Hitler's practical reason for killing the Jews

[Steken]

@filmstar-en

I was trying to imagine what makes people participate in genocide, the footsoldiers rather than the generals. I have read that some were reluctant to kill innocent people and some refused and it made them much less effective as a military force. These people were indoctrinated with all kinds of reasons why the killing should be done and yes, many were rubbish.

You have basically answered your own question. They killed because they had been “indoctrinated with all kinds of reasons why the killing should be done.” In a nutshell, that’s it.

@filmstar-en

Many people, even soldiers, are not easily turned into killers.

Sure. Certainly, plenty of “ordinary Joes” in Germany (not to mention Poland, the Baltic countries, Belorussia, Ukraine, Russia etc., etc.) believed, for a number of reasons, that the Jews deserved to die - or, at the very least, that the Jews were a “problem” that needed to be solved, one way or the other. In Germany, Hitler had been in power since 1933, and the Nazi faithful had been lapping up his poison since long before that. By 1941, you had lots and lots of 20-30-year-olds who had basically grown up on the stuff.

But yes - I, too, imagine that not all of them found it an easy thing to kill thousands upon thousands of poor, starving, unarmed men, women and children, begging for mercy. That’s where peer pressure comes in, and threats, and further indoctrination, and all manner of mental gymnastics to short-circuit one’s conscience, decency and humanity. In his Posen speech, Himmler spoke of the extermination of the Jewish people as something his audience - i.e. the appointed butcherers themselves, charged with the task at hand - had to “endure” (“dies durchgehalten zu haben,” “keiner hat es durchgestanden,” etc.), i.e. a disgusting, unpleasant, thankless, but nevertheless absolutely necessary task. By framing it like that, he tacitly acknowledged that for many men, mass murder does not come naturally - while at the same time underlining the basic point that mass murder was nevertheless their duty. (He himself was said to have kept a copy of the Bhagavadgita in his pocket, for much the same reason - to remind himself of a warrior’s duty.)

These men had plenty of opportunities for “desensitization,” too, through the T4 program, Poland '39, etc., etc., for years before the industrial-scale death camp slaughter really got under way, ca. 1941-1942. Along the way, those opposed to mass killings of civilians - men like Blaskowitz - had been either dismissed or reassigned. Those who remained were men like Heydrich, Eichmann, Jäger, Greiser, etc. - relentless killing machines, fanatically dedicated to the task at hand.

[iiandyiiii]

@filmstar-en

No.

So you meant that all of these reasons are rubbish?

[tomndebb]

@filmstar-en

I was trying to imagine what makes people participate in genocide, the footsoldiers rather than the generals. I have read that some were reluctant to kill innocent people and some refused and it made them much less effective as a military force. These people were indoctrinated with all kinds of reasons why the killing should be done and yes, many were rubbish.

Looking at it that way is not to be an aplogist, a holocaust denier or anything else, it is simply trying to answer the question ‘why did it happen’. What did people believe that made it acceptable to do this both in Germany and in the invaded countries. Many people, even soldiers, are not easily turned into killers. I want to how it happended from the ground up, what the ordinary joe thought, what they believed.

‘Hitler was evil’ and ‘it was Nazi racial policy’ seem very incomplete answers, as does ‘simple xenophobia’ to account for the actions of the people on the ground.

However, I appreciate that questioning from this sort of angle is easily misunderstood and so I have abandonned it.

Unfortunately, you have posed the questions as “practical reasons” to kill Jews. None of them were.
It is certainly possible to examine the rhetoric, the propaganda, and the existing anti-semitism in Germany, (and a number of other places), that allowed Jews to be targeted. However, in all cases, we find no rational or practical reasons. None.

Trying to understand how so many Germans were willing to participate in the Holocaust is not the same as drawing a conclusion that they might have actually had reasons beyond irrational hatred. It certainly does nothing to explain why Romanians and Lithuanians who had never been been part of any German economy through the period prior to the war were so enthusiastic in murdering their fellow countrymen who happened to be Jews once the German invaders arrived. It does nothing to explain why the French–the traditional enemies of Germany–tended to vary between passive acceptance and active participation in shipping their Jewish fellow citizens across Germany to the death camps while the Danes actively worked to save their Jewish population.

