RE: Ethical ramifications of, The PRIME-DIRECTIVE
There is no contradiction in saying that the Nazi regime was delusional, and yet not implying absolute evilness to individuals, but a misguided worldview. I gave you the example of a high-ranking soldier who, if you appealed to his humanity without flattering him, could have helped a man sentenced to death by the court martial. On the contrary, it would be an opportunity to question the hard principles of a misguided, arbitrary regime and not to accept its claim to absoluteness. To execute shootings on the basis of absolute obedience, do you not think that was an act of fear of the same fate?
Do you really believe that a person who kills another can live in peace with himself afterwards? The only justification lies in absolute belief in a higher objectivity, isn't it? To be reassured by the fact that you were acting on a command? People who have killed others often return from war and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because they cannot reconcile having killed or having seen their own killed comrades die, regardless of whether they were authorized to do so. Do you think they are helped by believing in the authorities who gave them permission to do so?
The Nuremberg Trials, which exposed the Nazi atrocities, don't you think they showed how irritating it can be when someone holds on absolutely to an identification that makes them believe they were right?
And do you think it brought peace to the people that the so-called liberators then had to be convinced of their goodness in order to seize those whom they could accuse of absolute wickedness? No one has won anything in this war. Neither the so-called victorious powers nor the defeated. After all, peace is not a fixed state, i.e. the end of an armed conflict. That is far from being order. It takes several generations to overcome the effects, people who are able to alleviate their suffering and to experience cooperation in times of non-combat.
Have you already killed someone because you were authorized to do so? How can you be sure that you will be okay with it? Where does this certainty come from? How do you feel about your own death?
How do you, who do not believe in absolutes, claim that the tenets of NSDAP is "delusional" and those who hold office within the party structure to be "misguided?" With what standard do you dare judge the actions of the NSDAP without absolute reference? Can you even define this "humanity," to which you claim that men can appeal causing officers to be derelict in their duty? Definitions are absolutes, and for someone ranting against absolutes, you seem to utilise a great many absolute principles.
Some men are born killers, and these men lose no sleep over performing their duties. The humanist drivel about "equality of men" seems to have caused you to solely seek external circumstances as the precipitating factors for PTSD. PTSD is a consequence of training unsuitable men to become killers. Only those who have the temperament, will-power, and emotional stability ought to be enrolled into the military to become killers. In the modern degenerate humanist era, unqualified men are recruited and sent forth into hell (probably because of the toxic belief regarding equality), resulting in the emotional and mental wrecks you observe in society. PTSD results from improper selection, not from the demands of duty. Not all men are born with your temperament, will, and emotional state; many function optimally in combat situations, while others disintegrate. For someone who decries any absolutes, you sure seem to assign your assumptions of man's qualities as an absolute state upon all 6 billions souls on this planet. Furthermore, since PTSD is virtually unknown outside the modern West, whether it be in the armies of the the East or the past armies of the West, perhaps PTSD is caused by the methods of the modern West in rearing her young.
The only accomplishment at the kangaroo court of Nueremberg is undermining the authority of the victors. By what legal authority did the victors dare to charge the defeated? The members of the NSDAP did not agree or consent to the legal authority, nor the moral legitimacy of the victors, under which pretense the entire farce was conducted. Had the victors summarily executed those they deemed most responsible for conducting and organising the war, the victors would have had more justification for judgment than the propaganda kabuki theatre claiming "immoral" orders ought not be obeyed. Who determines morality of one's duty? Does the lowly private have the "right" to refuse his orders based on his preferences? How can a society, let alone the military, function when any one has the "right" to obstruct any and all policies?
Men have killed men since beginning of time, with each new technical advancement resulting in new ways and places for men to die. When or where on this planet has mankind experienced absence of war? The "peace" of the developed world is founded upon the war, misery, and death of the societies existing just outside the camera frame. The reason that you and I have the luxury to discuss the merits of pacifism and peace is because we have outsourced war to professional killers.
The victors of the second world war reorganised the postwar geopolitical landscape in their favor, thereby enriching their subjects to live in comfort and luxury of peace and prosperity. Of course the victors won massively in the war.
All men are born, only to die. Who are more pitiable, those who live by certain principles and die with absolute conviction; or those who wander through life without any faith, merely waiting to be buried?