This reminds me of (the somewhat controversial) Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. She was the one who coined the phrase the "banality of evil". The coldness and lack of emotion present is not unlike how Arendt was describing Eichmann.
It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.
I was recently reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murikami and there is a scene mentioning his contributions to the war. I am not sure whether the historical book the main character Kafka reads is real or doctored, but the scene where the author becomes absorbed by it mentions how Eichmann was frusrated by the logistical complexity of this operation. He was unnerved by how much was expected of him to make all Jews disappear with increasingly minimal resources. It was operational tempo that bothered him, not ethics. It was how he might be remembered for his failure to accept the task in front of him.
I cannot exactly remember the frame of reference of main character as he read this in the scene. But I do remember thinking: how did I think I would make it through the military as an officer when I was a young little wannabe patriot?
I think we see this now too. Many people complain about gamification of war. I do not think spy planes and Apache gunship HUDs (heads up displays) make that happen, they just add post-modern flare. If society does not gamify war and killing, we have convinced ourselves we will not win, not fight hard enough.
An end to my many anecodtes. My grandfather was a WWII vet, and very much hated it (only was promoted once in the brig for unlawful dissertion). I was always remember his favorite quote: "they trained us very well to kill but never to stop." It haunts me all the time.
>Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The Enemy's story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad. If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you'll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy's mind.
However something like 4% of men are sociopaths, so this isn't always true. But as far as I know, Hitler was not a sociopath, nor were all of the countless other people involved.
Wow, that Leonard Cohen poem. It's true for the Nazi leadership too; explaining Hitler as a madman diminishes the horror of his actions. Point is, he was a sane man. It's only by admitting that he was one of us that helps us not repeat history.
Plus, he had a huge following who shared the same beliefs. Not just in German population, but also in the ruiling and upper classes of Europe, the US and Latin America.
And, of course, it's not like his actions were that different than things like the slavery of African Americans, the colonization and enslavement of 2/3 of the world by the European colonial powers (with tens of millions of dead, and heinous acts of torture and mass murder), etc.
To judge by the reviews of a new book on Eichmann, she had an axe to grind, and ignored some flaws in her case. If thinking that they should have killed 10.3 million rather than 6 million does not count as rabidly antisemitic, that's setting a pretty high bar.
It is fair to say that there were people such as Arendt painted Eichmann to be. Some went on to quite solid careers on either side of the Cold War.
It's a bit glib to dismiss a long and well-researched book in a single throwaway sentence. Hsve you taken the trouble to read it? I found it extremely convincing. Arendt sat through the entire trial and examined reams of historical documents.
The claim made in this new book is that Eichmann was far more intelligent than he let on, and that he essentially fooled everyone by telling them what they wanted to hear. Evidence is provided in the form of his writings about the moral philosophy of Kant, and previously-mislabeled transcripts from postwar interviews conducted in Argentina by a fellow member of a sort of Nazi book club they were running. Basically all this evidence was out there, it was just misclassified or mislabeled and so no one had connected the dots.
Well, I did link to a review of another long and well-researched book that picks apart Arendt's portrayal. Unless the referred documents are complete fabrications I can't see how Arendt's thesis holds water anymore.
I encourage others to read that review of Bettina Stangneth's "Eichmann Before Jerusalem". Again: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichma.... It does contradict Arendt's thesis, and does so with comprehensive grounding in source material that had been unexamined.
Arendt's thesis is that Eichmann was banal -- that is so lacking in originality and boring -- in his evil, that he was an unthinking functionary just following orders. This is not what Eichmann's memoirs and interviews from his time in Argentina (after World War II, before Jerusalem) convey. He contemplated and dismissed the philosophy of Kant. He participated in weekly book clubs and laid groundwork for Holocaust deniers. He spoke of his genocidal role as a "duty to our blood".
This is not the talk of a man who was just following orders.
"I never did harm to any Jew," says a former guard at Auschwitz.
