
Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf] - apsec112
https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/1429971
======
chewz
I recommend reading book - Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the
Final Solution in Poland.

Well researched (based on testimonials) and well written.

Some men get used to the job, some enjoyed it, some kept refusing.

> Twelve out of 500 soldiers opted out when allowed to leave freely.[34] Those
> of them who felt unable to continue shooting at point-blank range of
> prisoners begging for mercy, were asked to wait at the marketplace where the
> trucks were loaded.[35] The action was finished in seventeen hours. The
> bodies of the dead carpeting the forest floor at the Winiarczykowa Góra hill
> (about 2 km from the village, pictured)[36] were left unburied. Watches,
> jewelry and money were taken.[3]

Unfortunately some of those men who refused were hanged after the war for made
up war crimes. History has bitter sense of humor.

> For a battalion of less than 500 men, the ultimate body count was at least
> 83,000 Jews.[50]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-
Soluti...](https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-
Solution/dp/0060995068)

[2] [http://hampshirehigh.com/exchange2012/docs/BROWNING-
Ordinary...](http://hampshirehigh.com/exchange2012/docs/BROWNING-
Ordinary%20Men.%20Reserve%20Police%20Battalion%20101%20and%20the%20Final%20Solution%20in%20Poland%20\(1992\).pdf)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101)

------
nabla9
The courage to stand up against your own ingroup is the highest form of
courage and morals.

It requires independence of thought and high principles.

~~~
srean
The other one is to acknowledge and believe deeply that your acts were wrong.
I cannot think of another country that breathes these values so sincerely and
profoundly. I am sure everyone knows that Germany is in no way unique in its
killing of millions.

I have no German ties whatsoever but I am in deep admiration of their capacity
to accept, correct and be vigilant of repetition.

I know neo-nazism exists. I hope it continues to be an aberration.

~~~
fit2rule
I moved to Germany from America precisely because of Germans' lack of hubris
about their ability to take responsibility for the crimes of their nations'
past - while America is, without doubt, not ready to confront its own heinous
crimes, being committed in present time, as yet.

Neo-nazism doesn't scare me as much as the average American patriot, whose
political cover allows many, many crimes to be committed in their name with,
seemingly, no repercussion.

However, as a believer in karma, participating in such a society is not on -
thus, I moved.

My only concern now is that the Germany of the future will have what it needs
to address America - because it doesn't look like Americans are going to be
roping in their criminal death cult any time soon ... and all signs point to
an America, in the future, which will have to deal with the crimes being
committed in its name, today.

------
Tepix
In Dortmund, Germany, on Good Friday, a commemoration ceremony took place in
the afternoon at the Bittermark memorial
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahnmal_Bittermark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahnmal_Bittermark)
). 300 POWs and resistance fighters were murdered there just weeks and days
before the end of the war.

1700 demonstrators showed up this year. We must not forget.

~~~
HarryHirsch
You are looking for the keyword "Endphaseverbrechen". Particularly crass:
Willi Herold, the Butcher of Emsland.

~~~
cafard
There was a movie ( _The Captain_?) released about that guy within the last
year.

------
PavlovsCat
> There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you
> so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take
> part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels,
> upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.

\-- Mario Savio

I really think there is something to the idea of not going along because you
just _cannot_. I think sometimes the "no" comes first, and then comes finding
or making a way, maybe.

Though I think disgust with what one is complicit in, and the sheer inability
to go on with it, are ultimately also based on positive values, and on not
betraying oneself, so it's always a "no to X, to uphold a yes to Y" IMO.

from
[https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-t...](https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-
trial-hannah-arendt)

> Arendt had removed the guarantee of absolute innocence and automatic guilt
> from the question of moral responsibility. What did she put in its place?
> The capacity to exercise an “independent human faculty, unsupported by law
> and public opinion, that judges in full spontaneity every deed and intent
> anew whenever the occasion arises.” And who evidenced this capacity? They
> were not distinguished by any superior intelligence or sophistication in
> moral matters but “dared to judge by themselves.” Deciding that conformity
> would leave them unable to “live with themselves,” sometimes they even chose
> to die rather than become complicit. “The dividing line between those who
> want to think and therefore have to judge by themselves, and those who do
> not, strikes across all social and cultural or educational differences.”

Hannah Arendt's essay "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship":

[https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt-
pe...](https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt-personal-
responsibility-under-a-dictatorship.pdf)

------
HeWhoLurksLate
Interestingly, the Geneva Convention was barely used at all, and the "excuses"
given were mostly based on the politics of the military instead.

~~~
blattimwind
That's because civilian protections where only added in 1949 to the Geneva
Conventions. The Geneva Convention as-of WW2 would only be applicable to PoWs,
not civilians.

~~~
Bayart
To be fair I don't think anybody saw systemic violence upon civilians during a
war between states (as opposed to a civil one) as a realistic possibility
during the inter-war period. It was well outside the customs of war in our
corner of the world at that point.

