Traitor?

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Hobilar

With all respects to Jim, does anone else feel that quoting the Declaration of Independance just to WIN an argument to be particularly bad form. Surely it is a bit like quoting Goebbels wartime propaganda broadcasts and asserting them to be facts.

What facts did I "assert"? And which of those words that Jefferson wrote bother you? Read my words:

...That is a slippery slope to be on but it is what happens when one views government and people as one and the same. I have a different view on that subject, as well quoted by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence...

I was referring to people's responsibility to "throw off such Government". This is not a discussion of whether the government of King George III was "such a government" and we won't have that discussion here. This reflects MY feelings as to people's individual and collective responsibilities in terms of their own governments.

To put this in other words, if Canaris felt that Hitler and the Nazi government had "a long train of abuses and usurpations..." then "it [was his] right, it [was his] duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security". I use Jefferson's words to make a point because they are eloquent and they serve that point well.

Feel free to challenge Jefferson's words in another thread in the appropriate location if it suits you. Do yourself a favor before you do, however, and think really hard before comparing Jefferson to Goebels if you'd like to be taken seriously.

[temujin77]

Originally Posted by DDLDSDB

If one loves his Country and the people, they do not sell them out because of a political or so called "moral" issue or whatever their reason be.

Hitler must have loved his country and his people so much that he brought them a devastating war and built them death camps! Oh wait a minute, doesn't that Hitler the real traitor to the German people, then?

But in all seriousness, what you call "wishy-washy" is how the world operates. History is subjective, and definitions of words are even more so. You can say Canaris was a traitor to the government he served, but there are also many who believed that government had no right to be there in the first place since it is betraying the very people it governs. There is no black-and-white answer to that question.

[Helmut Von Moltke]

Admiral Canaris according to the laws of the German Reich was a traitor, and legally executed. But whether morally he was is a big question. He was a good man with a high moral standard, who wanted to save his fatherland from Bolshevism and a few mad men controlling it by appealing with the Western Allies.

And Hitler? What about his orders to destroy baisc German facilities in the West, and abandonign the German people and declaring that he did not care for them any more and that they deserved extermination for losing the war? Seems like the real traitor to Germany indeed.

K