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 d-usa wrote:
A good book to read on this:

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany



The title and cover have always led me to believe that this would be extremely apologetic.

Read the very first review on the page. The preview available on google books (about the first 100 pages) is pretty damning to as to what the book thinks was going on.

 LordofHats wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
A good book to read on this:

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany



The title and cover have always led me to believe that this would be extremely apologetic.

Read the very first review on the page. The preview available on google books (about the first 100 pages) is pretty damning to as to what the book thinks was going on.

It was a hard book to read for me (being German probably didn't help ) and it has some very rough passages in it. It was a book that I could not finish without taking breaks and taking some time away from it.

One passage that still stand out the most to me was a Wehrmacht soldier hearing shooting when the SS men and the local soldiers were clearing out a ghetto so he walked into the restricted area to see what was going on. While there he watched them hold on to little babies by their feet and smash their heads against the wall to kill them. I remember him talking about how he ignored all the dangers of sending a letter talking about it but he wrote his family back home and told them about it saying that if there is a God there will be now way that Germany should ever win this war.

It is organized very good, with the oral histories grouped in the front of the book and then a result and interpretation of the study in the back. I really do recommend it if you are into history at all, particularly WW2 and the holocaust. It's not light Sunday afternoon reading though.

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'd never seen this documentary before, it really was quite harrowing. Part of it explores how the Gestapo couldn't have done what they did without help from the people. People falsely reporting their neighbours/making disingenuous claims and such.

I've read a few comparisons of the differences between the secret police in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. In Soviet Russia they fit the popular concept quite well, encouraging the denouncements of others through intimidation, threats and torture. But in Nazi Germany the Gestapo were actually quite passive, they rarely had to go hunting for confessions because they flowed in quite regularly from the general population, particularly from the young.


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 Pacific wrote:
I've met some Germans and their attitudes towards the war are more than a little conciliatory, actually to the point where it is becoming tiresome.

Definitely, and the rest of your post gave your point extremely well, and I agree with it. This isn't about railing on the Germans. I think its about understanding what can happen to any society, how easily it can happen, and that it will happen not because of some clever evil mastermind, but because of what everyday people are capable of in the right circumstances.


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 LordofHats wrote:
And I'll note the same thing happened in the Soviet Russia with the NKVD and no one has ever questioned that Russians at large knew about the Gulags and what happened in them.

I don't think anyone has ever tried to claim that the Soviet people had no idea about the Gulags. If they did, I think they'd be debated with and dismissed as quickly as anyone trying to claim the German population and military was unaware of the atrocities being committed.


And, to be honest, I think its worth comparing the environment in which both sets of atrocities took place, to find the common elements. What stands out more than anything, I think, is the brutalisation of each society in the wake of war. In Soviet Russia they suffered through WWI and then the Civil War, while in Germany they suffered through WWII. I doubt much of the murder and hardship would have been viable had the Bolshevik revolution happened in 1913 (ignoring all the reasons that such a coup wouldn't have happened in 1913, and just looking at the changes in society).

SImilarly, I think the holocaust and other atrocities of the German regime were simply not viable in 1933. It took the radicalisation of the youth, and the hardships of the war to make that kind of inhumanity possible.


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 Seaward wrote:
I think it's unreasonable to conclude that your average German was aware that many were being specifically sent to death camps rather than internment camps not designed to kill you.

The historical record simply proves that wrong. If a German was unaware that Jewish citizens were being systematically disposed of (not locked away somewhere, but actually gotten rid of) it is because he chose not to think about the evidence clearly on display. They simply chose not to think to much about the fate of those other people.

Living in a brutal state in total war does that to you.


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 Seaward wrote:
The point isn't that the American internment camps were exactly like the Nazi ones - it's a wild stretch of imagination to draw that conclusion from what I said, by the way - but that, in times of war, loyalty tends to override objections to actions taken by the government that the average citizen would consider to be wrong - or even oblige the citizen to conclude that they must be morally right. An awful lot of Americans believed that waterboarding was a perfectly moral thing to do to terrorist suspects after 9/11, for example.

That's a good comparison. And that was in a country that still maintained democratic and personal freedoms where dissent could still be made. And that was after only a single terror attack, which as horrible as it was, doesn't compare to the bombing of many German cities and the loss of so many young men in war.

 d-usa wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
A good book to read on this:

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany



The title and cover have always led me to believe that this would be extremely apologetic.

Read the very first review on the page. The preview available on google books (about the first 100 pages) is pretty damning to as to what the book thinks was going on.

It was a hard book to read for me (being German probably didn't help ) and it has some very rough passages in it. It was a book that I could not finish without taking breaks and taking some time away from it.

