German or Nazis?

[mikewint]

objectives both immoral and illegal by any normal standards.

A very difficult question.

Steve

Not really, NORMAL STANDARDS, do they apply. Chris said it best. You can sit in your home today 2015 and ask "How could they do that?" Now, I do not know you at all but I do know that men/women in groups can and do things that alone they would never do and in a war you(pl) are a group and "they" are not. Mobs have little or no morality and what little they do have applies to their group not the non-human foe" As a soldier you are taught to obey orders: "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." Obviously you can refuse an order and state that it is "illegal" but that is YOUR opinion and may or may not, later on, be seen in that light. That momentary decision changes the entire course of your life. Do you take the chance? For these "family men" you mention that decision would also destroy their family.
As a young college student I protested the Vietnam war. I was totally against war and killing. "You can draft me but you cant make me kill" I said and believed.
As a soldier I saw civilian women and children kill my friends. Shoeshine boys 7yo or so whose box is rigged with C4. Women with babies in arm laying on C4.
Then it's your turn, a woman/child/both come towards you, in my best Vietnamese: "ZOONG LYE! DI DI MAOW" (stop go away fast) and they don't. What do you do?
Several troop transports were blown up by mines buried in the roadway. We set-up an ambush in the bushes and watched. On the night of the second day, 3 figures crept up the road, stopped and began to dig and bury something in the road. We opened up and fired until all three stopped moving. At first light we moved out. Laying there was a woman and her 2 young daughters and a bag of Chinese land mines. We had known all three. They had a small stand just outside the base where they sold Cokes. Just about everyone stopped there and most paid extra for the small Cokes trying to help her out.
I do not excuse anything the Nazis did but most likely "There but for the Grace of God go I"

 

[stona]

The point is it would not have destroyed their families. This is a myth. Goldenhagen argues that the Germans and German culture were infected with a particularly rabid antisemitism which he calls 'eliminationist antisemitism'. I don't buy that, I think it was not unique to the Germans but prevalent in European culture generally. It was exploited by the Nazis to the point where those middle aged policemen considered it at least acceptable, even laudable, to murder old Jewish men in their beds along with their women and children.
This is not equivalent to the sort of tragic accident you describe above. The men of those police battalions INTENTIONALLY murdered people who posed no military threat to them or their nation on ideological grounds. There was no mistaken identity, no accident of war. These were not what we now euphemistically describe as 'collateral damage', these were targeted victims of a genocidal regime.
There are rules of war. I'm certainly not stupid enough to believe that these are rigorously observed in the heat of battle but again, this is not what we are talking about. Aberrations (I mentioned Amritsar and My Lai) occur but neither the Americans nor the British were engaged in an intentional, racially motivated, war of annihilation against the Indian or Vietnamese people respectively.

Steve

 

[mikewint]

I was going a bit overboard with the term "destroy" but not by much: Let's assume Curt an Ordnungspolizei refuses a order to shoot, as you say "old Jewish men in their beds along with their women and children". The consequences to Curt, at the very best might be dismissal and public disgrace. In the culture of the time and place he becomes a pariah. If he has a job, it is gone; if he is renting a home, it is gone; friends are gone, and all officialdom would turn against him. He and his family would loose everything. Is that "destroyed"? Without a job, no money, no money, no food, clothes, shelter, ect for the whole family.
Reverse all of that. In spite of all he believes he pulls the trigger. Again in the culture of that time and place he becomes a hero, fame and fortune are his and his family prospers as never before. In what direction will he head?
Antisemitism has occurred in every country and just about every time period running the gamut from expulsion, forced conversion, and execution
Consider Jews in Russia pre WWII. It is difficult to assess the scope of the pogroms during the civil war years and the number of victims they claimed. Partial data are available for 530 communities in which 887 major pogroms and 349 minor pogroms occurred; there were 60,000 dead and several times that number of wounded (according to S. Dubnow).
Moral compasses are fickle things very subject to outside feedback. The "Elvis Presley" syndrome: No matter what he did and no matter how outrageous his surrounding entourage assured him it was normal and natural. Or the similar "Michael Jackson" syndrome.
You go to War for your country but you fight for your friends. The "White Crow" is quickly eliminated.
General Westmoreland's term, by the way, was a war of Attrition ruled by "body count" (though I never heard that term until I got back). NVA/VC losses published by Hanoi in 1996 were 1,100,000 KIA and 600,000 WIA with 2,000,000 civilians killed.

 

[GregP]

Not everyone who was a Nazi part member was a real Nazi. There was a time when you either joined or your family didn't get food. So you had the coice of joining or starving.

