OP
OP
matticus
Guru
(Well you did ask ... )
To remind everyone NOW that choices have consequences, and you CAN be punished, even if it takes years.
97yo convicted in Holocaust trial
- Thread starter matticus
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(Well you did ask ... )
To remind everyone NOW that choices have consequences, and you CAN be punished, even if it takes years.
AndyRM
Elder Goth
So, not a lot then really?
During my year abroad in Germany, a book was published where two historians had researched what actually happened to those who refused to join in the crimes made against civilian populations. I never bought it but I did read a detailed review of it.
Going by memory of 30 years ago, the authors found that in cases of refusal the norm was for soldiers to be sent off to do other duties. They were not automatically stuck up against a wall and shot. It wasn't a common occurance to refuse, but it did occur.
The other thing I remember was the investigation into why so many did commit atrocities. They came to the, in my opinion frightening, conclusion that it was peer pressure. Everyone else joined in or so it appeared so soldiers who otherwise would recoil at such things went along with it in order not to stand out.
What would have happened if refusals had occurred on a much larger scale I don't know, but this particular book did remove the excuse that no-one had any choice whatsover.
I also remember the book had a picture of a camp I actually visited at a place called Sandbostel in northern Germany. It housed Italians after they changed sides, of whom many were massacred late in the war, and there were also several long mounds in an adjacent cemetary each of which contained the bodies of 500 Russian dead. There was a road sign there which had at the top Sports Centre and underneath Camp Memorial, and the authors took this as insulting to the memory of the dead and an indication too many Germans had avoided coming to terms with what happened there.
OP
OP
matticus
Guru
Hard to quantify. (After all, if it saved a million lives down the line ... )
And you didn't ask if it was a lot. 🙂
OP
OP
matticus
Guru
The Beeb have been showing some good (i.e. sobering) doccos about This Business recently (to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January.)
https://www.televisual.com/news/bbc-readies-three-docs-for-holocaust-memorial-day/
I've watched Ep1 of the "US and ... " thing, and learnt quite a lot.
The James Bulgin thing last night was a real stomach-churner. Both because of the scale of local help that the Nazis found in Eastern Europe, and the horrendous images shown (sparingly) of the mass shootings.
(The good news is that the historians are finding more and more mass graves in places like Lithuania.)
It's not much fun, but it feels like time well spent to remind yourself of how apparently normal people co-operated to bring about something so horrendous.
https://www.televisual.com/news/bbc-readies-three-docs-for-holocaust-memorial-day/
I've watched Ep1 of the "US and ... " thing, and learnt quite a lot.
The James Bulgin thing last night was a real stomach-churner. Both because of the scale of local help that the Nazis found in Eastern Europe, and the horrendous images shown (sparingly) of the mass shootings.
(The good news is that the historians are finding more and more mass graves in places like Lithuania.)
It's not much fun, but it feels like time well spent to remind yourself of how apparently normal people co-operated to bring about something so horrendous.
Fab Foodie
Legendary Member
Interesting article trying the reframe the common narrative....
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...locaust-atrocities?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...locaust-atrocities?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
BoldonLad
Old man on a bike. Not a member of a clique.
- Location
- South Tyneside
That seems to be a written word version of the recent TV program Bulgin narrated. All fairly predictable, and, of course, worrying to see how readily “ordinary” people can be co-opted into unspeakable acts.
multitool
Pharaoh
I lived in East Anglia for a while in the early 90s. I had a colleague who had worked for the civil service in immigration. He told me that if I came across a septegenarian with an Eastern European accent the chances were that he had been a concentration camp guard.
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BoldonLad
Old man on a bike. Not a member of a clique.
- Location
- South Tyneside
In the TV program version, there was what appeared to be German Newsreel footage of the advance into Latvia etc. it was interesting to note, although Hitler had invaded a neighbouring country, the dialog had the slant “our brave boys, fighting against resistance from the invaded”, as if those who were being invaded had no right to resist. All very similar to what, possibly, the Russian population are being fed over Ukraine.
multitool
Pharaoh
To be fair, I think we had pretty much the same sort of shite about "our boys" when they invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
I suppose its easy to view the Germans in the light of hindsight, and with 78 years* of narrative surrounding the Holocaust, but I doubt at the time they thought they were the baddies, nor could they have forseen the eventual outcomes of decisions made at the Wansee conference.
*there is quite an interesting history around the coining of the term 'Holocaust', and indeed around how language around the genocide changed over the decades following 1945.
I suppose its easy to view the Germans in the light of hindsight, and with 78 years* of narrative surrounding the Holocaust, but I doubt at the time they thought they were the baddies, nor could they have forseen the eventual outcomes of decisions made at the Wansee conference.
*there is quite an interesting history around the coining of the term 'Holocaust', and indeed around how language around the genocide changed over the decades following 1945.
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BoldonLad
Old man on a bike. Not a member of a clique.
- Location
- South Tyneside
I perhaps didn't make it clear. I wasn't criticising the German Newsreel, as such, nor commenting on "The Holocaust", merely pointing out that there is not much new in the world of Governments manipulating their populations. It has all been done before, and, sadly, is not doubt still being done, and will be done in the future. IMHO.
The TV program did take this view, that the initial atrocities were quite possibly not part of a co-ordinated plan. The "plan" came later. To me, the initial uncoordinated behaviour was, if anything most scary, since it showed (yet again) how neighbours can so easily turn upon neighbours.
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multitool
Pharaoh
Don't worry, I understood your point, and I agree with it. Was just adding to same point you made.
glasgowcyclist
Über Member
It really is.
I remember learning about the Milgram Experiment, conducted in the 1961, which showed that people could be easily persuaded by an authority figure to do things that were in conflict with their own conscience and would harm others. He did this to explain the psychology behind the ‘just following orders’ defence and question whether such people really could be considered accomplices in the genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
In 1974 he wrote an article "The Perils of Obedience", which summarised his earlier findings:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
(Edited for a spelling error.)
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glasgowcyclist
Über Member
Can you expand on what you mean by that and how it was applied in the Milgram experiment?
