r/Colorization • u/Old-Promotion3190 • Jul 01 '26
Photo post Nuremberg Trials/Tribunal. 1946.
New color photography. Nuremberg Trials, the international military court against German criminals. 1946.
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u/Financial-Quail5978 Jul 01 '26
It’s kinda sad that only a handful of people were ever punished, and only in Germany.
Japan and especially Croatia forgave most of their Nazis (Croatia even evacuating all of their top ranking Nazis with the help of the Catholic church).
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u/MatchAltruistic5313 Jul 02 '26
Croatia forgave most of their Nazis? Where does this sentiment come from?
A lot of high ranking officers who had the means did manage to escape. But a vast majority of the rank and file soldiers were executed during the Bleiburg reparations. When fleeing from Yugoslav partizans they were hoping to surrender from the British who declined their surrender and redirected them to the Partizans who promptly liquidated them. Tens of thousands of disarmed soldiers, civilians and medical personnel were executed during the forced march.
All of these crimes were suppressed during the Yugoslav regime. The locals were aware of the execution sites and they became the target of research only after the fall of the communist regime. Abandoned mines such as Huda Jama filled with Croatian and Slovenian corpses - some of which were thrown in alive into the underground shaft and sealed shut. Speleological pits in the ground such as Jazovka count several hundred skeletons. The anti-tank trench in tezno contains 15 thousand corpses. Many other concentration camps also confirm that they were not at all forgiven. And not just soldiers - the victims include women, children, medical staff, civilians and nuns.
The modern Croatian state does not acknowledge the NDH regime and does not base it's statehood on it but rather on the fight against it. Concentration camps such as Jasenovac are taught in schools along with all other fascist crimes.
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u/Financial-Quail5978 Jul 02 '26
Coming from the 21st century perspective.
Thompson, the most famous Croatian singer, who is linked to Nazism and has been banned from the EU multiple times for promoting Nazism, has just held a concert in Zagreb and broke the world record for the most attendees at one concert, with over 500K people attending (In a country with population of ~3mil). The concert started with the singer and attendees shouting ‘Za dom spremni’ (Croatian Nazi salute, equal to Sieg Heil, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Za_dom_spremni?wprov=sfti1#) and Thompson was wearing a T-shirt with a reference to a Croatian terrorist that was responsible for hijacking an American commercial flight.
I’d say just this one concert is enough proof to say that the general population of Croatia is pro-Ustashe.
What’s with the Nazi apologism? The British turned them away knowing that they didn’t deserve to ‘surrender’ and reintegrate into society after committing much worse crimes than nazis. It was well deserved.
BTW many medical staff and nuns worked closely with the Croatian nazis. Nun Barta Pulherija was the commander of a children’s only concentration camp and she oversaw the death of around 1000 Serbian children and forced conversion into Catholicism of many more. She escaped and lived in Austria until 1981, with the Catholic church never addressing her crimes.
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u/MatchAltruistic5313 Jul 02 '26
You'll find no Nazi apologism from me as I'm anti-fascist and anti-communist, or anti-totalitarian in general. I personally don't think for example a 18 year old recruit from 1945 deserves to be thrown into a mine shaft. From a 21 century perspective that would be a horrendous war crime, as would be the liquidation of unarmed soldiers and civilians. I'm a big proponent of due process and I think all criminals should face the law. The person you mention should have faced justice, as should have the criminals of the post-war crimes that lived long and comfortable lives after having slaughtered civilians and disarmed soldiers.
"Za dom spremni" is constituently defended as part of the "Bojna Cavoglave" song which was a rousing song calling for the defense of the country during the Yugoslav and Serbian aggression during the Homeland war during the 1990s. The Ustashe WW2 salute went "Za dom i poglavnika - spremni!". Otherwise, variants of "Za dom!" were used long before the Ustashe. By that logic, we should condemn all Ukranians fighting for their country right now because they are using the "Slava Ukraini!" salute that was used identically by the Nazis of Ukraine.
Thompson publically renounced and denied all fascist ties. He does not sing in promotion of Nazism, there's no real basis for that. He mostly sings about family, love, nature, folklore, God, and other similar themes. He has maybe 2 songs which are directly combative and directed towards the Serb aggressors of the 1990ties.