Christopher Browning proposed, in his study Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, that the lower level Germans were simply in the habit of following orders and that when the leaders ordered them to commit murder, they went along with it. He based his conclusions in part on psychological studies that had demonstrated the willingness of all sorts of people to inflict pain if they were so instructed by a figure in authority.

Daniel Goldhagen published a rebuttal, of sorts, in Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, claiming that Germans had a log “national” predisposition to hating Jews and were, thus, predisposed to carry out murder if the targets were Jews.

Both works are flawed, but Goldhagen seems to have ignored a lot more facts than did Browning: he ignored similar murderous actions by non-German peoples; he ignored actions taken against non-Jews by the same group he studied, he creates a history of “German” anti-semitism that is contradicted by actual history. (This does not make Browning’s work correct; it only indicates that Goldhagen did not provide an accurate answer.)

We may or may not ever discover the “real” reason why so many people supported the actions leading to the Holocaust. However, we have sufficient evidence to state without fear of any serious contradiction that the reasons were basically irrational and without foundation. Xenophobia is not “the” answer, but it is the point at which to start any serious consideration of the event, just as it is the starting point to examine the genocides conducted against the North American Indians, Herero, Armenians, Tutsis, and others.

[filmstar-en]

@iiandyiiii

So you meant that all of these reasons are rubbish?

I meant no I am not going to expand on it.

As I said earlier, I have decided to abandon the answering the question from this angle. Trying to work out what was going on in ordinary peoples minds involves too much speculation and potential misunderstanding.

Indeed, it is off topic because the question in the OP focusses on Hitler, a character who was never much concerned with practical matters to the often great exasperation of his generals.

[Malthus]

Again, from a wholly amoral perspective, the only practical reasons for the Holocaust in general and killing Jews in particular are as follows, as far as I can see:

(1) Stealing their stuff/enslaving them for the enrichment of the Nazis. The problem with this heading is that there were better ways of doing that, which did not have the drawbacks of mass murder. A rational policy of theft and enslavement leaves the slaves alive to slave.

(2) Tapping into existing Euro prejudices to create a commonality of interests between Germans and other Euros. The problem with this is that mass murder was unnecessary for creating such a commonality of interests.

(3) Creating an atmosphere of unspeakable terror - ‘if they can do this to Jews and Roma, they can do it to you, if you get out of line’. This has a couple of problems: (a) the Nazis tended to not deliberately publisize their massacres - rather, they attempted to hide them; and (b) the massacres were unrelated to resistance - that is, Jews and other ‘undesireables’ who obeyed were killed along with those who resisted. A rational policy of terrorism would massacre those who resisted, and spare those who did not resist - what you may call the “Mongol” philosophy.

Any additions to this list?

[Little_Nemo]

@Malthus

Any additions to this list?

There is the hunger theory I mentioned above. The Nazis killed the Jews so they wouldn’t have to feed them and that way would avoid severe rationing in Germany.

And there’s the eugenic theory. You can’t discount it as a reason because this is something the Nazis themselves said. They believed that the Jews were a genetically distinct group and had undesirable genetic traits. So they felt justified in killing all Jews, including those who posed no threat or were even useful, because these Jews would pass their dangerous genes on to future generations if they weren’t killed.

[Malthus]

@Little_Nemo

There is the hunger theory I mentioned above. The Nazis killed the Jews so they wouldn’t have to feed them and that way would avoid severe rationing in Germany.

And there’s the eugenic theory. You can’t discount it as a reason because this is something the Nazis themselves said. They believed that the Jews were a genetically distinct group and had undesirable genetic traits. So they felt justified in killing all Jews, including those who posed no threat or were even useful, because these Jews would pass their dangerous genes on to future generations if they weren’t killed.

I mean reasons that a hypothetical objective but amoral rationalist would find “practical”. That eliminates the “eugenic theory” - your hypothetical amoral rationalist would dismiss that as bullshit.

The “hunger theory” doesn’t, I think, pass muster. Most of those killed were killed in Eastern Europe. It was a war aim of the Nazis to sieze Eastern Europe, and particularly Ukraine, as the “breadbasket of Europe”. Killing folks there that could farm (and so produce more resources) isn’t “practical”.

In point of fact, as the war progressed Germany faced a manpower shortage that was more severe than any food shortage.

[tomndebb]

@Little_Nemo

There is the hunger theory I mentioned above. The Nazis killed the Jews so they wouldn’t have to feed them and that way would avoid severe rationing in Germany.

