How Much did the Germans Know?

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=85874

 

There is a very appropriate saying in Persian.

شتر ديدي، نديدي!ا

"Camel see, not see."

and it means "If you have seen something or you have knowledge about something, be quiet and forget it, just as if you don't know anything about it at all!"

I could go on further about the origin and meaning/reason, but I think it suffices in this case to describe the, at best, willful ignorance of the civilian population.

Nazi policy stressed the superiority of the Nordic race, a sub-section of the white European population defined by the measurement of the size and proportions of the human body models of racial difference. From 1940 the Nazis in General Government (occupied Poland) divided the population into different groups. Each group had different rights, food rations, allowed strips in the cities, separated residential areas, special schooling systems, public transportation and restricted restaurants. Later adapted in all Nazi-occupied countries by 1942, the Germanization program used the racial caste system of reserving certain rights to one group and barred privileges to another. Ethnic Poles were believed by Hitler to be "biologically inferior race" that could never be educated or elevated through Germanization.

It only got worse from there.

Starting from very early on, no one was unaware of the treatment of "sub-humans". The language used was deliberately chosen to de-humanise, and entice violence. So while there wasn't a deliberate spoken encouragement to mishandle prisoners in the KZ's in the early years, there was definitely a systemic abuse prevalent in the system, causing more deaths.

There should be no shred of doubt, that it was widely known, that Jews were being massacred by the summer of 1942, if not earlier.

Just think of the entire apparatus involved. The Lawyers and "justice" created laws that allowed abuse, mistreatment, and methodical killing. All those soldiers involved in "Anti-Partisan" activities. All those empty apartments of people "re-located". All those railway workers witnessing how they were treated. All the DRB train drivers, All the Germans involved in the administration of the Eastern territories. The teams of Nurses and doctors that visited the camps. Germans managing the slave-workers in the subterranean factories, housed and worked in atrocious conditions. The researchers in German universities, that received information on the experiments?

Do you imagine that all these people kept silent? That they didn't allude in confidence to others about the horrors they saw? That this knowledge spread to others, as humans need to share information?

Furthermore, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper noted that although Himmler had forbidden photographs of the killings, it was common for both the men of the Einsatzgruppen and for bystanders to take pictures to send to their loved ones, which he felt suggested widespread approval of the massacres.

 

I just don't buy german post war propaganda that only SS was doing the crimes and others were completely innocent and knew nothing or very little.
It is not even question if ordinary soldiers saw or did not see atrocities being committed by the ss or whoever, because they didn't need to,they were participating. Orders and general directions on behavior were issued to regular soldiers and officers. One such directive issued generally in early Barbarossa said: ' In every instance of opposition to german authorities,regardless of circumstances communist origin must be assumed.For the life of each german soldier a death sentence of from 50 to 100 communists must be deemed commensurate'.Communists here means civilians that found themselves in the area of this 'opposition', and opposition is not defined but can be accessed on the spot by practically anyone. The direction continues: 'the means of execution must increase the deterrent effect still further' For this purpose it was ordered that firing squads will shoot at or below the waist - which resulted in majority of victims being buried alive in agony from stomach wounds. And meticulous as Germans were they didn't want to leave anything unclear..'In case where children are included among the hostages (communists as they said earlier) such person may escape execution..and would have to be dispatched in hand by the officer in charge.' If something was unclear to ordinary soldiers after this, they weren't to bright , right? And many obviously had to participate in such activities themselves.
Another order,signed by Keitel considers soviet prisoners and states that 'use of weapons against unarmed russian prisoners was now to be considered lawful regardless of circumstances'. These orders weren't secret they were official directions of behavior to anyone in contact with prisoners. Of course not all soldiers succumbed to such barbarism, but it is imaginable how many did, with official permission to do whatever one wants, and in the brutal reality and strain of the ostfront.
These were pointers issued to the broadest army community. There were than orders issued to specific units. For instance when retreating after Moscow soldiers of AGC were issued orders to burn every town and village to the ground, which was a death sentence for children and the elderly mostly left there with snow outside and temperatures about -40. Another set of altruistic orders were given to the ninth army when they evacuated Rzhev-Sychevka salient. Everyone who had any strangth to work was deported, all settlements were burned and concrete buildings blown up, railroads destroyed,bridges blown,fields schorched,every well poisoned,cattle taken or killed, anything of any use taken or destroyed. This went so far that even empty barrels were shot upon so they couldn't be used!This later became standard procedure for withrowing german army if they had time, if not at least partially. Not that Rzhev faired any batter during the occupation, as the soldier from 256th division noted: 'the civilians from Rzhev mostly women and children wander around begging, starving and in rags.' When Germans took the town in october '41 it had 40 000 inhabitants,less than a year later 3000.
Wermacht commanders after the war imposed all the blame on Hitler and the SS while they enjoyed life in full, worked for the new gouverment's army and presented their views of the war in the memoirs that shaped West's conscience for 50 years. Many of them accidentally omitted some parts of their war biographies though. For example highly esteemed generalfieldmarshall Manstein. He forgot to mention his secret order from 20th november 1941 titled 'the annihilation of Judeao- Bolshevik system' in which he said 'Jews were instigators of all disorder in the rear areas and..the soldier should understand the necessity of punishment of Jewry'. Nor does he mention his collaboration with the genocidal activities of SS Einsatzgruppe D that followed 11th army into Crimea.Unfortunately commander of that unit testified after the war that ' in Simferopol army command requested the SS in its area hasten liquidations because famine was threatening and there was a great housing shortage'. The SS duly murdered 14 300 civilians in Simferopol on 13th december '41, when Manstein's HQ was in town. He also testified that Manstein demanded wristwatches from murdered civilians to be sent to the 11th army.After the collapse of of Sevastopol's heroic defense, Manstein allowed the SS free hand in murdering both civilians and POWs. So much about him. In spite of this,many of the army commanders kept their honor and basic humanity, still numerous others succumbed to propaganda,race hatred and the right of the winner to express their sadistic urges.

