Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
Well, over 20,000 German soldiers were executed during the war for failing to carry out orders (of various sorts). It wasn't an idle threat.
But of course even by Nuremburg standards the argument from coercion would have been considered valid *if* the defendants could prove it (mostly they couldn't). The standard defense was "An order is an order," which according to normative law up until WWII *was* a complete defense.
I don't deny that a very great many, probably the majority, of those Germans who took part of atrocities would have even if they did have (or believed they had) a choice. Human beings generally let power go to their heads (which is why they should be entrusted with as little of it as possible).
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Sorry if it sounded like I was saying those in charge had no culpability, they did, and there were orders from high up. Especially when the Nazis started losing the Eastern Front there virtually was no choice. Also, Browning's book I referenced above just deals with the Police Battalions, which were under Himmler, but were seperate from the SS and were under different rules. Most were middle-aged men who could not make it into the army or the SS. You definitely would be punished if you were in the SS and disobeyed any kind of order.