Were former Nazi war criminals plagued with depression and mental problems?

[Argent Towers]

I was wondering - with all the SS units and other Nazi divisions which were used to personally commit atrocities against Jews and all the other people who were imprisoned by the Nazis, were there huge numbers of men after the war who were deeply troubled by what they had done, or committed suicide out of guilt? Some of them were no doubt psychopaths and sociopaths who had no problem killing innocent people, but I would wager that most were ordinary men who were following the orders of their officers, who were in turn following the orders of the Nazi government. Some of them had to have been wracked with guilt and mental trauma after doing what they did.

Are there any statistics on this? Has any survey or study been done?

[The Scrivener]

A few quick points, working OTTOMH (and totally research-free! -- we could call it "posting commando"), so it's IIRC-territory:

1) The SS and the mobile-killing, paramilitary Einsatzgruppen units (which were composed of particularly die-hard SS men, plus police) that were trusted to hunt down and summarily dispose of Jews, Gypsies, Soviet commissars, partisans, etc. were, until 1942, entirely voluntary. Good, ordinary Germans were indeed drafted into military service, but they couldn't end up in those units unless they really wanted to be there (and qualified -- politically, racially, and otherwise). That changed a bit in '42 (or '43?) when mounting casualties on the Ostfront prompted the first of a series of emergency unit reassignments of SS units (i.e., the same Panzer army might be rebuilt with increasingly young and untrained recruits several times over.) IIRC, in the SS that process began with an SS Panzer Army battalion that had been ground into the Ukrainian mud or somesuch -- and that wasn't an Einsatz unit, but an actual combat unit, although I'm sure they fought dirty, also.)

There's also some relatively recent scholarship on the war crimes of the Wehrmacht, the regular army. That's where you would find the vast majority of German war crimes committed by ordinary, generally unsociopathic individuals. It's worth pointing out that some Nazi war crimes were officially sanctioned by their central command group -- the summary execution in the field of Soviet commissars being not merely allowed, but mandated by the infamous "Commissar Order," for example -- meaning that any German officer had legal cover from his own government to perpetrate some war crimes.

The particular extent of such acts varied greatly though, depending in large part on the leadership factor; on the highest levels, some German Wehrmacht generals were rabid Nazis who condoned and even encouraged such acts, while others fought a more traditionally honorable war. (IIRC, Gen. Paulus, of Stalingrad infamy, personally deplored the conduct of the Einsatzgruppen units and wouldn't tolerate their activities in his theater of operations, judging their operations as not only dishonorable but disturbing and demoralizing to many regular army troops -- and thus counterproductive. But even he was fighting a very tough offensive against civilian populations...) On the tactical level of platoons and such in the field, it would largely depend on the standards set by the ranking officer in charge. I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes along and issues a correction on at least part of this, though.

2) Drinking one's self into a stupor is the universal soldering pasttime, but this was probably a greater problem with some German units than average, due to their role as occupiers and looters, and the privileged access many of their officers must've had to stores of booze. There was a history book (that I haven't read yet) which came out about a year or two ago that argued that much of Hitler's domestic support was attributable to the war dividend the Nazis bestowed upon Germany as a whole -- the incredible extent that the Reich was looting Europe and the effective distribution of the goodies to their own people. No doubt there's some figures in there on the extent that distilleries and prewar stockpiles of liquor were among that loot...

3) I must take issue with your thread title. Once a Nazi war criminal, always a Nazi war criminal; and you don't have to ask the Mossad about that one.

4) As for depression, guilt and PTSD in postwar Germany, I'll hazard a WAG that that society was, ahem, relatively underserved by psychiatrists and psychotherapists and that most of the afflicted veterans and war criminals never saw one. Talk about being hoisted on your own petard...

[KarlGauss]

Originally Posted by The Scrivener

1) The SS and the mobile-killing, paramilitary Einsatzgruppen units (which were composed of particularly die-hard SS men, plus police) that were trusted to hunt down and summarily dispose of Jews, Gypsies, Soviet commissars, partisans, etc. were, until 1942, entirely voluntary. Good, ordinary Germans were indeed drafted into military service, but they couldn't end up in those units unless they really wanted to be there (and qualified -- politically, racially, and otherwise). That changed a bit in '42 (or '43?)