The guy sleeps well at night. He invited his wife and neighbor, who have all heard it before, to listen to the interview. He stood in front of a permanent bonfire of people, with a gun, and imagines himself as a victim. The power of rationalization is terrifying. And the smarter you are, the better you are at it.
Would you have had the courage to desert under threat of getting shot? I'm not sure I would.
I feel quite certain that I couldn't possibly be brainwashed to do a thing like that willingly. But under threat of pain and death I'm not sure I would be capable of standing up to that kind of force. I honestly don't know what I would do.
On the other hand, my conscience would most certainly not be clear in the aftermath.
Its remarkable how you can apply engineering / industrial methods to a mass killing facility so almost nobody feels guilty. Certainly the construction workers can't be blamed that they built the crematoria, railways can't be blamed for transporting people to death camp, chemists for inventing the Zyklon-B gas or guards for making sure nobody escapes. Everyone just did their job pretending that it's OK if you don't hurt anybody personally. I dont want to judge them, evil sometimes happens just because it's allowed to happen.
Germany invades Yugoslavia, he is drafted, he's picked for Waffen-SS, he is sent to guard a concentration camp.
At that point it's too late to do anything short of sacrificing himself.
I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended?
>At that point it's too late to do anything short of sacrificing himself.
Millions of people have "sacrificed themselves", in the sense that they died fighting to get rid of the nazi regime, and tens or hundrends of thousands also sacrificed themselves by going into the resistance, aiding jews and other fugitives, sabotaging german camps in occupied cities, etc. There are lots of recorded examples of people who faced the firing squad singing or shouting for freedom. So he always had that option too.
>I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended?
Hitler had broad mass appeal for over a decade. He wasn't some crazy dictator who suddenly imposed himself upon the German people. What he preached was actually a general sentiment, repeated by lots of intellectuals, politicians and pundits in one form of another, as was the "historical role" of Germany etc (come to think of it, not that unlike "Manifest Destiny" or the idea of "exceptionalism").
He had detailed his plans, including racial hatred and even extermination, and he had given several bloody examples. He not only was voted for in '33, but he continued to have great popular support even after the war started. It was not just silent forced compliance. Millions applauded those actions, even going out of their way to enable them.
Hitler didn't have, and didn't need, broad mass appeal because his gangs, first the SA and then the SS, terrorized the people into supporting him; the SA in particular operated when Germany was very fragile and looked like it might fall in line with Stalin, who would have been terrible for Germany as well. Hitler was effectively supported by the German establishment as being someone better than Stalin, someone who would actively fight the extreme Leftist forces.
There is a Moral Lesson to be learned from Hitler, but it isn't that functional democracies can just collapse due to a single election going the wrong way. It's that marginal democracies with severe internal problems can collapse if one gang gets more support from the establishment than the others, and if the establishment doesn't check the gang's powers quickly enough.
>Hitler didn't have, and didn't need, broad mass appeal because his gangs, first the SA and then the SS, terrorized the people into supporting him
Not really. Germans were mostly thoroughly enthusiastic, and this has been shown in several historical studies of the era.
Hitlers SA actions were about terrorizing communist and liberal dissent, not about terrorizing the large masses.
E.g:"Few twentieth-century political leaders enjoyed greated popularity among their own people than Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. This remarkable study of the myth that sustained one of the most notorious dictators, and delves into Hitler's extraordinarily powerful hold over the German people"
"Daniel Goldhagen re-visits a question which history has treated as settled, and his research leads him to the inescapble conclusion that none of the answers holds true. That question is: How could the Holocaust happen? His response is an exploration of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism that demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945. The author marshals fresh, primary evidence - including extensive testimony from the actual perpetrators - to show that the killers were ordinary Germans who were not compelled to act as they did (they knew they could refuse without retribution) yet they killed willingly..."
"From the Nuremberg Laws to the Olympic Games, Kristallnacht to the Hitler Youth, this gripping account shows how a whole population became enmeshed in a dictatorship that was consumed by hatred and driven by war."
> Not really. Germans were mostly thoroughly enthusiastic, and this has been shown in several historical studies of the era.