One passage that still stand out the most to me was a Wehrmacht soldier hearing shooting when the SS men and the local soldiers were clearing out a ghetto so he walked into the restricted area to see what was going on. While there he watched them hold on to little babies by their feet and smash their heads against the wall to kill them. I remember him talking about how he ignored all the dangers of sending a letter talking about it but he wrote his family back home and told them about it saying that if there is a God there will be now way that Germany should ever win this war.

It is organized very good, with the oral histories grouped in the front of the book and then a result and interpretation of the study in the back. I really do recommend it if you are into history at all, particularly WW2 and the holocaust. It's not light Sunday afternoon reading though.

I might read it, if it's open and honest. Thanks.

 sebster wrote:

The historical record simply proves that wrong. If a German was unaware that Jewish citizens were being systematically disposed of (not locked away somewhere, but actually gotten rid of) it is because he chose not to think about the evidence clearly on display. They simply chose not to think to much about the fate of those other people.

Living in a brutal state in total war does that to you.

The 'historical record' shows that Germans were aware of an escalating series of anti-Jewish policies that spanned decades, up to and including forced deportation and confinement, and use as slave labor, but there's little at all to suggest your average German was aware of the Final Solution until after the war. Were some Germans aware of it? Absolutely.

What evidence of the Final Solution was clearly on display, out of curiosity? One coalition in this discussion seems to be under the impression there was a death camp on every Strasse in Germany.

 Seaward wrote:
The 'historical record' shows that Germans were aware of an escalating series of anti-Jewish policies that spanned decades, up to and including forced deportation and confinement, and use as slave labor, but there's little at all to suggest your average German was aware of the Final Solution until after the war. Were some Germans aware of it? Absolutely.

How many people does 'some' have to be before it can be seen as something everyone would be aware of, if they chose to talk about it?

 sebster wrote:
How many people does 'some' have to be before it can be seen as something everyone would be aware of, if they chose to talk about it?

By that logic, as long as one person knows about it, everyone should know about it!

I think that's a rather asinine way of looking at things, but as long as it floats your boat.

I don't have a favorable opinion of the Nazis, but when I see a swastika, my heart jumps a little bit, and I feel happy. I really wish I didn't have a reaction like that, but I guess it has something to do with hollywood.

A question, if anyone can answer it... Before George Lincoln Rockwell, was holocaust denial even a thing? Was that a device that he alone created?

 Captain Fantastic wrote:
A question, if anyone can answer it... Before George Lincoln Rockwell, was holocaust denial even a thing? Was that a device that he alone created?

No. Holocaust denial began almost as soon as the war ended. The first 'academic' denier was Henry Barnes and American paid by the Germans to produced Pro-Aryan propaganda and to rewrite the events of World War 1 so that the Allies were the aggressors rather than the Germans. After the war he claimed that the war crimes leveled against Germany and Japan were US propaganda.

Prominent early Holocause deniers include Paul Rassinier, David Hoggan, and James Martin. As an aside these men indeed holocaust denial itself are key reasons why historical revisionism has come to carry a negative connotation in modern times.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Captain Fantastic wrote:
A question, if anyone can answer it... Before George Lincoln Rockwell, was holocaust denial even a thing? Was that a device that he alone created?

No. Holocaust denial began almost as soon as the war ended. The first 'academic' denier was Henry Barnes and American paid by the Germans to produced Pro-Aryan propaganda and to rewrite the events of World War 1 so that the Allies were the aggressors rather than the Germans. After the war he claimed that the war crimes leveled against Germany and Japan were US propaganda.

Prominent early Holocause deniers include Paul Rassinier, David Hoggan, and James Martin. As an aside these three men are also the key reason why historical revisionism has come to carry a negative connotation in modern times.

A wonderfully elaborate answer, thank you

It's quite disturbing the lengths people will go to spread disinformation. It's not surprising, but the more I learn about WWII, the more I just want to forget about it. It feels like WWII left a huge shadow over the entire world.

 Seaward wrote:
By that logic, as long as one person knows about it, everyone should know about it!

I think that's a rather asinine way of looking at things, but as long as it floats your boat.

Only if I was putting forward the argument that 'some' could be as few as one, and that any amount of 'some' would be enough to argue that . And, of course, I said no such thing, nor even hinted at such a thing. It's just some silliness that was invented inside your brain, for reasons I neither know nor care to find out about.

Meanwhile, the issue with your previous answer was the vagueness of the word 'some'. That is, the amount of knowledge available to your average German citizen varies greatly depending on whether the 'some' who were aware of the holocaust was 10,000 Germans or 1,000,000 Germans. As such, you need to specify how much you believe 'some' was, and how much 'some' would have to be before we were able to say 'that really was something most Germans ought to have known about in some form'.

 sebster wrote:
Meanwhile, the issue with your previous answer was the vagueness of the word 'some'. That is, the amount of knowledge available to your average German citizen varies greatly depending on whether the 'some' who were aware of the holocaust was 10,000 Germans or 1,000,000 Germans. As such, you need to specify how much you believe 'some' was, and how much 'some' would have to be before we were able to say 'that really was something most Germans ought to have known about in some form'.

