After the defeat of National Socialist Germany – “Nazi” is a pejorative acronym coined by the Left; that is to say, by socialists and communists (the latter being the higher-proof version of the same thing) to mask the fact that the “Nazis” and they had much in common – trials were held in Nuremberg, where many “Nazis” were found guilty of moral crimes, having “followed orders.”
That is to say, for following – and enforcing – the law, as it was in “Nazi” Germany. This was not considered exculpatory, then.
Why then is it, now?
Hundreds of millions of Americans were simply ordered to close the doors to their businesses – without any due process of law and no compensation for their losses. Many owners of these businesses ended up having to close the doors to their businesses permanently. Those who attempted to keep them open – so as to avoid being forced out of business – were forced to close them, by enforcers who were just following orders.
Such enforcement continues, too – as in the case of Gourmeltz, the Virginia restaurant that recently received a visit from a half-dozen law-enforcing order-followers as retribution for ignoring prior orders to “mask” employees and customers. And for keeping its doors open in defiance of orders to keep them shut.
The entire population was subjected to a deliberate, orchestrated campaign of mass terror based on lies. Ordinary people were set at each other’s throats. Families torn apart. Old people left to die alone. Children conditioned to be terrified of seeing “unmasked” human faces. All of this leading to a Mengele-esque medical experiment involving not just a few score victims at a camp but an entire nation – an entire world. The latter has cost thousands their lives and quite possibly millions their future health. Most of these people were coerced into “participating” in these experiments; all were lied to about the nature of them.
If it was justifiable – if it was right – to hang the “Nazis” convicted of moral crimes at Nuremberg – including fomenting hate toward a whole class of people, marginalizing those people, abusing the rights of those people, harming those people economically and physically – irrespective of the fact that those who did these things hadn’t broken any laws – then how is it that the enforcers of morally indefensible laws in our time, in this place, not only aren’t punished (even to the extent of a fine) but rewarded for “just doing their jobs”?
The answer to that question is as easy as it is unpalatable.
It is – simply – that the “Nazis” lost the war and what happened to them was victor’s justice.
One of the leading defendants at Nuremberg, the former Reichsmarschall and head of the Luftwaffe, the air force of “Nazi” Germany – said so openly and bravely, knowing he was going to hang and wanting to go out like the man he was, whatever else might be said of him.
Reportedly, his American analog, Air Force General Curtis LeMay said essentially the same thing. That being if America had lost the war, he probably would have found himself swinging from a rope – for having followed orders (lawful!) to purposely bomb German civilian targets.
Now, at the time of the trials – and the verdicts – an innocent-minded person might have understandably believed that the court was dispensing justice rather than victor’s justice. For the “Nazis” were certainly guilty of heinous moral crimes.
They deserved to hang.
But 76 years hence, it is harder to be so innocently minded – because of the serial, brazen, never-held-accountable actions of enforcers of the law. Precisely because they have the law on their side – which the “Nazis” in the dock no longer did.
Consider the example of the war criminal – by definition, if the Nuremberg standard applies generally – George W. Bush, who literally did exactly what the “Nazis” did but was never brought to trial, much less convicted and punished for his crimes. But first consider prior precedent.
In the autumn of 1939, the German “Nazis” wanted to invade Poland – and did so, after claiming Poland represented an existential threat to Germany.
A faux Polish attack was even confected – Operation Canned Goods – to provide what the “Nazis” hoped would be cover for their invasion of Poland.
Mass slaughter ensued.
Six years later, the surviving “Nazis” who had leading roles in the dirty, murderous business were duly convicted and hanged.
In the spring of 2003, the military forces of the United States launched an attack upon Iraq, a country that had not attacked the United States. This unprovoked attack was preceded by a deliberately confected faux assertion of an “imminent threat” of an attack, with “weapons of mass destruction.”
Based upon these lies, mass slaughter ensued.
But the war criminals responsible – Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney – were never indicted, let alone hung. And all of the order-followers who were “just doing their jobs” in Iraq – which included killing lots of Iraqis – were likewise never held accountable for their moral crimes.
Because America was the law.
And so it will be until it once again becomes a moral affront to “just follow orders,” irrespective of the legality of those orders. I’ll go farther, because it is necessary. There will never be an end to “just following orders” until it becomes lawful once more to defend oneself against such moral affronts, regardless of their legality.
This principle was not only understood and respected at the time of the Nuremberg trials, it was held up as an example of moral courage. One thinks, for instance, of the people who shielded Anne Frank from those “just following orders” – and of those who took good care of the Reich Protector of what had been Czechoslovakia before the “Nazis” invaded and occupied it and styled it the “protectorate” of Bohemia-Moravia. A handful of brave Czechs took out SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, much as one might take out the trash.
No one regarded them as “criminals” – except, of course, the criminals themselves.
As it is in our time.
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