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The question of how much the average German knew about the Holocast and to what extent they were complicit in it is a much debated topic. It is one that few Germans have wanted to discuss. An American historian, Daniel Goldhagen has raised the issue and maintains that there was wide knowledge and that a kind of willing comoplicity. His books speaking engagements have attracted considerable interest, but many Germans are deeply resentful at him for raising the issue. There are some obvious facts. Most of the actual killing was done in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other Eastern Euroopean countries. In Poland where the death camps were located, most of the killing was done behind barbed wire where the SS carried out the murders without public scrutiny. Many of the Jews that arrived had no idea as to the fate that awaited them. Others while they did not know the details had few illusions about the NAZIs. NAZI controlled media in Germany never published accounts of the killings. Even the Allied propaganda did not provide details on the Holocaust and what claims were mentioned were dismissed by many Germans as war propaganda. (The Allies, especially the British, had during World War I fabricated many lurid accounts of German attrocities, specially in Belgium.) While all this is true. There are other clear facts suggesting that many Germans knew. Public statements by Hitler, Goebbels, and other NAZIs while not specific made it very clear as to the regimes plans for the Jews. The NAZI Stromtroopers (SA) and Hitler Youth had songs and chants with the words, "Death to the Jews". The NAZI pogrom of Kristallnacht was conducted in Germany in the full view of the German people. While the actual number of deaths were minimal compared to the later killings, there were killings and vicius beatings carried out in publiv view. After the War began, not only the SS but Wehrmacht units were involved in mass roundups and killings of Jews. Many must have talked about their experiences in the East. Jews were used as slave labor by large numbers of German companies and employees there would have been exposed to what was happening. The German railway system organized thetransport of large numbers of Jews east. Many would have know about where they were being transported and the fate that awaited them. The subject is difficult to reserach, because interviews with Germans living at the time cannot be taken at face value. Many Germans benefitted by the NAZI anti-Jewing campaign in the 1930s. Many got jobs that the Jews were dismissed from. Many got homes, shops, and other property that was stollen from the Jews. Many participated in small ways such as avoiding Jewish shops and ignoring or reporting on Jewish neighbors. School children ostraicized or even physically asaulted their Jewish school mates. These are painful memories that few Germans want to admit and most want to forget.
The question of how much the average German knew about the Holocast and to what extent they were complicit in it is a much debated topic. It is one that few Germans have wanted to discuss. An American historian, Daniel Goldhagen has raised the issue and maintains that there was wide knowledge and that a kind of willing comoplicity. His books speaking engagements have attracted considerable interest, but many Germans are deeply resentful at him for raising the issue.
There are some obvious facts. Most of the actual killing was done in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other Eastern Euroopean countries. In Poland where the death camps were located, most of the killing was done behind barbed wire where the SS carried out the murders without public scrutiny. Many of the Jews that arrived had no idea as to the fate that awaited them. Others while they did not know the details had few illusions about the NAZIs. NAZI controlled media in Germany never published accounts of the killings. Even the Allied propaganda did not provide details on the Holocaust and what claims were mentioned were dismissed by many Germans as war propaganda. (The Allies, especially the British, had during World War I fabricated many lurid accounts of German attrocities, specially in Belgium.)
The poplar media has perpetuated the idea that the Holocaust was conducted by an all pervasive Gestapo and carried oyr by mosters. This is in part because it makes for dramatic portrayals in the media. As much as many Germans object to Hollywood portrayals of Germands in World War II, the depiction of the Holocaust as the work of NAZI-mad men and a Gestapo which terrorized Germans into complying. Most people have difficulty comprehending the Holocaust. It seems that the ordinary German citizen could have known about, let alone participated in something so evil. It makes one question the very nature of humanity. Thus the convenient Hollywood image that good Germans were terrorized by the all pervasive Gestapo is a comforting illusion.
Gestap is a term used to describe the NAZI secret police. The actual organizaion is complicated and varied over time. Both Göring and Himmler as well as well as Heydrich and other NAZI luminaries played major roles in the development and administration of the Gestapo. The Gestap was created by the NAZIs within in weks of seizing power. The Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo--Secret State Police) was created by Hermann Göring. When Hitler was made Chancellor in January 1933, it was part of a coalition government. Hitler insisted that the NAZIs be given the Interior Ministry. (In America Interior many national parts and forrests. In other countries Interior normally means the police, which of course is why Hitler insisted on it.) Göring, was made the Prussian minister of the interior. (Prussia was the most important German state.) Göring immediately reorganized the police by separating the espionage and political units of the Prussian police and staffed these units with committed NAZIs. Göring took command of this new police unit on April 26, 1933. While this was underway, Heinrich Himmler was reshaping the Party small Schutzstaffel (SS-Protective Echelon) unit from Hitler's personal body gurd to a powerful state security body. Himmler in April 1936 he was given command of the Gestapo which was then integrated within the SS structure. Himmler later in 1936 merged the Gestapo with the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo--Criminal Police). This newly integrated unit was named the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo--for Secret Police). The former name of Gestapo, however, is generally used rather than Sipo. With the onset of World War II in 1939 the Sipo or Gestapo was again reorganized. The Sipo was incorporated into the intelligence branch of the Wehrmacht, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD--Security Service). Sipo became the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RHSA--Reich Security Central Office) of the SD. Himmler put his trusted deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, in charge of the RHSA or Gestapo. These constant organizational changes mean that the responsibilities and priorities of the Gestapo varied over time and overlapped with other NAZI security units. In the months leading up to the invsion of Poland, the RHSA formed the notorious Einsatzgruppen (Task Force) which carried out mass killings of Jews in Poland and then on a larger scale in the Soviet Union after the 1941 invasion. The Gestapo operated without any legal restrictions. They were authorized to make arrests without any legal restraints. They also were authorized to use torture and even execute those arrested without trial. Many arrested by the Gestapo simply disappeared in the concentaion camps. There were trials, but compliant NAZI judges guarnted that defendants would be convicted.
