Talk:Malmedy massacre trial
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Elaboration on the criticisms, please? --Tothebarricades.tk 22:20, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I knew nothing about the trial. I read both the Jewish Virtual Library link (which I added) and the scrapbook link, and added the flaws in the trials. Perhaps they need to be expanded a bit and moved to a seperate page, becasue they do not seem to be restricted to just the Malmedy trial.
--Frank.visser 12:34, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
also, on why the death penalties were not carried out. ✈ James C. 01:44, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
and also a reason for why the right-wing repeatedly brings it up? porge 03:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
were the non-death sentences carried out? shortened? commuted? Rmhermen 03:38, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
They all probably got what they deserved. You don't kill your prisoners. It merely confirmed what we already knew about the discraced SS organization. Nothing more than a bunch of thugs in uniform legitimized by the state. Even though the entire Wehrmacht committed attrocities, the most conducted in the field were by the Waffen SS, The Einsatzgruppen of the TKvB and the Polizie Feld Regiments. All were SS and therefore Nazi Party organizations. They want to get everyone to focus on their being soldiers and not on the fact that they were thugs in uniform who may have fought hard in conbat are now over glorified by a bunch of revisionists and apoligists. The SS was the military arm of the SS and as such got what they deserved. They have been given the equivelent of elite status as the US Marines, The marines however didn't routinely kill its prisoners and round up hapless civilians for deportation to slave labor camps. user: Tomtom 0905, 26 July 2004
- Look, you don't have to convince me: I am Dutch and as far as I am concerned they could have hung them from the highest tree. If not for the Malmedy Massacre, then for the atrocities on the Eastern front, or indeed the Einsatzgruppen. Most of them actually got released after a few years, IMO a scandalous decision. However, from a NPOV, the trial was highly disputable, and it actually became quite a scandal in the US a few years later, with anti-semitic and anti-communist undertones. Therefore these criticisms should be reported in the article. The article needs to expanded to include this, McCarthy got his first break actually investigating the trial, so it had quite some impact. --Frank.visser 01:48, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- "The way this tribunal conducted its trials has been critizised, not only by extreme right-wing groups but also in the USA." is a strange sentence. There do exist extreme right-wing groups in the US, so the statement notes nothing special as it is. Did the author mean the US government was critical of the trial? "Guilt was established beforehand" is a tough accusation, violating basic law standards and in direct contrast to other trials like those in Nuremberg. Are there serious sources? And for the claim that witnesses were paid to testify? Get-back-world-respect 14:15, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] Linked article
I am not entirely certain what bias is held by the article for the Jewish Virtual Library (I think it's likely the work of several different people, each trying to clean up the last's work); but I am quite certain that it is irremediably biased. We don't need to scream about Hitler and the SS being evil for it to be true, nor do those we source. Unless anyone can offer a compelling reason for keeping, I think it ought to be excised. Wally 19:53, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV
The Wiki article seems to be based on one web page on the net [1]. It needs the input of several more sources to balance it. At the moment the major paragraph is a list of grievances from that article about how unfair the proceeding were. It needs a piece on the case against the accused, the case for the defence, and a piece on the ruling by the judges, preferably with an example of some legal heavy weight stating if it has been used as precidence in any other international case.
- I was the original author of this article in English. I actually based it on the corresponding German topic [2]. I did come up with the link you mention on scrapbookpages.com as part of my corroborating web research. I don't object to any of the other comments about the ways this topic could be improved; I just wanted to be clear about the source of the topic. Jim DeLaHunt 02:35, 20 July 2005 (PDT)
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- Based on the German Version of the article I reworked the section in question. Funnily enough the German Version war far more NPOV and claimed less then the english one. I coudln't find certain claims made in the English Version in the German one which is why I dropped them completely. If anyone has more information on it, he can be my guest and change it. --Ebralph 10:33, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
The grievances about alleged unfair proceeding should be mentioned but they must be kept in proportion to the rest of the article, because although as the article mentions there are problems with the procedures did they cause an innocent man to be found guilty?