This hypothesis has the distinct problem that there were too few Jews in Germany to actually have an effect on food production. There were, similarly, too few Jews in Denmark or Norway to justify the expenditure of effort to round them up and ship them to death camps, and the Jews of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy had no real impact on food production or consumption. The hypothesis, then rests on the idea that Germany would begin a program in Germany and extend it to multiple western nations, (with all the effort that it required), in order to satisfy a purported need in eastern Europe. That makes no rational sense.

@Little_Nemo

And there’s the eugenic theory. You can’t discount it as a reason because this is something the Nazis themselves said. They believed that the Jews were a genetically distinct group and had undesirable genetic traits. So they felt justified in killing all Jews, including those who posed no threat or were even useful, because these Jews would pass their dangerous genes on to future generations if they weren’t killed.

This might come closer to a rationale than the other ideas promoted. However, there is still the problem that such an effort would have made more sense if it were undertaken after hostilities had ceased when it would not have interfered with the ability to wage war. It could hardly be a rational effort that required the immense effort of labor and redirection of troops and transportation at a time when all were required for a victorious war effort. Even as Germany was clearly losing the war and needed every resource to stave off defeat, they were introducing new directives to round up and murder Jewish populations. It simply fails any examination to claim a “practical reason” to exterminate a people when one is being overwhelmed by other people who do not even favor the group being exterminated. An utterly monstrous effort to eliminate all Slavs as untermenschen while the Wehrmacht retreated in order to prevent them joining the advancing Soviet forces might have been regarded as “practical,” (thankfully, they did not actually do that), but continuing to expend the effort to hunt down Jews, homosexuals, and the mentally ill in the final months of the war is the exact opposite of “practical” or “reasonable.”

[Malthus]

@tomndebb

This might come closer to a rationale than the other ideas promoted. However, there is still the problem that such an effort would have made more sense if it were undertaken after hostilities had ceased when it would not have interfered with the ability to wage war. It could hardly be a rational effort that required the immense effort of labor and redirection of troops and transportation at a time when all were required for a victorious war effort. Even as Germany was clearly losing the war and needed every resource to stave off defeat, they were introducing new directives to round up and murder Jewish populations. It simply fails any examination to claim a “practical reason” to exterminate a people when one is being overwhelmed by other people who do not even favor the group being exterminated. An utterly monstrous effort to eliminate all Slavs as untermenschen while the Wehrmacht retreated in order to prevent them joining the advancing Soviet forces might have been regarded as “practical,” (thankfully, they did not actually do that), but continuing to expend the effort to hunt down Jews, homosexuals, and the mentally ill in the final months of the war is the exact opposite of “practical” or “reasonable.”

I would argue that it still isn’t a “pratical” motive, even assuming that the Nazis won - because it was, in point of fact, nonsense: Jews (and other Nazi ‘undesireables’) did not, in fact, have undesireable genetic traits. That was just Nazi mythology.

[filmstar-en]

@Malthus

Again, from a wholly amoral perspective, the only practical reasons for the Holocaust in general and killing Jews in particular are as follows, as far as I can see:

(1) Stealing their stuff/enslaving them for the enrichment of the Nazis. The problem with this heading is that there were better ways of doing that, which did not have the drawbacks of mass murder. A rational policy of theft and enslavement leaves the slaves alive to slave.

(2) Tapping into existing Euro prejudices to create a commonality of interests between Germans and other Euros. The problem with this is that mass murder was unnecessary for creating such a commonality of interests.

(3) Creating an atmosphere of unspeakable terror - ‘if they can do this to Jews and Roma, they can do it to you, if you get out of line’. This has a couple of problems: (a) the Nazis tended to not deliberately publisize their massacres - rather, they attempted to hide them; and (b) the massacres were unrelated to resistance - that is, Jews and other ‘undesireables’ who obeyed were killed along with those who resisted. A rational policy of terrorism would massacre those who resisted, and spare those who did not resist - what you may call the “Mongol” philosophy.

Any additions to this list?

Here is an essay that looks at the causes of famous genocides.

What Are The Main Causes of Genocide?

The word ‘practical’ in the OP makes this a bit of a trick question.