The national-social cocktail completely tore apart common decency.

~~~
blattimwind
> To be fair I don't think anybody saw systemic violence upon civilians during
> a war between states (as opposed to a civil one) as a realistic possibility
> during the inter-war period. It was well outside the customs of war in our
> corner of the world at that point.

Really? Atrocities against civilians in war were common even then. No need to
look further than e.g. the colonies.

~~~
ekianjo
> Really? Atrocities against civilians in war were common even then. No need
> to look further than e.g. the colonies.

I think the point was that scale of it was quite different in WW2. In WW2 the
majority of casualties were civilians, which was new compared to previous
conflicts.

~~~
blattimwind
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio)
is of relevance here. WW1 already had an almost 1:1 ratio, though this ratio
isn't really indicative of atrocities per se. E.g. previously you might have
rather seen pillaging. Going a bit back, the people's crusade of 1096 mostly
pillaged European cities and landscape.

------
rolph
i get a [PDF] from the submission. no complaints from me but usually a tag
[PDF] is appended to title. That being said there are those that just love the
excuse of just following orders, and those that have a moral boundary stronger
than a perceived social duty.

in a lot of cases there was a cloak such as, we are not told to do it
immediately i have more efficient plans.

>Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 - 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist
and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200
Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions
factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.<

These people were declared essential servants and diverted from concentration.

~~~
secfirstmd
Highly recommend watching this 4 minute piece about Sir Nicholas Winton. Makes
you feel good about humans.

[https://youtu.be/PKkgO06bAZk](https://youtu.be/PKkgO06bAZk)

~~~
telesilla
Thank you so much for sharing. We should know this man's name.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton)

~~~
secfirstmd
You are welcome.

Thank you for spreading his name, here and hopefully elsewhere. He and the
people he helped deserve it.

------
stcredzero
It makes me angry, when I see people online talking about the whole of the
WWII Wehrmacht as if they are all uniform, fungible movie villains. This was a
huge organization of human beings. The degree to which any individual is
culpable needs to be considered on an individual basis. Human rights are
absolute, even for the soldiers of the enemy. Principles like that are what
separate free countries from tyranny.

This is not to say, that there isn't a group accountability for an
organization like an army, where people are all wearing the same regalia and
literally marching under the same banner. This implies a group responsibility
for calling out the wrongs of one's own side. The morality of the faction can
be measured as a whole by how well it calls out its own failures of principle,
and by what principles it says it upholds and by what principles it eschews.

~~~
iknowordidthat
As the paper clearly illustrates, there were so few documented cases of
refusal that they are negligible when weighing the war crimes of the Wehrmact
and its members.

Less than one hundred out of millions.

Viewing them all as “fungible villains” is a very accurate approximation with
a ridiculously low error.

~~~
pergadad
You're shot for refusing orders. In a war situation no one is going to bother
recording this. You'll either get a letter home that you were a deserter and
died dishonourably, so your widow and kids won't even get a pension, or you'll
be lucky and the commander sends back a letter that you were killed in the
line of duty or from injury/disease.

One way or the other, there will be few situations where such refusal is
possible, much less written down.

~~~
anigbrowl
Better to die with a clear conscience than to murder the innocent. If you were
cunning you could take the commanding officer out instead.

------
dsfyu404ed
I think it's worth noting that the armed forces and the Nazi party itself were
not in lock step for the duration of the 3rd Reich. While the SS answered more
or less directly to the Nazi party there were certainly individuals throughout
the leadership of the armed forces that did not like their resources being
used to carry out genocide and or help the SS because they had little interest
in that, they wanted to fight a real war. A lot of the leadership of the armed
forces resented the fact that the Nazi party has usurped some of their power
so they weren't too keen on bending over backwards to further the goals of
their unspoken political opponents. Also have to remember that until they got
the death camp system up and running most executions were done by firing
squad. Doing this to civilians at large scale is kind of a shitty task so
there's going to be really little enthusiasm for it from the lower officers
and the grunts who will generally drag their feet and stall.

~~~
chewz
It is always better to study history then to make broad general statements.

As an example Babi Yar one of largest mass execution of Jews during II WW.

> Contrary to the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht", the Sixth Army under the
> command of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau worked together with the SS
> and SD to plan and execute the mass-murder of the Jews of Kiev.[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar)

------
jacobush
The last line resonated with me a lot "In every case of documented refusal to
obey orders to exterminate people, the coercive powers of the Nazi system
proved to be impotent or ineffective."

I would have expected the opposite. I guess this means, the structures of
society and rule of of law were actually sort of still working, but that most
people feared going against the zeitgeist.

~~~
choeger
In fact, the Nazis had perverted the law and its rule but retained the
structure of a lawful state, as chaos and anarchy were pretty much out of
fashion in Germany after the 20s. Think of the Nazis as a gang of uneducated
mobsters winning some decent hotel in a game of poker. They had to retain the
reception, the service personal and the kitchen. But they behave disgustingly
at every opportunity.

~~~
hutzlibu
"Think of the Nazis as a gang of uneducated mobsters"

Only that they were quite educated. Not the lower troops of SA. But the party
members were very much into classical education, classical music etc.

