How do you feel about the "I was just following orders" defence?

How do you feel about the "I was just following orders" defence?

Talking about it in regards to any atrocity/immoral act that a person was compelled to do due to orders, not just pic related.

It was all bullshit, the only people punished were those that had no post-war value to the Allies/Soviets. Then there was that Japanese general that was executed after explicitly ordering his officers/men to avoid committing war crimes.

inb4
>WEHRABOO!

The post-war trials were a complete farce

Membership in the Totenkopfverbände (SS camp guards), Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo was voluntary, in the regular SS and Waffen-SS it was voluntary for the most part, too. The Waffen-SS also used conscription though, but I didn't hear yet that soldiers were forced to participated in massacres.

I think the excuse is bullshit. Same goes for My Lai or most other massacres, I haven't heard of any war crime where the soldiers responsible harmed their comrades for not participating, but maybe I haven't read enough yet...
What does that have to do with the OP?

I want to know why the morality of the attacker asking the question is never brought up.

>Society endorses and supports having a military military
>People join military
>Military specifically trains people not to think and to follow orders
>Soldiers are ordered to do things the society deems immoral because that's what happens in war
>Ivory Tower intellectuals accuse soldiers of be immoral monsters for "just following orders"

objective morality is a spook

Every human being should read about the Milgram experiments.

Because "I was just following orders" was the main argument used by the defence in the Nuremberg Trials, and the refutation of that defence at Nuremberg is obviously a major part of war crimes trials

So you can't see a difference between killing hostile combatants who are a clear threat and killing unarmed civilians who don't pose a threat in any way?

>I didn't hear yet that soldiers were forced to participated in massacres.
You non-metaphorically have no idea what it is like to be an infantry company.

What do you think happened if you someone no?

If someone said no***

Not exactly the same but similar, the Stanford prison experiment is a breddy gudd one too.

You tell me. Out of this picture who are the terrorists and who are the civilians?

Keep in mind the penalty for guessing wrong is death.

No it's not.
Thanks for the answer, wasn't aware of that at the moment.
I'm a soldier in an infantry company...
I don't think they would have been killed, that's an unnecessary loss in a time of total war. Besides, there were certainly enough German soldiers who participated gladly...
But I'm not sure what actually happened, that's just what I'd think so yeah.

Strip search them, get the locals to question them, detain the most untrustworthy of the lot, hand them over to the civil authorities and send the rest on their way.
Just like in the real world.

Cherry picked case, tell me who's the threat in pic related... same goes for most other massacres/ war crimes we're talking about ITT.

It's not the soldiers job to distinguish.
It's the soldiers job to follow orders.

You have already given the officers licence to execute soldiers for not following orders.

You are engaging in a war, knowing full well that innocent people will be killed.

You know that by supporting a war those officers will give orders that will result in non-combatant death.

You are trying to weasel out of responsibility for your actions.

>Strip search suicide bombers
>Get the locals, who you are at war with, to betray their families and communities

This is why the wars in the middle east were such a disaster. US forces actually did try this.

I don't know which country you're from but in our army you are not allowed to follow orders that clearly break the law. If there's collateral damage during fighting that's one thing, but if you kill non-combatants who don't pose any threat that's clearly a war crime and you're not allowed to follow such orders.

It's better to murder the whole village. After all out of 200 people 5 could be partisans.

Geneva convention was a mistake.

It is legitimate. But not in the case of high command, as it was used in Nurenberg. Generals are fully responsible, for their own actions and decisions, as well as their subordinates. They were giving orders.

Please join the military.

If you don't follow orders you get shot. Who the fuck do you think does an investigation on war crimes?
So long as your country is not losing the conflict, being a conscious objector is a surefire way to land in jail or be brutally beaten or worse.

Literally the only time we actually convict war criminals is when we have a total domination victory. About the closest thing you have for proving me wrong is the Mai Lai massacre and that only happened because news reporters were on the front line with soldiers. Literal weeks after that mess the press wasn't allowed anywhere near the front lines anymore.

After postwar investigations, we can say for sure that dozens of villages have been wiped off the face of the earth with little to no consequence.

How far up the chain of command is the cutoff of responsibility then?

This may come as a shock, but enemy soldiers do not tattoo the word "enemy combatant" on there forehead.

There is so much wrong with this argument that I just don't have the time to go into all of it.

Soldiers follow orders or they get shot.
Officers give the orders.
Officers get the orders from command.
Command gets the orders from the politicians.