I'd say 'some' would be a number between 'none' and 'all.' As I specified that it was unlikely most Germans knew about the full extent of the Holocaust, I'd say 'some' would be a number between 'none' and 'half.'

But I'm more interested in this historical record you have that proves all of Germany was aware of the extent of the Holocaust, as you asserted earlier.

 Seaward wrote:
I'd say 'some' would be a number between 'none' and 'all.' As I specified that it was unlikely most Germans knew about the full extent of the Holocaust, I'd say 'some' would be a number between 'none' and 'half.'

Somewhere between none and half... so such a stupidly vague number that it's basically you conceding you have no idea what you're talking about. Good oh, then. No point wasting any more time on this.

But I'm more interested in this historical record you have that proves all of Germany was aware of the extent of the Holocaust, as you asserted earlier.

Except that isn't what I said. So you're making your own argument so vague as to be utterly useless, and being disingenuous about my own. Well, you do earn points for consistency.

 sebster wrote:
Somewhere between none and half... so such a stupidly vague number that it's basically you conceding you have no idea what you're talking about. Good oh, then. No point wasting any more time on this.

Look, you're fond of asking stupid questions - how have you not figured out most people are going to give you stupid answers, largely to amuse themselves? You know perfectly well nobody could possibly know exactly how many Germans knew about the full extent of the Holocaust. We have a few first-hand accounts of Germans who knew an awful lot of it, we have first-hand accounts of Germans who knew next to none of it, we have historical studies that conclude most Germans knew a lot of it, we have historical studies that conclude most Germans knew most of it. In none of these cases is an exact number given, because nobody's childish enough to insist on an exact number when their argument's defeated.

Outside of Dakka, anyway.

Except that isn't what I said.

Here's the quote chain:

 sebster wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
I think it's unreasonable to conclude that your average German was aware that many were being specifically sent to death camps rather than internment camps not designed to kill you.

The historical record simply proves that wrong.

So, again. Any time you'd care to whip out this historical record of yours that proves the average German was aware that Jews were being sent to death camps rather than concentration camps, I'd be delighted to see it. I think you'll have a difficult time, however, because you're just making it up. And, as usual, I expect you to ignore getting called out in a bit of a fib and just move on.

 Seaward wrote:
So, again. Any time you'd care to whip out this historical record of yours that proves the average German was aware that Jews were being sent to death camps rather than concentration camps, I'd be delighted to see it. I think you'll have a difficult time, however, because you're just making it up. And, as usual, I expect you to ignore getting called out in a bit of a fib and just move on.

Your anti-intellectualism staggers. Regardless of Sebsters knowledge, its blatantly clear you have no idea what you're talking about. There are dozens of books on this subject since the 1960's and most to a greater or lesser degree have reached the conclusion that Germans at large were aware of what was going on the Holocaust (the debate mostly ranges on the level of actual participation).

Sebster and I have no need to provide a historical record to prove our claims as the bulk of the historical record already does. As the one supporting a position in defiance to the accepted historical narrative of the Holocaust it's really your job to prove your position not our job to prove a position that is already effectively proven until evidence suggests otherwise.

But since I know you would rather live your faux history I'll see if you'll bother reading a brief bit of info here and there:

From Backing Hitler

Germans were in fact meant to know that their country had a Secret Police and a concentration camp system. Contrary to what has been passed down, the Germans did not just accept the 'good' that Nazism brought (the economy for example) and reject the evil institutions. Instead, Hitler was largely successful in getting the backing, one way or another, of the great majority of citizens. The consensus formed quickly but was and remained pluralistic, differentiated, and at times inconsistent. However as I show in this book, the Germans generally turned out to be proud and pleased that Hitler and his henchment were putting away certain kinds of people who did not fit in, or who were regarded as 'outsiders' 'asocials' 'usless eaters' or 'criminals.' Although the Nazis certainly aimed their venom at people drawn from the ranks of such 'enemies' Hitler and his henchmen did not want to cower the German people as a whole into submission but to win them over by building on popular images cherished ideals and long held phobias in the country. Even as the Nazis cleansed the body politic in the name of the future and perfect race even as they grew more radical and brutal in the war years, they also aimed to create and maintain the broadest possible level of popular backing. They expended an enormous amount of energy and resources to track public opnion and to win over the people.

And that's just the preface of what is considered a ground break work on the Holocaust by Canadian Historian Robert Gellately, one of the foremost scholars on the Holocaust and 20th Century Europe today.

