(The following is an example of how men like you and me, loving family fathers, are turned into „beasts“. I took most of it from http://www.facing.org who mainly used "One Day in Jozefow: Initiation to Mass Murder" in The Path To Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Christopher Browning‘s excellent study „Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Harper Collins, New York, 1992.) Historian Christopher Browning studied interrogations made in the 1960s and early 1970s of 210 men in Reserve Police Battalion 101. The battalion was originally formed from the German equivalent of city policemen and county sheriffs. Battalion 101 was assigned to the district of Lublin in Poland. Most of the soldiers in Battalion 101 came from working and lower-middle-class neighborhoods in Hamburg, Germany. They were older than the men who fought in the front lines. The average age was thirty-nine with over half between thirty-seven and forty-two. Most were not well-educated. Very few were Nazis and none was openly antisemitic. Major Wilhelm Trapp, a 53-year-old career police officer who rose through the ranks, headed the battalion. Although he became a NSDAP-member in 1932, he was not a member of the SS, although his two captains were. The unit's first killing mission took place on July 13, 1942 at the village of Jozefowl. This morning, Major Trapp gave a short speech. With choking voice and tears in his eyes, he visibly fought to control himself as he informed his men that they had received orders to perform a very unpleasant task. These orders were not to his liking, but they came from above. It might perhaps make their task easier, he told the men, if they remembered that in Germany bombs were falling on the women and children. Trapp then explained to the men that the Jews in Jozefow would have to be rounded up, whereupon the young males were to be selected out for labor and the others shot. Trapp then made an extraordinary offer to his battalion: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out. Trapp paused, and after some moments, one man stepped forward. The captain of 3rd company, enraged that one of his men had broken ranks, began to berate the man. The major told the captain to hold his tongue. Then ten or twelve other men stepped forward as well. They turned in their rifles and were told to await a further assignment from the major. In the post-war trail, most simply denied that they had any choice. Faced with the testimony of others, they did not contest that Trapp had made the offer but repeatedly claimed that they had not heard that part of his speech or could not remember it. A few who admitted that they had been given the choice and yet failed to opt out were quite blunt. One said that he had not wanted to be considered a coward by his comrades. Another--more aware of what truly required courage--said quite simply: "I was cowardly." As one man admitted, it was not until years later that he began to consider that what he had done had not been right. He had not given it a thought at the time. The men who did not take part were more specific about their motives. Some attributed their refusal to their age or the fact that they were not "career men." Only one mentioned ties to Jews as a reason for not participating. Insidiously, most of those who did not shoot only reaffirmed the 'macho' values of the majority, according to which it was a positive quality to be 'tough' enough to kill unarmed, non combatant men, women and children, and tried to not to rupture the bonds of comradeship that constituted their social world. Trapp then summoned the company commanders and gave them their respective assignments. Two platoons of 3rd company were to surround the village; the men were explicitly ordered to shoot anyone trying to escape. Those too sick or frail to walk to the market place, as well as infants and anyone offering resistance or attempting to hide, were to be shot on the spot. Thereafter, a few men of 1st company were to accompany the work Jews selected at the market place, while the rest were to proceed to the forest to form the firing squads. The Jews were to be loaded onto battalion trucks by 2nd company and shuttled from the market place to the forest. Having given the company commanders their respective assignments, Trapp spent the rest of the day in town. Witnesses who saw him at various times during the day described him as bitterly complaining about the orders he had been given and "weeping like a child." He nevertheless affirmed that "orders were orders" and had to be carried out. Trapp's driver remembers him saying later, "If this Jewish business is ever avenged on earth, then have mercy on us Germans." Even twenty-five years later they could not hide the horror of endlessly shooting Jews at point-blank range. „I made the effort, and it was possible for me, to shoot only children. It so happened that the mothers led the children by the hand. My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her, because I reasoned with myself that after all without its mother the child could not live any longer. It was supposed to be, so to speak, soothing to my conscience to release children unable to live without their mothers.“ (Testimony of Alfred B) As the killing continued, several more soldiers asked to be relieved of their duties. Some officers reassigned anyone who asked, while others pressed their men to continue despite reservations. As the day continued, a number of soldiers broke down. Yet the majority continued to the end. Was the incident at Jozefow typical? Certainly not. Browning knows of no other case in which a commander so openly invited and sanctioned the nonparticipation of his men in a killing action. But in the end the important fact is not that the experience of Reserve Battalion 101 was untypical, but rather that Trapp's extraordinary offer did not matter. Like any other unit, Reserve Police Battalion 101 killed the Jews they had been told to kill. Emphasis are mine. At Jozefowl, Reserve Police-Batallion 101“ killed „only“ 1,800 Jews. Altogether, this unit and her 500 men killed some 34,000 Jews in 1942/43. War needs obedience. Cheers,
I read "Ordinary Men" a couple of years ago. Definetly infuriating. I couldn't beleive, for some reason, that as you showed, they were old, suburban, and not "Nazis". Although I guess that really doesn't change the outcome anyway. It was a good book, but very unpleasant to read.
