What was Nazism in practice?

I

What was Nazism in practice

25 The minutes of the meeting of top Gershyman officials held at the Grosse Wannsee testifies to the decision on the final solution of the Jewish problem

As a further possibility of solving the question the evacuation of theJews to the east can now be substituted for emigration after obtaining permission from the Fuehrer to that effect However these actions are merely to be considered as alshyternative possibilities even though they will permit us to make all those practical experiences which are of great importance for the future final solution of the Jewish question

The Jews should in the course of the Final Solution be taken in a suitable manshyner to the east for use as labor In big labor gangs separated by sex the Jews capable of work will be brought to these areas for road building in which task undoubtedly a large number will fall through natural diminution The remnant that is finally able to survive all this-since this is unshydoubtedly the part with the strongest resistance - must be treated accordingly since these people representing a natural selection are to be regarded as the germ cell of a new Jewish development in case they should succeed and go free (as history has proved) In the Course of the execution of the Final Solution Europe will be combed west to east

Hannah Vogt The Burden of Guill Transshylated by H Strauss New York Oxford Univ Press 1964229

26 Heinrich Himmler chief of the Gestapo the Nazi secret police tells his 55 (elite political police) generals of the proper atshytitude towards the human animals of the lower nationalities

One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS men We must be honest decent loyal and comradely to members

of our own blood and nobody else What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take if neces~~ry by kidnapshyping their children and raISIng them here with us Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culshyture otherwise it is of no interest to me Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finshyished We shall never be rough and heartshyless where it is not necessary that is clear We Germans who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them When someshybody comes up to me and says I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch- with women a~d

children it is inhuman for it would kill them then I have to say You are the murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die and they are the sons of German mothers They are our own blood Our concern our duty is our people and our blood We ~an be indiffershyent to everything else I WIsh the SS to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign non-germanic peoples esshypecially Russians

International Military Tribunal Doc 1919shyPS

27 Hermann Graebe a German engineer working in the Ukraine tells the Nuremberg Military Tribunal about a massacre in Volshyhynia on October 5 7942

an old woman with snow-white hair was holding this one-year old child in her

15 THE RISE OF THE NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE

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arms and singing and tickling it The child was cooing with delight The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes The father was holding the hand of a boy about ten years old and speaking to him softly the boy was fighting his tears The father pointed towards the sky stroked the boys head and seemed to explain something to him At that moment the 55 man at the pit shouted something to his comrade The latter counted off about twenty persons and instructed them to go behind the earth mound The family I have described was among them I well remember the girl slim and with black hair who as she passed me pointed to herself and said Twentyshythree years old

I then walked round the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each other so that only their heads were visible Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads Some of the people shot were still moving Some lifted their arms and turned their heads to show that they were alive The pit was already two-thirds full I estimated that it held a thousand people I looked for the man who did the shooting He was an 55 man who sat at the edge of the narrow end ofthe pit his feet dangling into it He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette The peopleshythey were completely naked - went down some steps which were cut in the clay wall of the pit and clambered over the heads of those who were lying there to the place to which the 55 man directed them They lay down in front of the dead and wounded Some caressed the living and spoke to them in a low voice Then I heard a series of shots I looked into the pit and saw that their bodies still twitched or that their heads lay motionless on top of the other bodies before them

On the morning of the next day when I visited the site I saw about thirty naked people lying near the pit-about thirty to fifty metres away from it Some of them

400 THE RISE OF THE

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were still alive A girl of about twenty

spoke to me and asked me to give her clothes and help her to escape At that moshyment we heard a fast car approach and I noticed that it was an 55 detail I moved away to my site Ten minutes later we heard shots from the vicinity of the pit Those Jews who were still alive had been ordered to throw the corpses into the pit then they themselves had to lie down in the pit to be shot in the neck

International Military Tribunal IV 253 Doc 2992-PS

28 Rudoli Hoess Commandant of Auschshywitz concentration camp describes the extermination procedure in Auschwitz

The extermination procedure in Auschshywitz took place as follows

Jews selected for gassing were taken as quietly as possible to the crematoriums the men being separated from the women In the undressing rooms prisoners of the Special Detachment would tell them in their own language that they were going to be bathed and deloused that they must leave their clothes neatly together and above all remember where they had put them After undressing the Jews went into the gas chambers which were furshynished with showers and water pipes and gave a realistic impression of a bathhouse

The women went in first with their chilshydren followed by the men who were alshyways the fewer in number