But I'll go on!

... camp prisoners and slave workers soon appeared in public spaces all over Germany, from factories to the city streets, and became impossible to overlook. As the war dragged on the camp world invaded everyday life as never before and confronted citizens with the cruellest sides of the dictatorship. By and large Germans regarded the prisoners in their telltale camp garb and often in wooden shoes in terms they had come to accept from pre-war propaganda. Although we hear from survivors of help and comfort thei received, the overwhelming impression is that the Germans were at best indifferent and fearful and at worst they shared the guards' scorn hostility and hatred

Maybe you've never noticed but its pretty hard to not notice when when a person is starving to death. Try watching a couple hundred march through every day, some dropping dead right there.

But I'll go on!

The sight of concentration camp prisoners working in the streets of big cities like Cologne, often without proper footwear, dressed in the pathetic striped garb of the camps, right down to the well-known badges signifying nationality and 'crime' became a new fact of everyday life in Germany. All over Germany, camp prisoners of one kind or another shuffled to and from their camps in the full view of citizens who certainly could not fail to notice their mistreatment and deplorable condition.

Since I can't copy paste this book and have to type it out I'll stop there because the time investment is probably already too high. Gellaty's book uses internal Gestopo memos and documents and German newspaper archives. Germans knew what the camps were, they knew that once you went to one you never came out, and they knew people died in droves in these camps. Small camps were located throughout Germany right in people's towns and neighborhoods. Only the blind could not see what was happened especially at the end of the war when the Nazi's started burning the bodies in mass graves or marching entire camps through the country side before just gunning them all down and leaving them in roadside ditches.

So yeah. Sebster and I don't really have to prove anything. Historians have been in agreement with the position we're advocating since the 1960's at the latest. But then this kind of discussion probably blows way past the sphere of Dakka unless any of us have immediate access to archival materials.

 LordofHats wrote:
A bunch of stuff

It's hilarious that you use Backing Hitler to support your claim that the average German was well aware of the existence of death camps, because it actually concludes the opposite. It concludes - much like I do, would you look at that! - that while your average German was certainly aware of the concentration camps, the deportation of Jews, the use of slave labor, and so forth, they were not, in fact, aware of the Final Solution and the intentional attempt at genocide.

I can only advise you to start both actually reading what I've said and actually reading these historical works you claim prove your point - if you even know what point you're arguing. As you're arguing against me, I'll conclude your point is that 'normal' Germans were well aware of the death camps. There are few books on the subject that make that claim, and the ones that do use what anyone who's actually been remotely well-trained as a historian would regard as specious evidence.

Reading comprehension, folks. It matters.

 Seaward wrote:

It's hilarious that you use Backing Hitler to support your claim that the average German was well aware of the existence of death camps, because it actually concludes the opposite. It concludes - much like I do, would you look at that! - that while your average German was certainly aware of the concentration camps, the deportation of Jews, the use of slave labor, and so forth, they were not, in fact, aware of the Final Solution and the intentional attempt at genocide.

Really now? Not only have you apparently missed the point of the book but you've apparently got little knowledge of Gallately's views on the Holocaust.

What is at issue is no longer whether or not Germans knew about the camps but rather what kind of knowledge they had and how it was conveyed

That is the conclusion of his book and you seem to have missed the point horribly while making up your own. Primarily Gallately is arguing for an expansion on knowledge concerning motivations for supporting the Nazi party and the camps themselves and the perception the common German held of the camps.

So yeah. Reading comprehension does matter. Good advice that you should follow in the future.

Interesting that you think the Holocaust was just about the Final Solution (especially after apparently reading Gellately cause he spells this out very clearly not just in Backing Hitler but in his other works). How many prisoners really need to just drop dead in the streets before people start wondering what goes on in the camps? Gellately covers this completely in the 9th chapter and makes it more than apparently people couldn't not know what was going on in some broad sense. The real shocker about Backing Hitler is how in line it is with Hitler's Willing Executioners which any decent historian knows is a very poorly written book (barring the sensationalism of course).

Oh, I see. You didn't actually read the thread. Here's what I said:

 Seaward wrote:
I think it's reasonable to conclude that your average German was aware of the Holocaust in the broad sense - "Hitler's getting rid of Jews." That'd been going on, in one way or another, since he came to power. More Germans should have stood against it - some did, but far too few. Then again, how many Americans stood against the internment of Japanese-Americans?

I think it's unreasonable to conclude that your average German was aware that many were being specifically sent to death camps rather than internment camps not designed to kill you.

Know what? That's exactly what Gallately concluded. Germans knew about the concentration camps, were largely unaware of the death camps. Knew about slave labor, didn't know about Final Solution.

