Silence gives consent: Two men in the water and a nation on trial
by Joel Connelly
Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the German Navy, was among the defendants in the dock at the Nuremberg war crimes trials after the Allied victory in World War II. He was spared the noose but sent to Spandau Prison for ten years.
Dönitz was found guilty of violating rules of war, his crime being an order that U‑boat commanders not rescue survivors from ships they had torpedoed. Unlike those left at sea, and 30,000 U‑boat crewmen, Dönitz lived to eighty-nine and died in his bed.
Seventy-nine years post-Nuremberg, the United States faces an eerily similar situation. Was it a war crime to order a second air strike to “take out” two survivors from eleven persons aboard a suspected drug smugglers’ boat bombed in the Caribbean?
Who, too, was responsible?
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/12/silence-gives-consent-two-men-in-the-water-and-a-nation-on-trial.html