What do you mean Germans ? Austrians were pretty damn enthusiastic. New Yorkers were pretty enthusiastic (until the Poland invasion). Europeans were pretty enthusiastic (again, until Poland).
You might even say that the world was pretty enthusiastic. Well, only half of the rightist nut-cases, and only half of communists (Hitler managed to simultaneously introduce a crap-load of leftist advancements like pensions, right to a job, invalidity benefits ...) and fix the economic situation of the Weimar republic by threatening other leaders, although most was accomplished technically through "negotiation". This made him pretty fucking popular on the left, who saw it as vindication of their ideology (spend your way on social projects out of recessions) and on the right, who saw that he fixed the economy).
I realize this may be hard to believe, but Hitler had 75% of aisle firmly behind him right up till the day he invaded Poland, and after that it only dropped to 40-50% or so until the USSR declared war on him. Of course it varied from place to place and time to time, but if he wanted, he could probably have had himself elected major of Washington. Or Paris, for that matter.
He was never voted to be Chancellor (or CEO by any other name). The Nazi party didn't achieve higher than 33% or so in national elections. That number still qualifies IMO as "mass appeal" so I'm not disagreeing with your point, just clarifying.
I must correct you: The NSDAP did reach 43% at the 1933 (March) election. You could argue, that at this point the NS-regime had already taken over the power. But the NSDAP did also reach 1932 (first election) more than 37% and was the biggest single party in the Reichstag. Also you must count in the other right-wing parties that supported Hitler. With this in mind, you could rightfully say that the right-wing movement (together with Hitler) was popular in big parts of the German population of this time.
Of course, Hitler only could seize power, because the other parties where in controversy and the whole country political unstable. But you also have to keep in mind, that huge parts of the population where no friends of Democracy and wanted to have the Kaiser back.
Also: As much I know, even in those time, it was not possible for the population to directly elect the chancellor. The chancellor was "appointed" by the president. The precondition was, that he had a sufficient support in the Reichstag. That was the case in 1933, because other parties allied with the NSDAP. That is rather similar, how today the government is formed. In Germany, seldom one party can rule the country alone, even today when we have very much less parties in the Bundestag.
"33% or so" -> 37% is about right, but unless my history is wrong here, I think you've fused a couple different events... In 1932 Hitler ran for President, and it was his name directly on the ballot not the National Socialists. He actually pulled just 30% of the vote, which increased to 37% in a runoff with Hindenberg.
The point I was making is that he wasn't voted by popular support. And when he did ascend, Hitler wasn't appointed Chancellor because Hindenberg thought he had the support of the reichstag. He was appointed because Papen thought he could outsmart Hitler and that he as vice chancellor and Hindenberg as President could control Hitler. They were fools, Hidenberg was old and tired, Papen was delusional.
Anyway, no question it was a fascinating and intriguing time in european history.
What we here are discussing is really depending on focus. Fact is, that the NSDAP had more seats in the Reichstag than any other single party in 1932 and 1933 (3 elections -- they had many, because of the instabilities of the governments). In the US, there are only 2 major parties -- so the party with the absolute majority wins. But in Germany (also today) it is very rare, that one single party reaches 50% or more of the votes. It is really very often, that the biggest single party has 33% or less of the votes. What is done, a coalition is made with an other party -- or even two other parties to reach a majority.
Same thing was done 1933. So it was totally normal, totally legal how Hitler reached power (at least by the letter). And: 33% of the people are a big part of the nation. So, the NSDAP had big support even 1932 in the country. That is fact, as sad it is.
The biggest single party in today's Germany had 2009 also only ~33% of the votes, and where building a government with an other party. In 1949 it had even only 31% of the votes and formed the government together with two other parties.
You are right with Papen of course. He was from the Centre (Zentrum) party. The big parties rejected to form a government with the NSDAP, because it was no democratic party. But Papen changed that and formed an evil coalition, where the Zentrum literally supported the devil.
