All of these are arguments that such accused make in their trials. That’s what trials are for.
Unfortunately for your argument and the defendants, the evidence just does not back that up:
For those who don’t read German and for whom the auto-translation is too crappy, the TL:DR is that since the central authority for coordinating criminal proceedings about NS-era crimes was established in 1958, it has looked for evidence about the claim that refusing to participate in these atrocities would have lead to the defendant’s death.
It’s an argument that was in fact used with a great deal of success in the 50s and 60s.
But then the evidence to date is that no one has been able to find a single case where someone refused and was killed for it.
To the contrary, the evidence in fact indicates that people were frequently given the opportunity to decline to take part in atrocities and that people did decline with no worse effect than to be shunned by their comrades.
I think you mean that had the outcome been different he might have been tried and convicted of war crimes/executed without trial.
He either was a war criminal or he wasn’t. Which side he was on doesn’t change that. It only changes the reality of whether anyone will do anything about it.
And “just following orders” is per the United States not a sufficient answer for military personnel and hasn’t been since at least the Second World War.
And no one is doing that…
I’m really not sure what your point is unless it’s that you want to reintroduce the ‘superior orders’ defence as a complete bar to prosecution.
