When i was watching “the painist”, i couldn’t help but ask if any studies have been done on the German soldier’s mentality? Is it in a “normal” human trait or character to carry out actions as they did or are they psychologically different from the rest? Can somebody let me know what actually caused the massacre of 6 million lives???
It’s implausible to say that it’s something specific to German soldiers. The Holocaust WAS the result of a combination of a lot of things ranging into German history - but as far as the soldiers being psychologically different, I’d say no.
The famous Milgram experiment was an attempt to answer this question.
There have been many mass murders in many different cultures. I do not see the German case as very special.
Ahem, very important nitpick here:
The Holocaust caused the death of six million JEWS. The total death toll was more like 11 to 12 million, which included blacks, gypsies (lots of gypsies), gays, mental patients, POWs & various prisoners from countries the Nazis invaded (esp. Russians)…and so on.
(Yeah, it wasn’t until after high school that I found that out, either…)
IMHO, the Milgram experiment did a rather good job of answering.
maybe i should rephrase my question. Is ther any logical explanantions for such happenings of the mass murders? I just cannot believe that the human heart or mind can be behave in such extreme cruelty unless they have been psychologically stressed in some way or other…
Your belief stands in contrast to history.
That depends entirely upon your definition of “logic,” I’m afraid. My answer is that there are always explanations and rationalizations for these kinds of atrocities, and (usually in retrospect), always reasons they’ve occurred. That might not be what you mean.
Well, there are stresses… you can talk about the trouble Germany was in prior to the Holocaust for example. But I doubt you could find common causes to all of the genocides out there in human history. There are just too many. Perhaps there are certain patterns (humans can behave in pretty predictable ways sometimes), but it’s not a simple equation. If you’re suggesting that each and every person who was involved in the slaughter of 6 million Jews and roughly the same number of blacks, Communists, Roma, homosexuals, dissidents and others was involved because of some kind of personal stress… I don’t know. I can’t say I think these were sound and rational decisions, but I’m not willing to chalk it up to psychological duress and attempt to let everybody off the hook either.
Hell, Hitler’s crowd were pikers compared to Stalin and Pol Pot made Stalin look like Captain Kangaroo. All it takes is a society conditioned to view itself as morally superior or the enemy to be subhuman for this to take place.
Crap, I’m not against us having dropped the bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki but we never would have done that to the Germans or even the Italians. The simple fact is we felt about the Japanese the same way the German felt about the Jews, Blacks, Gays, and Gypsies, and many others too. Look at WWII posters allies made depicting the Axis. Hitler and Mussolini look pretty much human (evil but human) then check out the fangs and other inhuman features on Hirohito or Tojo.
Compare them to political cartoon depictions of Jews and others in pre-war Germany.
When you can’t generate a reasonable fear of an enemy in your populace you simply need to fabricate one. Romans did it too, depicting the Gauls as baby eating monsters in order to justify money spenmt on a ware of expansion over a land no Roman wanted to live in.
One thing to keep in mind is that the people actually carrying out orders of methodical execution or ‘special actions’ behind the frontlines, would not be your average citizen.
They would be people already accustomed to violence. Special squads recruited for this exact purpose, from among the more violent/criminal elements in society.
In a hypothetical situation, where the U.S. government would want to do something similar. Do you think they would have any trouble getting volunteer units from a city like say L.A.?
There would be plenty of low-life flocking to the extra pay.
Would that say anything about the mentality of the regular U.S. soldier?
Like Hell we wouldnt. Berlin missed its appointment with the atom bomb due to German surrender not out of racial bias.
I hate it, but you may be right. Racism might have played a role in the willingness of Americans to see Japan obliterated when they wouldn’t have done the same to Europeans. But remembr the European enemies had already capitulated by the time the A-bomb was ready. Just possibly if the Germans had decided to fight to the last man, as the Japanese had demonstrated their willingness to do in Okinawa, an atomic attack on Germany might have been necessary. If Hitler had gotten the bomb first and ordered it dropped on the US, I doubt that he’d have had much trouble finding Germans willing to do the job.
In answer to the OP, I think soldiers are psycologically similar in every culture, and are willing to put away their normal moral compass and follow orders when they are convinced their enemy is wrong, evil or inferior. American soldiers in the 1870’s who slaughtered Indians were engaged in genocide, but they were not psycologically warped. They really believed they were doing right, having imbibed the idea of “maniest destiny” since they were children. The belief that it was ordained that the whole of America should be thiers, coupled with their belief in the inferiority of the native peoples made it easy for them to do.
The Germans who carried out the holocaust were just as sure that the people they slaughtered were inferiors who stood in the way of German desiiny. Psychology was a factor, surely, but not abnormal psychology. Hitler, as other leaders before and since, knew how to use psychology to manipulate his people. They were probably not much different from you and me.
Heck, give anyone a weapon and a moral cause and tell them they can kill their neighbors with impunity and just watch the bodies pile up.
We already firebombed Dresden simply to make the point to tthe Germans that if they screwed with us they were going down hard. I doubt seriously whether anyone cared all that much about the Germans not to nuke them. We wouldn’t have bombed the Italians since they were not worth using such a valuable weapon on. Your idea is contradicted by the record of history.
Making a point? Don’t screw with us?
Bollocks. It was just a fun thing to do to the enemy.
At the risk of being vaguely anti-Semitic:
Why can’t people remember that between 10.5 and 11 million people died in the Holocaust? Jews (as the Nazis defined them) were the single largest group targeted for extermination by the Nazis, but they certainly weren’t the only one.
The constant repetition of the number of Jewish deaths makes it seem as if those are the only ones people are concerned about. There aren’t many books or movies about the Gypsies or homosexuals or physically/mentally handicapped people who died.
I know perfectly well why this is: just as a gay and lesbian advocacy group would most often discuss the death of homosexuals in the Holocaust, Jewish advocacy groups focus on Jews. It’s all quite reasonable.
The problem is that it indirectly helps feed bigotry.
The Jews were the big targets and the primary targets. They and the Sinti/Roma were by and large the main victims. If you really want to get technical, the germans targeted darn near everyone.
Well the main reason is that the Jews were treated exceptionally (I hasten to add in the negative sense of the word) by the Nazis.
For example the Roma were not affected by the Nuremburg laws and there was no equivalent for them, they were targetted as antisocial (IIRC ~50,000 Roma were funded in their lifestyle by the Nazi government as a sort of ethnic theme park due to the fact the Roma were ‘unimpeachably’ ‘Ayran’ with the rest being dismissed as the result of the ‘diluting’ of the bloodline by Turkic peoples and criminals).
The unique thing about the Jews position in the holocaust was that it was a pre-meditated and sustained attempt to wipe them out.
If you’re interested enough, there is a very good (and rather brief, thankfully; it’s uncomfortable) book called Ordinary Men that looks at the mentality of those carrying Nazi atrocities at various levels.
Also, a great (great = interesting but disturbing) movie called The Wave that we had to watch in high school history class. It’s about this “club” that starts at a school, with dynamic speakers and big rallies and hand gestures and so on. Everyone gets swept up in this Club. A few kids start to wonder what the club is about, and isn’t it weird that people are so willing to submit to this fabricated authority that doesn’t seem to offer anything except mob mentality, and then they get in some trouble, if I recall …
Very uncomfortable look at how succeptible we humans are to flashy leaders and group mentalities.