It was prisoners in camps who build crematoria and operated infrastructure. Soldiers were drafted (involuntary) and would get shot for not following orders. Some guards in camp were even Jewish. Nobody pretended anything, they just wanted to live a bit longer.
Just compare it with US prisons or Gaza, everyone is fine with those today.
>It was prisoners in camps who build crematoria and operated infrastructure. Soldiers were drafted (involuntary) and would get shot for not following orders.
If only it was that clear cut.
Actually higher personel, as well as guards and soldiers were known to be extremely sadistic, from using women as sex slaves (the "joy divisions"), to cruel games with killing, maiming prisoners for fun, and everything in between.
It wasn't just "following orders". There was sadistic enjoyment, and sense of a higher race getting rid of unwanted parasites in lots of these people.
That some prisones built crematoria and operated infrastructure (under threat of death) is just a technical detail.
Also, the camps themselves were built by businessmen. Hitler had strong ties to German business. He gave many handouts to business over the years, including labor conscription.
Another perhaps little known to some fact is that tons of people, especially businessmen and politicians, viewed Hitler favorably in the US, until they entered the war. Including his views on Jews etc.
He was a kind of their mascot against "the reds" and against unruly workers and working classes in the US.
Also, contrary to some belief, before and even during the war, the US mostly could not care less about the plight of Jews at the time, even when it was known what was happening to them. E.g
Yes, there is absolutely a direct line running from systematically murdering over 11 million innocent people to incarcerating people or killing 2,000 people in a war.
The Nazis didn't cut roads or destroy infrastructure in the Holocaust, they methodically murdered a lot of people. I really don't see the comparison to the US prison system or to recent events in Gaza.
My point is that nobody can really blame individuals, who are protecting their ass, for participating on evil.
We probably both agree there is something wrong with overblown prison system. But we would hardly blame prison guard for participating. Also we would probably agree to punish prison guard who helps prisoner to escape.
Also some innocent civilians died in last Intifada, but nobody is demanding head of soldiers who killed those civilians.
You do realize that Hamas uses the infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc...) for their attacks? It's safer for the IDF to shoot a rocket then perform a land operation.
This premise reminds me of the plot of a movie, I think it was The Cube. From what I remember, it dealt with how bureaucracy could be used to perpetuate evil, without those involved thinking that what they're doing is wrong.
Once the machinery is in place, inertia makes it very hard to stop: the cogs don't need to worry about the bigger picture, they can just keep on turning.
It's not the same or of the same scale, but every time a massive scandal comes out I think on this. The thing I have in mind currently is the BBC and its group of molesters and rapists that were protected and covered for. It also appears UK politicians were up to the same stuff, but it has been much more successfully covered up. The average moral compass is pretty damn poor when peer pressure rears its ugly head.
Interesting point. If you have a gun to your head, and disobedience has virtually no effect except suicide, then you have virtually no responsibility.
Compare to those of us who are complicit (even if tacitly) in all sorts of crimes, from war to global climate destruction to mass incarceration. Much more responsible than this Auschwitz guard, since we have more freedom to act effectively.
(Assuming he's truthful, and couldn't frag his Nazi commanders nor organize his peers.)
There is nothing in this comment I agree with at all. That doesn't mean I think it's bad; it's just startling to me how different someone else's worldview could be.
I am responding here just for context, it is not directed at you. The parent comment is evidently not popular. It has already been pointed out in comments that many did actually martyr themselves rather than follow the orders or be a cog in the system. However what really annoys me is the insincerity of the "holier than thou" position adopted by many here. Yes, some of those who are commenting here would, I think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt if the majority would. I seriously doubt, if even 50% of those commenting here from that patronizing position would do any different, and I am being generous. Its not about just those who have left such comments, I wonder how many among our own peers would take a moral stand in light of the consequences, particularly when I see people grumble and moan self righteously about even petty inconveniences. Again, I know some would, I know one or two people among my peers of whom I have absolutely no doubt that they would sacrifice themselves, and it fills me with a sense of respect for these people that I cannot even begin to describe. I would like to think that even if I dont sacrifice myself I would find a way to squirm out, but that is perhaps wishful thinking, unless you are put in that situation you never know yourself well enough.
