Helmut

Helmut Lemke creates a vivid visual image of digging a foxhole on the frigid eastern front. The ground too tough for his spade to make quick work he has only managed to dig four feet. Helmut stationed in this position to delay the advancing Russians. He peeps out of his hole to see grey dots in the distance knowing the mechanical beasts of the Red Army approach. Knowing he is outclassed by the heavy machinery he decides to retreat. Helmut takes action and hurdles out of the foxhole and begins to sprints back to the front line. Then he wisely drops to the ground and roles over couple times only to hear the crack of a rifle and dirt fling up from where he rested seconds ago. That was a narrow miss and like many of his stories it was seconds and inches between life and death. Helmut is a German World War 2 Veteran with amazing stories that make you ask so many questions.

If there is one person you would want to talk with to gain perspective on the Second World War it is Helmut. You could tell when he walked into the room his presence was one that emanated experience, stories and great fullness. Helmuts stories where interesting, descriptive and thought provoking. He talked with such amazing description similar to your grandfather’s best stories. As you listened with your eyes and ears open, your eyes began to lose purpose as you got engulfed in his legends. You no longer felt the need for your eyes as they closed and your brain started too replace the images in your eyes. Hypnotized by his stories, questions started to arise about why these stories happened.

Helmut began to mention the brutality of the Red Army to the German forces. He then continued to describe that their reasoning was because of the Germans brutal treatment of them especially the S.S division. That’s what brought me to my concept, which is the ethics of vengeance.

Is it ethical for someone to die who has killed one of your family members? That is tough question about the ethics of vengeance. That question has been debated since the dawn of civilization. During the second world war there were many unethical war crimes but I will focus on one that takes the form of vengeance. It was unethical for the Red Army of Russia to torture German soldiers despite the German war crimes against the Russians. I come to this conclusion because the Russians passed that often hazy line between justice and revenge. Helmut discussed the Geneva Convention and one off the first thing he said was that the men who are being tortured on the battlefields are average people. That’s were I think many of the Russian soldiers got influenced, as they perceived the enemy people as a government or a set of ideas instead of normal people who might not agree with those beliefs.

The average Joe of the German army which was most of their army were the ones suffering against the Russians. The German army had an estimated 12.5 million soldiers fight in the war. Many of them were like Helmut farmers or factory workers who believed in their country but not necessarily in its leaders actions especially Hitler’s ladder actions. Helmut spoke about the Russians as they were horrible beasts. Saying that you might as well die fighting then be captured because you will be sent to Siberia to die. Helmut like 8.8 million others were part of the Hitler youth where they were trained to fight at young age to be drafted to fight in the war.

The Germans who committed these war crimes were often those of high ranking officials not the soldier on the front line. The Germans arguably more brutal then the Russians deliberately starved 3.1 million soviets prisoners of war. But the mastermind behind this project once again was a high ranking official Herbert Backe not the German soldier.

Germany portrayed as a fascist country deployed the vision of hatred toward communism. Which once again Germany began to dig their own hole. Hitler would turn the country fascist not by choice but by constant influence by forcing teachers and other influencers to be fascist supporters. He also had total control of media outlets spreading propaganda about the beauty of fascism.

But these brutal acts by the Germany were then equally matched by the brutality of the red army. The Red Army has been estimated to rape up to 2 million German women. A staggering number which Russia refused to accept as a war crime just a result of the revenge for the German actions and the rewards of the victor. The reason to take brutal actions on the Germans had no moral Reasoning’s other than an act of revenge, which we already established as an unethical act.

Germany took unethical actions upon their Russian counterparts but that did not give permission for the Russians to commit the same sinful acts. Although Russian soldiers took those actions upon the innocent the reasoning might be because they had no where to place their personal vengeance so they took matters into their own hands. The combination of anti-propaganda and government ideals led ordinary Russian people to commit atrocities in the name of justice but in reality it was revenge.

Nash and I also created an audio podcast to help us brain storm our ideas and get someones personal opinion on the concept. This was an effective way to get our opinions across because when you are talking about a grey topic like ethics it makes it easier to explain yourself when you can add emphasis. Credit to Nash for editing the podcast and making an interesting piece of cover art. You should also check out his blog he had an insightful take on the concept of time.

Thanks Helmut for sharing your momentous and intriguing stories