And they and the Roma were the only two groups targeted with the extent of wiping out a people. Other groups, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, socialists, homosexuals, etc., were put in the camps and killed because they had committed specific actions the Nazis considered criminal. Jews and the Roma were put in the camps and killed simply because of who and what they were.
Using Milgram to explain the Holocaust has always struck me as a bit inappropriate. Milgram’s experiment proved that people would do things that they considered to be wrong when ordered to do so by someone in a position of apparent authority all the way to the point of ‘killing’ someone. This doesn’t really apply completely to those that carried out the majority of the killings during the Holocaust – they didn’t feel that what they were doing was wrong.
That’s not what I recall the evidence presented in the book I read saying. They may not’ve liked Jews, but most were hardly enthusiastic about carrying out the killings.
What made the holocaust possible in the first place? My simple answer would be: Beaurocracy.
Registering Jews and forcing them to wear the star was a first step. Then they were “relocated”. I think most people weren’t aware that this “relocation” was actually a one way ticket to a concentration camp, at first. And by the time it came to light, it was already too late.
So, call me paranoid, but whenever a governmental institution asks about my religion or about any data, especially questions about my parents, I am very wary to answer. In most cases, this is really none of anybody’s business.
There is not, it is in fact highly illogical. Without even touching ethical concerns, it is utter lunacy to kill off your citizens, when you are in dire need of citizens during wartime.
That’s right, most were disgusted by the task. That’s why they came up with ‘cleaner’ ways to do it.
However dirty they found the job, they did feel that they had the duty to do it and to see it through.
I would like to point out, again, that the larger part of the atrocities were not carried out by the OP’s ‘German soldier’ but by special troops.
When the ‘German soldier’ did come into contact with such proceedings they were as appalled as anyone else.
eg. The regular Waffen-ss units detached to clearing the Warsaw Ghetto were absolutely shocked by the goings-on there, at the hands of troops of the SD, Dirlewanger, Kaminski and other ‘specialists’. And those were East-Front veterans, used to seeing some pretty horrible stuff .
smilingbandit-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.
I think your reading might be off. The Germans were being solidly beat when Dresden happened. It was a show of force for the godless commies that were advancing on the city, not the Germans.
Still. it did show a willingness to execute Europeans to make a point.
I still don’t agree that someone was trying to make a point with the Dresden bombing.
It was just a continuation of the, already existing, bombing campaign, with better efficiency. The object was to err… “Break the fighting spirit of the German population.”, I believe the parlance was in them days.
I doubt that it was confined to special troops. I’ve read accounts of civilians doing their part, such as a tarring-feathering-lynching displays of people who “collaborated” with Jews, for example, or the Polish who rounded up the local Jewry and burned them in a barn. Not to mention the relationship between German corporations and the labor camps, like Auschwitz. Oh yeah, they knew.
Lest I look like I’m biased, I liken it to things I’ve read here about the South until the late 60’s, where it was expected and almost normal to have white rioting, beating and lynching of blacks due to racial incidents - white “supremacy” gave them license to do this apparently.
While the Nuremberg laws of 1935 did not specifically mention Romani people, they were later expanded to include them. Romani people were declared asocial under the 1937 ‘laws against crime’.
I know you prefaced that with an “IIRC”, but can you provide a cite for that?
Actually, that’s not necessarily true.
May I suggest reading “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”? for an in-depth study of the killing squads.
No, Kal the Nuremburg laws never directly targeted the Roma (though often interpretetd it this way), and again the antisocial laws were not specifically targeted against them, though they often fell under their remit.
The Third Reich: A New History Micheal Burleigh, MacMillian 2000
And don’t forget the Trade Unionists and Communists, the first targets of “purifying the German population”, I.E. remove the opposition to your later slaughter plans.
While not an exhaustive explanation by any means, the Stanford Prison Experiment is a chilling read. It goes a long way to show how thin the veneer of civilisation really is.
Actually, that movie was based on a novel, which was in turn based on a true story. A social studies teacher did it to teach the kids how people could become Nazis so easily. (I also have heard that there’s a nonfiction book about the real-life Wave incident.)
Read The Wave, watch “Triumph of the Will”, and it will become all too obvious how the Holocaust happened.
[minor hijack]
Elie Wiesel has said that the “Holocaust” was an event so evil that it transcends history. But, he also says that the “Holocaust” only includes Jews. All those Gentiles Hitler killed? Awfully bad, but not transcendently evil.
[/minor hijack]
I think that Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a book that contributes a lot of information regarding the Holocaust, but it should be noted that a number of historians have taken issue with the book specifically on the grounds that it reaches the wrong conclusion. Many scholars have spent the last 60 years examining the origins of the murders and have found that it actually took time to get people to overcome their resistance to such barbarous acts. There was resistance to being ordered to kill and there were people who made an effort to avoid the orders. Even those who carried out the orders did not simply get an order to kill, one day, and go forth to carry it out. Goldhagen’s assertion that it was simply the culmination of some “German” attitude embraced by the whole nation is simply not supportable (and ignores the many non-German slaughters that have occurred throughout history, several mentioned earlier in this thread).
There is no question that humans can work themselves into a killing state and there is no claim by Goldhagen’s critics for a plea of innocence among those who carried out the murders. However, unlike the claim laid out in that book, it was not something that was done willingly and without balking.
Most telling, while Daniel Goldhagen borrowed a lot of material from Christopher Browning’s earlier Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Browning, himself, has noted several flaws in the way his material was used and the way in which Goldhagen cherry-picked the material he wanted to use.
An example of reactions to Goldhagen:
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewsh27.htm
The OP is asking if perpetrators of this are psychologically different. Going solely by the reactions to Goldhagen’s book, seems he’s saying the same thing: yes, Nazi Germans were psychologically different. ::shrugs:: It looks right to me.
Let’s not forget Rwanda. About 1 million people slaughtered, mostly hand-to-hand with tools like machetes. Not quite as impersonal and bureaucratic as the Nazi system.
http://www.racematters.org/nyiramasuhuko.htm
Most staggering of all: Pauline was a Tutsi herself, as it turns out.
It’s unfortunately all too common, but nonetheless inexplicable.
Total hijack but THANK YOU FOR THIS POST!
I read the book back when I was in high school about a million years ago. Something (I don’t even remember what) nudged it from my memory about a month ago, and I was really annoyed that I couldn’t remember the title. Thanks!
I’m not sure if I understand what you are saying. Are you agreeing with the position that the Germans were “psychologically different”? Aside from the fact that the majority of historians have disputed Goldhagen’s statements for the Germans, such a claim completely ignores the huge number of Poles and only slightly smaller numbers of Bulgarians and Romanians, along with many people from conquered nations, such as the French and Belgians, who joined in with the Nazis to carry out their Final Solution. Such people were by no means a majority of those nations (any more than a majority of Germans actively participated in the murders), but the relative numbers were depressingly large in nearly every nation but Denmark.