 Seaward wrote:
Oh, I see. You didn't actually read the thread. Here's what I said:

Well it has been a day or so Cut me some slack. I work at night I'm sleepy.

 Seaward wrote:
Germans knew about the concentration camps, were largely unaware of the death camps. Knew about slave labor, didn't know about Final Solution.

Good to know that Germans can watch people forced to labor in factories and construction work while starving to death and still not think anyone is being killed. The Holocaust isn't just about the death camps. Hundreds of thousands of people died outside of death camps (if we include all German prisoners killed at the camps probably more or a comparable number died outside the death camps than inside). The slave labor was itself a very public death sentence.

This is less an issue of 'did they know people were dying in mass' and more a question of 'did they know they were being exterminated in mass.' And by this distinction I mean did they know that Germany was industrializing mass murder or did they just think people were dying in mass. Both are genocide but the distinction matters. It has not been a question of whether German's realized that Jews were dying in droves as a result of Nazi policies since the work of Ian Kershaw in the 80's. The German's knew people were dying in these camps (and Gallately does cover this so I suggest you reread), but I can concede I've glossed over the question of whether the Germans knew there was a very targeted desire to outright murder.

 Seaward wrote:

Know what? That's exactly what Gallately concluded. Germans knew about the concentration camps, were largely unaware of the death camps. Knew about slave labor, didn't know about Final Solution.

From Hitler to the poor homeless schlep on the streets who accused Jews of stealing his job and his livelihood would probably beg to differ; removing millions of unwanted elements of their society, casting blame on those who were an easily targeted minority, became intrinsic to the Germany mindset then. Going from removing Jews to killing Jews (and other unwanted members of society) is not a hard task to accomplish, and the populace really didn't care especially when the removed elements were bascially dehumanized.

I don't blink twice when I eat a chicken wing or a slab of meat from a cow despite the widely documented potential abuses and horrors those animals may of gone through from birth to death to feed me. I accept it as a natural part of the cycle of commercialized food; Germans probably didn't care that their new homes came from a Jewish family that was even then being gassed in chambers hundreds of miles away or worked to death for no good reason other than to not make them exist anymore.

So while you may contend they only knew half truths, it is a very small leap to assume they knew more.

 LordofHats wrote:
Well it has been a day or so Cut me some slack. I work at night I'm sleepy.

I probably would have had you not come in with the, "Your anti-intellectualism staggers!" bullgak.

Good to know that Germans can watch people forced to labor in factories and construction work while starving to death and still not think anyone is being killed.

They can believe it is not a systematic and deliberate attempt to commit genocide.

The Holocaust isn't just about the death camps.

But the point I was making - and which you chose to respond to - is.

Hundreds of thousands of people died outside of death camps (if we include all German prisoners killed at the camps probably more or a comparable number died outside the death camps than inside).

'Probably' is an interesting word choice.

This is less an issue of 'did they know people were dying in mass' and more a question of 'did they know they were being exterminated in mass.'

I think the distinction's a bit finer than that.

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:


All of German society was intensely involved with carrying out the Holocaust.

It's possible to make a statement without using such loaded language perhaps? My gran is from Northern Germany, young teenager at the time, without being cruel to her not the sharpest chip off the block, but then she was a farm girl and knew more about milking cows than the political/social situation.

She told me they knew something was going on.. the propaganda against Jews etc, but it wasn't something that affected her or probably any number of people living in the more rural, smaller towns and countryside. The war started, she carried on milking cows, men from her family and her town went off to fight in the war, the bombers came over (the odd bomb dropped on them) - eventually British/US troops rolled into the town. She did say that they used to pray however that the Western forces would reach them before the Russians - obviously there was still enough of an information network (presumably refugees heading west?) for there to be some stories to be travelling back and forth.

So, undoubtedly many people were aware of the holocaust, and what it involved, but equally you can't try and make out there was some mass event of evil taking place, with some kind of centralised consciousness that transcended the individual. I also don't think there is anything uniquely 'German' about it (except perhaps the level of organisation - I'll come to that), and it is something that could happen in any nation. If anything, as has been pointed out it should serve to remind us of the dangers of nationalism, and of managing to de-humanize other people (who actually have a lot more similarities to ourselves than the monsters, and their cabal of sycophants, who sometimes manage to get into positions of absolute power).

I will say however that perhaps the German cultural trait of organising things seemed to extend to the holocaust also - and perhaps it is this separation between the order givers ('get rid of the Jews' etc) and the people who actually were responsible directly for the murder which is one of the most astounding and at the same time horrifying things about it. I know, having read about the Nuremberg trials, that in some cases it was very difficult for the prosecutors to actually pin down specific orders and crimes on individuals, even when they knew those individuals were in a position of seniority. One order was signed by someone (sometimes going backwards and forwards multiple times between departments), before moving down and across the chain of command. At each stage one soldier or another was responsible for moving people, then another would lock the door, then another would sign for the train or truck to start moving. I believe I read somewhere that there were more than 20 different departments and offices responsible for moving even a small group of people from one place and (ultimately) to the concentration camps.

