Download Willing Executioners of the Holocaust

Willing
Executioners
of the
Holocaust
By: Shauna Delaney
Overview
• WWII lasted from 1939 to 1945
• The Final Solution was the Nazi plan for the complete
elimination of the Jewish People (11 million).
• During this time in order to carry out Hitler’s plans for the Final
Solution many Germans had to become actively involved.
• There are many reasons why the Germans willingly exterminated
the Jews.
• There have been many historical debates about the reasoning
behind the mass participation.
Questions
• Did Germans have feelings of Anti-Semitism before the war?
• Where Germans conscripted or did they sign up for the war and
Police Battalions?
• Did the Germans naturally have feelings of Anti-Semitism or
where they brought on through propaganda by the government?
• Did the Germans become indifferent to cope with the
psychological stress of the killings or did they just not care?
• What were some of the factors that lead to the Anti-Semitist
feelings around the time of WWII?
• What distinctions must be made between various types of war
crimes and the mind- sets of the men who committed them?
• What would create such a nationwide consensus on what to do
about the “Jewish Problem?”
• Why would so many Germans become actively involved in the
mass extermination of the Jews in WWII?
Thesis
• Many Germans become actively
involved in the mass extermination of
the Jews in WWII because of
conformity, obedience, and AntiSemitism forced upon the German
people by their Government.
Argument #1- Conformity
• The battalion had orders to kill Jews but each individual did not.
• To break ranks and to act with nonconformist behaviors was
beyond most men and it would be easier for them to just shoot.
• By breaking ranks non-shooters were leaving the “dirty work”
for their comrades. It was like refusing one’s share of an
“unpleasant collective obligation”
• Those men who did not shoot risked isolation, rejection, and
ostracism (A tight-knit unit among a hostile population, so the
individual literally has no where else to turn for support.)
• It was considered extremely disrespectful to one’s comrades
because not shooting indicates that he is “too good” and better
then the rest.
Argument #2- Obedience
• There was a known standard of obedience to orders in the military as
there still is today.
• The ruthless enforcement of discipline created a situation were most
individuals felt they had no choice but to kill.
• Men believed that disobedience surely meant concentration camp if
not immediately executed, possibly for their families as well.
• Trial after trial in postwar Germany, perpetrators said they were in a
situation of impossible “duress” and could not be held responsible for
their actions.
• Although no defense attorney or defendant in any of the hundreds of
postwar trials has been able to document a single case.
• But, even if the consequences of disobedience were not as dreadful as
thought, the men who complied could not have known that at the time.
Argument 3- Anti-Semitism
• Germans had been told for years, through literature, popular media, political
speeches and the medical establishment that the Jewish pose a threat to the
“Kultur” (the German concept and influence of a particular Germanic attitude,
spirit, temperament, ambition, achievement, and purpose.)
• It was not cultural propagandists who organized the “special treatment of the
Jews.” It was the public health officials, scientific journals, and physicians who
created the Anti-Semitist feelings. They ultimately believed that the Jews were
endangering their lives.
• The government did not want to hold back this information from the civilians.
This started many years before the outbreak of WWII.
• Germans felt that they had been chosen to accomplish this massive sanitation
project.
• Psychiatric professors believed in euthanasia, not as Nazis, but as responsible
physicians.
• Jews were believed to be “carriers of sickness” and it only reinforced their
beliefs when they were put into ghettos. They were horrible places where people
would live 15 to a room and real, not fantasized, diseases would rise.
• “If one sees others as polluted, infected matter dangerous to the culture, one
sees not human beings with feelings, capable of pain, and eliciting pity and
empathy.”
• This creates an enthusiasm to kill and remove the object provoking such intense
fear.
Counter Arguments
• The likelihood of any SS man ever having suffered punishment
for refusing to kill a Jew is very small. No case was able to
withstand scrutiny in the Nuremburg trials.
• If the majority of a group’s members opposes an act then the
social psychological pressure would work to prevent, not
encourage, individuals to undertake the opposed act.
• Germans had a natural hatred towards the Jews and the AntiSemitism was not brought on through the Government.
Sources
• Browning, Christopher R. "Daniel Goldhagens Willing
Executioners." Review Essay (2002).
• Fackenheim, Emil L., and David Patterson. "Why the Holocaust
Is Unique." Judaism 50.4 (2001).
• Glass, James M. Life Unworthy of Life. United States of America:
Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., 1997.
• Goldhagen, Daniel J. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Random House, Inc.,
1996.
• Klee, Ernst, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess. Those Were the
Days. Great Britain: Hamish Hamilton, 1991.
• Van Liempt, Ad. Hitler's Bounty Hunters: The Betrayal of the
Jews. New York: Oxford International Publishers Ltd., 2005.
• Moses, A. D. "Structure and Agency in the Holocaust: Daniel J.
Goldhagen and His Critics." History & Theory 37.2 (1998).
Sources Cont.
• Rosen, James. "Willing Executioners." The American Spectator
(2005): 70-73.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Holocaust
Encyclopedia War Crime Trials. 2000. 21 Oct. 2006
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/>.
• The History Place. Holocaust Timeline. 1997. 21 Oct. 2006
<http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.
html>.
• Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. United States of
America: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc. 1992