In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Wrong or right using these resources was certainly in their best interest.
In 1968, Mr. Hoover authorized the F.B.I. to wiretap a
left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about
Nazis in America, internal records show.
On one hand, there's the act of not immediately burning potential useful allies for their (abominable racial) politics. On the other hand, there's the actions taken against political dissenters to protect those allies, actions that seem like one of those classic stacking the deck moves that gives notice to all good men that the Tree of Liberty might be looking a little thirsty.
Quoting from the article:
But many Nazi spies proved inept or worse, declassified
security reviews show. Some were deemed habitual liars,
confidence men or embezzlers, and a few even turned out to
be Soviet double agents, the records show.> The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the future
I don't know the parent's true intentions, but I read this less as approval of their actions and more as a mournful observation about how few choices any of us really have.
The rest of this comment is just my speculation/justification for why moral considerations might make for more effective policies than "pragmatic" ones.
I think that (there's a reasonable chance) the security agencies did themselves (by which I mean American society) more harm by acquiring flawed assets than the cost of waiting to develop appropriate assets on their own.
It's the same general problem as security theater -- a system that focuses on "doing something", rather than making a principled understanding of the costs/benefits and trying to optimize some security tradeoff.
One reason principles are great is because they (are supposed to) act as commitment devices that keep you from doing some tempting, short-term thing, and keep your actions in line with your longer term goals.
Here in France the same principle prevailed: "better an ex-collaborator than a communist", with the difference that they were starving for managers (and it didn't go well for the resistants). So they didn't try an in-depth cleaning of the country which led to great disasters during the decolonization wars (tortures, mass executions, etc.)
They were quicker to shave the hair of women who slept with a german soldier than to hang a prefet who sent 1500 jews in a train and became Paris' police chief.
How is that (French here)? Maurice Papon, the man you are talking about, was responsible for the brutal repression of the demonstration ordered by FLN, which lead to hundred of dead people. However, given the climate at the time, it's not obvious that a different man in the same position wouldn't have acted the same way. As for claiming that the French army tortured in Indochina and Algeria due to a lack of denazification, that's plain silly. Many of the soldiers who took an active role in these crimes were former resistants (like Massu and Aussaresses).
this is why there are things defined like "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" and Nuremberg trial which affirmed the principle that "just carrying out the orders" and "a different man in the same position would have acted in the same way" isn't a valid defense at least in case of such heinous crimes.
You could make the same argument about women who slept with German soldiers, but they were punished in the streets while people with administrative skills were quietly excused. I don't know if nraynaud meant to focus on Papon per-se. I think he wanted to draw the sharp contrast between how those with skills were treated v.s. how we treated those who were of lesser value to the state.
Sincere question: what on earth would qualify as a "minor" war crime?
Later on in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, Congress as a practical matter provided even more extensive retroactive immunity for war criminals via the expedient of a reliance on counsel defense. (Counsel in this case being John Yoo et. al.)
BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and destroy too, nazi or not.
>>BTW, anyone that build weapons or be part of experiments to break and destroy too, nazi or not.
Are you saying anyone develops weapons is unethical? I can see how you might hold that as a personal POV, but don't pretend there is consensus around that.
Hard to say because many certainly were given the opportunity to pretend like they didn't even if they did. Surely afterwards they probably wouldn't be raising their hands proclaiming they knew but kept quiet.
Hundreds of thousands and millions of neighbours, friends, acquaintances disappearing and everyone actually thought they are being sent to ... well where ? the beach ? What did they think happened to this people.
> Being a nationalist isn't inherently unethical, committing genocide is
Joining to fight a war of aggression is and willingly participating in it is. Besides the most horrific and well calculated, scaled and optimized genocide, "regular" Joes Barbers committed countless tortures, rapes and execution in Easter Europe.
My Russian teacher was telling us a personal story how as a child she watch through a fence how German soldiers, raped and then dismembered her childhood friend.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard
> The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitler's Holocaust, according to a new research study. They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatised as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand.
> They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of officially-inspired German media articles and posters according to the study, which is due to be published simultaneously in Britain and the US early next month and which was described as ground-breaking by Oxford University Press yesterday and already hailed by other historians.
Think of all the modern conflicts the US is in- If people actually voted on such things, they would happen less often. Nazi Germany quickly went from a "fighting mob" democracy to a "not really a democracy at all", proposing WWII was the choice of the average German citizen is nonsense. Even if your country is fighting a war you didn't support- you probably still want it to win...
>My Russian teacher was telling us a personal story how as a child she watch through a fence how German soldiers, raped and then dismembered her childhood friend.
And the Russians were just as bad later in the war... Are you claiming the Germans were especially brutal? This behavior has been the norm for solders for most of history- (Not saying its right, just saying it wasn't abnormal or unique).
I never said Russians were better.
And THIS answer was in response to the scientist NASA and other agencies use, sorry for not make it clear.
"Once "bleached" of their Nazism, the scientists were granted security clearances by the U.S. government to work in the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip.
This trigger the answer: "That hardly meant they did anything unethical during the war"
Which kind of spy is more useful? The one that work with lovely and peaceful investigations? Or the one in positions of power, knowledge and most likely, militar-related?
So them were most-likelly victims? According to this article:
"They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich"
So?
> DAF membership was theoretically voluntary, but any workers in any area of German commerce or industry would have found it hard to get a job without being a member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Labour_Front
You could not work unless you joined the Nazi party.