Adolf Eichmann: Fair Sentence?

[gebhk]

You are still evading my question about a viable alternative.

[gebhk]

You are still evading my question about a viable alternative.

I have answered that three times and will not do so again

If they did what they were accused of and were found guilty on the evidence, then it was no "lynch party".

The victims of lynch parties are also 'found guilty on the evidence'. It is the jurisdiction of the court, the application of valid law and the rules of evidence overseen by an impartial judge that differentiates a lynch party from a legal proceeding. All of the above have been found wanting in the Nuremberg trials.

For example Article 21 of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal Charter stipulated that: The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. In other words, 'we all know that X did it' became evidence - this is certainly a feature of lynch parties but not of legitimate courts of law.

Neither is 'doing what you are accused of' make you guilty in law unless what you did is unlawful. In this respect the IMT was found almost entirely wanting.

The fact that the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court considered the Nuremberg Tribunal a fraud and a lynching party should give us pause even if we take into account possible hyperbole and professional jealousies and animosities.

In any case, not all the accused were executed, so hanging was not "assured", even if found guilty

.
My reference to hanging was a hyperbole meant to chime with the 'lynch party' theme - however, I am happy to change that to 'punishment' if you prefer.

This point does however lead to the question why some defendants were spared the noose or even acquitted. Only the most naive would believe that this was based entirely on the law. For example, for the obvious political reasons, the tu quoque (you too) defence (aka the whatabout defence we have both combated on many occasions elsewhere) was admitted as valid during the trials. Most famously admirals Dönitz and Raeder were not hanged, or indeed punished in any way, for waging unrestricted submarine warfare. If they were to be hanged for that, then so should be Ernest King and/or Chester Nimitz. This precedent has been a thorn in the side of the prosecutors of many subsequent war crimes' trials, including the work of the ICTY.

It is a not an unreasonable suspicion that for this very same reason, a large number of criminals were never even indicted - most notoriously, perhaps, von dem Bach-Zelewski who openly and publicly admitted to being a mass murderer (he is connected to our thread by being a defence witness at the trial of Eichmann in 1961).

[wm]

Eichmann and his ilk were not indispensable. They could have been easily replaced.

Yes, they could have been - but the entire Team Reinhard had to exist and had to work well to make possible the murder of 6 million Jews, fast and cheap.
It was their own choice and they had to pay for their decisions.

According to Hague IV (1907, Annex to the Convention, Section III - Military Authority over the Territory of the Hostile State), every killing of a Jew was a war crime and a hanging offense (because why not).
Eichmann should have known that - Hague Conventions, Laws of War were mandatory teaching for every German officer.
And he should have been aware of the doctrine of aiding and abetting because it hanged people as surely as Section III of Hague IV.

I mean, just how far down the ladder is it fair to go when seeking to punish war crimes, especially if the person never ordered anyone's death and never personally harmed anyone himself? If Japan had won the war and had held war crimes trials over the American fire-bombing of Japanese cities and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would they have tried to prosecute and execute the mid-level officers who handled the shipment of the atomic bombs, the mid-level officers who flew the Enola Gay, the mid-level officers who trained the pilots who dropped the nukes? No, probably not. They would have focused on the senior officers and civilian officials who ordered those bombings.

Although the Holocaust was a massive war crime and bombing of Japan wasn't.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi gebhk,

You post, "I have answered that three times and will not do so again".

If thought you had, I would not be asking.

Please humour me explaining (again, if you so wish) what you think should have been done, in practical terms, with the senior leadership of the Third Reich in lieu of the Nuremburg Process?

We know that the Nuremburg Process was something of a "camel" - designed by a committee of conflicting interests - but what better alternative was there that was viable?

Is your alternative that they should have been released on technical grounds?

That they should have been shot out of hand?

A third way?

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

You better watch the 1984 movie complete, this will answer all your questions.

The problem is the movie falsifies history right then so there is no point to watch it further.
The people at Wannsee didn't need to know, didn't have to know about the Holocaust. They were discussing technical aspects of deporting the Jews (to the East, to work there) what would really happen to the Jews was state secret and not their business.

The people at Wannsee knew about the Holocaust,they knew what would happen to the Jews who would be deported ,they had already collaborated to the Holocaust .They had already ordered the murder of countless Jews .
That it was a state secret does not mean that they did not know it .

[wm]

And the source for that is?

