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To: rbg81

Whether or not Romnel deserves to be on the list has nothing to do with the plot to kill Hitler, unless you consider gentlemanly opposition to tyranny one of the chief qualities of great generals, which is a possibility. But then he’d be in line behind several other anti-Hitler generals.

By the way, one reason among many that the Nuremberg trials were such a travesty of justice is that here we are, 70 years later, giving the benefit of the doubt to Nazi generals as monsters unless demonstrated otherwise. I might ask what genocide Rommel committed that he needed to be saved by joining the plot? Or why various Nazis were convicted for the exact same acts for which no one slapped British, American, and especially Russian hands? Or why some went to prison despite being demonstrably more restrained than allied generals?

The guilty until Provence innocent standard might be fun and instructive, if not just. But only if applied equally to Sherman, for instance, as men who happened to be German in 1939.


20 posted on 11/21/2012 4:11:12 PM PST by Tublecane
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To: Tublecane

War crimes trials are mostly political rather than just.

I remember that Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita was ordered executed despite the fact that he had ordered his troops to not commit the acts of brutality which they did.

I think McArthur said his crime was not keeping control of his men. The odd thing about Japanese soldiers and officers is they often disobeyed their commanders orders, doing things which would never have been allowed in American or German armies.

I have read that they would often choose to commit suicide rather than retreat when ordered to do so.


38 posted on 11/21/2012 5:03:14 PM PST by yarddog (One shot one miss.)
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