Bah, you all have it easy, as a chemist I have to wonder if I’d be conduction ‘experiments’ on those poor people. Ufff, I think I’d have a tough time doing that. Of course, if it was them or me, sorry me wins.
Well, I’m the same way, but we were raised in a society where “question authority” is a well-respected ideology. I doubt it was similar in 1930s Germany.
Not to mention that we’ve grown up in a prosperous time with a lot of national pride (while some of us might be embarassed by W’s actions, there’s still a sense that the US is strong and innovative with a high quality of life).
All those ingredients were missing in that time and place.
I’d like to think I wouldn’t have been a Nazi henchman, but no one can really say for sure, huh?
There were plenty of people who resisted the Nazi death machine despite being part of the 1930s German culture, and there are plenty of people in our “question authority” society who would willingly go along.
Me, I’d rather go out fighting than have to write some pathetic memoir as an old man about how sorry I was but I really had no choice blah blah blah.
If resisting the death machine was an easy choice, then everyone would have resisted. Life gives you hard choices sometimes, and if you don’t measure up, a little scorn and contempt comes with the territory.
The thing that always puzzled me about Nazi Germany: while german soldiers were being slaughtered in Russia (because their rail transport was not sending them adequeste supplies of food, ammunition, winter clothing, etc.), the SS was requesitioning all of the railroads to transport the jews to the death camps! It never seemed to dawn on the Nazis, that had they used the Jews as labor for their armaments factories (instead of gassing them to death), they might have had enough weapons to defeat Russia!
Nope, it was far more important that the Reich be “judenrein”…talk about stupid!
No… I would have probably been as apathetic and disgruntled at that job as I am at my current line of work. Nazi’s are a little to demanding as employers.
Ah, this would be a not-rare-enough case of me being completely wrong. 
I have to chime in again. The Germans were willing to find plenty of psychos to run the death camps. Think about all the nut jobs on this board who make stupid statements about “bombing Mecca” or “rounding up all the Muslims in this country”. I’m sure many are joking but it’s not that far a trip to crazytown once you have decided an entire group of people are worthy of extermination.
The German death machine was able to work not because Hans Sechs-pack sitting on his couch reading der Want-ads answered an ad:
Gewünscht!!!
Local death camp seeking mid-level supervisor. Must be a team player and good with people.
It was able to work because most people simply ignored or pretended to ignore what was going on.
Actually, there were quite a lot of slave labor camps- many of the V2 missiles produced later in the war were done through slave labor in underground facilities.
Well, considering I’m bisexual, there’s a chance I might have been in the camp as one of the prisoners but if I were one of the guards, I don’t think I’d’ve handled it well, if at all. I can’t even kill an animal, let alone a human.
More likely, I’d’ve probably been jailed (or killed?) as a deserter or a coward.
Well, yeah. I may have been able to hide any traces of an alternate sexuality; but probably wouldn’t have been able to convince them that I’ve renounced Judaism.
If I weren’t being killed, however, I wouldn’t have. I find needless death kinda appalling. I also have a really, really hard time making moral compromises. So, no.
I would have done it.
It goes without saying that I think it is a horrible idea like any sane human being today would say. I would even hope that I would realize that it was wrong at the time.
But I would have to make a judgement based on my chances of survival if I could escape. The Nazis had things pretty efficiently managed throughout Europe, and it would be difficult to flee. Imagine being in the Center of Europe in 1942, running the death camps. Where are you going to go? Say you were in Poland. Where to? Russia? I have no clue what the Red Army would do to a German deserter. Italy? You’d get sent back or probably put in the camp yourself. Germany is an obvious no-no. People look back and think that because it was before modern times and surveilance techniques that it would be easy to hide out. Especially if you are an American. I know of places where I could go out into the woods and never be discovered for a long time. But if you have ever been in the countryside in Europe, it isn’t that easy to find a spot where nobody is likely to find you. Otherwise you would have to find someone that would protect you and doing that would be difficult because you would endanger them too. I would imagine that the Germans had the borders locked down tight too. You’d need fake papers to even stand a chance and when you got involved in obtaining them you would take a huge risk.
Then of course you had plausable deniablity at work. The Nazis were very clever in keeping it as secretive as possible. If you could plausibly deny it to yourself, why not keep on doing it? You’d think, “I’m putting these Jews on the train, but I don’t know for a fact that they are going to be killed.” People can become quite deluded under situations of high stress. Why not delude yourself, and when its all over you can say, “Well I didn’t know I was helping to kill them” Imagine being a German. If you were to go to any other country you’d get recognized as a foreigner. A lone German with no papers is certainly suspicious and would certainly be a good catch for anyone trying to get in good with the Fuehrer.
So I probably would have done my best to get out of the situation without a direct disobedience. I suppose that would include some kind of injury of some sort, but if that’s what I had to do, I would have done it that way.