The door would now be quickly screwed up and the gas immediately discharged by the waiting disinfectors through vents in the ceilings of the gas chambers down a shaft that led to the floor This insured the rapid distribution of the gas It could be observed through the peephole in the door that those who were standing nearest to

the induction vents were killed at once The remainder staggered about and began to scream and struggle for air The screamshying however soon changed to the death rattle and in a few minutes all lay still After

NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE 16

twenty minutes at the latest no movement ovens which had meanwhile been stoked could be discerned Those who screamed up Depending on the size of the bodies and those who were old or sick or weak or up to three corpses could be put into one the small children died quicker than oven retort at the same time The time those who were healthy or young required for cremation also depended on

The door was opened half an hour after this but on the average it took twenty the induction of the gas and the ventilation minutes As previously stated crematoshyswitched on Work was immediately begun riums I and II could cremate about 2000 on removing the corpses bodies in twenty-four hours

The special detachment now set about Reprinted by permission of The World Publishing Company from Commandantremoving the gold teeth and cutting the of Auschwitz The Autobiography of Rudolfhair from the women [for use in the war Hom by Rudolf Hoess Translated by C

effort] After this the bodies were taken FitzGibbon Copyright copy 1959 by George up by elevator and laid in front of the Weidenfeld amp Nicolson 221-23

29 The results of the final solution of the Jewish problem

JEWISH

POPULATION PERCENTAGE

SEPTEMBER JEWISH OF JEWISH

COUNTRY 1939 LOSSES LOSSES

1 Poland 3300000 2800000 850 2 USSR

occupied territory 2100000 1500000 714 3 Rumania 850000 425000 500 4 Hungary 404DOO 200000 495 5 Czechoslovakia 315000 260000 825 6 France 300000 90000 300 7 Germany 210000 170000 810 8 Lithuania 150000 135000 900 9 Netherlands 150000 90000 600

10 Latvia 95000 85000 895 II Belgium 90000 40000 444 12 Greece 75000 60000 800 13 Yugoslavia 75000 55000 733 14 Austria 60000 40000 666 15 Italy 57000 15000 263 16 Bulgaria 50000 7000 140 17 Others 20000 6000 300

8301000 5978000 720

Hannah Vogt The Burden of Guilt Translated by Herbert Strauss New York Oxford Univ Press 1964 233

401 17 THE RISE OF THE NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE

30 Gustawa Winkowska a Polish prisoner tells of experiments with Ukrainian and Polish prisoners

I saw [Dr] Rosenthal struggle with a healthy young Ukrainian girl whom they tried to take to the operating room by force The girl fought back and screamed for help With the help of Gerda Quernshyheim Dr Rosenthal gave her a sedative She was then taken to the operating room where one of her legs was amputated Immediately after the operation Dr Fischer left the operating room with a large package going directly to a car that stood ready I believe the package conshytained the amputated leg This took place at the time when experimental operations were being performed on the Polish girls

The woman on whom this operation was performed later received a fatal inshyjection [of gasoline]

Under similar circumstances the arm and shoulder group were removed from another Ukrainian girl She too was killed by injection

Reprinted from Doctors of Infamy by Alexshyander Mitscherlich amp Fred Mielke By pershymission of Abelard-Schuman Ltd All rights reserved 65

Who was guilty

31 Dr Karl Brandt on trial for Nazi medical crimes justifies experiments in which pashytients were killed because he had a direct order to carry out

Judge Sebring Now does [a government order] take away that responsibility from the physician in your view or does it share that responsibility jointly with the physician in your view

Defendant Karl Brandt In my opinion it removes it from the physician for from this moment on the physician is only an instrument in about the same way as is an officer in the field who is ordered to take a

402 THE RISE OF THE

-

group of three or five soldiers without fail to a position where they will perish fall When I apply the relationship of our Gershyman conditions during the war it is basshy )

----shyically the same I do not believe that the physician on his own would or could COnshyduct such an experiment by his medical ethics or his moral sense unless he had this immunity from the authoritarian state which would give him on the one hand security under formal law and on the other hand a direct order to carry out

Mitscherlich and Mielke Doctors of Infamy

bull161

QUESTION If the Germans had been trained to obey orders without question is this a reasonshyable defense Explain your answer

32 But the German philosopher Karl jaspers questions the defense that orders are orders

Orders are ordersl- this meant and still means emotionally for many people the expression of their supreme duty But this phrase implied at the same time a shedding of responsibility when it allowed a man to accept with a shrug everything that was evil and foolish This behaviour under the inner compulsion of obedience became altogether sinful in the moral sense this inshystinctive behaviour which pretended to itshyself to be listening to the voice of conshyscience whereas in fact it had entirely done with listening to this voice