 

No serious student of the war buys into the 'it was Hitler and his SS cronies only' defense, but by the same token a blanket condemnation of all German service personnel and civilians as knowing is not accurate or even fair.

Let us use some logic here. Sailor's in the Kreigsmarine and pilots, airmen ground crews in the Luftwaffe would not likely have any direct connection to atrocities like the camps or mass executions simply because they were not part of these operations. Troops in North Africa and Norway, the same. Further not every German lived near a Camp or war industry that used camp prisoners.

Then there is the assumption that everybody talked about what they saw. Funny thing is that Allied soldiers and governmental officials did not go around blabbing about everything they saw and did, so why do we automatically assume that the Germans were any less discrete? Our guys kept their mouths shut, sometimes for decades, partly out of patriotism, partly out of not wanting to tell the folks at home what they saw and did.

If you served in the Heer in the East or the Balkans you almost surely saw or did something, If you worked in the common police or the Railroad, again a near certainty. But not every war worker did or farmer or even city dweller did.

Certainly it was a massive undertaking that could never be hidden from all German's, but it is clear that those who ordered the deeds be done did attempt to keep the scale of the act hidden, long before they began retreating.

 

My country was annexed to the Reich.We were the Reich. Everyone knew, half-wits too. What I'm thelling you is how it was, without ellaborate theories. Pure facts.

 

I agree

 

I agree every German knew that Jews, Gypsies, Communist's and Homosexual's were 'taken away', but in itself that does not automatically translate into gas chambers. Most may have suspected or even heard rumor's, but is not the same as knowing. Knowing is knowledge beyond any shadow of a doubt.

With respect Tamino I do not believe you yourself was there. As many postwar Germans have convinced themselves they knew nothing, I imagine that many from that era in your homeland have convinced themselves they know more now than they did then. Surely they knew something, people being taken away, declared non-citizens, even enemies of the state, but not the Final Solution in all its perverted grandeur. If they did can you explain why people continued to move in orderly groups to the trains?

We are forgetting all the propaganda efforts done by Germany saying they were 'resettling' these people in the East where they could do 'useful work' for the Reich.

 

We underestimate the true effect of propaganda, if it is extensive, comes from an official/"official", supposedly "reliable" source(s) and the message seems to have some kind of connection to the reality already known.

We don't have to look far for modern day examples: most of the Russians now believe, that Crimea has historically been "always" Russian (it hasn't), the "fascists" are in power in Ukraine (they are not) and the West is bullying Russia (it's the other way round). Also (far too) many Americans believe that the Evolution is not true (it is), most of the Israelis believe that they actually had/have the right to steel the lands of the native Palestinians (they did/do not) and far too many muslims believe that it pleases some sort of god to kill and rape women and children (very unlikely and definitely not according to Koran). And all this at our time of constant media coverage, internet etc.

