Death to all collaborators?

[Jawz II]

Wouldn't shoot them, not worth the ammunition.

Hang 'em high.

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

The question is far too wide thus I vote "No".

You can't include all the people in the same bag. For instance, in occupied France during world war two, you can't compare authorities of the Vichy regime who clearly helped in the deportation of French citizen to the death camps and the locals who did some bargains with the German stationed in their village.

My mother family did sympathized with a few German soldiers. They traded milk, butter, bread, wine, booze and stuff like that for cigarettes (real cigarettes was really a luxury, if not you had to smoke corn), soap, chocolate and other stuff which was considered luxury at the time. Living in rural areas was also better than living in the cities. They were farmers so it helped a fair bit.

Were they traitors? You decide. You do what you have to do in such harsh time. Sure they did that and told no one else in fear of being pointed at "bad people". But to be honest, most people were just simply jealous because they had nothing to trade.

Being forced to cooperate in some way under duress is not collaboration. Collaboration is actively working with the occupation to harm those working against it in any way.

Please brush up on your English.

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

Pasi, is that the only trial that would satisfy you, because people get shot quicker?

The main focus of a resistance movement shouldnt be about rooting out collaborators, the focus is on kicking the enemy out of the country. How many people worked for the Vichy government? Did the resistance have enough ammunition to shoot them all?

Win the war first, then deal with the collaborators.

But collaborators are effectively the army or political arm of the occupation, and working to eliminate them is working to eliminate the occupation. Someone who collaborates is not a citizen of the occupied country, but a soldier of the occupiers. Dealing with the collaborators is dealing with the enemy, because they are the enemy.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

English isn't my first language indeed. But it's your own fault when you depict the trial scene as you did.

Very well, we can have trials.

Resistance member one: You're under arrest. You have been accused of collaborating with the enemy. How do you plead?

Collaborator: Not Guilty.

Resistance member one: Your plea has been rejected. You have been found guilty. The sentence is death. Would you like to take up the case in an appeals court?

It contradicts the quote you used after investigating if english was my first language.

So make up your mind.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Pasi, ok, youre a top leader in the Resistance. A woman has been brought before you and accused of being a collaborator. Whats your 'process'? How will you deal with this woman?

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

English isn't my first language indeed. But it's your own fault when you depict the trial scene as you did.
It contradicts the quote you used after investigating if english was my first language.

So make up your mind.

It kinda sucks when you have to explain that you were being sarcastic/satirical.

Pasi, ok, youre a top leader in the Resistance. A woman has been brought before you and accused of being a collaborator. Whats your 'process'? How will you deal with this woman?

If we know she is, she gets a bullet to the brain. If it's just an accusation, well we still have to hold her anyways because she now has knowledge of me and our MO. I'm sure we'd figure out something, and probably sooner rather than later release her back to wherever it is she came from, with strict instructions to tell no one of what she saw.

 

[Sidhe]

Pasi, ok, youre a top leader in the Resistance. A woman has been brought before you and accused of being a collaborator. Whats your 'process'? How will you deal with this woman?

Is she good looking?

Deal with it by degrees, if your going to have some sort of moral high ground when the war is over you can't just go round arbitrarily killing all those who are collaborators, many collaborators had to do so or be shot or worse, it wasn't like many French collaborators didn't have blackmail used against them to make them co-operate. If your family was being held as collateral against your collaboration, would you not feel slightly between a rock and a hard place, regardless of your true affiliation?

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

you can't just go round arbitrarily killing all those who are collaborators,

If someone really is a collaborator, killing them is hardly arbitrary.

 

[Yeeek]

No I perfectly understand your question. I answer "No".


Scenario, France 1942.

You are a Gendarme (think Policeman) under the Vichy regime of France. You are sent with a couple other Gendarmes to investigate a place supposed to harbour Terrorists (resistant at the time were identified as such by the puppet regime and the occupying forces).

What do you do? You don't do it, you will most likely end up at the local Komandatur questioned as to why you let them escape. That's clearly an act of treason. There's a very good chance you and your men will face a firing squad. If not, labour camps or worse.

You do it. They are arrested, though, you know they are the good guys but so are you. They will be tortured, killed, sent to camps.

Not so easy, isn't it?

Answering that you would simply resign from the Gendarmerie is not an option. Life is already too harsh for you and your family, losing your job would put you in a very uncomfortable position.


I could give other example. Operation Torch in Morocco. As a Vichy French soldier you are given the order to fire on the Enemy. Them being Americans, British and Free French. Future will tells that you were a collaborator by victors standards. But right now such a definition of your action doesn't exist. You are just a soldier defending your home. What's going on at the head of the state doesn't concern you. Politics aren't for little people like you.

Whatever happens, if you don't pull that trigger the guy in front you won't hesitate.

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

No I perfectly understand your question. I answer "No".


Scenario, France 1942.

You are a Gendarme (think Policeman) under the Vichy regime of France. You are sent with a couple other Gendarmes to investigate a place supposed to harbour Terrorists (resistant at the time were identified as such by the puppet regime and the occupying forces).

What do you do? You don't do it, you will most likely end up at the local Komandatur questioned as to why you let them escape. That's clearly an act of treason. There's a very good chance you and your men will face a firing squad. If not, labour camps or worse.

You do it. They are arrested, though, you know they are the good guys but so are you. They will be tortured, killed, sent to camps.

Not so easy, isn't it?

Answering that you would simply resign from the Gendarmerie is not an option. Life is already too harsh for you and your family, losing your job would put you in a very uncomfortable position.