Quoted in Crankshaw Gestapo 234

33 And Edward Crankshaw says the Gershymans cannot have it both ways

When General Beck was trying to gather round him a powerful opposition to Hitshyler he was met on every side by his colshyleagues who respected him with the un-

NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE 18

assailable response that they had taken their military oath to Hitler and must abide by it or lose their honour But at Nuremberg General after General exshyhibited the greatest anxiety to prove that he personally had disapproved of such and such an order and had in fact ignored it or omitted to pass it on There were

Imiddotmiddotbullbullmiddotbull indeed many examples of disobedience in the fieldf

The Germans however cannot have it t ~ both ways Either the idea of disobeying ~ an order was inconceivable to them orf it was not It has been demonstrated ~ beyond all possible doubt that they were t

prepared to disobey the Fuehrer on a truly f remarkable scale when it seemed to E them desirable convenient and exshy

pedient to do so When it did not they took refuge in the mystique of total obedishy

I ence

Crankshaw Gestapo 235 r 34 American journalist Victor H Bernsteini thinks that the German people closed their t eyes to what was going on I I

IIgnorance has become a national virtueI in Germany I didnt know cried the

defendants I didnt know cried the man I in the street It was a mighty invisible

force emanating from an invisible source that had pluc~ed millions of people out of

Ir

Europe dropped them on Mars and there smote them down with invisible death rays

These Germans lie Every German knew something a few knew everything milshylionsknew more than theywill today admit The proof is im plicit in scores of documents introduced at Nuremberg The prosecushytion did not introduce these documents as evidence against the German people for the German people were not on trial at Nuremberg But the evidence is there nonetheless

This evidence showed that knowledge of

l atrocities extending far beyond those pershy

sons directly implicated penetrated into wide Nazi party circles into the ranks of the Wehrmacht into business and indusshytrial groups and into whole communities that were at times literally blanketed with the stench of death

Ernst Wiechert told German youth at a meeting held in Munich last summer

It had become clear to the Supermen that they had nothing to fear from this German people More burned up in the Reichstag fire than a heap of stone and wood Rights law and truth disappeared and no Phoenix rose from its ashes but the blond beast preparing to jump at his own brother The cries of those who were tortured and beaten to death were heard in the streets With the first barbed wire around the first concentration camp sentence was pronounced over an entire nation a nation which had recognized the evil but hid in palaces and huts not to hear the cries A nation which pressed its

hands against its eyes in order not to see the stream of blood which slowly slowly but growing wider and redder flooded the German soil

Victor H Bernstein Final Judgment the Story of Nuremberg New York Boni and Gaer 1947246258

35 And in the novel Judgment at Nuremshyberg Ernst Janning former Nazi Minister of Justice admits his guiIt

My defense counsel would have you believe that we were not aware of concenshytration camps

Then he cried out Not aware Where were we

Now he seemed to be speaking directly to the Germans in the audience

Where were we when our neighbors were being dragged out in the middle of the night to Dachau Where were we when every village in Germany had a railroad terminal where cattle cars were filled with children who were being carried off to God

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knows where Where were we when they cried out into the night to us Were we deaf dumb and blindImiddot He says we were not aware of the

I I

extermination of millions He would give you the excuse that we were only aware of the extermination of hundreds Does that make us any the less guilty Maybe we didnt know the details But if we didnt know it was because we didnt want to know

I am going to tell them the truth about their Ministry of Justice

He looked at the men in the dock Werner Lammpe An old man who

cries into his Bible now An old man who profited by the property expropriation of every man he sent to the concentration camp

Frederich Hoffstetter The good Gershyman who knew how to take orders Who sent men before him to be sterilized like so many digits Emil Hahn The decayed corrupt bigot obsessed by the evil within himself

And Ernst janning concluded janshyning Worse than any of them because he knew what they were and went along with them Ernst janning who made his lifeshyexcrement because he walked with them

janning sat there It was silent in the courtroom

Abby Mann Judgment at Nuremberg New York New American Library 1961 114shy16

36 But Milton Mayer an American reshyporter asks What is the proportion of revolutionary heroes of saints and martyrs in our own country

Who wants to investigate the reports Who is looking for trouble Who will be the first to undertake (and how undertake it) to track down the suspicion of governshymental wrongdoing under a governmental dictatorship to occupy himself in times of turmoil and in wartime with evils real or rumored that are wholly outside his own

404 THE RISE OF THE

1 life outside his own circle and above all outside his own power After all what if 1 one found out

