Posted by Sigismund on February 1, 2009, at 15:28:47
I was watching an account of the Nuremburg trials which dealt with one defendant at a time, (or so I assumed).
Last night, at any rate, it was Hess.
At the trial the question of his mental competence to plead arose because of his amnesia, apparently real, then said (by Hess) to be feigned, followed by unusual (in any terms) behaviour .What was interesting to me is that Hess explained the existence of the camps, the behaviour of his fellow defendants (in pleading guilty), and I think the defeat, on mind controlling capacities possessed by the Jews operated through hypnosis and mind controlling drugs.
This had the interesting result of blaming the Jews for, and asserting that they had contrived to arrange, their own destruction.
In one sense this made some sense, because the existence, not to speak of the revelations of the camps was not to Germany's credit.Presumably his picture of the Fuhrer as the world historic figure given to Germany only once in a thousand years was one fixed point in his mind.
This left me wondering.
The other defendants responded to the spectacle of defeat, the ruin of Germany, the revelations about the camps, and one would hope (without any confidence) the revelations about the nature of the war on the Eastern Front by more or less, albeit slowly, recognising reality.
Frank, head of the General-Government of the Polish remnant (what was it called?), said ( more or less) that the Nazis on trial were a disgraceful lot by comparison to the victorious allies, and that the guilt of Germany would not be expunged in a thousand years.The thing was, as Captain Gilbert, the psychiatric (?) expert wrote, Hess was only marginally more crazy than the rest of them, (and the rest of them were sane).
So it left me wondering about consensual reality and the mental frailty of our species.
poster:Sigismund
thread:877537
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20081212/msgs/877537.html