One of the first decisions of the Nazi war trials held after WW2 was what crimes the defendants were to be charged with. In the first Nuremberg trial, 21 high-ranking Nazis were tried for crimes that fell into 4 categories:
- Conspiracy to wage aggressive war
- Waging an aggressive war
- War crimes
- Crimes against humanity
Nobody seriously disputes that the Nazis conspired and waged an aggressive war and also committed war crimes. Sometimes history softens as time goes by, but not in this instance. Ironically, war crimes weren't limited only to the Nazis; for example American GIs machine-gunned 50 unarmed German SS prisoners of war in a barbed-wire enclosure and the Russians committed many atrocities as an act of revenge as they advanced into Germany. Nobody was ever charged with crimes in those instances.
Crimes against humanity is rather broad and is certainly appropriate for the indiscriminate killing of millions. Humanity definitely suffered, but the question of whether or not crimes against humanity are actual laws or were made up on the spot to address genocide was never asked. Humanity has always suffered during wars and
still does to this day. Seeking justice, we tried them, sentenced 11 of them to death and 7 to lengthy prison terms. Three were (surprisingly) acquitted. Goering cheated the hangman a few hours before he was to be hanged and the rest of them walked to the gallows. In 103 minutes, 10 top Nazis were dead.
In total, there were 13 war crimes trials at Nuremburg; 199 defendants were tried, 161 of them were found guilty and 37 of them were sentenced to death. Not all of the 37 were actually put to death and in most cases, the prison sentences were commuted early. For what it's worth, the British were the most prolific at hanging Nazis; between 1945 and 1949 they hung 210 war criminals including quite a few women. Their skilled hangman Albert Pierrepoint practically turned their gallows into a (dis)assembly line.
Ah, but I digress; something I often do. Let's get back to the subject.
To be sure, the Nazis committed war crimes, but crimes against humanity are usually used to address large-scale genocide. 60 years later, Saddam Hussein ended up on the wrong end of the rope for the same charge.
To see how this could even come to pass, you have to look at the rise of National Socialism in Germany and what quickly ensued when they took the reins of power in 1933. First, consider how bad things were in Germany as the Nazis rose to power. The German people were so desperate they ceded power to these extremists (
lesson learned - never give power to rabble-rousing rioters or extremists) and that set the stage. Also consider the irony that Adolf Hitler ran in 1932 and
lost the only election he ever ran in.
In that same election the Nazi party took a fair number of seats (about 1/3) in the Reichstag and under pressure, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. Shortly after that, the Nazi juggernaut began rolling towards absolute dictatorial control. Things happened fast after that, very fast. A little more than a month later, the Dachau concentration camp began construction in March 1933, which coincidentally is the month the enabling act was passed. The enabling act gave Hitler and his cabinet power to enact laws without the Reichstag. With this power, Hitlers edicts, laws and decrees set Germany on the path to the holocaust and global war. When Hindenburg died in 1934, the last obstacle to Hitler's total power was gone. In September 1935 the Nuremberg decrees took rights away from Jews and other
untermensch. (
He wasn't the first head of state to take citizen's rights away with pen and paper; Abraham Lincoln did pretty much the same thing during the civil war when he suspended habeous corpus and imprisoned newspaper editors who opposed him, which clearly wasn't constitutional and still isn't.)
Throughout the 12 years of the Nazi Reich, more laws were implemented that simply made stealing property and killing legal. To them, they weren't breaking any laws at all. They just made what they were doing legal with words on paper as they deemed necessary.
Why am I boring you with all this WW2 Nazi trivia when the subject is crimes against humanity?
What the Germans did
was in fact a crime against humanity; also consider that
they thought it was perfectly legal. And that is the crux of what I want to emphasize here:
Laws may make something legal,
but it doesn't always make them moral.
Clearly, laws should
always be cloaked in some form of morality. Otherwise, what's the reason for enacting them?
That was the
then part, let's talk about the
now part.
Fast forward about 3 decades after WW2: In 1973, Roe v Wade made abortion legal by washing the Federal government's hands of the issue. Abortion is legal as I write this,
but that doesn't make it moral. Since then, most estimates agree that over 60+ million viable human beings in America have been aborted.
I've heard the arguments on both sides.
Women's rights are the motto of the pro-abortion advocates. (They prefer to be called
pro-choice and I prefer my description. Since I'm the author, I get to choose the words.) I only ask one question when I hear this:
Since when did anybody get the right to extinguish a human life?
Crimes against humanity
can take different forms, it seems. What did I say about the indiscriminate killing of millions before? Oh yes. It fits the description pretty close.
America is suffering major political dissension as I write this. In recent years, about 120 million or so take the time to vote in a Presidential election year and it's pretty close as to the split. What's not said is that about
90 million do not vote and not only is that sad, it makes a statement about how much apathy there is in our country. Things are heating up and political parties are now being aligned and weaponized in an attempt to subvert the constitutional election and power of the President; one big reason is that the appointment of conservative judges to the judiciary has the possibility of reversing the big issue liberals really care about, and of course I'm talking about
abor, er, infanticide which currently appears to be legal regardless of which side of the uterus it occurs on.
I've seen predictions of civil war a few times already, and I'm not sure what the outcome of this is going to be. I'm approaching old age and the last thing I want is to see the country suffer (and myself along with it) in large-scale civil unrest. If it happens, I hope I'm not around to see it. If I am, I hope to sit it out. If that's not possible, then I will follow my moral compass wherever it leads me.
Looking at it from the top down, I'm not sure those 90+ million are going to sit it out if it happens. I'm betting the radicals are not going to prevail because its an easy guess most apathetic people aren't radical; rather, it just takes a lot to stir them to action. But if it happens, a new day is going to dawn after and I'm betting a whole bunch of people are going to be held responsible, just as they were 75 years ago.
And that brings us back to the question of crimes against humanity. Remember, legality is not always morality.
If the Germans thought passing laws to make mass extermination legal justified it, how is the United States different when well over a million viable human beings are legally slaughtered here every year?
The question begs: If the extermination of over 60 million human beings since abortion became
legal isn't a crime against humanity, what is? Worse, if we don't recognize it for what it is and fix it ...
Then we're no better than the Germans were 75 years ago.