And they totally went by law and order. "Just" a different order. With racism
as its core fundamentals and the neglect of humanism in general.

~~~
choeger
It was a metaphor.

~~~
hutzlibu
I know .. but many people have this picture of the Nazis. So I wanted to
clarify ..

------
AlexCoventry
The OP link is dead for me: returns 0 bytes. Anyone got another link?

~~~
FabHK
Try this:

[https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/1429971](https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/1429971)

~~~
AlexCoventry
Thanks, that worked.

------
dannyw
This link doesn’t seem to work in Australia (Optus). Censorship?

~~~
anigbrowl
Server overload. You can get it from here for the price of creating a login:
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/1429971](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1429971)

------
jasonhansel
The White Rose pamphlets, by Germans who opposed Nazism during World War II,
are fascinating --
[http://whiterosesociety.org/WRS_pamphlets_home.html](http://whiterosesociety.org/WRS_pamphlets_home.html)

------
grobibi
Conclusion at the end is the biggest surprise.

------
Doubl
Most people go with the flow. I'd imagine that this was true also when it came
to the torturing of prisoners by America post 9/11\. How many refused to go
along with that I wonder? Nazi Germany, like the USA, seems to have been a
country where the courts were able to operate with a degree of independence
and due process consequently existed to some extent. By contrast I remember
solzhenitsyn writing how he would much prefer to end up in the clutches of the
Gestapo than the NKVD. You had a chance of the Gestapo releasing you if you
managed to persuade them off your innocence whereas your fate was already
sealed with the NKVD from the moment they decided to arrest you.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Was this post intended as sarcasm, or did you actually mean to equate the
torture of a small number of prisoners with mass executions of millions of
civilians?

~~~
Doubl
I never said they were equal. I don't know if anyone was punished for doing it
though.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Your post appears to be apologizing for the actions of Nazi Germany by
comparing the Nazi legal system's civil protections with those of the modern-
day United States of America.

The OP discusses instances where individual Germans refused to follow orders.
One example:

> By his action to obtain this order, Griese refused the request of the SD to
> have his men participate in the execution of Jews in his area.

>In fact, the SD had shot the 365 Jews themselves while he was on his journey
to and from Konigsberg

Nazi leadership recognized that mass execution of Jews (and others) by firearm
was taking a psychological toll on the Germans being ordered to do so, which
is one of the reasons that more abstract, industrial methods (e.g. gas
chambers) were developed.

~~~
Doubl
How an I apologising for the Nazis? Is it necessary to always preface any
remarks in which Nazi Germany and another country may both be referenced with
some kind of explanation or risk being called a Nazi apologist? Can we not let
the actual arguments speak for themselves? America has tortured people. It has
also destroyed Nations it regarded as Savage. How is that an apology for the
Nazis?

~~~
pknopf
Don't encourage him. He obviously likes feeling morally superior.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Perhaps you misunderstand. This is an issue better approached with logic than
with emotion.

I draw attention to the parent's false equivalency of Nazi Germany and 21st
Century USA. I describe the Nazi regime's recognition of the morale toll on
its soldiers of gunning down innocent souls. Himmler himself saw this as an
"issue."

Conjecture basis the article that the Nazi German legal system is similar to
the modern American system is logically fallacious and dangerous insofar as it
suggests that Nazism is compatible with contemporary American political and
ethical values.

------
muglug
The Milgram Experiment[1] shows that most people do go along with what an
authority figure tells them. It’s one of the more depressing experiments in
social psychology.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment)

~~~
DanBC
The Milgram experiment shows people will role-play if you put them in a role
play situation.

It doesn't tell you anything about what people do in the real world in real
situations.

~~~
spamizbad
That’s just not correct.

In the original form of the experiment (and several subsequent replications),
the “teacher” was under the impression everything was real and wasn’t aware
the “learner” (the person pretending to get shocked) was an actor.

Today, you’d never get an ethics board to approve the experiment in this form,
as several former “teachers” were distraught, after being told the true nature
of the experiment, because they naturally assumed they’d never be capable of
such terrible acts.

There is no evidence to support the view that the “teachers” who administered
dangerous shocks were somehow clued into the fact that it was an actor. That
would have made the entire experiment worthless, as “Will people pretend to do
evil things while role playing?” isn’t an interesting question because thats
well understood to be true. Milgram set out specifically to see if every-day
people would commit acts that go against their personal conscience if directed
to do so by authority.

~~~
tptacek
Eh. [https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-
milgram...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram-
participants-provide-little-support-for-the-contemporary-theory-of-engaged-
followership/)

~~~
mannykannot
That is an interesting article. There are certainly lots of reasons for
thinking that the behavior of the participants was much more complicated than
is sometimes presented, but nevertheless, it seems not beyond possibility
that, when questioned after the event, participants might have made somewhat
self-serving statements about actions of theirs that they may have had qualms
about at the time.

I find it interesting that the article makes an issue over the point that "the
majority do not appear to have continued out of commitment to science," as
this particular motivation seems to me to be one of the lesser issues raised
by the exercise.