Suppose that you have heard secondshyhand or even first-hand of an instance in which a man was abused or tortured by the police in a hypothetical American comshymunity You tell a friend whom you are trying to persuade that the police are rotshyten He doesnt believe you He wants firstshyhand or if you got it secondhand at least secondhand testimony You go to your original source who has told you the story only because of his absolute trust in you You want him now to tell a man he doesnt trust a friend of the police He refuses And he warns you that if you use his name as authority for the story he will deny it Then you will be suspect suspected of spreading false rumors against the police And as it happens the police in this hyposhythetical American community are rotten and theyll get you somehow

So after all what if one found out in Nazi Germany (which was no hypothetical American community) What if one came to know What then

What is the proportion of revolutionary heroes of saints and martyrs or if you will of troublemakers in Stockholm Ankara EI Paso We in America have not had the German experience where even private protest was dangerous where even secret knowledge might be extorted but what did we expect the good citizen of Minneapolis or Charlotte to do when in the midst of war he was told openly and officially that 112000 of his fellow-Amershyicans those of japanese ancestry on the American West Coast had been seized without warrant and sent without due procshyess of law to relocation centers There was nichts dagenen zu machen [nothing to be done about itJ-not even by the United States Supreme Court which found that the action was within the Armys powershyand anyway the good citizen of Minneapshyolis or Charlotte had his own troubles

It was this I think-they had their own

NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE 20

troubles - that in the end explained my friends failure to do something or even to know something A man can carry only so much responsibility If he tries to carry more he collapses so he rejects the responsibility that exceeds his capacity

Milton Mayer They Thought They Were Free The Germans 1933-45 University of Chicago Press 195574-75

37 And he questions whether even memshybership in the Nazi party makes a German guiitraquo

There are many lawyers in the United States who disagree vehemently with the policies and programs of the American Bar Association but if they want to pracshytice law they had better belong to the conshystituent societies of the ABA There are even more physicians in the United States who disagree even more vehemently with the policies of the American Medical Asshysociation but if they want to practice medicine they had better belong to the constituent societies of the AMA They may only pay dues and that grudgingly but the record shows that they belong They are officially guilty of the policies of the organization which speaks in their name In Nazi Germany the professional associations were all blanketed into the National Socialist organization

bullMayer They Thought They Were Free 87-88

QUESTION Were the German people guilty for not having resisted or spoken out Do you think there are undemocratic featuresQf Amershyican life Are Americans who fail to speak out against them in the same category Give your reasons

38 Hannah Arendt questioning why so few resisted quotes a German Army physician

Peter Bamm a German Army physician

21 THE RISE OF THE NAZI HORROR WHO WAS

who served at the Russian front tells in Die Unsichtbare Flagge (1952) of the killing of Jews in Sevastopol They were collected by the others as he calls the SS mobile killing units to distinguish them from ordinary soldiers whose decency the book extols and were put into a sealed-off part of the former GPU prison They were then made to board a mobile gas van in which they died after a few minutes whereshyupon the driver transported the corpses outside the city and unloaded them into tank ditches We knew this We did nothshying Anyone who had seriously protested or done anything against the killing unit would have been arrested within twentyshyfour hours and would have disappeared It belongs among the refinements of totalishytarian governments in our century that they dont permit their opponents to die a great dramatic martyrs death for their convictions A good many of us might have accepted such a death The totalitarian state lets its opponents disappear in silent anonymity It is certain that anyone who had dared to suffer death rather than sishylently tolerate the crime would have sacrishyficed his life in vain This is not to say that such a sacrifice would have been morally meaningless It would only have been practically useless None of us had a conshyviction so deeply rooted that we could have taken upon ourselves a practically useless sacrifice for the sake of a higher moral meaning

From Eichmann in Jerusalem A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt Copyshyright copy 1963 by Hannah Arendt All rights reserved Reprinted by permission of The Viking Press Inc 211

bull~

QUESTION Why does Bamm think that help to the victims or protest against injustice would have been useless from a practical point of view Do you agree Do Americans by and large protest against injustice Are those who do not guilty of the same offenses as those with which Bernstein (document 34) charges the German people Explain your answer

405 RESPONSIBLE

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39 Father Max Pribilla a German Catholic leader reminds the Nuremberg tribunal thai Cltrmans had not been brought up to think in terms of individual responsibilities

The idea that the individual citizen is responsible for the state and must supershyvise the government of the state is foreign to his national consciousness On the conshytrary the German expects directives from his government for his political thinking and action and is inclined to see his duty and prove his reliability in loyal adherence to these directives

Veesenmayer defense document 34 MS Department of the Army January 26 1948 Quoted in Mother M A Gallin German Resistance to Hitler Catholic Univ of America 196127