I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this. In fact, as early as October 1941, "ordinary men" were participating in the massacres in the East. This is well documented in the unsettling book entitled (strangely enough), Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning. As the title implies, and as the book chronicles and documents, much of the ostensible work of the Einsatzgruppen was, instead, accomplished by ordinary men - middle aged conscripts, in particular. In large part, the "purpose" of the book was to dispel the myth that only the most crazed, irrationally motivated, hard-core Nazi's participated in the systematic killings. Browning shows that it was otherwise - 'ordinary men' did as much of the murdering as the fanatics.

[Sevastopol]

Originally Posted by The Scrivener

...

3) I must take issue with your thread title. Once a Nazi war criminal, always a Nazi war criminal; and you don't have to ask the Mossad about that one.

4) ...

In turn I must take issue with this description. The very 'crimes' for which senior Nazis were convicted are now the formal policy of the US government: To wit "waging aggressive war". Accordingly it is now appropriate to conduct a ceremony offering formal apologies and pardons to convicted Nazis, as well as issuing posthumous decorations for valour and efficiency.

[Pushkin]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

Some of them had to have been wracked with guilt and mental trauma after doing what they did.

Are there any statistics on this? Has any survey or study been done?

I read in the Times a while back that IRA members were known to have sought help from the NHS to cope with their own post traumatic stress. Which sounded bloody cheeky to me, but then its nice to know they feel a little guilt at least.

[puppygod]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

I was wondering - with all the SS units and other Nazi divisions which were used to personally commit atrocities against Jews and all the other people who were imprisoned by the Nazis, were there huge numbers of men after the war who were deeply troubled by what they had done, or committed suicide out of guilt? Some of them were no doubt psychopaths and sociopaths who had no problem killing innocent people, but I would wager that most were ordinary men who were following the orders of their officers, who were in turn following the orders of the Nazi government. Some of them had to have been wracked with guilt and mental trauma after doing what they did.

Are there any statistics on this? Has any survey or study been done?

There is virtually no possibility to sift out suicides and depression caused by guilt from that caused by PTSD (you know, all that fighting the war, being bombed and losing one-fifth of the population thing).

But overall, guilt seems rarely be only or even main cause of mental problems. Humans have great coping capabilities and I can't recall any reliable source pointing to some greater psychological suffering by those who committed atrocities anywhere in the world. Usually over time people convince themselves that their victims "got what deserved", "it's their own fault" and "they made us to do it".

puppygod, degree in psychology and lifelong interest in holocaust, WWII and psychology of extreme situations

[samclem]

Originally Posted by Sevastopol

In turn I must take issue with this description. The very 'crimes' for which senior Nazis were convicted are now the formal policy of the US government: To wit "waging aggressive war". Accordingly it is now appropriate to conduct a ceremony offering formal apologies and pardons to convicted Nazis, as well as issuing posthumous decorations for valour and efficiency.

Moderator Note

Let's not get too carried away with "reverse Godwinizing" (to quote a sharp-eyed reader).

Keep the current administration out of this.

samclem, GQ moderator

[williambaskerville]

There's a book called "My Father's Keeper" , by Stephan Lebert, that discusses this to some extent. In one chapter he quotes a number of researchers who had investigated whether Nazi perpretrators had ever sought emotional help.

Dan Bar-On, an Israeli academic, interviewed some 80 German doctors, priests,psychologists and psychiatrists in the mid 1980s. Not one reported a single case of an individual admitting to Nazi-era crimes to them.

In the 1960's 2 Heidelberg psychologists reported that a survey of 4000 mental health patient records found not a single case of a self-confessed Nazi criminal.

Wolfgang Schmidbaur, a Munich psychoanalyst, did "countless studies", found a similar lack of confessions, and ultimately concluded that Nazi era perpretrators found it easy to forget their past.

So from that data, it seems that if Nazi war criminals were suffering mental problems, they either weren't seeking professional help, or were lying to the professionals whose help they sought.

[The Scrivener]

Originally Posted by KarlGauss

I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this. In fact, as early as October 1941, "ordinary men" were participating in the massacres in the East. This is well documented in the unsettling book entitled (strangely enough), Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning. As the title implies, and as the book chronicles and documents, much of the ostensible work of the Einsatzgruppen was, instead, accomplished by ordinary men - middle aged conscripts, in particular. In large part, the "purpose" of the book was to dispel the myth that only the most crazed, irrationally motivated, hard-core Nazi's participated in the systematic killings. Browning shows that it was otherwise - 'ordinary men' did as much of the murdering as the fanatics.