I've posted it in here before, but I had a very good friend whose wife was a 16 -year old German plane spotter when the war ended. Her job was one of two: 1) to sit in a tower and look for aricraft. If she saw one, she called in the position, estimatd altitude, estimated cousre and speed, and her best guess on the type; and 2) to cook for a military kitchen when she wasn't spotting.

If she had not joined the party when it was "requested," her family would not have gotten any food.

One of her guards at the time, just after the war, verified that claim himself and eventually wound up as her husband. She said her worst disobediance of orders was to leave the tower when it looked like it was going to get attacked. She went to the top of a nearby hill and continued spotting. The tower was bombed, so she was proven correct that it would be attacked. She was active for about 2 months before the war ended and was essentially a baby when Hitler was writing Mein Kampf.

Personally, I had and HAVE no trouble with her service s a cook or a plane spotter. Neither one was really a combat job. She has since passed on, but it gave me some pause for thought about the label "Nazi." When she was recruited at age 16, there was no alternative "political party" to follow and no possibility of escaping to anywhere. She was stuck where she was born and brought up, and was a product of whatever that resulted in.

No excuses, just stuck in a situation that was impossible to change at an age where taking a political stand against the way things were would bring dire consequence.

Anybody think they would have rebelled against cooking or plane spotting in lieu of a possible death sentence? It ain't exactly the same as being an SS Prison Guard.

 

[GrauGeist]

There is also a "herd mentality" that people assume in many cases, which is hard to understand.

For example, currenty, there is an effort to remove the Confederate battle flag from a state Capitol building. It has since snowballed into a "feel food" witch hunt to ban the battle flag from stores, sporting events and even an old TV show "Dukes of Hazzard" which had the Confederate battle flag painted on the roof of the Dodge Charger.

Now, if that weren't bad enough, people are now calling for the removal of Confederate Monuments, changing the names of places, townships or military bases with Confederate leader's names and most recently, the removal of a Confederate war dead cemetary.

When some of these supporters were asked why they felt the need to have the monuments removed, they simply said they were showing support for the effort, but personally didn't care.

This is the herd mentality...a few people start the ball rolling and all the dumbasses jump on the bandwagon.

 

[stona]

The consequences for 'Kurt' as demonstrated by the research carried out into Reserve Battalion 101 of the Ordnungspolizei (not just by Goldenhagen with whose conclusions I largely disagree incidentally) would have been a transfer to other duties. That was it. Several men did refuse to directly take part in the massacres. They were always found another detail, like the SS officer I mentioned earlier who commanded the unit charged with securing the perimeter whilst the murders were carried out by his unit.

I do agree with Graugeist about a herd mentality, or rather peer pressure. Individuals can justify what they know to be an immoral or illegal act to themselves on the grounds that everyone else is doing it. It needs strong character and conviction to resist the pressure to join in with everyone else and this is even more the case in military or para-military organisations. The fact is that there were men who were able to do so.

Steve

 

[gjs238]

Please read about the Peterloo massacre and Bloody Sunday, there were actually two bloody Sudays both involving Troops opening fire on civilians one in Derry NI 1972 in my lifetime and the other in Liverpool in 1911.

Quite a few on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday

- Marburg's Bloody Sunday (1919), a massacre of civilians of German ethnic origin in Maribor during the protest at the central city square

- Altona Bloody Sunday (1932), a bloody confrontation among the Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS), the police, and Communist Party (KPD) supporters in Altona, Hamburg

- Bloody Sunday (1939), (Bromberg Bloody Sunday), a massacre of civilians of German ethnic origin in Bydgoszcz, Poland, at the onset of World War II

 

[mikewint]

There is also a "herd mentality" that people assume in many cases, which is hard to understand.

For example, currenty, there is an effort to remove the Confederate battle flag from a state Capitol building. It has since snowballed into a "feel food" witch hunt to ban the battle flag from stores, sporting events and even an old TV show "Dukes of Hazzard" which had the Confederate battle flag painted on the roof of the Dodge Charger.

Now, if that weren't bad enough, people are now calling for the removal of Confederate Monuments, changing the names of places, townships or military bases with Confederate leader's names and most recently, the removal of a Confederate war dead cemetary

This is the herd mentality...a few people start the ball rolling and all the dumbasses jump on the bandwagon.