--------- shyQUESTION Do you think that the way a person is brought up is justification for his acceptance of evil Is he responsible if he knows that he is accepting evil Give your reasons

40 A German professor tells Milton Mayer that each step was so small that the Cetshymens could not see the evil developing

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me-unless one has a much greater deshygree of political awareness than most of us had ever had occasion to develop Each step was so small so inconsequential so well explained or on occasion regretted that unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle what all these little measures that no patriotic German could resent must some day lead to one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer

THE RISE OF THE

in his field sees the corn growing One day j

1 it is over his head

How is this to be avoided Frankly I do not know Many many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims Principiis obsta and Finem respue - Resist the beginnings and Conshysider the end But one must foresee the end in order to resist or even see the beshyginnings

Each act each occasion is worse than the last but only a little worse You wait for the next and the next You wait for one great shocking occasion thinking that others when such a shock comes will join with you in resisting somehow You dont want to act or even talk alone And it is not just fear fear of standing alone that restrains you it is also genuine uncershytainty

But the one great shocking occasion when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you never comes Thats the diffishyculty If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest thousands yes millions would have been sufficiently shocked - if let us say the gassingoftheJews in43 had come immediately after the German Firm stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in 33 But of course this isnt the way it happens In between come all the hundreds of little steps some of them imperceptible each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next Step C is not so much worse than Step B and if you did not make a stand at Step B why should you at Step C And so on to Step D

And one day too late your principles all rush in upon you The burden of selfshydeception has grown too heavy

You see what you are what you have done or more accurately what you havent done (for that was all that was reshyquired of most of us that we do nothing) You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when if one had stood others would have stood perhaps but no one stood A small matter

NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE 22 406

a matter of hiring this man or that Too late You are compromised beyond repair

What then You must then shoot yourshyself A few did Or adjust your principles Many tried and some I suppose sueshy

ceeded Or learn to live the rest of your life with shame Many Germans became this poor kind of hero many more I think than the world knows or cares to know

Mayer They Thought They Were Free 168-72

bullQUESTION What is meant by the phrase that was all that was required of us that we do nothing To what extent do people in this country accept evil in this sense Give exshyamples

47 But German writer Hans Rothfels says that there was a German opposition to Hitler

We must start with the thesis that preshyvailed throughout the war and at its conshyclusion at least in former enemy countries to the effect that no opposition to Hitler worth speaking of ever existed The conshyviction was held that as a political nation the Germans differed from all other peoshyples for they had it was believed volunshytarily associated themselves with or subshymitted out of cowardice to the tyrannical rule of criminals either through innate wickedness or from an acquired habit of blind obedience or under the influence of some specifically baneful philosophy It was assumed that they that is the whole nation had deliberately shut their eyes to terrible crimes which had been committed by Germans And the way in which the inescapable evidence of a counter-moveshyment leading up to the attempt on Hitlers life was interpreted was in exact conformshyity with these views Opposition only beshygan it was believed when confronted with defeat the Prussian generals attempted to save their own lives - and preserve the General Staff for a third world war

But so long as the inmates of concenshytration camps consisted entirely of Gershymans the atrocities committed in them received little notice abroad When the Brown Book ofthe Hitler Terror which sought to draw attention to these misdeeds was published by Alfred Knopf in New York it was reviewed in the New York Times by no less a person than the former American Ambassador to Berlin James W Gerard Confronted with the revelations contained in the book he thought it proper to write ~ ~

Hitler is doing much for Germany his 1

unification of the Germans his destruction of Communism his training of the young his creation of a Spartan state animated by patriotism his curbing of parliamentary government so unsuited to the German character his protection of the rights of private property are all good

Of course this attitude underwent a basic change in the spring of 1945 The unspeakable horrors which came to light in camps as they were freed and the evishydence unearthed of crimes committed in Poland and Russia released a storm of inshydignation in the Western world Indeed the discoveries even exceeded the expectashytions of those who were best informed on National Socialist methods But when proof of German bestiality emerged little was said of the great numbers of Germans who had been among the victims

Hans Rothfels The German Opposition to Hitler Translated by L Wilson Chicago Regner) 1962 16 l8

42 And a silent opposition within Gershymany

On all levels of the co-ordinated govshyernment machinery there were groups that from the beginning practiced a silent but continuous and effective resistance Whenever they could these groups saboshytaged the execution of punitive measures made possible the escape of intended vicshytims and held emergency exits open Anyone who was connected with such

407 2~ THE RISE OF THE io ZI HOKROR VHO S KESPONSIBLE

ft ~ ~~~

things either personally or through friends or relatives can recall his own reshyvealing incidents Perhaps it was the way the whole atmosphere of an office changed

