How Much did the Germans Know?

What I hope we're coming to here is that this subject is very complex and saying that "they all knew" is just as simplistic as saying that it was just the SS's fault. Many knew something, but only a very few knew it all. As PzJgr says, there is a difference between an atrocity and a wholesale, gargantuan, highly organized system of genocide. The Abu Graib scandal would have never come to light if the soldiers doing the torture hadn't been taking and sending pictures on their cell phones! Otherwise, me may have never known. Last I knew, there weren't any cell phones in WWII.

Now let's talk about "trench talk", "latrine rumors", "scuttlebutt" and whatever. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that soldiers in most armies have very little knowledge of what's going on except perhaps up to the level of the battalion they're in. Their life and awareness is in their squad, platoon and perhaps company. Beyond that they don't know and usually don't care. Most "other ranks" often don't know where they are except perhaps in a very general way. I can't believe that these rumors, which are usually false anyway, would provide the average German soldier with detailed knowledge of the holocaust.

 

You may use any euphemism you wish but the murders were committed in all camps. Do you really think that people weren't dying in Dachau just because that camp was located near Munich - Germany? What about Mauthausen? ...

How much they knew?

Crystal night was the first show-down. Everyone knew very well what happened and were pleased. Just look at these faces observing misery of their victims, approving what happened with wishful smiles. They knew that from the first day. Most of them expected that from the new government. Bastards may pretend they didn't know, but we know they knew and willingly participated the crimes.

 

I was speaking about death camps, the german population knew about them and knew what was going on there. Many might have been in denial, but that is not an excuse. Even the inmates in the work camps knew about the death camps.

 

Smiley quote:

He says he had knowledge of the camps such as Dachau, but not what was really going on.

Now granted some people may not have known, but some who claim they didn't know might not have been telling the truth. Would you believe this sort of claim?





If we hadn't all the internet and the REAL independent journalists...what would you have known of Abu Graib prison ? The waterboarding in Quantanamo ?
Do you know what happens on daily basis in the closest prison to your living place ?
Do you ever feel the incling to VISIT a prison if you have nothing to do with its population ?

 

. It even mentioned a point during the invasion of Poland in 1939, that there was a Wehrmacht unit, who without any help or supervision from the SS killed a number of Poles and Jews in a small town after one of the German soldiers from their unit was killed by what they believed was by Polish fire.
(They later found out that it was friendly fire and that the German soldier was killed by accident by Germans)


Which is why this is one of many examples of what the germans thought of dealings in a war situation that as acceptable : executing partisans.
executing spies.
Do you think one US soldier in Afghanistan today would object or interfere if his commanders pull out an afghan suspected Taliban and claims they have info that he is taliban ? After which he is taken by CIA or Afghan republican forces and molested and tortured ?
DO you think any US soldier today would ask what happened to the apprehended taliban that he handed over during his tour ? ever ?

And what "shit" did not happen in Vietnam by the US soldiers ? hey ?

Don't judge to simply from your comfy home chair.


Instead think of HOW it is possible that healthy morally fine young men (be it Germany, or USA, or Russia, or Serbs, or Ukrainians, etc in any era) eventually turn out to act against, just over and finally far over the borders of humanity in their respective wars.
And then realise...it can happen TO YOU TOO:

 

Very simple:
Although they could know they were bad places (but not in detail) , they themselves do not want to end up there.
So it is quite IMPOSSIBLE to suggest any individual could arrange some sort of social protest.
And oh, there were (weisse rose)..but they were rounded up and killed.
So where is your bravery ? And why to expect bravery from everyday simple unorganised citizens who only struggle to survive when the ones who SHOULD HAVE resisted YEARS BEFORE (socialist, democrats, communists, unionists, industrialists, UK; France; etc..from 1926-1938) have bailed out or joined the Nazi bandwagon long before.

wrt Nazi camps: they were HIDDEN. As in relatively FAR from cities and towns...and sealed by military (shot on sight) . So as ordinary man you were NOT able to accidentally hear or see anything.
wrt smells, and soot. Of course prisons/camps in those days were a smelly business. No one outside was to be alarmed by that.
And soot ? anything burned gives soot. How are you to know or measure it comes from X tons of wood, clothing , dead pigs remains, or people ?
Besides , it is also not uncommon to have many inmates to die from diseases in THOSE days. We know it was so planned by the NAzis, but who from outside the camp is to judge that the dead by diseases was a matter of bad luck or a matter of willful torture ?


In Phnom Pen it is even more startling to see the Tuol Sleng prison being actually a former elementary school SMACK IN THE MIDDLE of the city.
Why then , did none of the people living around the school "protested" ? Hey ?
...
Ahw right,,,they were all already killed !



Again conclusion: it is so easy to pretend that you would protest today here in safe Arizona. But it is/was not.

And in order to find out you need first an interested and persevering party; a proper reporter/journalist.
If there is no interest, or apathy, then there is no story.
That is why the bloodthirst (on BOTH sides of Spanish civilian war!) is underreported, and we know still TOO LITTLE about the even MORE atrocities the soviets perfomed under Stalin.