Thanks for that post Andy. I have read little on 101 and it is very interesting to me to read what kind of men did these things and what brought them to do this. That is one of the things that got me into researching WW2 anyway; What were these men like (I am talking about veterans in general now), what did they see and how did it affect them? It is interesting although sometimes scary to delve into the minds of these 101 men(and others -Dirlewanger for example). To learn and "understand" how they came to do what they did and how they reacted to that. It is easy to think of them as beasts on account what we know about the atrocities. Very interesting to read about the men behind the numbers. Not that will lessen in any way what they have done, but it is an interesting part of the puzzle. Definately a book I will read. Thanks again, Andy.
Interesting account Andy, first I've heard of this incident. Major Trapp and several members of the battalion seem to be torn between doing their duty and their own personal values.....of course I cannot see how one can define their duty to country as murdering innocents, and some of the answers and methods are very varied to say the least. Not meaning to spark another thread, I can understand (don't agree!) when combatants are Murdered, but I will never understand how you can murder women and children far behind the front lines. One thing I'd like to know though, what sparked this "Mission"? Was it part of the final solution or merely a reprisal for some partisan activity?
If I remember right Mr Browning makes an assumption late in the book that if you take 10 normal people whatever the country and age group and you put them by order to do this kind of thing this will happen in the long run: 3 will not accept any kind of brutality and will be treating the prisoners/camp people according to Geneva rules 3-4 will do the shootings if ordered but treat the people according to Geneva rules otherwise 3 will be totally brutal guards and terror the inmates at all times and enjoy beating the prisoners! The inmates are subhumans and are treated accordingly.
To answer the questions: The massacre at Jozefowl was part of the extermination of the Polish Jewry and was not coated with "reprisals". It must also be noted that Jozefowl was a "de-humanizer" to many members of police batallion 101, because it was their "first time": After a couple of such massacers, it was much easier to kill people at point blank. It just became regular business even to many of those few who refused to participate in the Jozefowl massacre. Sooner or later any of them had his "first time" and it became easier to anyone of those "ordinary men". I fully agree with Kai that this has almost nothing to do with "Nazi believes" or Sadism or such, but with the absence of punishment or, respectively, the encouragment by the authority in place to commit those crimes. Authority and obeying orders is a key element in the military chain of command, and as Zimbaro's famous Stanford Prision experiment had shown, it is clear that most people have the potenetial to become a sadistic nazi mass murder if just encouraged by the system. Actually, the military system is using that individual "human defect" to turn peaceloving accountants into killers. The Air Force pilots etc. sure didn't feel like murderers, if ordered to drop their bombs "for their country" on "the enemy". Cheers,
Today in my history class we had a discussion, it began as a discussion about Goldhagen and then developed into a cross class argument over whether the whole German population are to blame for the holocaust. Personally I think this is a gross oversimplification and am perfectly willing to admit that frankly if I were placed in Nazi Germany and had seen the depression etc I can not put my hand on my heart and say I would have done anything. IMHO I don't think anyone can condemn the German people as a whole for not acting because frankly I don't think any one here can honestly say they would have done any differently. In a world where crimes are committed in the streets, muggings, rapes, beatings, and people look the other way, very few people could say they would stand up against the might of Nazi Germany. In fact I will even go so far as to say that I very much doubt many people these days would care if, for example in Britain, immigrants began to disappear and were never seen again. Further to that I dont think it would take long before people started to denounce their neighbours or report people wiping windows on crossings. I am not saying that what happens is right or that we can not say that the actions of the German people, the turning of a blind eye in most cases, was immoral, just perhapse we should consider how we would act in the circumstances before people like Goldhagen decided that a nation is fundamentally, uniquely anti-semitic and condemn a whole people as evil. Just my opinion, Stefan
