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Old 04-11-11, 09:33 PM   #11
Freiwillige
The Old Man
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat View Post
The truth is actually much simpler.

Goering convinced most of the defendants to follow his line of defence of denying responsibility for everything.

Speer took a different tack, accepting collective responsiblity, while fudging the details of his personal involvement. Not all the evidence against Speer was found and presented at Court. Speer was a sympathetic character and was able to portray himself as a naive young man who had been fooled by Hitler.

On the larger issue of "Allied culpability", I don't see any of it. The Germans started the war and tried to conquer all of Europe, the Germans murdered 6,000,000 jews, 4,000,000 Soviet POWs, etc., etc.

After the war, the Allies set up the tribunals to punish the guilty. There were 13 trials in all, against 200 defendants stretching all the way into 1949. How many Germans should they have locked up to not feel guilty? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000?

By 1948, after taking down the worst dictator in modern history, the US was facing the second worst dictator in modern history. Stalin had staged coups in every country in eastern europe and was "purging" their government. Stalin had shipped off every German scientist he could get his hands on to the USSR and was working on an atomic bomb.

What should the US have done? should they have said: Oh no, we can't deal with any German scientist who worked for the Nazis! Better to remain pure even if it means the Communists will take over all of Europe!
Makes a good story doesn't it? Sells our culpability a bit easier? WWII is a little more complex than the age old "Hitler was gonna conquer the world!" speech.

World war two started because Germany and Russia conquered and divided Poland. Ribbentrop\Molotov pact. Poland was to cease to exist.

France and England in turn declared war on Germany but not Russia????

German's were shocked that they would go to war over Poland and rather abruptly threw plans for war in the west together. In fact their first plan was the same Schifflin plan of WWI!

It is now known that dum fuhrer wanted England as Allies not enemy's and had little interest west.
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