If you are ordered to attack an enemy village and wipe out everyone, you don't ask why, you follow orders and hope that the village was making weapons, or harboring spys, or something else.

It's not the soldiers job to question, it's the soldiers job to act.
Fault lies with the officers for not preventing obvious abuses and the politicians that started the war in the first place.

Go ahead and tell me how successful the "win the hearts and minds" strategy was for the U.S.

I'm in the military right now, believe me or not.
Ffs I'm not talking about collateral damage, but if you can't differentiate between summary executions of civilians and a firefight in which some innocents die I can't help you either...

No, you can differentiate.

But it doesn't matter. Because if you don't follow orders you get severely punished. All of basic training is grinding you down to build you back up into a unit that follows orders.

Lemme guess, you're part of the 39th Cobblestone Brigade?

Well, shooting every man and sending women to concentration camps wasn't very successful either.

>Lemme guess, you're part of the 39th Cobblestone Brigade?
And you never had a lesson about orders in basic training?

>You have already given the officers licence to execute soldiers for not following orders.

Lolwut?

What country gives its officers authority to carry out on the spot executions? Even the Soviets arrested them first.

It worked for Russia in Ukraine and Georgia

>How do you feel about the "I was just following orders" defence?
The compulsion to follow orders does not exceed the compulsion to obey the laws of war.

Soldiers most often wouldn't get stop for not following orders in 3rd Reich, much less in any semi modern military. There is no reason to follow an order to kill civilians besides being afraid of comparably minor consequences like demotions or prison time, or just thinking executing civilians is alright.

>US forces strip search suicide bombers and employ local informants and auxiliaries
>insurgency almost entirely over
>hand control over to the Iraqis who shoot everything that moves and gonright back to persecuting the other tribal/religious groups
>insurgency flares into a massive force that conquers half the country and routs the army until the stupid Americans come back

Really makes you think...

Russians weren't as bad as the Nazis.

I was speaking in general terms.
You know i'm referring to nonjudicial punishments.

take accountability for your actions, by that stage say whatever you want.

>If you don't follow orders you get shot

>Soldiers follow orders or they get shot.

Where the hell are you getting this idea?

So you are saying some sort of middle ground exists between innocent until proven guilty and gas chambers?

All memeing aside, the Russian occupation of Ukraine is a great example of how to properly do it.

>employ local informants and auxiliaries
Local informants who became very powerful by falsely reporting political and business rivals, as well as selling the service turning them into an impromptu mafia network.

The hearts and mind stuff only works if you are actually a liberator, and not an invasion force from halfway across the globe.

>Where the hell are you getting this idea?
NJP

Nobody can be absolved from making personal decisions. People are always responsible for what they do.

You have right to follow orders.
They have right to hang you.
Simples.

>How do you feel about the "I was just following orders" defence?
I am deeply conflicted about it. It's easy today, today there is a law and a proper procedure for it, so the justification is null. But in the past it really was a dilemma between one's own humanity and peaceful sleep and their duty and obligation to obey orders.

The one who gave the order is responsible for it. The culpability is specific to the order in question.

said one who never served for one week in an army

Perfectly valid defense. You're a pretty shitty soldier if you don't follow orders, and you yourself are likely to end up dead. Finally, virtually any trial on the matter is basically a textbook example of people throwing stones in a glass house.

>You're a pretty shitty soldier if you don't follow orders, and you yourself are likely to end up dead.
You can always defect

It's like screaming at the costumer service rep about how shitty the product is instead of asking to speak to a manager.


These people actually expect the guy making $2 an hour to stand up to his boss and demand they change the product because somebody on the telephone said it was bad.

Yeah dude, just press the defect button on your keyboard, it's THAT EASY!

which is a sure death if you get caught

>If you don't follow orders you get shot.

Are you a member of some middle-east army?

Yeah bro, because it's not like the military's job is to routinely shoot people. I'm sure that in a heated situation they'll totally give a shit about making a rational and well thought out logical argument for why you should follow the order. Shit, in fact, they'll probably add in a please and thank you.

they dont cry when you get hanged for committing a war crime

So it doesn't matter what I choose then?

the baghavat gita has a lot to say about that

the final conclusion is that its way more immoral to not follow orders

krshna is one hardassed motherfucker

T. Hasn't read Stirner

It bullshit because when you go to the army, considering you were recruited voluntarily, you KNEW what type of situation you would be forced into. Everybody in the world, including children, know what soldiers do. If you sign to be a soldier you sign to be put in a position where you have to choose between a stranger's death or your own.