Because:

I read a detailed report from the SD and police regarding the Final Solution of the Jewish question [The Wannsee Protocol, January 1942]. A vast number of new significant points emerge from it. The Jewish question must now be solved within a pan-European framework. There are more than II million Jews still in Europe.
They will have to be concentrated later, to begin with, in the east; possibly an island, such as Madagascar can be assigned to them after the war.
The Goebbels - Diaries March 7, 1942

If Goebbels himself didn't know, how come middle-level bureaucrats knew two months earlier?

[Hans1906]

The very fine details revealed, they spoke about the Endlösung, the terms Massenmord, Tötung, and Ausrottung did not occur in the protocol of that time.

Am I wrong, did I read the wrong documents ?

The very typical vocabulary of the high-ranking officials of the state at that time, and that is exactly what all of the participants were at that time "speaking", without exception.
Today called "Beamtendeutsch", this term is still very common in our German language.
(Beamtendeutsch still has very negative touch, ordinary people do not understand all this...)

Verwaltungssprache / Behördensprache / Beamtendeutsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verwaltungssprache


Hans

P.S. Who really read the book "Mein Kampf" by Hitler, and perhaps really perceived it, all this was very clear, without question.

[Hans1906]

The worldwide internalized misperception of Hitler as a person is once again revealed in this topic.

People talk about his work, but hardly anyone has actually read his books.

A burnt genius, with a German vision, that spoke from the soul of hundreds of thousands of former veterans at the time, not least my greatgrandfather.
You should have read the books to even begin to form your own opinion...

Hans (Born in the year 1956)

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Hans,

There was only one book people could have read. The second was not published in his lifetime.

Sid

[David Thompson]

Let's get back on topic.

[mikegriffith1]

Eichmann and his ilk were not indispensable. They could have been easily replaced.

Yes, they could have been - but the entire Team Reinhard had to exist and had to work well to make possible the murder of 6 million Jews, fast and cheap.
It was their own choice and they had to pay for their decisions.

According to Hague IV (1907, Annex to the Convention, Section III - Military Authority over the Territory of the Hostile State), every killing of a Jew was a war crime and a hanging offense (because why not).
Eichmann should have known that - Hague Conventions, Laws of War were mandatory teaching for every German officer.
And he should have been aware of the doctrine of aiding and abetting because it hanged people as surely as Section III of Hague IV.

Well, uh, the Allies ignored major parts of the Hague Conventions as well, so that's not a good argument.

That said, I agree that under the Hague Conventions the mass killing of Jews was a crime. Where we differ, again, is on the issue of how far down the ranks we should have reached when it came to punishment. We're simply not going to agree on this issue. I just cannot agree that we should reach that far down the ranks to hand out the death sentence when the person never personally harmed anyone and never personally ordered anyone's death.

I mean, just how far down the ladder is it fair to go when seeking to punish war crimes, especially if the person never ordered anyone's death and never personally harmed anyone himself? If Japan had won the war and had held war crimes trials over the American fire-bombing of Japanese cities and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would they have tried to prosecute and execute the mid-level officers who handled the shipment of the atomic bombs, the mid-level officers who flew the Enola Gay, the mid-level officers who trained the pilots who dropped the nukes? No, probably not. They would have focused on the senior officers and civilian officials who ordered those bombings.

Although the Holocaust was a massive war crime and bombing of Japan wasn't.

This statement badly damages your moral credibility. I know all the justifications for excusing the fire-bombing of dozens of Japanese cities and the resultant killing of hundreds of thousands of women and children, and for excusing the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at a time when we knew--we absolutely knew--that the emperor was ready to surrender on very reasonable terms. I find the justifications vacuous and morally bankrupt.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi mikegriffith1,

You post, "...the emperor was ready to surrender on very reasonable terms."

Of course he was, but (1) he hadn't offered to do so, (2) "reasonable" is a matter of opinion, not objective fact and (3) a compromise peace of "terms" was not being demanded of him, but unconditional surrender. Japan had no leverage or wriggle room left with which to extract "terms".

There is a fundamental difference between the so-called "Holocaust" and the bombing of Japanese cities. The "Holocaust" victims were in the protective (!) custody of the very people who killed them. They could do nothing to avoid their fate. By contrast, the Japanese could have declared their cities "Open" by stopping all military activity in them, but chose not to try to exercise this option at any stage.

Cheers,

Sid

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi mikegriffith1,

You post, "...the emperor was ready to surrender on very reasonable terms."