So, I think it is important here to see the structures in place, the mistakes, rather than just saying "the German people were evil" - from which no logical progression of study of human societal development can take place, and we can learn nothing, save by punishing those who are already well into their advanced years and for whom any act against them can only ever be a pyrrhic victory. With the upmost respect towards the suffering that was caused after Hitler came to power, at the same time we must have an eye towards study of the human condition and make the most detailed examinations of that period possible. It is vital that we learn from it.

So learn what? As the OP says, it's important to look at the underlying processes which allowed the holocaust to take place. In brief and to summarize, the extreme level of nationalism, a grip which took hold in Germany following the great depression and the perceived failures of the Weimar Republic. To put it crudely, people having to eat boiled wallpaper paste are easy prey for charismatic leaders with big promises. Secondly, the affects of governmental control of media and education - tapping into the existing and inherent mistrust of 'outsiders', and skewing popular opinion behind that government. The people became 'monsters' or were 'evil' - well how do you define such? A complete disregard for the lives of others, viewing them as a being whose life is less valuable than your own? Again - this ties back in with control of media, and of education. The ability for governments to turn people against others who had lived as their neighbours for many years has always astounded me, but the precedents for it happening (and continuing to happen) are many.

Ultimately the whole affair is one of the most horrific instances of barbarity in human history. Undoubtedly things of a similar situation have happened before and throughout recorded history, but never in such full view, and we have never been able to study it in such detail and so easily. Looking at the list above, and how many of those 'criteria' can easily be filled, makes me worry about the modern world, and how we seem to be allowing similar situations to occur and which could easily lead to other outbreaks of sectarian violence, even other Holocausts, in the future. I see the Balkans, Bosnian Christians massacring the Muslim populations. Sectarian violence in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. With all of them, to take nothing away from the severity of Nazi Germany, there are many parallels to be made in terms of the circumstances surrounding these genocidal actions taking place.

So the sight of Chinese citizens wrecking Japanese cars, of wailing North Koreans bemoaning the passing of their 'dear leader', even of here in the UK men leaving the heads of pigs outside Mosques following 9/11 - all of it should worry us to the extreme as the potential to become so much more. The flames of nationalism, once fanned, can give rise to allow the worst atrocities imaginable. A free press, separate from the orders of self-serving governments and industrialists, and easy access to education are vital to stop something like the holocaust happening again. We should also, though the power of democratic vote, ensure that our governments do not act to destabilize the governments of other countries - and therefore create the conditions of poverty and instability that allow people such as Hitler to come to power. It's within human nature, and the potential exists for another holocaust to occur.

 WarOne wrote:
From Hitler to the poor homeless schlep on the streets who accused Jews of stealing his job and his livelihood would probably beg to differ; removing millions of unwanted elements of their society, casting blame on those who were an easily targeted minority, became intrinsic to the Germany mindset then. Going from removing Jews to killing Jews (and other unwanted members of society) is not a hard task to accomplish, and the populace really didn't care especially when the removed elements were bascially dehumanized.

It's a monumental task, actually, and it's one that was never openly discussed. Getting Germany's bureaucracies in motion to truly carry out mass murder didn't occur until '42, despite planning for it having begun - in secret, of course - long before. Allied broadcasters and leaders started mentioning extermination camps within the next year, and at that point, it would have made little sense for the Reich leadership not to acknowledge them if they had merely been concerned about foreign perception. There were even individuals rather high in the party - I'm thinking of Lammers - who were all for the deportation and general harassment of Jews, but drew that line at genocide. I would posit that would not have been an uncommon viewpoint.

 Seaward wrote:

I probably would have had you not come in with the, "Your anti-intellectualism staggers!" bullgak.

Probably. I think its obvious now I misunderstood the exact position you were taking. That's my mistake and I apologize.

They can believe it is not a systematic and deliberate attempt to commit genocide.

A willing indifference on the part of Nazi policy to work people to death, at times publicly, is systematic and I think quite clearly systematic. It's not the same as sending people to the gas chamber but it's hard to ignore people dying slow deaths that are easily and perfectly avoidable.

Now, whether they thought of it as genocide is an interesting question itself. Today we're very aware of genocide primarily because of the Holocaust, but were the German people even capable of conceptualizing that that's what was happening at the time? If we assume that they did not does it make any significant difference? I don't think it does. A genocide occurred at least in part in plain sight and the German people saw it happening. They can claim after the fact that they didn't 'know' but I think that in a very real sense they did at some level.

