Nazi is a Political party, not a military force!

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

So? As I pointed out before Oskar Schindler and John Rabe were Party members too as were a lot of people before the war.

And the Nazis were not thought to be as evil as they were BEFORE the war too. Remember that Americans gladly did the Nazi salute to honor visiting German dignitaries in the 1930s.

Remember the funerals for the victims of the Hindenburg. Newsreel footage show thousands of American well wishers doing the "Nazi style" salute. Being associated with the party in the 30s wasn't that big of a deal to most people. Only people who knew that pogroms and other evil things were being done under the auspices of the party's philosophy were aware of such thing and they were rare.

People view the NSDAP through the prism of 20/20 hindsight AFTER WW2, rather than view the NSDAP as people did BEFORE the war.

So you guys still think of OJ Simpson as just a HOF running back?

You're trying to make the case for Nazism by pointing out the only two good members? Yes, people did view Nazism different before the war. If you've ever watched "Olympia" by Leni Riefenstahl, many teams gave Nazi salutes when they passed the reviewing stand. (US athletes did not, I should point out.) I don't dispute this. But you cannot ignore what they did after the war. And this is what we're talking about here. For ever one John Rabe or Oskar Schindler, who stuck their necks out to save the lives of innocent people, there are a dozen Klaus Barbies and Joachim Peipers who ended the lives of innocent people. Yes, Oskar Schindler was a good guy, and who were the people he was trying to save his Jews from? Other Nazis, and more specifically, the SS. Taking into account what happened during the war is not hindsight, it's the big picture. Yes, the SS was muscle for a political party, and that political party ordered them to murder millions of innocent people.

Here's the argument I made on the "Schindler's List" discussion page. "Here's my logic: After the death sentences were handed down at the Nuremberg trials, the Allies denied requests by the condemned to be shot by firing squad, their reason being, firing squads were for soldiers, and hanging was for criminals, and they wanted to ram home the fact that these men were criminals. Therefore criminals ≠ soldiers. According to the International Military Tribunal, SS = criminals. Thus, using substitution, SS ≠ soldiers."

And finally, I know it's not an infallible resource, but under the SS page on wikipedia, the following are the catagories under which they are listed (emphasis mine): "Categories: Nazi SS | 1925 establishments | Defunct law enforcement agencies of Germany | Military wings of political parties | Nazi organizations | Terrorism in Germany | The Holocaust | The Holocaust in Germany | Nazi Germany"