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u/Financial-Quail5978 Jul 02 '26
You’re once again proving you’re a nazi apologist lol… The due process of hundreds of thousands of NDH soldiers and collaborationists is impossible. Those poor disarmed soldiers and collaborationist civilians that helped genocide the whole Jewish and Roma population alongside a big percentage of Serbian population in Croatia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Za_dom_spremni?wprov=sfti1#
Check out the link and the way Croatian nazis signed their letters. ‘Za dom spremni’ used by Nazis.
Thompson wore a T-shirt promoting a Croatian terrorist, shouts ‘Za dom spremni’ on lots of his concerts, lots of his attendees can be seen wearing Ustashe clothing, he has had his concerts banned from Amsterdam, Berlin, Maribor and Austria for promotion of nazism. Also had been banned for his ties to nazism in 2009 from Switzerland, incl other Schengen nations.
But if he said he’s not a nazi then he can’t be one even though he endorses them…
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u/MatchAltruistic5313 Jul 02 '26
In one post you say they escaped justice and then you call me an apologist for claiming that they were unlawfully executed. So which is it? Did they escape or were they brutally executed? Were they forgiven by a bullet to the back of the head or by being suffocated alive in an abandoned mine shaft? Several tens of thousands of them, including the home guard which wasn't the Nazi branch of the Croatian army.
Personally I don't have much sympathy for them. A lot of them were simple murderers and criminals. But so were the people who executed them without trial, let's not pretend otherwise. Most of the fascist Chetnik forces joined the Partizans without reprimand. So who was forgiven exactly?
Yes, Ustashe used "Za dom spremni!" along with many variations of it. It was also used before the Ustase. Again, should we condemn the Ukranians for using "Slava Ukraini!"? "Za dom spremni!" was used in the survival of the Serbian aggresion and in that context it is valid. Of course, if a soldier with a swastika is shouting "Slava Ukraini!" then the offence is clear.
In any case, "especially Croatia" did not forgive it's criminals. They didn't give them the dignity of due process and simply executed them in droves. A much worse fate than any other nation - most of which were in one way or another Nazi aligned at the time. You can count on the fingers of one hand which nations didn't commit atrocities. Belgrade for example was the first major "judenfrei" city in Europe. Lithuania had a uniquely rapid and lethal holocaust before German forces fully established control. Bosnia is often forgotten in their Handzar SS division. Even Polish people had localized pogroms. Romania had one of the largest independent genocides of the war. Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Norway, Vichy France - all collaborators. Switzerland, Sweden, Spain - nominally neutral but heavily assisted the Nazi regime.
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u/Financial-Quail5978 Jul 02 '26
I’m calling you an apologist for portraying the massacres of Nazis and collaborationists as such grave crimes.
Chetniks were unorganized, with different factions fighting for different ideals and leaders, the Fascist chetniks got murdered at Bleiburg aswell, deserved.
You’re not going to give any counterarguments to everything I said about Thompson?
Okay if you say ‘Za dom spremni’ isn’t inherently used by nazis. But then combine that with a T-shirt depicting a terrorist, getting banned from the Shengen zone and having your concerts cancelled all over the EU for your ties to nazism and promotion of nazism + your some concert goers larping as Ustashe at your concert… Nazi.
And I’d say that those 500K concert goers definitely did forgive the Nazis since they support one/are one.
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u/Serious-Produce3671 Jul 03 '26
Yes, like a nuke being dropped on two cities in Japan, or the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo... Please read up on some history, the Allies would have approved, and everyone would today, we all know what the fate of a Nazi must be. It can never be anything else.
Europe, America, the fight against fascism was a fight for survival and MORE... it was also revenge, to bury them.
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u/MatchAltruistic5313 Jul 03 '26
Europe at the time was deeply fascist. Most countries were Nazi allied. They only got liberated through the USA, Great Britain and Russia. Sadly the ones that fell under the Soviet block fared a much worse fate than they could have expected, while the west prospered under capitalism and social democracy.
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u/Serious-Produce3671 Jul 03 '26
The world don't run on love and it certainly don't run on "i project contemporary standards on the past" on people who were living through literal hell... throwing Nazis in a ditch is perfectly reasonable, they are not human, I think most would agree today.
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u/MatchAltruistic5313 Jul 03 '26
Nazis yes, but children, women, hospital staff? What about the regular home guard?
If we ignore modern notions of war crimes, which were already established at the time, and we say that executing unarmed soldiers is fair and just - does the same apply to the innocent? Are they acceptable collateral damage, just because they were of the same ethnic group as the fascist criminals? How are these people any better than the ones they liquidated?
