Heinz Barth, former ss officer dies

[calus_3]

Perhaps, Nova, you should use that brain of yours to go digging into history.

The nazi soldiers didn't just violate the rules of combat, rules of engagement, geneva convention, nor did they make poor poor pitiful iraqis stand in naked pyramids.

The nazi soldiers pretty much killed anyone and anything in their sight. The didn't do it with a gun pointed to their heads, they did it because they enjoyed it. If you were to read a little history into the nazi prison camps, you would see that they didn't just assign johhny newgrunt to the camps, they hand chose those they could count on to perform their duties and those that enjoyed the killing and brutalism. The scope of their killing was absolutely endless and without mercy.

If you were so inclined to go digging, you would find that the "I was ordered to do it" the only viable defense against a world that was slowly waking up to the atrocities committed by these men. The "guess they deserved to be baked in ovens and gassed in the showers" defense wasn't going to cut it. The whole "I was following orders" was concocted as a red herring defense by trial lawyers.

So don't give me your normal spiel explaining the unexplainable. Perhaps in your uninformed world, you can come to the defense of such a deplorable statement as was made. Yet in the light of history, you are shown to be what you are.

Cal

 

[Nova]

yes my point was it is in the eye of the beholder if you want to stretch it to cover ever area. do we have a solder here and there that is as sick as the nazi's yes. what on earth that has to do with anything is beyond me. she may have only meant a select few but she went on to speak of it taking 50 years before we as a country can recover. was her statement about a few bad apples? if so how is that relevant to the nazi's? if her statement is about our country it can be relevant only if you feel we are just as guilty on some way. the desire to impose political will on another country is a far cry from trying to wipe a entire race from the planet.

i am so glad to see how extreme politics can turn a thread about a man who killed over 600 people into a debate on the current war. sure wish we had a political forum for extreme views to go rant in.:doh:

I don't see how we are debating the current war. Atrocities have been committed; that's a fact. As far as I have seen, all of us here agree that those atrocities are the work of, in lightwave's words, "a select few." Where's the debate?

She said that it will take a half-century before our country's international image recovers from the crimes of those select few. This we can debate, I suppose, but we'll all be speculating.

I agree with your distinction between "mere" imperialism and genocide, but it's a bit like debating the relative evil of Scott Peterson and John Wayne Gacy. At some point, what does it matter?

What we ought to keep in mind is that whether comparisons between German and American war criminals are fair, whether we like them or not, most of the world is right now making exactly those comparisons.

And before the chorus (not from you) of "I don't care what the rest of the world thinks" begins, it does matter. What the world thinks affects our ability to achieve the necessary cooperation to pursue international criminals such as the Islamo-fascists we all fear and abhor.

 

[Boyzmomee]

Too easily if you ask me :banghead:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070814/ap_on_re_eu/obit_barth

On June 10, 1944, as they headed toward Normandy to combat D-Day invasion forces who landed four days earlier, German troops of the armored SS Division "Das Reich" slaughtered 642 men, women and children in the village.


The Germans rounded up the village men, forced them into barns and machine-gunned them. The 241 women and 209 children were herded into the church, which was set afire with grenades and then shot at with machine guns.

In addition to involvement in the massacre, East German judges also found that Barth volunteered to participate in an execution of 92 Czech civilians in 1942

Barth lived under a false name in communist East Germany, working as a decorator in Gransee and running a grocery store, until his identity emerged in 1981 and he was imprisoned.


In 1997, a state court freed Barth on health grounds, commuting his sentence to probation. Barth, who lost a leg in the war, suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments.


"I feel guilty about the terrible crimes in Oradour," Barth was quoted as telling the Berlin tabloid B.Z. at the time of his release. "But I have paid long enough."


NOT near long enough for me I'm so sick of these sickos not being held responsible for what they did! Here he died at home at the ripe age of 86 and he killed hundreds of innocent people.

