's been totally devastated, subject to extermination by a foreign nation, had to move vital industries several hundred kilometers over a rail network at breaking point, putting soldiers who can't speak to each other, into the field without any training (or hell, education), who are now engaged in a total + industrial war, subjected to the kind of conditions that are only really comparable to things like the ww1 trenches or particularly vicious civil wars, and then tut tut that said army wasn't morally pure and well behaved enough, you are an arrogant fool. Soviet commanders did what they need to do, to win the war, that they didn't start.

Rape was never legal, it was always a criminal action. It happened because that's what the situation ensured was gonna happen. If you're not prepared to face that, if you're not prepared to acknowledge that context, you aren't ready to discuss what war actually is, or what war crimes actually are. You're just not.

Okay, it's a criminal action, so what's wrong with aggressively prosecuting the rapists and all the people responsible?

And what is wrong with my post? Rape is never committed in defense. It should be aggressively prosecuted. Allied commanders who let it happen should have been put on trial. Do you disagree with any of these three sentences?

Soviet commanders did not need to allow rape to win the war, and therefore were complicit and should have been prosecuted as well.

Flowers For Algeria fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Feb 17, 2017

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 20:35

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

steinrokkan posted:

Absolutely nothing, but an army will never prosecute such crimes in earnest, because it's not how it is structured to work. There may be token concessions to decency as we see these days, but those are few and far between, and arguably the military apparatus fights against making them teeth and nails.

So take it out of the hands of the army, change the laws to fit the situation, crush the reticent military apparatus, rely on outside observers, investigate every claim and prosecute every case. Make rapists afraid again. Sounds easy enough.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 21:45

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

Well, your can't do attitude certainly doesn't help.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 21:48

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

steinrokkan posted:

Exactly, a fight against militarism is practically a fight for mandatory rape.

The military must be politically destroyed before civilian oversight can become a thing. Hell, you know what, I'm gonna say that military personnel having any political clout whatsoever is the chief reason why violence against civilians becomes permissible in militaries. Not just because of the personal activities of these people, but also because it allows the military a privileged position of maintaining institutions parallel to the civilian state and undermining the power of the latter.

All right, let's do both - smash the military's hold on civilian power, and prosecute military rapes and other war crimes.
Now, keeping in mind that this is not an is, but an ought question: don't you agree that the Allied (American as well as Soviet) command, as well as individual soldiers, should have faced trial back at home for the war crimes they committed in the liberation of Europe?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 21:58

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

Wait, I think that there's a great alternate solution - if you don't want to bother doing all the "hard" stuff such as actively investigating and prosecuting rapes, you can simply ban all men from serving in the armed forces.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 22:09

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

rudatron posted:

If you can find proof that an individual soldier committed a rape, then you should prosecute that, because they committed a criminal action. But when it comes to the commanders, you're arguing negligence, which necessarily entails taking into account the constraints they were operating under. I've tried repeatedly to get you to acknowledge these constraints, yet you and others keep stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that, instead opting to keep pretend that the eastern front was some kind of gentlemanly picnic, where clearly issues of limited resources and the viability of policing/prosecution (to the extent that you seem to want) didn't matter.

Until you acknowledge that context, you are not seriously discussing the issue.

Furthermore, by treating allied and nazi commanders as the same, you're saying that the two contexts are the same, which is emphatically not the case. There is no comparison between nazi commanders and allied commanders. In my view, Russian, American and British leadership did the best they could have reasonably done, in prosecuting a war that they didn't start.

I acknowledge the context and dismiss it as irrelevant, since there are no extenuating circumstances to crimes against humanity such as wartime mass rapes. Incontrovertible crimes against humanity such as mass rapes deserve to be prosecuted, no matter who the perpetrator is.
Keep in mind that I am not treating allied and nazi commanders the same. I am prosecuting some for the crime against humanity that was the war of agression against the rest of Europe, and all the crimes against humanity that followed on from it. The others, I am prosecuting for the crimes against humanity that followed on from their justified war against an agressor.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 08:30

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

rudatron posted:

At no point did soviet leadership order or encourage rapes, they therefore did not commit a crime against humanity. You are arguing negligence, correct? That's not the same thing as arguing that the leadership perpetrated the war crimes themselves, ergo your entire premise (that war crimes are inexcusable) is irrelevant.