I don’t know. If you picked me up, my attitudes and all, and somehow deposited me back in Nazi Germany, then of course the answer would be no. I’m one of the bleedingest bleeding-hearts I know. I couldn’t possible take part in such a thing, and they probably wouldn’t consider me for the job anyway. But if I’d grown up in Germany after World War I, surrounded by that culture and those prejudices, I have no idea what sort of person I would be. It’s nice to think I’d still be a leftist, no matter where or when I grew up, but I just don’t know for sure.
Of course, if I grew up into the same body that I have right now, I doubt the Nazis would have wanted me. I’m a little short to be a Storm Trooper.
Would I have worked in a death camp? Absolutely not. I would, in fact, work to the best of my abilities to combat the Nazi regime. Although, if I’m going to be honest, probably not in any capacity that put me in direct physical harm. But that’s because I’m the product of a liberal* upbringing and inculcated from a young age with the ideals of personal freedom, equality, and democracy.
Now, if I had been born in 1920s Berlin to reactionary, anti-Semetic parents with a pavlovian appreciation of jackboots and smart black uniforms? That person might have been a Nazi executioner. But that person wouldn’t be me. He’d just be someone who happened to have all of my DNA. My identity, who I am as a person, derives from the values I hold, and the moral framework in which I was raised, not from the twists and kinks of long chains of amino acids.
*I am not using “liberal” in the context of American politics here.
Oh, I bet they sure did say that a lot AFTER the war. You’ll come up with lots of excuses when there’s a noose with your name on it.
Wehrmacht soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of Jews of their own accord, by shooting them, burning them to death, and murdering them in all sorts of ways. Wehrmacht officers also supervised various proxy Nazis in places like Croatia or Ukraine that murdered civilians. On the Eastern Front the Wehrmacht treated civilians with appalling cruelty, murdering God only knows how many innocents. It is the most preposterous sort of fantasy to pretend the Wehrmacht didn’t do any of that stuff and the SS did it all. Ever heard of the “Commisar Order”?
Probably. Why would I be any different from others?
I was once involved in a libel case that went to trial and a friend who was also a lawyer said that all the witnesses would lie. He was right.
CS Lewis said (paraphrasing) that ‘courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point’.
Good post. A lot of people here seem to be under some misconceptions about how the death camps were run. First, there were no death camps within Germany. They were put in Poland, etc., for a reason. Second, the numbers of people directly involved in the killing were kept to a minimum, and, as Toad says, they were specially selected. The part of the camp used for killing was kept separate, too. Nazis regularly used euphamisms for the equipment used in the death camps. Etc. etc.
The upshot of it is that, no, the ordinary German didn’t know about the death camps and didn’t directly support them. So I think the answer to the OP is that most people would not have participated in the whole death camp process had they known what was going on.
Let’s suppose for the sake of the argument that it’s factually true that to refuse such orders would mean death. I think the above opinion is a huge underestimation of the capacity human beings have for self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Look at the people who volunteered to clean up Chernobyl, or the nuclear submarine K19 (remember the Harrison Ford movie?), knowing that a horrible death would follow. Or the doctors and nurses in Africa who rock up to work every day to treat Ebola victims rather than running a mile. Hell, look at martyrdom throughout the ages.
And it bugs me how much slack is being cut for the death camp workers because of the culture they grew up in. I grew up in a racist culture too. Australian Aborigines didn’t even get the vote until not long before I was born, and the prevailing opinion down here is that not a single genuine asylum seeker has ever washed up on our shores. Our government puts refugees (including children) into concentration camps where they are kept in indefinate detention under God-knows-what conditions, often for years, before their cases are heard. And most people are passionately supportive of this policy. Our government has even told blatant lies to the public in order to denigrate asylum seekers - lies which I never bought for a moment.
URL=http://www.truthoverboard.com/]truth overboard: lies, damned lies and politics
The prevailing culture hasn’t stopped me from protesting against our refugee policy, and I’m willing to bet my liberal attitudes would survive the Nazi propaganda machine too. Sometimes, you just know whan something is wrong.
I definitely would choose my own death over killing innocents. I’d probably break if I was threatened with torture though, or the death of my family. Nobility does have its limits.
To comprehend is not to condone.
The question is meaningless; if I were there I wouldn’t have been me.
I see no reason why people today should have reacted any different transported back at birth, we’re certainly not any different genetically speaking. We all wish we were heroes. The odd one out who saw through the lies and dared stand up for humanity and decency. Alas! Mostly we’re not. Also there never were any lack of totalitarian fawners and people willing to make excuses for the worst of communistic atrocities amongst many people alive today.
Obviously, I would have been sent to the camps, although I hope I would have been one of the few who resisted (that’s a whole different thread right there). But if I had been born a non-Jew? I don’t know. Maybe I would have gone along. Maybe I would have been brainwashed, or acted out of patriotism, or threatened with death or torture.
And if I did go along I would be guilty of murder and deserving of death, no matter how valid my reasons were.
Life isn’t fair. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where the only right thing to do is also the hardest, and so long as you are capable of telling the difference between good and evil you always have a choice, even if the only alternative is a horrible death. Sure, it would be undertandable to choose the easy way out and give away your soul, but understandable doesn’t mean excusable.