Triple BINGO Dave, exactly and precisely and then no it is not hard at all.
It is quite easy to see how having a herd instinct would cause an individual to feel more comfortable with many other herd member around it to protect it. The reason they would naturally be suspicious of anyone who didn't fit in or seemed different is fairly obvious. The herd member does not necessarily need to know the other herd members individually for any animal which looked or acted differently could well be a predator and thus a threat. It would follow that the herd instinct must provide two reciprocal behaviors. These are the individuals need to fit in to act like its fellow herd members, and the herds need to drive out anyone who seems different and thus possibly dangerous. One can see where change that does not involve whole herd would be very uncomfortable. The noise and bustle of the herd is very comforting to the herd members. The individual feels distinct discomfort any time it is separated from the herd.
It was the philosopher Hannah Arendt who argued that the atrocities of the Holocaust were not caused by psychopaths but by ordinary people placed under extraordinary pressure to conform. In actual fact, the pressure need not be extraordinary at all. In fact, it may not be experienced as pressure, but as relief. We return once again to the above, human beings are herd animals. We survive only in highly coordinated groups. Individually, we are designed to pick up social cues, coordinate and align our behavior with those around us. Recent research has shown that social disapproval provokes the brain's danger circuits. Conformity soothes.
Strangely enough, nonconformity is in itself a group phenomenon. Psychological research from Asch's to Milgram's has shown time and again that, quite ironically, the presence of allies is the best predictor of nonconformist behavior. Our individual courage is a manifestation of group convictions and affiliations. The visible courageous individual is but the tip of a social iceberg. When you go against the group, you do it not on your own, but in the name--and with the backing--of another group.
I once attended an musical event where some 2500 people had gathered. A percussion group were performing and they wanted the crowd to participate. Their leader stood and gave orders—clap, shout, stand, pat your knees—and 2500 men and women obeyed his commands. I myself declined to take part, but the elderly woman beside me, with shining eyes, followed every movement as though she had been waiting eighty years for instructions. She would have stood on her head if they asked.

 

[pbehn]

Quite a few on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday

- Marburg's Bloody Sunday (1919), a massacre of civilians of German ethnic origin in Maribor during the protest at the central city square

- Altona Bloody Sunday (1932), a bloody confrontation among the Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS), the police, and Communist Party (KPD) supporters in Altona, Hamburg

- Bloody Sunday (1939), (Bromberg Bloody Sunday), a massacre of civilians of German ethnic origin in Bydgoszcz, Poland, at the onset of World War II

Thanks, I was referring to the "impossibility" that troops would ever obey and order and commit a crime unless they were of themselves possessed by the evil of their commanders.

 

[pbehn]

This is the herd mentality...a few people start the ball rolling and all the dumbasses jump on the bandwagon.

They dont have to be "dumb asses" recent examples of "herding":-

Climate change scientists ignoring any data that doesnt show that burning of fossil fuels is heating the planet. despite being "scientists" they are paid for research and their research generally reflects what their clients want.
The last UK election all pollsters predicted a hung parliament because the polling companies that got different (and correct) results ignored them so they didnt appear foolish.
The whole of western liberal politicians declaring Islam is a religion of peace but offering no evidence apart from 99% of Muslims do not wear explosive vests. Since I worked in Saudi Arabia in 1985 the region has been at war, in fact it has been at war since Mohammed died and the conflict is the same Shia against Sunni. No mainstream politician on either side of the pond will say anything to contradict this obvious falsehood.
The CERN reactor in Switzerland after some deliberation "proved" the existence of the higgs bosun particle and as a result of that a huge amount of money will be spent seeking to prove the existence of other "particles" Few people understand the theory fewer still understand the statistical proof but no one will ever declare this is complete BS which has no relevance in a continent drowning in debt.

 

[pbehn]

It was the philosopher Hannah Arendt who argued that the atrocities of the Holocaust were not caused by psychopaths but by ordinary people placed under extraordinary pressure to conform. In actual fact, the pressure need not be extraordinary at all. In fact, it may not be experienced as pressure, but as relief. We return once again to the above, human beings are herd animals.

The holocaust was ordered by a regime that had ideas but didnt want to do the dirty work. Goebbels was keen to see an execution until he was spattered with the brains of a victim. The Nazis recognised from the early days of their final solution that it was damaging to the people involved no matter how enthusiastic they were at the start, shooting people in the back of the head or gassing in lorries drove them insane. The camps and gas chambers mechanised slaughter and also took German people, apart from a comparative few genuine psychos, out of the process. The running of the camps was generally handed over to people whos interest was to survive a little bit longer.