To be clear, was that author talking about involuntary conscripts in the SS/Einsatz units, or involuntary conscripts who then elected to join the SS/Einsatz? Because the former instance would be surprising (not to mention dismaying), and in the latter, I'd wonder about why they elected to join those units and why the units accepted them (if they weren't initially hardcore Nazis or at least antisemites, that is). Particularly since one of the Reich's institutional advantages of [generally] limiting enlistment in the Einsatz units to young rabid Nazis is that their loyalty was ostensibly more assured, since they'd been educated under a Nazi school curriculum and had participated in the Nazi youth orgs.

[aldiboronti]

Richard Rhodes' book, Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust draws on testimony from both perpetrators and victims and covers the effect such horrific crimes had on the killers.

From a review on the Amazon site:

The catalogue of horrors, drawn not only from postwar memoirs and interrogations but also from the Nazi fanaticism for statistical detail, is profoundly appalling, even revolting: some of the malefic perpetrators were so sickened by the slaughter that Himmler set up mental hospitals and rest camps for the insufficiently sadistic.

[astro]

Why would you expect them to feel remorse and or have serious psychological problems about what they did ? Seriously, answer that question. How "sorry" were those US citizens that killed Indians, or enslaved blacks, or those who put the Japanese into internment camps. People can rationalize almost anything they are led into, or called upon to do as necessities of the the moment. If hindsight after the fact says it was a bad or unfair thing to do very few people are going to take on that judgment as a personal burden. The nation might take it on as ethical obligation as Germany did with the Jews after WWII, but individually there's not going to be much personal remorse. It's just not human nature.

One need only look to those who actively participated in the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda. There is little to no remorse on the part of most of the perpetrators.

[Morbo]

"Are we the baddies?"

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Originally Posted by Sevastopol

In turn I must take issue with this description. The very 'crimes' for which senior Nazis were convicted are now the formal policy of the US government: To wit "waging aggressive war". Accordingly it is now appropriate to conduct a ceremony offering formal apologies and pardons to convicted Nazis, as well as issuing posthumous decorations for valour and efficiency.

Yeah, because the Germans were attacked on their own soil by terrorists, or thought that the Poles were in posession of stocks of chemical weapons that they might distribute to the French for future terrorist attacks. It's exactly the same.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by FoieGrasIsEvil

Yeah, because the Germans were attacked on their own soil by terrorists, or thought that the Poles were in posession of stocks of chemical weapons that they might distribute to the French for future terrorist attacks. It's exactly the same.

In the first case, no it's not the same; they DID think that the Jews etc were attacking them on their own soil, but they were wrong. We on the other hand really were attacked, and really were retaliating against people who were sheltering actual enemies when we attacked Afghanistan. However, it also wasn't a "war of aggression" like Sevastopol was talking about.

In the second case Iraq & Poland, yes, they pretty much were the same. Poland was about as much a threat to them as the Iraqis were to us, and was about as likely to have stocks of chemical weapons as Iraq - more likely, probably. A war of pure aggression, motivated by greed and ideology.

[C K Dexter Haven]

> BANG! < ::: Moderator fires Mauser into air to get attention ::::

A moderator has already said, please keep modern-day comparisons out of this thread. Do that elsewhere.

[Moderator hat off] I haven't read any of the studies quoted above, but my guess would be that there was little or no guilt feelings. The German culture was oriented towards clear lines of authority (what sociologist Greet Hofstede calls "Ambiguity Avoidance.") It gets expressed as "I was only following orders, therefore I bear no responsibility; the higher-ups who issued the orders are the ones responsible, not me." There would probably be more guilt feelings among the few who disobeyed orders.

The ultimate was during the trial and interviews of Adolf Eichmann, who was one of the decision-makers, and who seemed to have no guilt, no regret, no remorse whatsoever (well, other than regret that he was caught, I presume.)

[Mops]

Originally Posted by puppygod

...

But overall, guilt seems rarely be only or even main cause of mental problems. Humans have great coping capabilities and I can't recall any reliable source pointing to some greater psychological suffering by those who committed atrocities anywhere in the world. Usually over time people convince themselves that their victims "got what deserved", "it's their own fault" and "they made us to do it".

