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So as I said, you do not think my policy was justified, and my spine, yours, theirs, or the lack thereof is irrevelant. Else you’re arguing that their dying out of cowardice, was really courageous. I think they were obligated to murder and treason, but exile, surrender, suicide, or conscientious objection would have been close to okay. Failing that, they may be family, but they were scum who bled and died for nothing and took innocents with them. And even by their own, and Hitler’s standard, they failed and should have died, courtesy of survival of the fittest race.
Nothing personal, I hold similar views about the russian conscripts currently dying, the only difference being, of course, the magnitude of their moral fault. I do not believe in the nuremberg defense: if you lay down your life for your master, his crimes become yours, regardless of your intent.
It's very convenient that someone with such views lives in a world that does not oblige him to act on them.
It’d be even more convenient if I proclaimed my intent to fall in line no matter what our dear leaders decided to do. I quit (bzw. was fired from) my job over the mandatory testing they passed, if that counts as some level of spine.
It does, but insufficiently so.
Compare your quitting of a job to the worker, peasant and soldier Germans of the 1940s of whom you demand that they murder their family members, brothers-in-arms, neighbors and/or themselves and doom their families in the process in order to conform to the lofty ideals of people with the benefit of historical hindsight who needn't sacrifice a thing.
“If a state engages in large-scale evil (war, exterminations, etc) , then for a citizen, murder-treason (and lesser forms of defection, like surrender, exile etc) is the right thing to do.”
A: “no it’s not, because they have a duty to the state, their nation, family, comrades, oaths etc.”
B: “yes it is, but they can’t, because most people are weak. “
Which option do you think they would have picked in 1930?
To be clear, I think they would have picked A, and the modern far right when defending nazis (to a degree - I’m not talking about actual neonazis, just regular far right) , calling modern germans brainwashed etc, also pick A. That’s why I think the question of cowardice is a red herring .
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