Things you often Wonder

[mjmooney]

Quote

A former SS guard has gone on trial in Germany accused of complicity in mass murder at a Nazi death camp during World War Two.

Named only as Johann R by authorities, the 94-year-old served in the Stutthof camp in what is now northern Poland from June 1942 to September 1944.

Because he was not yet aged 21, he is being tried in a juvenile court in Münster, western Germany.

BBC

I wonder if this the oldest person ever to be tried in a juvenile court? 

[Mark Albrighton]

20 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I gave up on it after Season 1. It was shit.

I often wonder if should have given it another chance. I can't believe how into it people were, given how bad I thought it was.

But the recent, almost unanimous slating of the more recent seasons has quelled that inclination.

I find some apocalypse stuff  interesting (zombie or otherwise) and I liked Andrew Lincoln from “This Life” and “Teachers” so I gave it a go. Then they cleverly added Lauren Cohan to the cast so I stuck with it longer. But it became a bit of a slog after a few series.

I remember people slating season two at the time but that was nothing compared to the the criticism it receives now. I suspect you made the right decision.

[BOF]

15 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

BBC

I wonder if this the oldest person ever to be tried in a juvenile court? 

Your link is wrong.

[Stevo985]

10 minutes ago, Shropshire Lad said:

I find some apocalypse stuff  interesting (zombie or otherwise)

I do too. Very interesting in fact. I've liked bad shows or movies before purely because they were about the end of the world. It kinda fascinates me. Signs is a good example. not that that was a BAD movie, but I liked it way more than other people seem to.

But for me The Walking Dead was just bad acting, a bad script and just overall cheesiness. I couldn't get into it as a result.

[mjmooney]

26 minutes ago, BOF said:

Your link is wrong.

So it is. I just tried editing it, put in this link:

BBC News - Holocaust trial: Germany tries former SS guard at Stutthof camp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46108753

But it still linked back to the VT thread. 

Confused. 

The link above works, but not in my previous post. 

EDIT: I edited again, and took out the descriptive text before the URL, and it now seems to work - although it does prompt as to whether you want to use a browser or the BBC News app. That of course my be specific to my phone. 

Edited November 6, 2018 by mjmooney

[BOF]

3 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

So it is. I just tried editing it, put in this link:

BBC News - Holocaust trial: Germany tries former SS guard at Stutthof camp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46108753

But it still linked back to the VT thread. 

Confused. 

The link above works, but not in my previous post. 

Fixed it now.  There was a sneaky BBC 'nofollow' tag in the previous one preventing external linking

[mjmooney]

Just now, BOF said:

Fixed it now.  There was a sneaky BBC 'nofollow' tag in the previous one preventing external linking

See also my edited comment above. 

[Paddywhack]

4 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

So it is. I just tried editing it, put in this link:

BBC News - Holocaust trial: Germany tries former SS guard at Stutthof camp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46108753

But it still linked back to the VT thread. 

Confused. 

The link above works, but not in my previous post. 

I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere on VT and maybe this isn't the right thread for it, but how are we supposed to feel about these kind of trials?

Is it at all plausible that some of them didn't know the full extent of what was happening? And what would have happened to them if they had denied orders?

Genuine questions by the way, I'm not trying to make excuses for him, I'm just wondering.

[Chindie]

10 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere on VT and maybe this isn't the right thread for it, but how are we supposed to feel about these kind of trials?

Is it at all plausible that some of them didn't know the full extent of what was happening? And what would have happened to them if they had denied orders?

Genuine questions by the way, I'm not trying to make excuses for him, I'm just wondering.

Just following orders isn't a defence (it may allow some mitigation in some cases). And while it's possible some ranks of personnel wouldn't be completely aware of goings on in the camps, the scale of the slaughter, the nature of it, would mean guards would likely know about it and be involved. 

It's important these trials happen. While the outcome is pretty much moot - they are all very old and are unlikely to receive much punishment, and they have all lived full lives in the meantime - it's important to show those crimes still matter.

[chrisp65]

19 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere on VT and maybe this isn't the right thread for it, but how are we supposed to feel about these kind of trials?

Is it at all plausible that some of them didn't know the full extent of what was happening? And what would have happened to them if they had denied orders?

Genuine questions by the way, I'm not trying to make excuses for him, I'm just wondering.

I guess a train guard at a train station maybe wouldn’t know exactly how and where the victims would eventually die. I guess an informant in a town or a local policeman searching under beds wouldn’t know the exact details.
But an SS at a camp?
SS at camps knew. They’d have seen, heard and tasted it.
 

[tonyh29]

they would , and I'm sure most of them thrived on it , but  the modern view that SS guards could say excuse me old chap but I object to the treatment you are dishing out to these poor old prisoners is kinda questionable , that said there are examples of people like Klaus Hornig  who refused to kill prisoners and survived .. all be it that it was more down to the camp he was thrown in got liberated just before his death sentence could be delivered

there was some research carried out that suggested ordinary folk given repeated orders  ( they received moderately painful, but tolerable, shocks if they disobeyed)  caused them to perceive a distance from outcomes that they themselves caused  , not conclusive in the "only obeying orders " stakes  but suggesting being people who give orders should be held more responsible for the actions and outcomes of those they coerce

 

 

 

[chrisp65]

The Milgram Experiment

truly shocking

Quote

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale Universitypsychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner." These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real...