Sort of like an instance of having something just on the tip of your tongue but not really being able to even recognize what you're trying to say until someone else has already said it.

'Probably' is an interesting word choice.

I do strive to keep things interesting

Gentlemen, while I find the discussion intriguing, I wanted to add a recent experience of mine to this thread. It is not relevant in terms of the empirical evidence surrounding the question of guilt for the Holocaust. Rather, it is a short story of how it continues to affect people, especially young people in Germany.

I recently made a pilgrimage to the King of All Festivals: Oktoberfest. While there, I had the privilege of drinking with some great German guys who were roughly my age. They were amazingly fun to be sure, but somehow the topic of the Holocaust and the German people's responsibility came up. They asked me what, as an American, I knew of the the role the German people had in it, and my opinion of it. I explained to them as a historian, regardless of nationality, I understood the historical fact surrounding the Holocaust. Furthermore, I understood that it is largely undeniable that the German people were silently complicit at best, and at the very least knew of the complete subjugation and degradation of society's "undesirables"(which of course was much more then just Jews).

At this point they had a very sullen look and said that they were sorry that their nation had done so much evil in the world, but at the same time expressed their frustration that it felt wrong to love their country. I stopped them right there. I have a very firm grasp of the German language, and I explained to them in their native tongue that I also understood their concept of "vergangenheitsbevältigung," which roughly means in English: struggling to cope with the past(very specifically the Holocaust). I went on to explain that while yes they should undoubtedly understand that this was a mark on their nation's past, that they should also realize it is not their own history, and that they should be proud of the good that Germany, and by extension, the German people have accomplished throughout history. I explained that it is easy for other Western countries to point out the sins of their past while ignoring our own, and loosely quoted Christ in saying: We have a tendency to point out the speck in our neighbor's eye and ignore the log in our own. I told him how as an American(and Southerner ) there is much in my nation's past to be saddened by, but that I can still love my country for what it is, and what it has accomplished in spite of its past sins. A friend who was traveling with me also stepped in at this point and explained that while those things were done, they were not done by us, just as the Holocaust was not committed by their own hands, and that none of us could blame ourselves for the sins of our ancestors. With that I encouraged them to love their country, their countrymen, and their history, but to keep the horrors of the past as a temperance to future excess.

Very sappy overall, but I thought it was a good story worth sharing to help us keep in mind the ongoing psychological effect that this dark period in human history, and also our ongoing discussion of it, has on many Germans.

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:

 Testify wrote:
The fact that virtually every woman (and girl) under 40 in Berlin was raped by Soviet soldiers doesn't phase you, huh?

That is not accurate. Not every girl and woman was raped. Such claims are either sensationalist nonsense (probably designed to sell a book or documentary) or are made up by Holocaust deniers.

If literally every girl and woman was raped, it would be very easy to determine, and there would not be any historical debate on the number of women raped.

You can find more information about this sort of Holocaust denial here:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#Red_herrings_in_Holocaust_denial

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Mass_rapes
"Following the Red Army's capture of Berlin in 1945, a mass rape considered the most extensive in history took place. Soviet troops raped German women and girls as young as eight years old.[72] Estimates of the total number of victims range from tens of thousands to two million"

The main difference between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany is this:
"After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution.[74] The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined troops to strictly guarded posts and camps."
Whereas AFAIK not a single German soldier was punished for war crimes in the east (though they were strictly punished for crimes committed in the West).

 LordofHats wrote:
Probably. I think its obvious now I misunderstood the exact position you were taking. That's my mistake and I apologize.

Accepted, and good on you.

A willing indifference on the part of Nazi policy to work people to death, at times publicly, is systematic and I think quite clearly systematic. It's not the same as sending people to the gas chamber but it's hard to ignore people dying slow deaths that are easily and perfectly avoidable.

I'm not suggesting it was ignored, I'm saying it's easy to accept isolated experiences like that as exceptions rather than the rule. It's perfectly plausible to believe that the Germans were using slave labor, that the Germans were deporting Jews and other 'undesirables,' that they were subjecting them to inhumane conditions, and that sometimes they died...without concluding that it was, in essence, mass targeted killings. If nothing else, that's an inefficient way to commit genocide. As I said earlier, when discussing guys like Lammers, the hypocritical position that it was perfectly fine to overwork what would become the victims of the Holocaust, and if some died in the process, so be it, but to actually deliberately kill them would be immoral was not necessarily uncommon.

Now, whether they thought of it as genocide is an interesting question itself. Today we're very aware of genocide primarily because of the Holocaust, but were the German people even capable of conceptualizing that that's what was happening at the time? If we assume that they did not does it make any significant difference? I don't think it does. A genocide occurred at least in part in plain sight and the German people saw it happening. They can claim after the fact that they didn't 'know' but I think that in a very real sense they did at some level.