Of course he was, but (1) he hadn't offered to do so, (2) "reasonable" is a matter of opinion, not objective fact and (3) "terms" were not being demanded of him, but unconditional surrender. Besides, Japan was out of leverage and wriggle room with which to extract "terms" of any sort.

There is a fundamental difference between the so-called "Holocaust" and the bombing of Japanese cities. The "Holocaust" victims were in the protective (!) custody of the very people who killed them. They could do nothing to avoid their fate. By contrast, the Japanese could have declared their cities "Open" by stopping all military activity in them, but chose not to try to exercise this option at any stage. Or, better still, they could have been quicker off the mark to stave off the inevitable by accepting unconditional surrender.

Cheers,

Sid

[wm]

Well, uh, the Allies ignored major parts of the Hague Conventions as well, so that's not a good argument.

Please name a single one.

That said, I agree that under the Hague Conventions the mass killing of Jews was a crime. Where we differ, again, is on the issue of how far down the ranks we should have reached when it came to punishment. We're simply not going to agree on this issue. I just cannot agree that we should reach that far down the ranks to hand out the death sentence when the person never personally harmed anyone and never personally ordered anyone's death.

That was a criminal conspiracy and under the doctrine of aiding and abetting each and every conspirator was equally guilty.

This statement badly damages your moral credibility. I know all the justifications for excusing the fire-bombing of dozens of Japanese cities and the resultant killing of hundreds of thousands of women and children, and for excusing the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at a time when we knew--we absolutely knew--that the emperor was ready to surrender on very reasonable terms. I find the justifications vacuous and morally bankrupt.

You don't understand, actually, it's your job to prove that it was a war crime. The burden of proof is on the person who makes the claim. And the fact that thousands of women and children died isn't a valid argument.

But I'd like to say this. When they tried to make of me an officer of the Army, one of the first things the instructor imparted on us in a harsh commanding voice was: THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS ON BATTLEFIELD.
The Japanese cities were major military and industrial centers so they were attacked - and became battlefields. But as the rule says there were no civilians there.

[Volyn]

Eichmann was a Lt. Colonel in the Waffen SS, which was far down the chain of command. He was not even a flag officer. There were six ranks above him. Was it really fair to prosecute and hang a mid-level officer such as Eichmann, many years after the fact, when there was no evidence that he ever personally harmed anyone?

The Wannsee Conference was covered exhaustively in Eichmann's trial. Yes, the conference was an abomination, but the question is, Do we punish a mid-level officer who attended the conference when he did not personally order anyone's death and did not personally harm anyone himself? That's the key question.

Biber is correct, Eichmann's rank is irrelevant, his actions throughout the Final Solution were sufficient for him to have been punished to the maximum extent possible in whatever court of law he found himself in.

With regard to Eichmann I think his rank is wholly irrelevant. That he was directly tasked by the upper echelon (Heydrich) with facilitating a crime indicates his involvement. Rank has nothing to do with it. The authority backing him and by which he conducted the job with which he was tasked trumped any issue of rank...

The issue of his rank and receiving a fair sentence should be cross-referenced with the other criminal trials of men who held equivalent authority and responsibility; most of them were executed and Eichmann was deserving of it as well. Without him the efficiency of committing mass genocide may not have been possible, and he was fanatically obsessed with finding every single Jew he could until the war ended.

wm is also correct that this was a "smaller" operation than the numbers of dead might lead others to believe. Although there were many dedicated personnel for this program, Obersturmbannführer Eichmann would have held sufficient rank to manage the day-to-day affairs. I wonder why he was never promoted to at least a Standartenführer (Colonel)?

But it wasn't a massive operation by any stretch of the imagination.
The operation was small, a machine that traveled from place to place and sent several trains full of Jews to death camps every day.

The life he lived in Argentina showed that he was fully aware of his war crimes, and he went to great lengths to keep his true identity concealed. He understood that he was one of the primary facilitators of the Holocaust and what would happen to him if he were captured alive. Eichmann made a strategic mistake by not surrendering to the German authorities before he was found by the Israelis, as Hans1906 pointed out already, the prison terms meted out in German courts would have been far more lenient than a court in Israel.

...Eichmann would have been held accountable in Germany after 1945, life imprisonment.
Life imprisonment in Germany today means 25 + years, in severe cases with real life imprisonment, whatever that means... I suppose, in Germany, Eichmann would have been released after less than 20 years, and the man would have lived with a small pension until the end of his life.
The inglorious judgments of the German judiciary in the 1960s speak for this.