I could give other example. Operation Torch in Morocco. As a Vichy French soldier you are given the order to fire on the Enemy. Them being Americans, British and Free French. Future will tells that you were a collaborator by victors standards. But right now such a definition of your action doesn't exist. You are just a soldier defending your home. What's going on at the head of the state doesn't concern you. Politics aren't for little people like you.

Whatever happens, if you don't pull that trigger the guy in front you won't hesitate.

Being forced to cooperate in some way under duress is not collaboration. Collaboration is actively working with the occupation to harm those working against it in any way.

du·ress /dʊˈrɛs, dyʊ-, ˈdʊərɪs, ˈdyʊər-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[doo-res, dyoo-, door-is, dyoor-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. compulsion by threat or force; coercion; constraint.
2. Law. such constraint or coercion as will render void a contract or other legal act entered or performed under its influence.
3. forcible restraint, esp. imprisonment.

 

[Sidhe]

If someone really is a collaborator, killing them is hardly arbitrary.

You miss the point, the arbitrary is not the should they be punished, the arbitrary is how. A person who's collaboration sent thousands to their deaths, should be punished the same as someone who was forced under pain of death of their family to betray information about underground activities. Perhaps someone who inadvertently let something minor slip should be shot too? Gun them all down, gunishment! That's not justice, it's butchery and makes you little better than the occupiers.

 

[Ramius75]

Not all, will depend on the "crime". i got little respect for traitors who will betray their countrymen to invading leaders. These will be high on my punish list. But not the others like for example those force to be soldiers e.g French vichy will be spared.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yeeek, that's the distiction I tried to make. If you are forced to cooperate with the enemy, that's not collaborating in my book. If you do it for personal gain (as was the case with many NSB-ers in Holland who got paid for every Jew they revealed the location of) that would be collaborating.

Allthough I do admit, that since the start of the thread the term kinda lost it's clear definition to me.

edit: Which is also why discussionforums rock

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

You miss the point, the arbitrary is not the should they be punished, the arbitrary is how. A person who's collaboration sent thousands to their deaths, should be punished the same as someone who was forced under pain of death of their family to betray information about underground activities. Perhaps someone who inadvertently let something minor slip should be shot too? Gun them all down, gunishment! That's not justice, it's butchery and makes you little better than the occupiers.

We are better. We have the moral high ground by being ourselves, by virtue of fighting for our people and our flag, and by fighting to kill those that want to exterminate our people and destroy our state as an entity through which our people physically manifest themselves. That is it.

 

[bhsup]

Being forced to cooperate in some way under duress is not collaboration. Collaboration is actively working with the occupation to harm those working against it in any way. Therefore, Winner is, as usual, wrong and viewing the question from the completely wrong angle.

During occupation, and given how you're presenting collaboration, I would have to say the collaborators are just as legitimate targets as are the enemy soldiers, strategic points of interest, and so forth.

 

[Pasi Nurminen]

Yeeek, that's the distiction I tried to make. If you are forced to cooperate with the enemy, that's not collaborating in my book. If you do it for personal gain (as was the case with many NSB-ers in Holland who got paid for every Jew they revealed the location of) that would be collaborating.

Allthough I do admit, that since the start of the thread the term kinda lost it's clear definition to me.

Being forced to cooperate in some way under duress is not collaboration. Collaboration is actively working with the occupation to harm those working against it in any way.

du·ress /dʊˈrɛs, dyʊ-, ˈdʊərɪs, ˈdyʊər-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[doo-res, dyoo-, door-is, dyoor-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. compulsion by threat or force; coercion; constraint.
2. Law. such constraint or coercion as will render void a contract or other legal act entered or performed under its influence.
3. forcible restraint, esp. imprisonment.

Okay? It's plain English, folks.

 

[Sidhe]

We are better. We have the moral high ground by being ourselves, by virtue of fighting for our people and our flag, and by fighting to kill those that want to exterminate our people and destroy our state as an entity through which our people physically manifest themselves. That is it.

I see so our moral superiority justifies acts of barbarity and brutality? That's a strawman of a moral argument. And fighting to destroy our state, and being coerced? It's too grey to make black and white decisions. You might as well say that, Dresden was justified, or Hiroshima was right and a morally sound action, no they were acts of evil, perpitrated by evil men for reasons we cannot even begin to fathom clearly. Don't make the mistake of thinking being on the so called morally right side gives you a moral cart blanche, that's ludicrous. In fact this is the mentality of the Germans, they no doubt believed what they were doing was morally sound too in many cases.

Oh and BS collaberation can be either voluntary or forced, there's nothing in the defintion of collaberation that says otherwise, and collaberation has nothing to do with legality anyway.

It doesn't matter I could find a million cases where just gunning someone down would seem overzealous.

 

[Winner]

Fine, so we estabilished that the 0.00001% of the collaborators, under Pasi's brand new definition of the term, deserve to die.

Great, informative and completely useless in the real world.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Pasi, you have got to admit there is grey area here. Since you included 'all' in your question, I can see why many would hesitate to vote yes. I'm thinking I have been too hasty with my vote.

If I feed hungry soldiers who are passing through my land, I am aiding the enemy. Simply because I regarded them as hungry human beings.

I am not forced in any way, I am by our definition a collaborator. Do I deserve to be shot for aiding the enemy?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Oh and BS collaberation can be either voluntary or forced, there's nothing in the defintion of collaberation that says otherwise, and collaberation has nothing to do with legality anyway.

It doesn't matter I could find a million cases where just gunning someone down would seem overzealous.

Doesn't "treasonous" imply voluntarily?

Honest question, no luring, just working out a pickle.
edit: Using this definition: to cooperate treasonably, as with an enemy occupation force in one's country

From a dictionary. So sue me