I still don't believe, and have seen nothing to cause me to believe, it was in quite as plain of sight as you seem to. Slave labor, the concentration camps...those I've maintained Germans couldn't help but know about. Mass killings, on the other hand, occurred in the death camps (most of which were outside of Germany) and on the front lines. Now, it's certainly possible that due to a hell of a lot of Germans being involved in the war effort, they could have heard stories, but actual first-hand knowledge of atrocities on that scale would be difficult to come by. Hell, I've heard stories about Camp Nama and, later, LSA Anaconda that I'm not entirely sure I believe despite them being plausible, just because they suggest a systematic, wide-scale investment in torture that my government says did not exist.

I wonder how many of the Germans who saw malnourished and badly treated prisoners marching through the streets and dying were basically just thinking: "I'm glad that's not me."

In any case, I very much agree with Pacific's rather longwinded but incredibly insightful post, and with JEB_Stuart's point that modern Germans certainly weren't the ones responsible for the Holocaust, and that it's "just" a black page in their history books.
*Every* single country has its own, though most aren't quite as recent.

I actually like Germans and Germany. I'm very seriously oonsidering moving to another country, and germany, even though it's just a stone's throw away, is slowly but steadily rising up through the ranks of likely candidates.

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:

 AustonT wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
10,000,000? That doesn't seem right.

It's a hard number to get your head around, but it's probably true.
I've seen estimates of Red Army mass rapes going the other way as high as 15,000,000.
The decimates on both sides are about 1 million and 2 million respectively and overall number are extrapolated from there.

The 10,000,000 figure definitely reliable, especially considering the German views toward the Russians and what the Germans did to the Russians during the Holocaust.

Whoever came up with the claim of 15,000,000 women raped by the Red Army needs to be institutionalized, fast. Anyone who doesn't want to be labeled immediately as a Holocaust denier and a Nazi sympathizer by the historical community should perpetuate that outrageous myth. I have studied the subject, and the number of Nazi women raped by the Red Army is not more than 1.6 million. Some estimates would put it at less than 1.5 million. There's also a huge difference in the historical context between both mass rapes, and they should not be compared. Rapes of non Germans by the Red Army were also far less common.

I'm also very familiar with the tactics of Holocaust deniers and other Nazi sympathizers, and extremely over exaggerated statistics about the rape of Nazi women by the Red Army that has no basis in reality is one of their common tactics. It attempts to portray the Germans as victims, and is frequently used because open Holocaust denial is illegal in many countries. The deniers then turn to over exaggerating supposed crimes by the Allies, both real and imaginary, to try to make the Nazis seem like sympathetic victims.

But was it legitimate rape? /Sarcasm


Rape is rape, regardless of 'historical context'.

 Seaward wrote:
Look, you're fond of asking stupid questions - how have you not figured out most people are going to give you stupid answers, largely to amuse themselves? You know perfectly well nobody could possibly know exactly how many Germans knew about the full extent of the Holocaust.

There are books on that very fething subject. Your entire chain of reasoning seems to be idea 'I don't know this, therefore it's unknowable, therefore it's whatever I make up'.

I mean, this isn't as remarkable as that time you tried to lecture me on violence in US politics while you had absolutely no idea about the recent record of violence in US politics, but it's still an incredible thing.

At this point, we could just go round and round for days like that other thread, or you could go and read something about this issue. It'd be a bit of a prick to your ego, but it would mean you'd actually know something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Seaward wrote:
It's hilarious that you use Backing Hitler to support your claim that the average German was well aware of the existence of death camps, because it actually concludes the opposite.

It's telling that you think the murder was related entirely to the final solution. Shoah by Bullets and Shoah by Bullets are phrases that exist for a reason. Non-extermination camps like Buchenwald have awful reputations for a reason.

It's produced a ridiculous argument in which you think people would tolerate individuals being worked to death, and this was known as many were marched through German towns, dying on the way, without receiving any support or symapthy from German citizens, but they would suddenly react differently if they heard these people were being systematically killed.

Now, I'm pretty sure you don't choose make ridiculous arguments simply for the sake of being ridiculous. As such, it's pretty clear that you've wandered into making your ridiculous argument because you simply had no idea what you were talking about, hence you're incredibly vague, information free first comment.

At which point, I'm going to ask you, again, to not let your ego get the better of you, and accept that there is information out there that you didn't have. Go and read. Learn. Don't keep fething about in this thread pretending you know what you're talking about.


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 JEB_Stuart wrote:
Very sappy overall, but I thought it was a good story worth sharing to help us keep in mind the ongoing psychological effect that this dark period in human history, and also our ongoing discussion of it, has on many Germans.

That was a really good story. Thanks for that.