totally OT, but...

eeesh.

Never knew there was a Nazi war criminal living right here in little ol' Sutton, MA.

Funny how a story gets so much more real when the person you're reading about lives right near you.

Googled a bit and found this link.
story

Wait a few years, and they'll all be dead....

People can harbor really nasty ideas and be willing to actually put them into action with little provocation, as evidenced by the fact that the parents and associates of the Isla Vista Shooter were clueless (on more than one front). May justice prevail.

Hard to make a opinion on these people without knowing all the circumstances that went on in that time.My fathers half sister's husband was forced to serve in the Luftwaffe as a pilot.If he didn't they threatened to kill his whole family.When the war ended he was in Czechoslovakia and had to walk back to Germany.

Vito

It's time to let this stuff go.

I read the story.these guys are all around 90 yrs old. they will soon be dead. How many lawyers do we have living off these prosecutions. Save the money for the welfare recipients.

Vito,

My brother-in-law's wife was a pre-teen girl in Germany during the war. Her father was forced into the German Navy during the war. They were a Christian family that rejected all of the Nazi violence, but like other young German men of that era, he had no choice.

After the war he served two years in a Russian POW camp that nearly killed him. One day the Russians opened the gates and left. He walked from Russia back to Germany and took nearly a year to find his family since the country had been bombed into oblivion.

Tough times for everyone.

Tom in TN

another way to pay a bunch of people big salaries for doing nothing.

My uncle almost died as a pow of the japanese but read the history some of what we did was as bad.
I cant help but wonder after the war a guy i knew who served with an native american wanted to bring horses from the reservation to wisc the horses could come but the native american a decorated combat vet couldnt .maybe its time not to forget but make peace

Tom,

My father was adopted by a woman who lived with a christian group.They were lucky to escape Germany before the war really got going.They first went to Lichenstein and then onto England.The British government was comfortable with a group of German nationals living in their country and asked them to leave.They found refuge in Paraguay and started from scratch.It was a tough life he always said.In the middle to late 50's they went back to England and the USA.The group has grown and is still ongoing.

He did lose a half brother on a U boat.

Vito

I just got back from Grafton MA

Yep,

Leave those old duffers be. Kee-rist, they are in their 90s.

Allan

Most of the ones still alive were very young men who were forced to serve wherever they were assigned. The Nazis were bad people. They wouldn't just punish the individual for refusing to do as ordered but their entire family, mom, dad, brothers and sisters were all subject to be punished (forced labor camps and possible execution). Keeping that in mind most of the guys they are finding now were privates manning guard post. They had little choice. Even the US, when they were drafting for WWII it strictly enforced the draft laws and failure to report would result in prison time. Their families were the subject of ridicule by their local communities too. Wasn't as bad as the Nazis but wasn't pleasant.

Rick

Personally I think the whole deal about the Nazi war crimes, etc was started with good intentions, and against those really guilty of being blatantly evil. Unfortunatly those types of cases went too quickly for some, and in the time since, the whole mess been played for all it's worth, in the name of being PC, all to make a small number of people feel avenged.

That said I can't see where being a guard in a prison makes someone a war criminal, regardless of what happened in the camp. These guys had a job they were ordered to do, and they did it, no different than the guy guarding the Japanese internment camps here in the US. Yes, the conditions were different between the two camps was a lot different, but the jobs of the guards was the same.

Now if you take the ones like Joseph Mengele that happily did deadly experiments on live subjects, gassed millions, etc, etc, then they were, and are criminals. Yes, they may have had 'orders' to do some things, but it was the manner in which they did them that makes what they did criminal. In other words they went about it with pleasure, and got great joy over being sadistic, while the guys talked about here, were simply doing what their country had ordered them to do under risk of their families being killed, etc, etc.

In the end, it's two way different scenarios, and I think the guys they are after now should be left alone, and left in peace to die. I'm sure anyone ever in a war zone, and in combat has done things they weren't proud of, or weren't happy having had to do something, but did, because they had received a lawful order so do so. I don't see them being tried for war crimes, so why should these guys be any different simply because they were considered Nazis, and not Army, Navy, or Marines from this country, or some other.

I don't disagree.

Just odd to read an article like that, then get to the part where he lives right down the road. That's what surprised me.
(another article, not the oneI posted which mentions sutton in the headline)

I asked somebody about it later today, I guess the guy has passed away.

They're illegal immigrants, not like the current bunch in DC is going to do anything about it. As far as "just following orders" we pretty much said that wouldn't fly at Nuremberg. Additionally when you go in the service they teach you that you have an obligation to follow any lawful order, and a similar obligation to disobey any unlawful order. As far a prosecution of guards at POW and Concentration camps it is my understanding the prosecution is only directed at service members who violated Geneva Convention articles, meaning they participated in the torture, experiments or otherwise took part in illegal activities directed at the prisoners or inmates. An example was a Japanese POW camp guard faced prosecution after the war because he had in his possession a watch that belonged to an American Officer interned in his camp. The Officer was Marine Corps Major Pappy Boyington, charges were dropped after Major Boyington confirmed that he freely gave the watch to the guard and stated He probably wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for that one guard.

Yes I understand they're old and in months or at most years the problem will sort itself out, I still favor sending them back. Their home country or Germany should be forced to take them or offer them to Israel, let them try them and punish them as they see fit, if not maybe one of the neutral countries (Sweden or Switzerland) would offer exile for the little time they have left.

I feel they avoided paying for their actions for many years and have probably lived pretty well for most of the years they were in the US, sending them back or to jail for the last few years of their life is a small price to pay for he years of freedom they enjoyed but didn't deserve.

Yes I agree some of our actions may of been outside of the Geneva convention. In Europe we seemed to go out of our way to minimize destruction of non-military targets including our policy of "Precision Daylight Bombing" that lead to brutal aircrew losses during the early part of the war in Europe. We didn't seem to be as careful in the Pacific and firebombed all major Japanese cities and eventually used Nuclear weapons on two of them. Our justification was a little weak, that decentralization of Japanese industry into cottage industries located everywhere and the fact that the entire Japanese population was prepared to take up arms to protect their homeland made just about the entire Island of Japan a valid military target.

Strange that war itself is not a crime.

The people actually labeled "War Criminals" weren't just privates guarding a truck outside some camp. If they got that label they went way beyond "orders". There is making war and there is committing atrocities. 2 different things.