“Not all”, and i cannot emphasize this enough, literal fucking SS men.
The entire organization was judged guilty for it’s critical role in the holocaust, to say nothing of the millions upon millions of people they murdered beyond the holocaust. The case was tried decades ago.
The interesting bit about the guilt is that Canadian courts did a “Ukrainian SS are no big deal” defense, there were decades of organized white washing for them. This can also be seen in wikipedia and the empirical work of historians who did in fact link Ukrainian volunteer SS units to war crimes are diminished there or not even mentioned.
the people who I feel like could have a case of not being executed are those who just joined and thus did not participate in any actions falling under crimes against humanity and can prove they joined either due to large pressure from others or to gather intelligence.
as I said in another comment, I don’t know much about about the SS aside from surface level information, so I admit it may be the case that there are no people who fufill both requirements I gave.
You are doubling down on not shooting every member of the ss in the head on sight.
What are you doing? No one was forced to join the ss. You need to drop this right now. You are defending the sharp sword of genocide.
During reading up a bit I found something which might interest you:
Approximately about 20 to 40 Icelanders served in the Waffen SS, including the first president of Iceland (1944–1952) Sveinn Björnsson’s son, Björn Sveinsson Björnsson. Most of Icelandic volunteers fought in the 5th SS-Panzer-Division Wiking, or in the SS Nordland[citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts
Amid the 11,000 Ukrainian members of the former SS Galizien, who had fled westwards to surrender—replete in their German SS uniforms—to the British in Italy, only 3,000 of them were repatriated to the Soviet Union. The rest remained temporarily lodged at Rimini as displaced persons, many of whom became British or Canadian citizens as a result of Cold War expediency.
So up to 8000 Waffen SS Nazis did move to the UK, Canada or Germany.
As stated by @Tankiedesantski@lemmygrad.ml :
Late into 1944 and 1945 the SS was very much in the practice of conscripting people at gunpoint so that’s where it gets murkey to shoot all of them out of hand.
My point is those people, as long as they did not commit any crimes against humanity, should not be tried as SS members or be considered to be its members.
I’m guessing SS members could have access to valuable information to the allied war effort. if someone joined the SS explicitly to gather this information, either as a Allied spy or as a spy for various resistance movements and did not participate in any crimes against humanity committed by the SS, they shouldn’t be considered part of the organization.
people who joined the SS of their own volition? Yes they do, in my opinion, deserve either execution or long prison sentences, including life in prison.
I do not however think that those who were forced to join at the end of the war and can show they have not participated in crimes against humanity committed by the organization, should not be considered to be part of the SS.
Look 80 years hard labor in Siberia I think is an acceptable compromise
Lmao they said in like 4 different comments that they only have a surface level understanding of what the SS was.
Could they have spent that time looking into who the SS was and what they did?
Of course, instead they keep double and tripling down, choosing to die on a hill defending the fucking Nazis.
Sorry, I thought “surface level understanding of what the SS was” conveyed something else than you clearly understood it as.
I know the SS ran death camps, I’ve been at one. I know that members of the SS executed people for little to no reason. that’s what I consider surface level information about the SS.
What I meant is I didn’t know how people were recruted to the SS. I assumed that as the war progressed it changed from purely voluntary to, at least for some new recruits, to done under threat of death, which, according to @Tankiedesantski@lemmygrad.ml did happen.
I am talking only about those who fall in this group and furthermore either deserted or did not participate in any crimes against humanity for a different reason. And I don’t think they should be considered members of the organization. Some of them could still support the Nazi government but should be tried as citizens. Those for whom there is no information to suggest have supported or voluntary collaborated with the Nazi government are then innocent.
Even those who didn’t committed atrocities are guilty. Even liberal German courts are that opinion. With the SS you have to proof your innocence when you were member of it or even a volunteer (which is more damning).
At least 60k Ukrainians were volunteers for the Nazis SS or army or alike. They were important contributors to the genocides that were happening there.
Even after 1943 you had the extremely problematic UPA (Banderitas) which did commit massacres which were complementary to the ones of the Nazis and the SS (which orders they did follow). Then again the individual innocence not guilt of members has to be proofed here. One reason for that is that there was pretty much no war crime free unit, no forced press ganging and the victims can hardly identify people.
Before you defend Nazis do at least research about the individual people and their units and listen to experts.
Early in the war, the SS had extremely high standards for recruits for racial purity and ideological commitment. Anyone who joined during this period can basically be safely shot without trial.
Late into 1944 and 1945 the SS was very much in the practice of conscripting people at gunpoint so that’s where it gets murkey to shoot all of them out of hand. Not necessarily wrong, I think there’s shakier justification for executing a conscript vs a hardened fanatic.
Probably best to just give the conscripts hard corrective labor like the Wehrmacht prisoners. Maybe a longer term or harder work since they were still SS.
Late into 1944 and 1945 the SS was very much in the practice of conscripting people at gunpoint
Only if we’re talking areas outside of Germany. I know that’s the case here, but it’s important to clarify because “i was forced to join the nazis or i would’ve been shot” is a very common justification that is very often blatantly false.
If someone joined the SS to spy on them, you would think that one of the allies or partisan groups would have claimed them as their own sometime in the past 80 years.