 

Edited December 11, 2018 by blandy
No article extract posted - now added

[A'Villan]

22 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

they would , and I'm sure most of them thrived on it , but  the modern view that SS guards could say excuse me old chap but I object to the treatment you are dishing out to these poor old prisoners is kinda questionable , that said there are examples of people like Klaus Hornig  who refused to kill prisoners and survived .. all be it that it was more down to the camp he was thrown in got liberated just before his death sentence could be delivered

there was some research carried out that suggested ordinary folk given repeated orders  ( they received moderately painful, but tolerable, shocks if they disobeyed)  caused them to perceive a distance from outcomes that they themselves caused  , not conclusive in the "only obeying orders " stakes  but suggesting being people who give orders should be held more responsible for the actions and outcomes of those they coerce

 

 

 

Hitler's men were killing their own fellow Germans before Jewish persecution was institutionalised by the Nazi's. Nazi men knew they were a part of a culture of thugs and brutes from the get-go. Annexing land, sabotaging the political course, imposing martial law, murdering and arresting innocents and an unhealthy and blinkered obsession with eugenics as a means to overcome the hard times faced in the past is a recipe for disaster and that's exactly what the Nazi military envisioned. Blaming the problems of their own culture on a Jewish race that made up  less than 1% of the German population is hard for me to understand, because, if the Germans were meant to be 'superior' surely their problems can't be caused by an 'inferior' race who make up 1% of the population.

Men like Mengele who was SS, a decision maker at the camps and responsible for human experimentation personifies the men behind the movement. There was nothing benevolent about Nazi ideology, or the men who occupied the ranks. SS, SA and the Gestapo under Hitler are the reason an SS officer couldn't turn around and say, 'this isn't right' even if he wanted to. They literally killed off the men who would oppose Hitler, his band of doctors and the military from committing the tragedies that they did. The SS are the very men responsible for enabling Hitler the political power he needed to change and create rules that led to the death camps. They willingly took it upon themselves to kill their own countrymen so that Hitler could impose himself, they had a choice, and they continued to show the brutish nature of their culture when attention turned to the Jews.

The system of governance in Germany was overthrown by Hitler because anyone who would oppose him in parliament was either being murdered, arrested or in fear of one of the two happening to them. In order to have a say in parliament, you had to attend parliament. His opponents stopped attending due to their life either being taken or on the line as a consequence, this is one method that was used in order to pass laws that allowed Hitler the powers that he granted himself. If only one party sits in parliament, only one party has a say.

 

[A'Villan]

Something 'I often wonder' is why people resort to animosity before questioning its merit and considering a more sensible approach.

[Rob182]

Why isn't there a website specifically designed for people to use to find old computer games that they can't remember the name of?

Once every few months I'll be scratching my head for days, trying to think of some obscure PC game that I played in the 90s, typing random descriptions into Google in the hope that it'll throw up a hit on some random games forum.

The game I'm currently trying to think of, I only had the demo of, but it was a turn-based birds-eye-view car game, where you rolled a dice/ spinner, and then drove round a big colourful map of a city, collecting things or something, competing against other drivers. I can't even remember if it was a race, or if the aim was to collect money.

[mjmooney]

3 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

Why isn't there a website specifically designed for people to use to find old computer games that they can't remember the name of?

Once every few months I'll be scratching my head for days, trying to think of some obscure PC game that I played in the 90s, typing random descriptions into Google in the hope that it'll throw up a hit on some random games forum.

The game I'm currently trying to think of, I only had the demo of, but it was a turn-based birds-eye-view car game, where you rolled a dice/ spinner, and then drove round a big colourful map of a city, collecting things or something, competing against other drivers. I can't even remember if it was a race, or if the aim was to collect money.

It's either Red Dead Redemption II, or FIFA 2003. 

[Rob182]

Every search I do just brings up 'Darkwind', which is not what I'm thinking of.

I should probably have rephrased my 'thing I wonder'. There might be a website, or even numerous websites, that offer what I've asked. What I want is one definitive website. The MAIN one, to find that game that you're thinking of.

[Stevo985]

23 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

Why isn't there a website specifically designed for people to use to find old computer games that they can't remember the name of?

Once every few months I'll be scratching my head for days, trying to think of some obscure PC game that I played in the 90s, typing random descriptions into Google in the hope that it'll throw up a hit on some random games forum.

The game I'm currently trying to think of, I only had the demo of, but it was a turn-based birds-eye-view car game, where you rolled a dice/ spinner, and then drove round a big colourful map of a city, collecting things or something, competing against other drivers. I can't even remember if it was a race, or if the aim was to collect money.

Sounds like Darkwind

[AVFC_Hitz]

6 hours ago, Rob182 said:

Every search I do just brings up 'Darkwind', which is not what I'm thinking of.

I should probably have rephrased my 'thing I wonder'. There might be a website, or even numerous websites, that offer what I've asked. What I want is one definitive website. The MAIN one, to find that game that you're thinking of.

Retro City Rampage?

[chrisp65]

Red Dead Darkwind 2003

on the wii