[Malthus]

@filmstar-en

Here is an essay that looks at the causes of famous genocides.

http://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/12/what-are-the-main-causes-of-genocide/

The word ‘practical’ in the OP makes this a bit of a trick question.

No, we are looking at two different questions.

Question 1 - why do regimes commit genocide?

Question 2 - do regimes that commit genocide have a rational (if amoral) reason to do so? In short, was genocide “practical” for them? Did its benefits outweigh the costs? This is how I understood the OP.

Under Question 1, there are all sorts of reasons - rational and irrational. An explaination here doesn’t answer Question 2, because regimes can and do commit to policies that are, rationally, not in their best interests. THat is, they are not “practical” in the cold light of reason. For example: if one believes Jews to be, literally, inhuman monsters bent on your destruction, that could easily be a “reason” for genocide, but it is not a “practical” reason, because the assumption it is based on is (in the cold light of reason) incorrect.

An example of a “rational” reason for massacre (if not “genocide”, for which it is tough to find a truly rational reason) one could look to the Mongols or the Romans: resist their imperium, and not only will you die, but your very city or tribe may well be erased from the Earth. This is arguably “rational” because it leads to other cities or tribes capitulating without a fight (arguably, a major factor in Mongol success).

[The_Hamster_King]

There are two factors that made German racism particularly virulent in the early part of the 20th century:

1. While other states in Europe had had national identities for centuries, a unified Germany was a relatively recent creation. So the question “Who is German?” loomed large in the German psyche.

2. The unified German state grew out Prussian expansion in the 19th Century. However, Prussia was not the German heartland. It was the product of medieval German crusades against the Slavs in the east. Prussia, unlike most of Germany, consisted of ethnically German aristocrats ruling over a Slavic peasantry.

So, basically, you had a country that was extremely anxious about national identity. And this was combined with a long tradition in Prussia of seeing Germans as natural masters and the “lesser races” as natural slaves. The Holocaust was “practical” in the sense that it addressed both these issues. It “purified” the German people, re-enforcing the idea that the unified German state was an authentic outgrowth of a particular ethnic identity. And it justified the ubermench/untermensch ideology that had developed as a response to centuries of exploitation of the Slavic peasantry by the German aristocrats.

[Malthus]

@The_Hamster_King

There are two factors that made German racism particularly virulent in the early part of the 20th century:

1. While other states in Europe had had national identities for centuries, a unified Germany was a relatively recent creation. So the question “Who is German?” loomed large in the German psyche.

2. The unified German state grew out Prussian expansion in the 19th Century. However, Prussia was not the German heartland. It was the product of medieval German crusades against the Slavs in the east. Prussia, unlike most of Germany, consisted of ethnically German aristocrats ruling over a Slavic peasantry.

So, basically, you had a country that was extremely anxious about national identity. And this was combined with a long tradition in Prussia of seeing Germans as natural masters and the “lesser races” as natural slaves. The Holocaust was “practical” in the sense that it addressed both these issues. It “purified” the German people, re-enforcing the idea that the unified German state was an authentic outgrowth of a particular ethnic identity. And it justified the ubermench/untermensch ideology that had developed as a response to centuries of exploitation of the Slavic peasantry by the German aristocrats.

If this was true, one would predict a society organized along the lines of Prussian estates - a far cry from shoving people into death camps. Would a Prussian aristocrat of the 19th century have murdered his population of serfs?

The problem with the Holocaust was that it wasn’t simply the creation of some sort of aristocrat-serf society, or even one of chattel slavery. Those at least would make a certain kind of sense.

[Little_Nemo]

@tomndebb

This hypothesis has the distinct problem that there were too few Jews in Germany to actually have an effect on food production. There were, similarly, too few Jews in Denmark or Norway to justify the expenditure of effort to round them up and ship them to death camps, and the Jews of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy had no real impact on food production or consumption. The hypothesis, then rests on the idea that Germany would begin a program in Germany and extend it to multiple western nations, (with all the effort that it required), in order to satisfy a purported need in eastern Europe. That makes no rational sense.

As I said above, I don’t really buy this theory in whole. But I will note that the timeline fits better than what you’re saying. The biggest concentration of Jews in Europe were in Eastern Europe and the Nazi general extermination program didn’t really take off until after this area had fallen under Nazi control.

[The_Hamster_King]

@Malthus

If this was true, one would predict a society organized along the lines of Prussian estates - a far cry from shoving people into death camps. Would a Prussian aristocrat of the 19th century have murdered his population of serfs?