This should be interesting..the Milgram electric shock testing that was made in the 1970´s: When Milgram conducted the study, he found that with a little bit of coaxing, the majority (60%) of subjects would administer shocks right through to 450 volts. The people administering the shocks were not "pathological sadists" as the psychologists had described them, but normal everyday people. At this point I think I should point out that nobody actually received electric shocks... the learner was a confederate of the experimenter and was pretending to be in pain. The only real subject in the experiment was the "teacher". Milgram's interviews with his subjects tended to confirm the view that ordinary everyday people can cause pain and suffering to another person under the right set of circumstances. Milgram recounts one interview in particular with a devout Catholic married to a plumber... According to Milgram she gave the impression of complete humility. At 225 volts she turned to the experimenter and in a tentative voice said "I hesitate to press these". But when the experimented told her to continue, she did. Later she hesitated again, but once again, when the experimenter insisted that she continue, she did... right up to the maximum 450 volt shock. http://designweb.otago.ac.nz/grant/psyc/OBEDIANCE.HTML When the experiment was initially conducted, 25 of the 40 participants went all the way to 450 volts!. The disturbing conclusion here is that 65% of the teachers continued with the experiment, even when their learner asked to quit the experiment or when they seemed to be dying or to have died. In later experiments Milgram changed various factors and the results also changed, but in general the results were very similar. [ 19. February 2003, 07:17 AM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]
http://www.sodabob.com/Constitution/Authority.asp Consider this statement by Robert F. Melson, Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. He states "Since the Second World War many more people have been killed as victims of domestic massacres and partial or total genocide's than by international war. State-perpetrated massacres are a greater danger to the world community than war itself." Stalin, Hussein and Milosovich are only easy, famous examples of such modern day tyrants... there are MANY others. This CAN happen and IS happening in the here and now. Consider some real world examples of soldiers who were "just following orders." Adolf Eichmann, at the Nuremberg trials after world war two, said he was only following orders when he caused, together with others, the slaughter and torture of Jews as a part of the Nazi's "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Hannah Arendt said of Eichmann, "Eichmann did not hate Jews, and that made it worse, to have no feelings. To make Eichmann appear a monster renders him less dangerous than he was. If you kill a monster you can go to bed and sleep, for there aren't many of them. But if Eichmann was normality, then this is a far more dangerous situation." William Calley, who ordered a slaughter of hundreds of innocent Vietnamese in the village of My Lai. In the trial regarding this incident, one participant recalled that Calley, "told me to start shooting. So I started shooting, I poured about four clips into the group... They were begging and saying, 'No, no.' And the mothers were hugging their children and... Well, we kept right on firing. They was [sic] waving their arms and begging..." (Social Psychology, David G Myers, p. 214).
NURSES' PARTICIPATION IN THE "EUTHANASIA" PROGRAMS OF NAZI GERMANY http://www.interlog.com/~mighty/essays/nurses7.htm The concept of the "life not worthy of life" was a widely held value. The severely mentally and physically ill were considered to be living less than a human existence. This devaluation of the handicapped had its origins in the eugenics movement which was widely embraced in Europe as well as the US. The Third Reich's quest for the development of a superior race called for the elimination of those judged to be "inferior", whether because of handicap, race, or ethnicity. The term "useless eaters" was often applied to severely handicapped and others regarded as non-productive (Friedlander, 1995, p. 61). Added to this were also the economic needs of the time. Valuable resources were to go to the war effort and to those who could work and be productive. Perhaps these nurses saw their actions as being congruent with these values. This is similar to the view of the ethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan who stated that, in his belief, physicians did not set aside their ethics during the Holocaust but saw their actions as congruent with their ethical commitment to heal the people ("Healing the Volk") through the elimination of undesirable elements (Caplan, 1992). Furthermore, many people believed that euthanasia was not "illegal" although a law permitting euthanasia had, in fact, never been passed in Germany (Proctor, 1988, p. 183). Perceptions of powerlessness were evident in the statements of several of the nurses who "didn't see a way around the orders, didn't have anyone to talk to, had no one trust if they told" and "was the youngest nurse on the ward". Others, however, did not remain powerless. They relocated, changed jobs, asked for transfers, became pregnant (Friedlander, 1995, p. 236). During this era, nursing education was based on religion. There were Catholic and Deaconess nursing programs - both of which incorporated religion into their nursing curricula. Similarly, the