Mr.Bill wrote:

I'm not talking about the Holocaust in regards to Speer.. His was armament minister. He was the one calling for and using the slave labor.. He was in charge.. Millions died in his factories and labor camps..He deserves are LEAST the same amount of responsibility as the people working for him. Which was death. BTW Speer successfully defied Hitler's scorch earth policy.

Speer was made the Armament Minister in 1942 to reallocate the resources within the economy. His main aim was to achieve the greatest production efficiency of war materials and goods. In order to achieve this objective he had to utilize the available resources, including forced labour, however morally incorrect it may have been.

He did not call for forced labour as it existed pre-1942. The policy of using POWs from the Eastern front, Jews and gypsies in factories and labour camps had first been utilized under Todt. The actual idea stemmed from high ranking SS. Therefore, such a policy could not easily be discarded as it would have substantial repercussions within the economy.

Because of these repercussions, Speer overlooked forced labour, just as he choose to overlook the holocaust. He adopted the attitude of 'see no evil'. In my opinion he only allowed forced labour as it was a policy of necessity that had been in effect before he was appointed, however evil and barbaric it may have been. As a realist, he could not condemn it as he had no influence over the matter.

He could have condemned it after the war..

I'm a realist, I know even if he spoke out against it, condemned it, or try to stop it, etc. pre-1945 nothing would have changed. Millions of slave laborers still would have died...

But it still doesn't reduce his responsibility. He was still in charge. With crimes of this magnitude the top men have to be severely punished.

Mr.Bill wrote:

He could have condemned it after the war.. I'm a realist, I know even if he spoke out against it, condemned it, or try to stop it, etc. pre-1945 nothing would have changed. Millions of slave laborers still would have died... But it still doesn't reduce his responsibility. He was still in charge. With crimes of this magnitude the top men have to be severely punished.

He condemned his 'acts of omission', as he like to called them, in his book 'Inside the Third Reich'.

His responsibility for forced labour was somewhat diminished by the fact that the policy was outside of his control. On numerous occasions he clashed with Heinrich Himmler arguing that forced labour was inefficient and that he would prefer that paid labour was used in occupied nations. This had next to zero effect on the utilization of forced labour across Nazi occupied Europe. This is a clear illustration of his lack of influence over the matter.

Even so, some of the burden did lay on his shoulders and he paid for that with a 25 year prison sentence.

Harlan Fiske Stone and William O. Douglas made some valid commentary at the time (both supreme court justices) that the allies basically substituted power and a want for vengeance for the actual rule of law.

thefranzkafkafront wrote:

Well very little of it was actually legal, you can't be guilty of a crime that was not a crime at the time. Im not saying these men did not commit mass murder, which was a crime at the time. It's just that the allies and soviets decided to make up grand sounding charges for the defendants, and in so charged them retroactively with laws they had just invented. From a legal point of view Nuremberg was a f***ing nightmare. Also the inclusion of Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko was a f***ing stupid idea. The guy ran stalin's show trials. Harlan Fiske Stone and William O. Douglas made some valid commentary at the time (both supreme court justices) that the allies basically substituted power and a want for vengeance for the actual rule of law. They should have been tried for mass murder, and more pressure should have been put on the soviets not to appoint Nikitchenko.

Granted, from a legal standpoint the Nuremburg Trial was not kosher. But this hadn't happened before in history, the Nazis went way beyond normal warfare, they wanted to be the first to exterminate a race of people, so they had to be the first to be made examples of.

As for Nikitchenko, don't see anything wrong with his appointment, he was one of the authors of the Nuremburg Charter and probably the most notorious judge from the USSR.

Hess can go to a mental institution until he is healthy enough for release. As for Ribbentrop he should hang, he was buried so deep in the Nazi plans for domination and massacre. As for Rosenburg my god how could he not hang? He was minister of the Eastern Territories and the architecht of Nazi racial theory, he needed the noose. And Speer utilized and advocated the slave labor of millions which killed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands, he should have swung from the gallows. But he outwitted the court.

lots of people used slave labor during the war because lots of time, that's all there was.

and what was he supposed to do? fight hitler? punch himmler in the nose?

maybe he could take a luger and fight the whole germany army!

Gotta agree with Skippy on this one. Granted Hess couldn't stop the madness, but he was a willing participant, even if it was beyond his control.

He would've reaped serious dividends if the Nazis had been victorious, he should've faced the consequences of a Nazi defeat. (Death)

every single citizen in germany would have "reaped dividends" if they had won the war. that's not a rational reason.

When you're working that close with Hitler and personally using tens of thousands of people for slave labour, oh yes it is a very rational reason.

what else was he going to use? what was he going to do so stop slave labor?

hitler would have just had someone else do the job if speers wouldn't.

This is true, like I said he really had no choice if he wanted to keep his job. But that doesn't let you off the hook, when the choice you make is wrong. Gotta be responsible for your actions, at the end of the day it ws Speer's choice to go along with Hitler.

then why wasn't every industrial giant in germany charged at nuremburg?

speers was nothing but a scapegoat.

The Comrade wrote:

then why wasn't every industrial giant in germany charged at nuremburg? speers was nothing but a scapegoat.

If it were up to me they would have. They had money, power, and respect there was also a Cold War looming, a lot of people got off the hook who should've been in prison or lined up against a wall.

But this doesn't let Speer off the hook.

If it were up to me they would have. They had money, power, and respect there was also a Cold War looming, a lot of people got off the hook who should've been in prison or lined up against a wall.

But this doesn't let Speer off the hook.

These guys helped Hitler to power, and to stay in power. They furthered the war effort.