a) The leadership was aware and did nothing to stop it, so I am arguing willful complicity. I am also fairly certain that they encouraged it, and there are grounds to believe that they did - the sheer scale of it, for one - so there also should at least be an investigation into their participation, yes.
b) I'm not limiting myself to mass rapes. Crimes against humanity were ordered by Allied leadership, and they were passed down the chain of command and carried out. The number and extent of these crimes should have been investigated as such by a civilian international court, and the people deemed responsible should have been tried.

rudatron posted:

Also lol, are you calling the soviet counteroffensive a war of aggression against the rest of europe? Because if so, you are legit a moron.

No I'm not.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 08:49

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

rudatron posted:

"Did nothing to stop it" assumes a realistic and reasonable capacity to stop it, which means taking into account constraints of the system and the situation command was operating under. You, therefore, cannot dismiss context as irrelevant, as you admit to have done.

A realistic and reasonable capacity to stop it existed. Orders to investigate rapes and severely punish rapists are a realistic and reasonable course of action. Among the Allies, there is proof that this was done to a certain extent (albeit with a horrific racist bias targeting black soldiers) among US troops in France. Not a significant extent, not nearly enough, but it shows ability.
Not even attempting or considering to stop it is complicity as well.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 09:13

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

It also had a huge bureaucracy and a martial court system that was pretty well developed and used to discipline many offenses, so yes. They had the means to afford barrier troops and penal battalions even when they were actively losing the war. They arrested tens of thousands of soldiers.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 09:29

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

Not raping is a crucial element of martial order and discipline, and the Soviet command had absolutely no qualms about sentencing over ten thousand soldiers to death in a court martial, in the middle of a total war (I don't even have figures for on-the-spot executions). Hundreds of thousands more were also sentenced to another form of hardly-better-than-meaningless death in the form of penal battalions. You're just arguing nonsense: the means existed, they were deployed for other crimes, and even in a beep boop ~total war means all we do is justified~ argument the sentencing of soldiers to serving in penal battalions serves the war effort.

Your defense of impunity for mass rape by invoking total war is pretty bad. Is this really a hill you want to die on?

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 10:06

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

Also your argument does not cover mass rapes behind the lines and mass rapes during the occupation, against which there was nothing more than a token effort, and which was certainly encouraged by Soviet propaganda.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 10:10

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:

Yes, the crime of running away from the germans.

I agree, it is an offense that is far less important than rape, and absolutely understandable.

LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:

Like, it's cool that you can jump up on this moral high ground, but there was loving cannibalism going on during some of the sieges in WW2. It's a lot messier of a situation than you're making it out to be, and you know it. If you're arguing it's morally bad, then yeah, so was a lot of poo poo everyone did during ww2. If you're arguing seriously that they really could have done something about it, though, you're kinda huffing your own farts pretty hard.

I'm not arguing that it is morally bad, the fact that it is morally bad is undisputable. I'm arguing seriously that they could have done a lot about it, and that they should have, and that not doing so and not even attempting to do anything about it makes them complicit in crimes against humanity.
Stalin himself was an apologist for those crimes against humanity and would not issue orders against them.

LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:

Happen to have any examples of the propaganda? Genuinely curious, I haven't seen a whole lot of the soviet propaganda from ww2.

No, only second-hand sources.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 10:56

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:57

Flowers For Algeria: Dec 3, 2005; I humbly offer my services as forum inquisitor. There is absolutely no way I would abuse this power in any way.

blowfish posted:

To an army concerned with not losing the other half of the country to literal nazis, it's much more important to shoot defectors pour encourager les autres, how do you not get this

The mass rapes did not occur while the Soviet army was defending the motherland against Nazi invasion, they occurred during the counter-invasion in Ukraine, Poland, Yugoslavia, Austria and Germany, after the summer of 1943 and up until 1949. The concern was not "losing the other half of the country", and the Nazis were being soundly defeated.

rudatron posted:

But if it ever does happen, full responsibility must be borne by the instigators of the war, which is this case, is the nazis.

The Nazis bear responsibility for the war and their own crimes against humanity, not the crimes against humanity of the Allied forces.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 11:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Should Joseph Goebbels have been executed for being propaganda minister?