Camparisons with procedures used and the the case presented and against the accused in the Biscari Massacre might be interesting and educational as well. Philip Baird Shearer 16:08, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
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- Much better Philip Baird Shearer 12:10, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] POV Tag
Hi, the article has been reworked and as such, I'll remove the tag in a few days unless someone stills has a bone to pick. --Ebralph 22:09, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
I wonder if any of you have actually read the Senate report and it's conclusions. Aschenauer was a very effective defense lawyer but the Senate's committee couldn't find any proof of torture and coercion. The smokescreen he created did cause the result he wanted as most of the defendants were released shortly afterwards. On Aschenauer: http://lexikon.idgr.de/a/a_s/aschenauer-rudolf/aschenauer-rudolf.php 2468Motorway
[edit] Freda Utley
MALMEDY and McCARTHY Printed in the AMERICAN MERCURY November 1954 By Freda Utley
[edit] Factual accuracy Dispute
Who was the lawyer who defended the defendants? As the article stands now we have two external links who state that it was an american lawyer, and one link to a page in german that states that it was a german. The German page is by the way a page which strives to combat right wing extremists by trying to contradict their assertions. I am not at all confident that it can be counted on to be NPOV. Stor stark7 23:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
- In fact, during the trial, the lawyer who defended the defendants was the American, i.e. Willis Everett. It was also Everett who brought the case before the Supreme Court and the Senate. During the hearings of the Senate subcommittee, Joseph McCarthy - who, BTW, was not member of the Committee, but was attending its sessions - got information material from Aschenauer, who had been the counsel of one of the defendants in the "Einsatzgruppen" trial.--Lebob-BE 20:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge
I don't see any reason why article should be seperate from Malmedy massacre. I think I'm going to merge it into that article in the near future. Raul654 16:14, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
- Last time I looked, the German wikipedia had separate Malmedy massacre and Malmedy massacre trial articles. I think there's value in the English Wikipedia having a parallel structure with two articles. Also, if either of these articles included the detail they deserved, they'd be long enough individually and too long if combined. I think that fleshing out the content will give a bigger return on effort invested than merging the articles. --Jdlh | Talk 05:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] just out of memory
I recall the trial was also largely disputed in Belgium and that a government inquiry into the massacre was organised that also came to the conclusion that the trial was at least unfair.
Then a general note. The notion that every SS (or just these SS) should have been shot for belonging to the SS shows plain ignorance of who was in the Waffen SS and how they came to be part of that force. It is also criminally stupid as it goes against all notions of justice, you cannot condemn someone for the crimes of another. That is to say you cannot condemn a 17 year of Waffen SS for the crimes committed by some other Waffen SS of the same unit a few years earlier. Being a member of the Waffen SS does not mean an automatic death sentence is valid. And yes, warcrimes were committed by units of all branches of the German military (I'll include the SS and Waffen SS here, though they were separate). warcrimes were also committed by forces of most other beligerents. All of these have to be seen separately (only blanket exhonerations, as often take place in Germany today, should be condemned).
Oh and lastly it's not just the extreme right or right that criticises the Malmedy trials, though obviously the extreme right tends to abuse the issue.--Caranorn 12:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
- While one can certainly argue about the Malmedy massacre trial and the way it has been carried out, one should not forget that this trial did not only concern the Malmedy massacre as such, but other cold blood killing of American POWs that happened between 17 and 20 December 1944 on the road followed by the "Kampfgruppe Peiper". POWs massacres happened a.o. in Honsfeld, Büllingen, Ligneuville, Stavelot and Stoumont. The total of POWs killed in total (including Malmedy) was of more than 300. In the same trial men belonging to the same SS unit were also found guilty of having killed more than 100 civilians (including women and children) in the area of Stavelot.
- Although being Belgian and leaving in Belgian, I can't remember that the trial has been disputed in Belgium or that a Governement inquiry came to such conclusions. In fact, I could not find any information about this issue. --Lebob-BE 20:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
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- I will have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure I read these things in a book (a Heimdal, so not necessarily a good source for anything non-military) about the campaign.--Caranorn 21:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