 

[GrauGeist]

They dont have to be "dumb asses" recent examples of "herding":-

Climate change scientists ignoring any data that doesnt show that burning of fossil fuels is heating the planet. despite being "scientists" they are paid for research and their research generally reflects what their clients want.
The last UK election all pollsters predicted a hung parliament because the polling companies that got different (and correct) results ignored them so they didnt appear foolish.
The whole of western liberal politicians declaring Islam is a religion of peace but offering no evidence apart from 99% of Muslims do not wear explosive vests. Since I worked in Saudi Arabia in 1985 the region has been at war, in fact it has been at war since Mohammed died and the conflict is the same Shia against Sunni. No mainstream politician on either side of the pond will say anything to contradict this obvious falsehood.
The CERN reactor in Switzerland after some deliberation "proved" the existence of the higgs bosun particle and as a result of that a huge amount of money will be spent seeking to prove the existence of other "particles" Few people understand the theory fewer still understand the statistical proof but no one will ever declare this is complete BS which has no relevance in a continent drowning in debt.

Well, in fact, you get a core of people perpetuating a movement and it will attract the masses. Individually, the people are most likely of average intelligence but once they fall into the stream, all common sense evaporates - leaving a dumbass behind. You can substitute "global warming"...err..."climate change" with "chemtrails", "Illuminati", "global zionist control" or "the confederate flag is the root of all racism" and you will find a common factor in the fact that people are willing to accept these "theories" or "movements" because the person next to them is. They don't have to understand what's going on, but if they think that everyone else is doing it, they feel compelled to jump aboard.

This is nothing new. I am sure that originally, a Roman Citizen was repulsed at the idea of seeing a wild animal rip a living human being to death. But once you fill an arena with tens of thousands of people, the spectacle takes on a different light. Once this brutal spectacle becomes commonplace, the victim(s) becomes a detached object.

We can open the history books and look throughout the ages and see examples from just about any time period and perhaps any continent. We had the Iquisitions, the Salem Witch trials, the French revolution, Mao's Cultural revolution and on and on.

 

[tyrodtom]

Not everyone who was a Nazi part member was a real Nazi. There was a time when you either joined or your family didn't get food. So you had the coice of joining or starving.

I've posted it in here before, but I had a very good friend whose wife was a 16 -year old German plane spotter when the war ended. Her job was one of two: 1) to sit in a tower and look for aricraft. If she saw one, she called in the position, estimatd altitude, estimated cousre and speed, and her best guess on the type; and 2) to cook for a military kitchen when she wasn't spotting.

If she had not joined the party when it was "requested," her family would not have gotten any food.

One of her guards at the time, just after the war, verified that claim himself and eventually wound up as her husband. She said her worst disobediance of orders was to leave the tower when it looked like it was going to get attacked. She went to the top of a nearby hill and continued spotting. The tower was bombed, so she was proven correct that it would be attacked. She was active for about 2 months before the war ended and was essentially a baby when Hitler was writing Mein Kampf.

Personally, I had and HAVE no trouble with her service s a cook or a plane spotter. Neither one was really a combat job. She has since passed on, but it gave me some pause for thought about the label "Nazi." When she was recruited at age 16, there was no alternative "political party" to follow and no possibility of escaping to anywhere. She was stuck where she was born and brought up, and was a product of whatever that resulted in.

No excuses, just stuck in a situation that was impossible to change at an age where taking a political stand against the way things were would bring dire consequence.

Anybody think they would have rebelled against cooking or plane spotting in lieu of a possible death sentence? It ain't exactly the same as being an SS Prison Guard.

When you posted this before I pointed out contradicting facts to what you state, but you choose to ignore them, so i'll state them again.

The Nazi party , at it's peak,1944 had 8.5 million members. Germany's population in 1940, was over 80 million, that's including Austria, Memeland, and the Sudetenland territories.

If we consider that about half that population was adults, 40 million adults and only 8.5 million were Nazis ???

If what you're saying was true ( Join the Nazi party or starve) 4 out of 5 German adults made the conscious decision to starve instead of joining the Nazi party.

I don't think so.

 

[gjs238]

.

 

[mikewint]

Tyrotom - consider this experiment:
Professor Krause, with PhD student John Dyer, conducted a series of experiments where groups of people were asked to walk randomly around a large hall. Within the group, a select few received more detailed information about where to walk. Participants were not allowed to communicate with one another but had to stay within arms length of another person.
The findings show that in all cases, the 'informed individuals' were followed by others in the crowd, forming a self-organizing, snake-like structure.
"We've all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd," says Professor Krause. "But what's interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren't allowed to talk or gesture to one another. In most cases the participants didn't realize they were being led by others."
Other experiments in the study used groups of different sizes, with different ratios of 'informed individuals'. The research findings show that as the number of people in a crowd increases, the number of informed individuals decreases. In large crowds of 200 or more, five per cent of the group is enough to influence the direction in which it travels.
Asch's work showed that people are reluctant to break with group norm even if the group is small, ad hoc, and made of complete strangers. But normative cues tend to be even more potent when they come from people whose friendship, love, and esteem we value. Hitler's cult of personality

 

[tyrodtom]

The church that my family attended while I was a child sponsored two German families after WW2 to come to America.
4 adults and 5 children, Kurtz and Heseltine . Both men had fought in the Army, both wounded, one severe enough to be sent home mid war.