I personally don't find it difficult at all to believe, that indeed not all Germans were aware of the true meaning of the "final solution" - as belasar already have explained.

 

That was in "Staufenberg II, I'll be back Adolf"

 

Another point comes to mind . I remember the testimonies from a survivor who managed to escape and told his ordeal to his friends (while the war was still going on) . No-one would believed him and he got naive answer like," they will settle in the east", "they go to labor camps" etc... .

It's like car accidents commercials. Your subconscient thinks you see such bloody pictures, that you deliberately occult the truth and make yourself beleive that such things do not happen.

Add some brainwash to this and you get a population who gets waken up from some sort of transe when they were shown the horrors committed by the Nazis.

 

People moved in orderly fashion to the trains, because in spite of what they had heard, they hoped.

They moved in orderly fashion, because they saw that those that did not were beaten, or shot.

They moved in an orderly fashion, because the only temporal power they had left resided in their limbs. They did not have the might of an entire state behind them.

The Germans chose to "not know" because the knowing was too horrible. It became a question of not asking the obvious question. If you are deliberately avoiding asking the obvious question, you know, you just don't want to.

You have to consider the scale of the crime. It was so huge, so massive, you'd have to be deaf, blind, and imbecellic to not know.

They were rounding up Jews across Europe entire! People were getting killed in the streets, Slave workers were everywhere there was some form of industry and getting worked to the death, and the attitude was to "eradicate the vermin". How much of genius do you have to be? IMO, in order to truly no know, you'd need an IQ slightly lower than that of piece of granite.

I've seen it personally, how a group of people will collectively deny knowledge of something occurring, that only a week or two prior they were resoundingly unanimous in what a brilliant idea it was.

 

Well said GS.

 

But hope is the whole point.

Germany went to some effort to instill that hope on their victim's initially. Allowing them to travel as family groups, to take some personal belongings, to allow local leaders to organize the initial movements, plus giving 'assurances' that they were being resettled rather than being sent to certain doom. Portraying a Terazenstadt (sp?) as a model camp for both internal and external consumption all point to a mixed message being disseminated to anyone who chose to hear it.

 

Although it is obvious that many did know, still it was possible for even more not to know - at least not everything. After all mass-murdering millions did not make any sense. It was much more logical to believe that people were sent to the East to labour camps. That made sense: the Jews were made to pay with work for their "crimes".

Sure a lot of bad things were happening - people were murdered in the streets, they were worked to exhaustion (death) etc. Still those could be seen as random incidents only happening to the relatively few unlucky or not obeying individuals. And the war was going on. Lots of people were dying all the time anyway and harsh measures were the norm of the day. It's quite different to know that several people have been worked to death or randomly shot at the streets than to realize, that millions were being killed in an industrialized way.

The same goes with the Jews themselves. It was much more sensible for them to believe the official stories of labour camps. Everybody understood how valuable workforce was (supposed to be) at the war time. Many little details supported this illusion, as belasar pointed out above.

 

That makes sense. It would still seem suspicious to see your own neighbors being thrown into trucks and never returning again. Some probably did not connect the dots, but there had to at least be some suspicion that their neighbors never returned. Would some have maybe "connected the dots?"

 

The terms the Germans often used was " Siedler" . This referred to settlers who were supposedly sent to built the Lebensraum in the East.
Germans did not know or did not want to know whether this was a rumor or not . What makes the difference between individual and collective guilt is that some of these citizens were later granted new homes and must have known who lived there before. This being said, the Russians, the Poles and the Czechs did exactly the same when they moved into German homes in 1945. They also moved into empty homes from deported people, not to mention that Holocaust survivors were rarely given their homes back by the people from those nations.

 

But of course, the Earth is a cube.

 

No, Poles knew exactly that they got property of either expulsed or murdered Germans. Czech knew that too. They both participated doing injustice to the Germans - from the first day and they were mostly pleased. Since the Crystal night the Germans were pleased too. The only difference is that the Czechs and the Poles were the last who laughed. And the Germans were the last who had a good reason to cry.