Unforgiving Dilemma

Here is post-war Germany, contrite, horror-stricken at their past insults to humanity, anxious to shed all vestiges of its Nazi past. Culture-bound, proud of its position in the world in the humanities, its gifts to the world in the arts, music, philosophy, literature and science.

So proud that they considered themselves elevated to the status of super-achievers, exceptionalism gone beyond the anticipated. Humility totally expunged; in its place a sense of overweening ego, hubris of a type known only to the ancient gods of Rome and Greece who took it upon themselves to observe and exploit and manipulate lesser beings living below Mount Olympus.

So did the Germans determine that as uber-menschen, it was their divine duty to conquer the unworthy world and rule it with an iron fist, modelling it after their own vision of ruler-and-ruled. And in the process, removing such unworthy distractions as those whose 'racial origins', physical and mental state ruled them inadmissible for prolonged life in their thousand-year conquest-and-rule.

Their determination led to a world upheaval of monumental proportions and the sacrifice of millions of innocents.

All of which has led saner minds and tremulous memories to frantically distance themselves from their hideous midnight past. So it is with mixed feelings that they regard their military. Their soldiery, their marines and their Luftwaffe who were, after all, comprised of ordinary Germans conscripted to do their duty to their motherland.

Not for them to reason why; theirs only to do or die. Do they did. Die they did.

But among them the sanity of universal morals and values yet pertained and some among them took steps to protest, to dissent, to disturb and to disrupt. For which many paid for their lives as traitors.

Others sought to bring the nightmare of the National Socialist Party of Germany to an end by forming cabals to destroy their leader. And failed. Their courage to be celebrated later, after the fact, as national heroes.

Yet here's a conundrum facing Germany at this very time. What to do with those who promoted insurrection in the ranks of ordinary German military functionaries. Those who followed their conscience and refused to serve in an army that saw fit to destroy the lives of civilians because they were Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, malformed or mentally retarded, or German resisters.

Thirty thousand German soldiers were sentenced to death during the war for crimes ranging from desertion to espionage. Of those, 16,000 were hanged, shot, garroted or guillotined by the regime that was desperate to crush any hint of insurrection.

Under a 2002 law the vast majority of these condemned resisters were pardoned. Yet a small portion of them were not pardoned and the German parliament is in the process of debating a rehabilitative bill.

These 70-some traitors were described within four categories of crime whose nature, apparently, appears too sensitive to be easily resolved. Charged with taking information to the enemy, information which was directly used against German troops. But these traitors were resisting the Nazi regime, as were deserters.

The conundrum lies in the posthumous pardoning of deserters, and by so doing indicating that those who stayed at their post in defence of Germany and its aspirations, ipso facto 'did the wrong thing'. Bringing offence to the many thousands of surviving veterans.

Yet who could possibly argue with the contention of Prof. Ludwig Baumann, 86, who founded the Association of Victims of Nazi Military Justice, in 1990. He was sentenced to death after fleeing what he termed "a criminal, genocidal war", in France in 1942. His sentence was commuted to 12 years in jail.

"Had there been more of such war 'traitors'" he said recently, "the Second World War would have been over faster, and thousands of lives would have been spared".