They often talked about their 3rd Reich experiences. Interesting talks, even to me as a young kid.

They were exposed to all the hazards, and temptations of any other German, but there was not one x party member among them.

 

[stona]

Yet even in the most grim situations in the toughest camps there were people who refused to partake directly in the massacres and murders. Nicholas Wachsmann gives examples in his history of the Nazi concentration camps. Despite the official and unofficial incentives to work in the camps and undertake the unpleasant work (extra rations, particularly alcohol and a share in the booty of the rampant corruption) some asked to be transferred to the front. An SS man asking to go to the eastern front, where he would surely have gone, must have known what the consequences would be. Others were gradually talked around.
Some never did take part directly in the murders and nobody was ever forced to do so under pain of any serious consequence like death or imprisonment.

A young SS physician, Dr.Hans Delmotte, suffered a breakdown after witnessing his first selection at Auschwitz. He appeared paralysed and had to be escorted to his quarters where he got drunk and demanded to be transferred to the front saying that he could not participate in mass slaughter. He was not transferred to the front. Under a bizarre sort of mentoring program he was placed under the wing of his experienced colleague, Dr Mengele, who gradually persuaded him of the necessity of the exterminations. The SS also arranged for his wife to travel to be with him. Within weeks he was carrying out selections himself, even earning commendations from his superiors. He was not sent to the front, he was not sent to a camp, he certainly wasn't shot.

Steve

 

[yulzari]

The church that my family attended while I was a child sponsored two German families after WW2 to come to America.
4 adults and 5 children, Kurtz and Heseltine . Both men had fought in the Army, both wounded, one severe enough to be sent home mid war.

They often talked about their 3rd Reich experiences. Interesting talks, even to me as a young kid.

They were exposed to all the hazards, and temptations of any other German, but there was not one x party member among them.

I cannot argue with what you found. However, they had experienced growing up in a society where you are careful in what you say. Modern German employers will recognise this in staff who grew up in DDR.

I am of an age where I met many ex german soldiers. Curiously all bar one only fought on the Eastern Front. The exception had been taken as a prisoner by my father. I mentioned this to a Russian who had served in the DDR. He thought that I must have been mistaken as all the ex german soldiers he had met only fought on the Western Front.

My father, after fighting for 5 years, ended up in Italy fighting alongside, amongst others, the Polish Army. They had a very pragmatic view. If you were a German taken prisoner and could speak some Polish and claim to be Polish you mysteriously ceased to be a PoW but instantly became a Polish soldier. Thus Polish speaking german soldiers became articles of trade who could be 'sold' to the Polish Army in exchange for goods of unspoken origin.

 

[pbehn]

My father, after fighting for 5 years, ended up in Italy fighting alongside, amongst others, the Polish Army. They had a very pragmatic view. If you were a German taken prisoner and could speak some Polish and claim to be Polish you mysteriously ceased to be a PoW but instantly became a Polish soldier. Thus Polish speaking german soldiers became articles of trade who could be 'sold' to the Polish Army in exchange for goods of unspoken origin.

I worked for years at a German company which moved to West Germany as soon as the construction of the wall started. The company has always been German but the place it was founded is now in Poland. Such things happen when politics moves borders.

 

[tyrodtom]

These experiences are from 50 years ago, and memories can fade.

But I do remember both men had been drafted into the Wehrmacht, both were enlisted men, one became a NCO, and one fought on both fronts.

My congregation was a small one, only about 25 families. But over half of the male family heads were WW2 vets.

Most of the talks were about civilian life leading up to the war, and civilian life during the war, not the usual blood and guts war stories.

My impressions were these people spent years keeping their mouths shut, keeping their thoughts to themselves, even around their own young children. People were sent to the camps just for telling the wrong jokes .

But in all their talks, nobody mentioned they had to join the party to keep from starving, and the number of party members verses total population just doesn't support that excuse. Though everyone would have been aware that party members got preferential treatment when anything was in short supply.

So my impression is that many Germans joined the Nazi party because they agreed with it's goals completely. But some joined because they thought it would make their life easier.