So he has died. I have no problem believing that now, he is just beginning to pay.

 

[4sure]

Calus 3 you speak of reading history. Well history is written by the winners. Who's version of history do you wish to believe? Prescott Bush was one of the main money lenders who financed Hitlers rebuilding of Germany along with the Bank of England.

Thats right our president's grand dad was arrested for treason by Hoover for trading with the enemy! How many Americans do you think know that? Funny to think he had all that money to lend Hitler at the same time this country was in the middle of the Great Depression. Do you think they would have voted for the grandson of a traitor? Do you have that book? Makes me sick every time I see Bush with that American Flag pin.

 

[Boyzmomee]

i'm sure everyone is going to hate me for saying this, but one day, we in the future, we will be reading articles like this about our own soldiers, who say they were just following orders.

~lightwaveryder~

As a Jew, I am so offended at the ignorance of this statement, I will say nothing further, and put this poster on ignore.

 

[Peter Hamilton]

i'm sure everyone is going to hate me for saying this, but one day, we in the future, we will be reading articles like this about our own soldiers, who say they were just following orders.

a select few sicko's are out there in iraq engaging in war crimes , and will not be held accountable except by the court of history, and that accountability will amount to naught, as in this case.

sad to say, but true.

abu graib is the tip of the iceberg, and its a big one. it will take a LONG time for america to be regarded as the liberating war hero again. possibly 50 years or more.
yikes.


~lightwaveryder~

--lightwaveryder, you are an ignorant fool--you obviously know next to nothing about the Nazi regime--your post is insanely stupid and I will ask the moderators to ban you from posting anymore on this or any other forum here at WebSleuths--This site is for intelligent discussion, and is not for your supremely stupid and laughably offensive remarks lol

 

[Boyzmomee]

lightwaveryder is only saying let's learn from the past.

Good grief. I never thought I'd read such drivel from you. That poster knows nothing of the past.

 

[Boyzmomee]

Calus 3 you speak of reading history. Well history is written by the winners.

Thats right our president's grand dad was arrested for treason by Hoover for trading with the enemy! How many Americans do you think know that? Funny to think he had all that money to lend Hitler at the same time this country was in the middle of the Great Depression. Do you think they would have voted for the grandson of a traitor? Do you have that book? Makes me sick every time I see Bush with that American Flag pin.

You blame Bush for the actions of his grandfather? You better go check your family tree.

 

[Peter Hamilton]

Good grief. I never thought I'd read such drivel from you. That poster knows nothing of the past.

--agree--Nova has really lost it, and its quite surprising given the fact that the Nazis also murdered every homosexual they could find--Nova should know better

 

[Boyzmomee]

--agree--Nova has really lost it, and its quite surprising given the fact that the Nazis also murdered every homosexual they could find--Nova should know better

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Thank you for your previous post.

 

[Peter Hamilton]

Boysnmomee,you're welcome---one cannot really compare the Nazis to any government or country,so massive were their crimes--Germany had a population of 70 million before the war yet they were responsible for over 50 million deaths during WW II--staggering--Communist dictators Stalin and Pol Pot are the only two that even could come slightly close to the Nazis, but their sadistic crimes were mostly internal

 

[Nova]

As a Jew, I am so offended at the ignorance of this statement, I will say nothing further, and put this poster on ignore.

Boyzmomee, I wouldn't blame you for being offended if lightwave had said the recent atrocities in Iraq are the moral equivalent of the Holocaust.

But this is not what she said. She said someday we will see similar cries of indignation when American crimes (by a "select few") in Iraq are recounted.

This is already happening; we don't even need to wait for "someday." One need only turn on foreign TV or read foreign media outlets to see examples, including instances where American actions are actually equated with those of Germans in the 1930s and 1940s.

Fair? No. But the best way to counter such exaggerations isn't to shoot the messenger, but to clean up our own house, so to speak.