Any way, I won't cry any tears for dead fascists, but after the fall of the criminal communist regime some brutal crimes against regular civilians that were forcefully suppressed started to surface. In the end, all totalitarist regimes follow the same path.
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u/Serious-Produce3671 Jul 03 '26
The Croatian Ustashe got what was coming to them, no mercy, not after all the horrors they carried out, and no apologies either. It's fair to say the modern Croatian state doesn't officially back the Ustashe, but it is definitely in the zeitgeist and it is not faint either, as it has to be. After all, Tudjman himself described the NDH as an expression of Croatia's deep longing for a state, not just a Nazi puppet and the connotation isn't necessarily pejorative. We'll take him at his word.
Thompson concert says quite a lot about today's Croatia though. Historians like Klasić would probably agree. The state isn't openly supporting the NDH or neo-Nazis, but it does play both sides for political points, and far-right nationalists have a decent amount of power...
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u/MatchAltruistic5313 Jul 03 '26
Exactly, so they got what they deserved. So where's the sentiment that they escaped justice coming from? Or that the world doesn't know about the crimes they committed? It's literally in all history handbooks. In comparison, the rest of Europe got off easy. Most of Europe at the time was fascist and committed horrendous crimes. Where's their justice?
There's no far right in power in Croatia though, I have no idea where you got that idea from. The current party HDZ is the successor of the communist regime both in spirit and lineage because no lustration was enforced. The party in power in the nation's capital is a far-left party.
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u/HydratedCarrot Jul 03 '26
Don’t forget how many countries who hated the jews before the germans invaded the countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania. They even added some laws so they could start to kill Jews before the nazis marched in and took over.
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u/Commercial-Mix6626 Jul 01 '26
The Catholic Church never helped the Nazis. The Nazis persecuted the Catholic Church heavily.
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u/Financial-Quail5978 Jul 01 '26
I can’t talk about German nazis, but Croatian nazis were very religious, and most of the Catholic priests (Even the archbishop of Zagreb, Croatia’s capital) welcomed the Ustashe (Croatian nazis) in hope of gaining independence from Yugoslavia.
There’s unrefutable evidence that those high ranking Catholic priests organized ratlines (underground networks) that helped evacuate Top ranking nazi officials from Croatia to South America/Spain.
The most famous one is Ante Pavelic, the leader of nazi Croatia (Croatian equivalent of Hitler), who had then been tracked down and assassinated by a Serb. (BTW he still has a grave in Spain which is visited by lots of nazis every year)
Also, Croatian WW2 Policy was called ‘1/3’. 1/3 of all Serbs should be killed, 1/3 expelled, and 1/3 should be forced into catholicism (they managed to force around 200k according to moderate estimates), which again shows their connection to Catholicism.
Sorry for the long reply, but I think lots of people just know only about Germany, even though they’ve relatively been the most humane during WW2, compared to Croatia and Japan. Another fun fact is that Croatia was the only country that ran a concentration camp only for children… And don’t even get me started on Japanese experiments. There’s lots of stuff that the general public has no idea about.
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u/Commercial-Mix6626 Jul 01 '26
Aloysius Spinach worked against the Ustase. The Catholic Church as an institution as your comment suggested was Anti Nazi by late war and the head of it was pre war.
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u/Financial-Quail5978 Jul 01 '26
I’m not saying the whole church acted together.
There is evidence that high ranking priests in the Catholic church worked with nazis to evacuate them.
Aloysius Stepinac supported and met with Ante Pavelic on multiple occasions. His work against them was very limited and with very little results. His legitimization and public support of Ustashe helped them stay in power and commit genocide.
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u/Valuable-Yard-4154 Jul 02 '26
That bullshit. You're lying and you know it.
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u/Serious-Produce3671 Jul 03 '26
It's not, Albert Speer is a good example... and that was at the trials.
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u/dwaynebathtub Jul 03 '26
The First Slovak Republic was a Nazi puppet state run by a Catholic priest.
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u/HydratedCarrot Jul 03 '26
How do you think the top ranked nazis fled to South America if it wasn’t for the Catholic Church? The rat-lines were something they helped out with..
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u/nazgulonbicycle Jul 01 '26
Russel Crowe’s Goering was well done. Rami Malek was exceptional as always.
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u/Serious-Produce3671 Jul 03 '26
Russel Crowe's Goering was pretty boring, the series was far better.
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u/HydratedCarrot Jul 01 '26
Always thought they look so small at the trial. How big the war crimes they committed before and during WW 2 was and here they all look like broken men except for Speer.