J once the zealous party watchdog left the room or the way a minor police official registering Jews would forget to give them the additional first name of Israel or Sarah required under the Nuremberg race laws thus in effect saving their lives

This leads to the more general question of what forms resistance took during the early years and how far it spread in the changing conditions of the early period Germans sometimes stress that Germany like so many other countries later was also an occupied nation criminally assaulted and conquered by alien rulers There is some justification for this But it should also be pointed out that criminal assault has seldom been accompanied by such frenshyzied jubilation on the part of the assualtedshya fact that also cannot be denied It is all the more important then that the view still very current abroad that German reshysistance did nut lake shape until the WUl in fact not until the wars fatal outcome had begun to be discernable be firmly opposed

it must again be emphasized that so long as there were free elections in Gershymany the NSDAP [Nazis] never received more than 37 per cent of the vote (inJuly 1932) Even in the manipulated and hysshyterical elections of March 1933 after the Reichstag fire it received only 44 per cent

Hans Rothfeis Resistance Begins in The Path to Dictatorship 154--56

Wi QUESTION If there was the resistance that Rothshyfels speaks of whydo many blame the German

people for the rise of Nazism

43 Edward Crankshaw says that not onlr Germans are capable of atrocities

In considering how these things came to be whether they reveal a particular wickedshy

408 THE RISE OF THE

ness of the German people and whether circumstances could arise elsewhere in which other nations might find themselves behaving in this way several lines of enshyquiry may be seen to open themselves

In the first place it is inaccurate to say that only Germans were engaged in the horrors we have seen Austrians many of them with Slavonic blood were deeply im plicated Hitler himself was an Austrian so to name only two were Kaltenbrunner and Globocnik Eichmann had been brought up as an Austrian There were many others

Furthermore it is inaccurate to think purely in terms ofTeutonism The Einsatz gruppen recruited and trained elements from the occupied countries above all the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians At Dlutzk the Lithuanian mercenaries outdid the German Police in their zeal and were accounted extremely useful up to a pointshythe point being reached when they lost their first enthusiasm for killing and were then found to lack the steady training and tradition which enabled the Germans to go on killing even when they were bore-d

When itcame to the high-spirited slaughshyter of Jews the native Ukrainians beshycame altogether too much for the Germans and had to be discouraged because they got out of hand The Roumanians lOO

showed a great aptitude for mass-murder and conducted their own massacres at Odessa and elsewhere In Western Europe certain officials of the [French] Vichy Government showed the greatest ardour in assisting [the gestapo]

We also know that in Spain in the thirties atrocities of extreme savagery were comshymitted by both sides We know about the Soviet deportations and the horrors of forced labour in the Soviet arctic camps We know that both Americans and British are still capable as individuals of atrocious behaviour to those whom they consider to be their racial inferiors

Thus we are clearly going about things the wrong way if we allow ourselves to

NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE 24

i I

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start with the assumption that only Gershymans could behave in the manner reshycorded in these pages

Crankshaw Gestapo 231-32

14 Russian poet Yevgen) Yevtushenko sees the Russian people too closing their eyes to atrocities during the perioel oi Stalins leadershyship

Did the Russian people understand what was really happening

I think the broad masses did not They sensed intuitively that something was wrong but no one wanted to believe what he guessed in his heart It would have been too terrible

The Russian people preferred to work rather than to think and analyze With a heroic stubborn self-sacrifice unpreceshydented in history they built power station after power station factory after factory They worked in a furious desperation drowning with the thunder of machines tractors and bulldozers the cries that might have reached them across the barbed wire of Siberian concentration camps

Yevge ny Yevtushenko Precocious Autoshybiography New York Dutton 1963 17

45 And American historian C Leonard Lundin points out that the cruelties were not al on Hitlers side

But the cruelties were not all on Hitlers side We all became fascists in certain respects in the second World War and indeed in later less extensive struggles such as the Korean War We condemned vast numbers of personally innocent men women and children to horrible flaming deaths because they happened to be on the other side The atomic bomb merely perfected a technique of mass slaughter with which we were already doing very well before that Everyone ought to have to read The Night Hamburg Died by Martin