 

[Nova]

--agree--Nova has really lost it, and its quite surprising given the fact that the Nazis also murdered every homosexual they could find--Nova should know better

I haven't lost anything and nobody has defended the Nazis or minimized their evil. That isn't remotely what lightwaveryder wrote.

We're being more than a tad hysterical here. That's understandable, perhaps, given the subject matter, but it isn't very helpful.

 

[Nova]

You blame Bush for the actions of his grandfather? You better go check your family tree.

I agree with this much. I may have complaints about the current president (though that isn't really what we've been discussing), but I see no reason to hold his grandfather against him.

 

[Nova]

Boysnmomee,you're welcome---one cannot really compare the Nazis to any government or country,so massive were their crimes--Germany had a population of 70 million before the war yet they were responsible for over 50 million deaths during WW II--staggering--Communist dictators Stalin and Pol Pot are the only two that even could come slightly close to the Nazis, but their sadistic crimes were mostly internal

Again, you are absolutely right here, Peter. But nobody said otherwise.

lightwaveryder's point is more "let's don't spend all our indignation on the past, when we have plenty to clean up in the present." That in no way says the two are the same or the past wasn't unspeakably awful.

 

[sherri79]

Boyzmomee, I wouldn't blame you for being offended if lightwave had said the recent atrocities in Iraq are the moral equivalent of the Holocaust.

But this is not what she said. She said someday we will see similar cries of indignation when American crimes (by a "select few") in Iraq are recounted.

This is already happening; we don't even need to wait for "someday." One need only turn on foreign TV or read foreign media outlets to see examples, including instances where American actions are actually equated with those of Germans in the 1930s and 1940s.

Fair? No. But the best way to counter such exaggerations isn't to shoot the messenger, but to clean up our own house, so to speak.

so if people in other countries make unfair comparisons we should act on them even if we feel as you stated that you do. how should we clean our own house if these are "exaggerations"? for me personally the best way to clean our own house and stop unfair exaggerations in other countries is to call out any1 at home he starts spouting the same muck.

 

[eleven]

It's one thing to not agree with a poster. It's an entirely different thing to chastize, call names and speak of a desire for physical assault against the poster. How old ARE we?

I don't understand the hysteria against lightwaveryders post. Not one bit. I read the post as saying that a very SELECT FEW of our soldiers were committing atrocious crimes that we would collectively eschew years from now.

I would only HOPE that years from now, us as a nation (including our leadership) will expand our mental horizons and empathetic abilities to the point that we will be evolved enough to see war for the crime against humanity that it is. And I know 4 US soldiers who are currently in Iraaq and Afganistan who feel the exact same way.

 

[Nova]

so if people in other countries make unfair comparisons we should act on them even if we feel as you stated that you do. how should we clean our own house if these are "exaggerations"? for me personally the best way to clean our own house and stop unfair exaggerations in other countries is to call out any1 at home he starts spouting the same muck.

"We're not as bad as the Nazis" isn't much of a defense, even though the statement is certainly true.

 

[Nova]

It's one thing to not agree with a poster. It's an entirely different thing to chastize, call names and speak of a desire for physical assault against the poster. How old ARE we?

I don't understand the hysteria against lightwaveryders post. Not one bit. I read the post as saying that a very SELECT FEW of our soldiers were committing atrocious crimes that we would collectively eschew years from now.

I would only HOPE that years from now, us as a nation (including our leadership) will expand our mental horizons and empathetic abilities to the point that we will be evolved enough to see war for the crime against humanity that it is. And I know 4 US soldiers who are currently in Iraaq and Afganistan who feel the exact same way.

Apparently the words you capped and I highlighted were typed into lightwaveryder's post in a very special font that only you and I can see.

 

[sherri79]

"We're not as bad as the Nazis" isn't much of a defense, even though the statement is certainly true.

a defense of what? if lightwaveryder did not say anything against this country why would you think i was saying We're not as bad as the Nazis as a defense?