...

Rationalization does seem to have gone a long way. From one Walter Mattner's letter to his wife after a massacre of 2273 Jews in Byelorussia, my translation from this page (German language)

"At the first wagon my hand trembled a bit. At the tenth wagon I already aimed steadily and shot surely at the many women, children and babies. Thinking meanwhile on my two babies back at home, whom these hordes would treat the same, if no ten times worse." (my emphasis)

[Maastricht]

In another recent thread, we were talking about (the Biblical take on) rape during war-time. War time rape seems, to me, a more deliberate evil then just mere war time killing. War time killing is done directly under orders and because if you don't shoot first, you'll be the one to get shot. But rape? I have a hard time believing war time rape is done out of sheer hornyness; it has to be something done either completely drunk, or in a rage of hatred.

What I especially can't fathom is the way Japanese soldiers did to the "comfort women", girls that were kidnapped, locked in army brothels and literally raped every day by 25 to 50 soldiers lining up. These weren't saucy smiling whores pretending to like it and receiving pay; these were scared girls, clearly hurting, clearly not doing this out of anything even remotely resembling free will. Each and every soldier seeing them must have noticed that, with his own eyes and must have emphatized how his own daughter, sister or female friend would feel in her place. And the soldiers can't have been too drunk (they wouldn't have been able to "perform"); and these brothels were far way from the battlefield, so there can't have been any acute battlefield frenzied bloodlust or whatever that would have impaired these boy's and mens normal judgment.
I'd like to hear from the "comfort women" now all well into their 70's and 80's, if any of the men came in, looked at them, and decided not to take advantage, but just sit there their allotted half hour and leave again. I haven't haerd of any that did, and that paints a sad picture of humanity.
And I'd also like to hear about soldiers who were sent to these brothels, to hear if the memory of their visit isn't one of the most nightmarish things from war.
There is one such confession from a Japanese WW2 soldier I found on the Internet; otherwise, nothing from any individual ex-soldiers.

[aldiboronti]

Originally Posted by Maastricht

Each and every soldier seeing them must have noticed that, with his own eyes and must have emphatized how his own daughter, sister or female friend would feel in her place.

But the same could be said of any rapist, Surely he must have empathized, etc. Men in the grip of lust do not empathize easily, and these soldiers had the additional insulation of acting in groups. I'm sure there was the odd exception but very, very few.

[The Scrivener]

Originally Posted by Maastricht

...I have a hard time believing war time rape is done out of sheer hornyness; it has to be something done either completely drunk, or in a rage of hatred.

What I especially can't fathom is the way Japanese soldiers did to the "comfort women", girls that were kidnapped, locked in army brothels and literally raped every day by 25 to 50 soldiers lining up. These weren't saucy smiling whores pretending to like it and receiving pay; these were scared girls, clearly hurting, clearly not doing this out of anything even remotely resembling free will. Each and every soldier seeing them must have noticed that, with his own eyes and must have emphatized how his own daughter, sister or female friend would feel in her place. And the soldiers can't have been too drunk (they wouldn't have been able to "perform"); and these brothels were far way from the battlefield, so there can't have been any acute battlefield frenzied bloodlust or whatever that would have impaired these boy's and mens normal judgment....

That's where the racism and xenophobia kick in; both the Germans and the Japanese were indoctrinated to believe in their own unique racial and cultural supremacy, along with an expansionist imperial destiny, with their greatest hatred reserved for minorities and their more-or-less immediate neighbors [arguably, an example of the narcissism of petty differences]. In the case of the Japanese, as much as their traditional culture had dismissed the Caucasian race as barbaric, they had a grudging respect and admiration for the technological superiority of the western world and of the Americans' 19th-C. success in using military force to limited colonial success in Japan. But there were no such reservations in their utter contempt for their Asian neighbors, who were to be enslaved, or worse.

[Maastricht]

Originally Posted by The Scrivener

.. their utter contempt for their Asian neighbors, who were to be enslaved, or worse.

That makes sense. Most of these "comfort ladies" were indeed from neighbouring Asian countries, like China and Korea.
There were a few Dutch women involved as well, captured in the Dutch colonies in Indonesia, but only a few.