Willing Executioners of the Holocaust

1. Willing Executioners of the Holocaust By: Shauna Delaney

2. 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.

3. 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?

4. Thesis • Many Germans become actively involved in the mass extermination of the Jews in WWII because of conformity, obedience, and Anti-Semitism forced upon the German people by their Government.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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 Anti-Semitism was not brought on through the Government.

9. 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).

10. 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