As much as many Germans, often for good reason object to World War II depictions of Germans, it is for many actually preferable to the more accuate explanation of the Holocaust. That is that the Holocaust was carried out by very ordinary Germans and assisted the Gestapo for the most part voluntrily. Despite the reputation of the Gestapo, NAZI Germany was not run as an oppressive concentration camp. For those who were not Jewish or involved in anti-NAZI activities, which were the vast majority of Germans, ther was an atmosphere that conditions were improving under the NAZIs. Unemployment fell because of the expansion of military production and the Reich Labor Service with projects such as the construction of the Autobans. This was during the Depression when there were very high levels of unemploymnt in America, Brirain, France, and other countries. Not only did Germans have jobs, but the NAZIs put an end to street fighting and violence which had disturbed many Germans during the later years of the Weimar Republic. They accomplished this realtively easily, primarily because the NAZI SA thugs were the major perpretator of the disorders. The other group involved in the disorders, the Communists, were quickly rounded up mand arrested. Most Germans strongly supported law and order and thus approved of these actions.
NAZI persecution of the Jews was of course no secret, but widely publicized. Extra-legal action against the Jews not publicized. In addition, the NAZIs open publicized often brutal legal axctioins taken against a wide range of individuals violating laws, including slackers, profiteers, political opponents, and many others. The press gave special coverage to crimes when a Jew could be identified. After the Nuremberg Laws were proclaimed in 1935, there were many legal action that the Gestpo could take against virtually any German Jew. It was common knowledge in Germany that indivuals arressted were brutlly treated in the concentration camps, although the full details were not publicized. One historian studying the NAZI press in the 1930s reports numerous stories cincerning the instituionalized brutality to which those who were arressted were subjected. [Gellately] There were ome Germans who were horrified at the perversion of the legal system. But Germans rather than being terrorized into accepting this, appear to have on the whole supported it. According to one historian, "On ballance, repression and persecution won far more support for the dictatorship than they lost." [Gellately]
There are other facts suggesting that many Germans knew. Public statements by Hitler, Goebbels, and other NAZIs while not specific made it very clear as to the regimes plans for the Jews. The NAZI Stromtroopers (SA) and Hitler Youth had songs and chants with the words, "Death to the Jews". The NAZI pogrom of Kristallnacht was conducted in Germany in the full view of the German people. While the actual number of deaths were minimal compared to the later killings, there were killings and vicius beatings carried out in publiv view. After the War began, not only the SS but Wehrmacht units were involved in mass roundups and killings of Jews. Many must have talked about their experiences in the East. Jews were used as slave labor by large numbers of German companies and employees there would have been exposed to what was happening. The German railway system organized the transport of large numbers of Jews east. Many would have know about where they were being transported and the fate that awaited them.
The subject is difficult to reserach, because interviews with Germans living at the time cannot be taken at face value. Many Germans benefitted by the NAZI anti-Jewing campaign in the 1930s. Many got jobs that the Jews were dismissed from. Many got homes, shops, and other property that was stollen from the Jews. Many participated in small ways such as avoiding Jewish shoops and ignoring or reporting on Jewish neighbors. School children ostraicized or even physically asaulted their Jewish school mates. These are painful memories that few Germans want to admit and most want to forget.
A European reder writes, "It is so easy to accuse and condemn a country or people for
their misdeeds. I believe that there is no country in the world that has a clean record as far as human rights are concerned. We all know the history of slavery and the treatment of the Indians in the United States, the plight of the natives in India under British rule, the same of the Indonesians under Dutch colonialism, not to speak of the atrocities the French committed in Algeria, the Italians in Abyssinia, the Belgians in Congo, the Australians in theirown country (they nearly wiped out the aborigines), etc. History is full of it.
In many ways the world has advanced. A war between European nations is unthinkable now.
We still have to fight for human rights however. I think that it is about time that we re-evaluate a country like Germany. We are now in the 2000s and Germany is a (as you also mention) prosperous, democratic country. The fast majority of the population was born after the War and played no role in what the NAZIs did. Still there are many people who want to concentrate on those horrible 12 years of Hitler's Third Reich that was supposed to last a
thousand years, a shamefull page in Germany's history book indeed. But Germany also has contributed immensely in science, the arts (music!) and education, long before Hitler came to power. The Aftermath of the War envolved terrible suffering in Germany. The country managed to absorb and integrate 12 million ethnic German "Flüchtlinge" (refugees) expelled from other coyntries after the War in a time when the whole country was destroyed. The American public doesn't know about that. People who still had a roof over their head were forced to share it with others who had nothing. It happened and it worked. Denazification was necessary, but I always have been bothered by the hypocricy of the American government in the case of the rocket scientists they captured and brought to the U.S. in order to help develop the American space program. Nearly all of them were members of the NAZI party, out of conviction or not, but America could use them. When the Russians started with their sputnik the German scientists were immediately made American citizens and put to work. Without them the U.S. could not have achieved men on the moon so soon."
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know (Ed. Arnold Kramer. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1993).
Gellately, Robert. Backing Hitler: Consent and Coersion in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2003), 380p.
Goldhagen, Daniel
Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf.
Nuremberg Tribunal. "Individual Responsibility of Defendants: Artur Seyss-Inquart," Nazi Conspiracy and Aggresion Vol. II. USGPO, Washington, 1946, pp.956-1004.
Padfield, Peter. Himmler: Reichsführer-SS (Henry Holt: New York, 1991), 656p.
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