religious affiliation of the institutions was a factor. Catholic hospitals were not used as euthanasia sites although patients from these institutions were transferred elsewhere for euthanasia with the knowledge of those employed at the Catholic hospital. It was religion - in the person of Bishop Galen - that is thought to have contributed to a cessation of the euthanasia program (but not an end to euthanasia). Knowledge of the euthanasia programs had become widespread among the population and, in August 1941, Bishop Galen delivered a sermon in which he described the killing of patients, including their registration and transfer. Copies of the sermon were dropped by the RAF over Germany. Shortly thereafter, Hitler ordered a stop to the gassing of patients. This order did not apply to the children's euthanasia program. In 1939, only 9% of the nurses were members of the Nazi sisterhood. The main employment of the Nazi nurses was in community health nursing because this area could provide the greatest opportunity for influencing the population. It was not, therefore, only the Nazi nurses who were involved in the euthanasia programs. Fear of the consequences of refusing to participate in the killings - "would be reported to the Gestapo if refused" and "afraid of losing job" - was not frequently cited by these nurses but has been given by other nurses as the reason for not refusing to help with the killings (Friedlander, 1995, p. 236). Certainly, the Gestapo were greatly feared during this era. In at least one institution, the nurses were made to sign pledges of silence under threat of death if they discussed the euthanasia program at their institution (Richarz, 1987). For the male nurses, there was always the threat of being sent to the Eastern front. Economic factors made have been an influence for some nurses. Nurses working on the euthanasia units received additional pay and/or bonus payments. For example, the nurses in the children's euthanasia wards at Eglfing-Haar received about $80 extra per month (Burleigh, 1994, p. 104-105). Other nurses later testified that they continued to work in the euthanasia programs because they were afraid of losing their jobs (Ebbinghaus, 1987). As civil servants, the nurses had benefits not available with all other jobs.
Milgram’s experiment is also mentioned in Browning’s book. Additionally to Kai’s description, I think it’s noteworthy to say that the „teachers“ in this experiment received certain kinds of feedback from the „learners“: 75 volts: the teacher can hear the learner "grunt" through the wall. 90 volts: learner is grunting 105 volts. learner is grunting 120 volts: the teacher can hear the learner saying that the shocks are getting painful. 150 volts: the learner cries "Get me out of here! I refuse to go on!". As the shocks increase the learner screams out "I can't stand the pain!" 300 volts: the learner begins pounding on the wall and demands to be let out After 330 volts: there is no longer any noise from the learner As Kai mentioned, 60% of all „teachers“ went up to 450 volts. The „teachers“ were carefully choosen to represent normal, „ordinary“ men and women like you and me. It is also noteworthy that without an „authority“ (an experimenter in a white coat and a rather pleasent and friendly co-subject telling the „teacher“ that it’s absolutely O.K. to increase the voltage) none of the „teachers“ would have gone beyond a level of 120 volts. Personally, I have only little doubt that I’d have pushed the button to 450 volts or shoot those Jews at Jozefowl. But that’s just an academic discussion until have to walk in their shoes. . Cheers,
Keywords "obedience" and "holocaust" do bring interesting material up. Anyway, all of this is just food for the mind. Thinking is important!We are forever responsible for our own doings, don´t forget that! ---------- A more relevant experiment would be the Stanford Prison Experiment. The subjects knew they were taking place in an experiment. Nonetheless, out of a sample of young men, all of similar temperment and all of which were considered normal, certain actions began to emerge. Though they were given few direct orders about their conduct, about a third of the guards became extremely violent and tyrannical, appearing to be sadistic. The remaining two-thirds were either "strict but fair" or tried to do favors for the prisoners. None of them made any attempts to stop the abuses of the guards. (Zimbardo, Prison) The experiment, which was meant to be two weeks long, was called off after six days. Zimbardo explains: 'We had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was 'off.' Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners." Even when they thought they didn't have to meet anyone's expectations, the role of prison guard determined their actions. (Zimbardo, Prison) So you give a guy a guard's uniform and tell him, "You are a guard. You are an authority. These people are prisoners. They are scum." and they will act as sadists? Even when they supposedly knew they weren't really guards, their roles seemed to take over. What they may before have been acting, they now become. Perhaps it is as Kurt Vonnegut said, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." http://www.godsoframen.com/essays/holocaust2.html http://www.godsoframen.com/essays/holocaust3.html Diffusion of Responsibility At three AM, March 16, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered near her home in Queens, New York. Thirty-eight of her neighbors witnessed the attack on her from their apartments without calling the police. By the time one of them called the police, nearly an hour later, she was dead. The disinterest in taking responsibility to help a human being became known as "the Genovese syndrome". (Dorman) We were left to wonder why no one called the police earlier. Psychologists invented the term "diffusion of responsiblity". No one person considered himself responsible for calling the police. "Oh, someone else will," they all thought. Later psychological studies have confirmed that the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely a person is to take responsibility for helping someone, and the more time it will take for someone to take responsibility. (Wade and Tavris 282) It does not take much imagination to realize how diffusion of responsibility relates to the Holocaust, when one sees how Hitler received relatively little opposition. The lack of widespread opposition by the German people has been taken by some scholars to mean that the most of the Germans were anti-Semites, that they really wanted a Holocaust. Though some may well have been, were all who did not resist anti-Semites? And what, then, of the rest of the world? http://www.godsoframen.com/essays/holocaust4.html
To add to this topic. The following is from an interview with journalist Michael Kelly, who was killed while on assignment for The Atlantic Magazine with the 3rd US Infantry Division, on April 4 2003. This interview was taken a month and a half before his death. Here he talks about his experiences during the first gulf war. What can you understand from having been there that we just can't understand, no matter how much we read or how much we hear on the radio? There were things I learned in that experience; some of them were horrible, some were funny. The horrible one was in Kuwait City in the ground war. I went with the Egyptian army into Kuwait City the day it was liberated. I spent a few weeks there. Talking to people there and looking into what the Iraqis had done there, what I learned—which was not a new thing to learn about human nature but it was new to me—was the horrible truth about what men are capable of doing who are not necessarily evil-to-the-bone men, and in fact, not necessarily particularly bad at all. What you're saying is that anyone is capable of it. Not anyone. That's not true. Not anyone. Lots of people are not capable of doing anything bad. But let's say you have an occupying army of ten thousand men. Nobody was going to look cross-eyed at you if you raped some girl or tortured somebody to death. The percentage of that ten thousand men who are going to do something evil is actually nothing close to everybody. It's probably in fact a pretty small minority. But it might still be a thousand. And that's much more than I thought. In other words, it's not just the professional sadists who end up in the Mukhabarat. There are plenty of perfectly nice farm boys who, thrown into an environment where it's suddenly clear you can beat people to death if you want to, think, Well, I might try that. These people did that simply because there was no punishment? That's it? Yes. One of the things war does is it more or less purposely destroys the existing order. That has a huge liberating effect in all sorts of ways. Much of it is benign. A lot of people who've been through wars will tell you on some level it was glorious fun. What they're talking about is immense liberation from the norms of life. You get up in the morning, it's like, hey, my checkbook isn't balanced. So what? I'm liberating Anzio! That's pretty benign and even good. It's part of the impulse that lifts people to great acts of heroism. There's a flip side to that, too. One of the things I found out which is quite interesting personally is that people, at least men, I don't know about women, but men go to great lengths in life to not find out the answer to the question, How brave am I? War presents you with specific opportunities to find out the answer to that question—you can't avoid it at all. The question is asked for you and answered for you, in front of you and in front of other people. It's interesting, because you see it of all the people around you and you see it of yourself. And that's knowledge you have for the rest of your life. Copyright (c) http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2003-06-03.htm
Here's some stuff that young japaneese people have said about war crimes commited in China. "I stand on the point that every country has commited dark jobs. China is not an exception..." "China tried to invade Japan 600 years ago." "China is expanding its military power now. This is a big threat to other Asian countries." "Nuclear tesing in China implies that China might drop A-bomb in Japan sometime. " I find this scary that the Japaneese have not admitted to their mistakes. This means that they cannot learn from their mistakes. Which makes japan bound to repeat those mistakes.