Caidin the horribly factual and well- docushymented description of how 70000 persons perished in the firestorm kindled by AJlied air raids in the German city which in all the country probably had the highest proportion of confirmed anti-Nazis in the population David Irvings The Destruction oj Dresden tells of how at least 135000 peoshyple largely refugees died at the hands of the RAF and the US 8th Air Force in a hardly defended city with only minor inshyd ustry as a by-product of disru pting Gershyman communications for about three days The descriptions one could read in our newspapers during the Korean War of the effects of napalm bombs dropped on North villages inhabited by people whom the American aviators were professedly trying to liberate also gave rise to uncomfortable doubts about our virtue It may be that historians of the future if our hydrogen bombs leave any future for civilization may consider Hitler the symbol of the twentieth century and that we shall be lumped together with him in the minds of our descendants

C Leonard Lundin The Twentieth Censhytury in Shirley H Engle ed New Pershyspectives in World History 34th Yearbook of the National Council for the Social Studies 1964282-83

46 But Cranlltshaw sees a diiierence

[Gestapo commander Otto Ohlendorf at his trial insisted] that posterity would be unable to perceive the difference beshytween his mass-executions on the Russian Front and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

But in that case posterity would be wrong The dropping of atom bombs without specific warning may have been inexcusable but the decision to do so was taken by harrassed men in the extremity of a life and death conflict It aroused imshymediate feelings of revulsion The mass murder of Jews and Russians was a delibshyerate policy made possible by the war but

409

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had nothing to do with the winning of it It was carried out systematically and in cold blood by men who knew what they were doing and watched their victims die

We all have citizens who given the necshyessary power and a total absence of reshystraint would behave like SS Captain Kramer the Beast of Belsen But do the rest of us have as many citizens liable at the drop of the hat to turn into Kramers And would so many of us condone such behaviour

In all modern societies there are men and women who released from all reshystraints will behave like beasts towards their fellows But in the twentieth century it has been only in Germany and in Russia that such men have been able to achieve absolute power and it is only in Germany that they have deliberately delegated their power without reserve to psychopaths and the criminal riff-raff of their country abshysolving them from all restraint

Crankshaw Gestapo 232-33 243

~ QUESTION With whom do you agree Why

47 Robert H Lowie thinks that the German people supported Hitler because they beshylieved he was good for the country

The Allies had harassed and intimidated the republican government had insisted on the admission of German guilt to the humiliation of all German patriots inshycluding the majority of Social Democrats But when Hitler began to talk the Allies changed their tune the bullies of the 1920s turned into the cravens of the 1930s According to Pechel a sufferer from Nazi vengeance nothing gave the resistance movement a greater setback than the concessions now made to the dictator when they had been denied to a moderate republican government The contention is plausible for apparently no national group is immune to the charm of

410 THE RISE OF THE

1

power when wielded by its own head The English glory in the days of Elizabeth I and Cromwell considering the atrocities of their reigns little more than [excusable sins] and Napoleon still lies in state in the Invalides Hence the gain Hitler secured for his country in point of inshyternational prestige inevitably won over the hearts of innumerable compatriots at the beginning of his leadership Later when the true nature of his designs had become clear effective open countershyaction was no longer possible On this subshyject our ex-Nazi 693044 says Since 1945 people have more than amply preached to us that even before the war we ought to have chased Hitler to the devil We ought to have seen that he was fomenting war that he was planning crimes This chasing to the devil is a thoroughly excellent idea only no one has revealed the recipe how that is to be done in an authoritarian state The same man reveals the menshytality of his type in further confessions If now someone were to ask me Do you repent for having been a National Socialshyist I must answer No I repent that my faith was misused on behalf of an evil cause I repent every unexpiable [irrepashyrable] crime committed in my and my comshyrades name I repent that the faith and unheard-of self-sacrifice and devotion of German workers was betrayed by Hitlershybut I do not repent having loved my peoshyple above everything that I rendered every sacrifice that I believed and hoped In a French author I read a formula that consoled me It is finer and better ardently to serve a great error than pettily to drudge for a petty truth

The motives that drove the masses into the Nazi ranks have been dispassionately summarized along similar lines by a strong anti-Nazi of the old conservative type It was the promise of work and bread the feeling of solidarity the people at large were yearning for [the writer] Silens conshy

)tends that proved the great drawing card 1 Germans were not craving a world war 1

1-0

NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE 26

had no desire to conquer the world to persecute and exterminate human groups They acclaimed Hitler for apparently asshysuring peace and employment not as the leader of an offensive war of clandestine crimes and atrocities Many initially reshygarded the ranting against Jews as mere campaign claptrap Very few party memshybers read Rosenbergs Mythos des 20 Jahrshyhunderts the official exposition of the Nazi world view Silens even conjectures that though millions bought Mein Kampf few read it through and educated readers did not take seriously what seemed incredible Or nonsensical in it

Robert H Lowie Toward Understanding Germany University ofChicago Press 1954 330-31