 

The point I was making about the German soldiers was that there was some who actively participated in the killings. my point was that not all Wehrmacht soldiers were 'innocent' of what was going on.
And the people that they killed were unarmed civilians, and they were only suspected of being partisans. Suspicion of being a partisan or spy does not make them a partisan or spy.

 

Handing out copies to married couples was ordered. Doesn't mean all of them enjoyed it ! Far from it.
Better count NSDAP memberships.
And even so, people took it just to keep going on in their profession. Again, not a true measure of Nazi ideology spread.
Look how the DDR was (supposed to be ideologywise) in 1985 and the masses of escapees after the fall of the wall in 1989.



But hey, you keep the Mein Kampf on yr KIndle ? As a reference ??? And have read it wholly many times ??? Yuch !

Out of general interest I looked it up on internet. Could only read (and often not even understand the 'pointe') a few pages, and that is as far as I could get.

 

you say unarmed civilians..they say Partisanen.
They say jihadi, you say terrorists.

 

Dude...

I understand your comparison attempt, but to keep using modern day terrorists in comparison to partisan troops during WW2 a little off base and somewhat naive. The fact of the matter, all Allied resistance fighters were defending against tyrrany, oppression and in topic with this thread, genocide.

 

That's right Jr.

Let me help you Dude:
In American terminology:

Partisan = John Connor
Nazi = Terminator

 

Time out!

There were work camps scattered all over Germany. One I've done some research on is sub-camp Lippstadt, where Jewish women from Buchenwald worked in the armaments industry. The women in these small work camps worked in plain sight of the German populace. Workers and supervisors from the local community worked directly with them. They talked with those women. They talked with the guards.

They knew.

 

Well, that's good question. After the war, the Nazis also evolved into the "good guys".

By the way, have you forgotten that in the third part terminator turned into a stunner. That's a rather good progress, if you neglect her bad temper. Pmp40fire: Pmp40fire: Pmp40fire:

 

Lets look at that from the reverse angle. What do they actually see? Jewish women working for the Reich, not actual executions. How candid were the prisoner's.. Yelling at the top of their lungs "help us, we are dying", how much would they ask, fearing the answer? By January 1942 as a German you have Russia, Britain and the US at war with you, are you going to insist on moral perfection or hold your tongue. and hope the nightmare eventually goes away.

I have no doubt that every adult German knew that Jews had lost all their civil and human rights as they understood them, That resistance has dealt with harshly and without mercy. That conditions for German's was hard and getting harder and would only be far worse for 'undesirables'.

But I do believe that for those who saw the worst, that they were fairly discrete with what they told others, if for no other reason than that was what others did.

Deep down I suspect they, the German populace, had a strong idea of what was happening, but in a world that was slowly going into ruin for them, this was not their most pressing problem or concern.

Humans have a wonderful facility to place uncomfortable thoughts out of their mind or with finding justification for dark acts so long as the dirty deeds are not rubbed under their noses.

 

Valid, but the question asked is 'did they know' not if they could they do anything about it. Clearly, they knew. Not only from the forced laborers who worked all around them, but from soldiers on leave - friends, family, neighbors who had been in the east, saw it directly and talked about it.

I suppose, after the war, it was easier to deny knowledge than to admit moral culpability. It's easier to say "I saw nothing" than to say "I saw it and did nothing."

 

Agreed

 

There is something else: there wasn't just German antisemitism. Poles were equal or even worse and they managed to cleanse Poland to the same extent and with the same barbaric methods. Yet, people tend to ask just how much did the Germans know.

Really, how much Poles knew? How much Lithuanians knew? ... All countries of Central and East Europe were involved too. Ukrainian SS units were hunting 12 years old "partisans" at the Balkans. How much their countrymen knew about their "heroes"?

Why just the Germans? There were other perpetrators.

 

True. Very true. You bring up a good point Tamino.

That kind of got me thinking, and reminded me of something.

My local newspaper reported this on September 1, 2009 when it was discovered about what John Kalymon did in the past.
Just thought I would share a related article.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/07/09/330193311/man-tied-to-nazis-dies-in-michigan-at-age-93

 

Actually Dude really has a point, since the real fact remains, that many partisans (not all) were nothing more than plain war criminals and/or were defending the very tyranny, oppression and genocide.

E.g. in Finland the soviet partisans (officially called as such both officially and by themselves) concentrated on murdering and raping civilians - women, children and elderly - carefully trying to avoid contact with the Finnish soldiers. Back home they lied having destroyed "military bases" and "fascists soldiers" - and even received decorations for their crimes.

In the USSR the partisans were as big a threat to the local civilians as the Germans, since they both murdered and robbed them.

In France prior the Barbarossa the main task of the communists "resistance" was to support the soviet dictatorship, which was allied with Germany - not to fight against that other tyranny.

In Yugoslavia the different resistance movements were fighting against each other, against the Germans and also in co-operation with the Germans. Very difficult to apply that "all Allied Resistance fighters did so and so" here either.