When did Rommel ever express remorse for his participation in the Nazi war machine and supporting Hitler? It seems more of a case of his turning against Adolf once the war was going badly and not reporting contacts with anti-Hitler conspirators (he supposedly was unaware of any assassination plot).
Yeah, Rommel wasn’t a Nazi per se (not a member of the party), but he wasn’t particularly anti-Nazi either. He was ambitious and seems to have carefully cultivated ties with Hitler in the furtherance of his career. Insomuch as he turned against him it doesn’t seem to have been an ideological split so much as a practical one.
And of course he never publicly denounced anyone, just quietly committed suicide on orders.
Field Marshal Erich von Manstein said in interviews and wrote in his memoirs that he had nothing to do with the atrocities, talked about how it was all carried out in secret behind the lines, and said that it was clear that it would be dangerous to ask too many questions about such things. But a look at paper records shows that he voiced numerous complaints to the high command that he and his troops weren’t getting a fair share of the gold looted from the bodies of the victims of mass executions.
As much as I would like to hear that some Nazis broke down in heart-rending sobs and sincerely repented their crimes against humanity I don’t expect there to be many, if any, such.
There are people who actually do believe the Third Reich was correct. Some of them were even part of the Third Reich and from their viewpoint losing the war just meant the bad guys won, not that their viewpoint was wrong.
Part of the problem here was that German and Austrians (and to a lesser degree Eastern Euros) were socialized to believe that Jews were a direct threat to the racial purity of their individual countries.
People socialized into anti-Semitic hatred are likely to consider it normal. They believed in it as 21st century people believe in racial equality.
This article from Slate is centered around a photo that shows the reactions of German soldiers after the war reacting to a film presumably showing the atrocities committed at the concentration camps.
The Wehrmacht was not only aware of the murder in the East but also aided it. They sent letters home to family that now exist in museums. Very few Germans of that era are innocent.
Here’s Wiki on the remarkably enduring “clean Wehrmacht” myth: Myth of the clean Wehrmacht - Wikipedia
I understand that but there’s somewhat of a gap between just hating Jews, and participating in a gigantic industrialized murder machine to kill millions of them including little children. And also it wasn’t only Jews who were killed. They also killed tons of Catholic priests, for instance. Native German priests, not just Poles and other people who they saw as racially inferior. How did they get their heads around that? Didn’t some of these Nazis, at some point, EVEN IF they hated Jews, look at this gigantic murder campaign and think “this has gone too far?”
I think part of it is explained by on the one hand the fact that so many of the important figures ended up dead, jailed, disgraced or slinked away into hiding anyway, and on the other hand how the apology/expiation/contrition was successfully made a collective effort. No need for YOU to step forward and say “yes, this was fucked up” when “yes, this was fucked up” is the official foundational position of the new society.
I also can’t help but think, that for many of the surviving party members what happened was that nobody got around to putting them on the spot for the record, and then what would be the point of making such a statement unprompted and attracting attention to themselves. Then they’d see and hear the likes of Speer assembling a narrative to try and wash the stink off themselves and give plausible cover to the underlings, and prefer to not look like they were also pitching for some sort of restoration of respectability. Plus of course there would be those Broomstick mentions, who would have actually felt that failing does-not-equal “being proven wrong”, but would figure that “if just shutting up about it is all they ask of me to let me get on with living the rest of my life, that I will.”
My impression is that the most hardcore Nazis not only never felt remorse for their actions / opinions, they truly believed that after the war was over, the USA would take up their cause and attack the USSR, and maybe even ask the (defeated) Germans for some help.
I’m going to go with a certain amount of frog in hot water theory. If you lived in Germany at the time, they didn’t give you the full picture of the atrocities and pass a referendum okaying the status quo. There must have been rumors but nah, it couldn’t be that bad. And you can always say priests (for instance) were plotting against the Reich, so religion was incidental, not the cause. Throw in some “regrettable collateral damage” and muzzle the media to minimize bad press. Meanwhile, that neighbor who spoke out against the government? They disappeared him last week. If you’re not with them you’re against them. And if you really want to push it, they’ll come for your family as well.
Your post reminded me of one of the best movies of all times, “Sophie’s Choice.” Meryl Streep won an Oscar for her role. Incredible performance, gut-wrenching film.
That idea was perhaps best expressed by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, who famously said, “They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Right. I forgot to mention the Las Vegas syndrome. People get in so deep that they think their luck has to change and if they give up now then what was all this suffering for etc.? Peer pressure, too: Sophie’s father in the movie was very anti-Semitic by her account.
Years later a famous study was done by Stanley Milgram. He tested how far people would go if ordered. Results: if an authority figure orders you to shock someone to death, there’s a good (65%?) chance you’ll do it.
Then there’s the French “Game of Death,” which is an updated version of sorts—but they’re cheered on by the audience. All fakery, but the people willing to shock don’t know that.
Some people (e.g. Nazis but also others) stumbled across how to manipulate that weakness in human beings, I think.
Johann Reichhart was not exactly an obscure person. Ordinary people were supposed to hail the superiority of the Nazi civilization and never cast a doubt on the Führer’s decisions. There was a general state censorship and various types of self-censorship. Everybody knew or guessed what was going on but they didn’t want to meet Johann Reichhart in person.
One of the most memorable quotes in my book. 
Despite Milgram’s experiment being used to argue that we all have potential for Nazi-level evil, it said no such thing. And his study had serious flaws.
“The study has been critiqued heavily over the past four decades on the grounds of research ethics. Milgram used deception and potentially scarred the participants. The study has also been criticised for experimental bias. It does not measure how people behave in real life, but rather how they respond to commands in a staged setting. The set up of the original experiment was seen as absurd by some of the participants and so they experienced no qualms about complying with the instructions.”
The study has a ton of flaws, the finding is really more like ‘if someone during a study wants you to give pretend shocks to someone and you figure out that’s it’s all fake there’s a decent chance you’ll play along’.
The other famous experiment that may or may not be relevant is the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which two groups of ordinary students were assigned the roles of prisoners and prison guards.
If everyone could do evil given the “right” circumstances, does it mean no one who commits atrocities should feel remorse for having joined the Dark Side?