~ QUESTION Is the sincerity with which a person serves an evil cause the test of his innocence or guilt If he really thinks at the time that the reshysults will help his country or his comrades is he justified in doing what he believesis wrong Do you think a man has the right to support My country right or wrong (See if you can determine the nationality of the man who origshyinated that phrase)

48 Oskar Rolfe the young defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg asks What about the rest of the world

What about the rest of the world Your Honors Did they not know the intentions of the Third Reich Did they not hear the words of Hitler broadcast all over the world

Did they not read his intentions in Mein Kampf published in every corner of the world

Where is the responsibility of the Soviet Union which in nineteen thirty-nine signed a pact with Hitler and enabled him to make war Are we now to find Russia guilty

Where is the responsibility of the Vatishycan which signed the Concordat with

27 HE RISE OF THE NAZI HORROR WHO

Hitler in nineteen thirty-three giving him his first tremendous prestige Are we now to find the Vatican guilty

Where is the responsibility of the world leader Winston Churchill who said in an open letter to the London Times in nineteen thirty-eight- nineteen thirty-eight Your Honors - Were England to suffer a national disaster I should pray to God to send a man of the strength of mind and will of an Adolf Hitler Are we now to find Winston Churchill guilty

He turned once more to the judges and aimed his next statement straight at them

Where is the responsibility of those American industrialists who helped Hitler to rebuild his arms and profited by that rebuilding Are we to find the American ind ustrialists guilty

He stared at them a moment as though by their silence he had received an answer

No Your Honors Germany alone is not guilty The whole world is as responsishyble for Hitler as is Germany It is an easy thing to condemn one man in the dock It is easy to condemn the German people - to speak of the basic flaw in the German character that allowed Hitler to rise to power-and at the same time to ignore the basic flaw of character that made the Russians sign pacts with him Winston Churchill praise him American industrial shyists profit by him

Ernst Janning says he is guilty If he is Ernst jannings guilt is the worlds guilt No more and no less

Mann Judgment at Nuremberg 117-18

QUESTION If the western democracies and the Soviet Union appeased Hitler and permitted him to come to power are they as guilty as the German people More guilty Are the German defendants less guilty Explain your answer

49 But American Judge Dan Haywood in the novel says the men in the dock are responsible for their acts

411 WAS RESPONSIBLE

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Herr Rolfe in his skillful defense continued Haywood has asserted that there are others who must share the ultishymate responsibility for what happened here in Germany

There is truth in this Then he looked about the Tribunal The real complaining party at the bar

in this courtroom is civilization In all our countries it is still a struggling

and imperfect thing This Tribunal does not believe that the United States-or any other country - has been blameless of the conditions that made the German people vulnerable to the blandishments and tempshytations of the rise of Nazism

He looked back at his papers and then directly in the dock

But this Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their acts Men who sat in black robes injudgment on other men Men who took part in the enshyactment oflaws and decrees the purpose of which was the extermination of human beings

The principle of criminal law of every civilized society has this in common Any person who sways another to commit murder any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of this crime any person who is an accessory to this crime is guilty

[armings record and his fate illumishynate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial If he and the other defendants were all degraded pershyverts-if all the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacsshythese events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis ordinary men - even able and extrashyordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination

Mann judgment at Nuremberg 129-30

THE RISE OF THE

e QUESTION What is Haywoods main point Do you agree Explain

50 A German writer asks Can we restore honor to the German name

A nation is made up of individuals whose ideas-right or wrong-determine their actions their decisions and their common life and for this reason a nation too can look back at its history and learn from it As Germans we should not find it too difficult to understand the meaning of the fourteen years of the Weimar Republic and the twelve years of the Hitler regime

The ancient Greeks already knew and taught that no state can remain free withshyout free citizens If the citizens of a com-middot monwealth are not prepared to make sacshyrifices for their liberty to take matters into their own hands and participate in public affairs they deliver themselves into the hands of a tyrant They do not deserve anything but tyrannical rule A class which fails to make sacrifices for political affairs may not make demands on political life It renounces its will to rule and must therefore be ruled These words of a Gershyman liberal about the educated class are valid for people everywhere

We have had the sad experience that the principle the law is the law does not suffice if the laws are being abused to cover up for crimes and to wrap injustices in a tissue of legality Our actions must once again be guided by that idea which is the basis of a just life no man must be used as a means to an end

These are the questions which should touch the younger generation most deeply What position could and should we have among the nations Can we restore honor to the German name Can we shape a new and better future Or shall we be burdened with the crimes of the Hitler regime for generations to come

NAZI HORROR WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE 28 412