The particular obsession with exterminating the Jews was a product of their assimilation into German society. If they had been clearly identifiable as a separate and inferior group (like the Slavs) the Germans probably would have been content with enslaving and brutalizing them. But the Jews were perceived as a special case of “contamination”. They were seen as infiltrators and a corruption of German identity and so had to be exterminated once and for all.

[Malthus]

@The_Hamster_King

The particular obsession with exterminating the Jews was a product of their assimilation into German society. If they had been clearly identifiable as a separate and inferior group (like the Slavs) the Germans probably would have been content with enslaving and brutalizing them. But the Jews were perceived as a special case of “contamination”. They were seen as infiltrators and a corruption of German identity and so had to be exterminated once and for all.

Again, this doesn’t fit well with the facts. The extermination of Jews really got rolling after the Nazis took over large numbers of Eastern European Jews; this seems to have been the trigger - but such Jews clearly could not “pass” for Germans, the vast majority of them were more like their neighbouring Slavic peasants.

In short, the Jews the Germans were most anxious to exterminate were exactly those who were “clearly identifiable as a separate and inferior group (like the Slavs)”.

[clairobscur]

@Latro

Well, one consideration is that when your average G.I. Joe would have trouble commiting the murders, you recruit people who will. Put them in uniform and Hey Presto!, you have ‘soldiers’ committing crimes.

I bet average Joe is not cut out to be a CIA interrogator either.

Unfortunately, I’m convinced that the average Joe, is, in fact, perfectly able and willing to commit genocide. Examples abound. No leadership bent on genocide had ever any trouble convincing regular people to participate. Same for mass executions of civilians in time of war and so on.

If you someday end up being part of a target group, don’t count on your nice neighbours to not hang you up from the nearest lampost, you might be disapointed.

[Malthus]

@Little_Nemo

As I said above, I don’t really buy this theory in whole. But I will note that the timeline fits better than what you’re saying. The biggest concentration of Jews in Europe were in Eastern Europe and the Nazi general extermination program didn’t really take off until after this area had fallen under Nazi control.

The issue, though, was that these areas - Eastern Europe (particularly Ukraine) - were exactly those the Nazis wished to exploit for food production; murdering off a segment of the population (some 20% or more of Ukraine was Jewish) doesn’t make sense, if you are worried about having enough food, as these people are necessary (or at least, useful) for growing it for you.

[Jackmannii]

@Malthus

The issue, though, was that these areas - Eastern Europe (particularly Ukraine) - were exactly those the Nazis wished to exploit for food production; murdering off a segment of the population (some 20% or more of Ukraine was Jewish) doesn’t make sense, if you are worried about having enough food, as these people are necessary (or at least, useful) for growing it for you.

Wasn’t it the Nazis’ plan to create lebensraum by killing off the local population and thus making room for a wave of German colonists to settle in the area? (not that there were hordes of Germans eager to become Ukrainian peasants)

[Malthus]

@Jackmannii

Wasn’t it the Nazis’ plan to create lebensraum by killing off the local population and thus making room for a wave of German colonists to settle in the area? (not that there were hordes of Germans eager to become Ukrainian peasants)

Allegedly, they had various plans - all of them contradictory - pursued by various actors in the Nazi hierarchy.

1. Encourage nationalism (under Nazi tutilage) vs. the Soviets; for example, see Nazi initial support for Ukrainian nationalism.

2. Enserf the locals. Cull the intelligent ones. Use them as dumb agricultural labour, under Nazi masters - a sort of Nazi version of Prussia writ large (only nastier).

3. Kill off the locals, replace with ethnically pure German settlers, creating a greater Germany in the east - a Nazi version of the US West, with the Slavs in the role of Native Americans (only much accelerated and more deliberate).

The problem of course is that, while it may have made some sort of (very evil) sense to pursue 1, then replace it with 2 after the war was won, and finally move on to 3 in a distant future when Germans reproduced enough - that’s not what the Nazis did.

They more or less pursued all three plans simulaneously - though there was a definite “race to the bottom”, morally speaking; after all, plan 3 screws up plan 2, which in turn screws up plan 1 (how can Nazis expect support for nationalisms they are busy enslaving and murdering? How does it make sense to kill off valuable slaves? etc.)