Many people were in the same position as Kiriakou, Snowden, Manning, many were fully aware of the wrongs that were going on, how many put up a resistance at a cost to themselves ?
Do I consider John Yoo to have committed worse acts than this guy, well, absolutely, assuming his account is truthful.
A nonignorable artifact is that we turned out to be on the winning side. Had the winners and the world order been different, Wolfowitz and their ilk would have been the new Eichmann's in the then popular narrative.
@tptacek Just to be clear I am not making a case for a moral equivalence, far from it. The only connection is that many people were in a position where they could have mitigated wanton civilian casualties and gross miscarriage of justice, if they chose to adopt certain personal inconveniences. However very few actually did. A sizeable portion of US were dead against the Iraq war, but among them many still continued to fund some of it with taxes, why ? because among other things, not paying taxes would cause considerable inconvenience.
And again this not by any means directed at you. I am not an US citizen but had I been one, I would have paid the taxes anyway and rationalized it away that taxes does good and very little of that is funding the war.
> Yes, some of those who are commenting here would, I
> think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt
> if the majority would.
This.
I thought about it yesterday, and I believe the most important difference between people living "in the situation" and commentators today is this: we know the Nazis lost the war big time.
1. I truly believe that quite a few people would try to act if they knew the war was coming to an end, their action would be seen as heroic, and therefore they either live as heroes or at least be remembered as such. Conversely, it's not tempting to act if you're going to be vilified when the Nazis win and rule the world.
2. Wasn't it clear by 1944 (or whenever) that the Nazis would lose? In a way yes, but if you want to argue that, think about Syria. A year ago it was clear that Assad was finished, he would certainly lose his power and quite possibly his life. Today he's not only in power (over a smaller Syria), but some in the West are actually wondering if we shouldn't include him in a coalition against IS. Now that he gave up his chemical weapons, we're clearly fine with whatever he's doing.
I also have trouble arranging Nazi camp guards, a CIA analyst alleged to have outed an undercover agent during a book press availability, Snowden, and the person who dumped a database of foreign service cables to a stranger on the Internet. I have, literally, no idea how to order that set.
I don't know if that's interesting to you or not. Just a difference in our worldviews.
Comparing our stance against the climate change, with a full-featured genocide is nonsense.
There's a limit to everything. Then again... when individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making[1].
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't 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."
Disobedience of orders within a military hierarchy in wartime will certainly lead to court-martial, and in serious cases may result in a death sentence.
Did some digging, luckily you are now obligated as a German soldier to disobey:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_obedience_in_the_Bu... "He must not obey if the order violates others' human dignity, international law or consists of a crime (including a misdemeanor)"
Well not back then of course.
The big mystery is, that even total "normal" people can become "beasts".
The problem is, that we are so far away from all that, that we think, we are immune to such things ... but we are not. Because humans are essentially the same today as yesterday. The only thing we could/should do is, remember what happened in the past. But we do the opposite: We make unnatural beasts of those people, that existed in the past -- some fairy-tale like creatures, that existed only in a nightmare of humanity.
But it was no nightmare and it can come back to us very quickly. Look into the nearer past -- what happened even in the "peaceful" Europe (e.g. Yugoslavia) -- humans can easily be beasts again and much easier, when we think, that it all was a fairy-tale.
It's not a mystery, it is a science: Flags, uniforms, medals, oaths, "unit cohesion," etc. are all designed to make a killer out of you or me if there is a need for it.
There are psychologists living and working in the US who designed torture programs.
Totally correct. By mystery, I wanted to say something different: Most people will not believe, how little is needed to make a beast out of "normal people".
Apropos science: the EU decided, that in the future, costs of the military will now be accounted for in the same category as investments into science, universities or infrastructure. Thus, countries of the EU can put more money into weapons without missing the EU targets for investments into the future. Sometimes politics can just be a totally dirty business.
people can evaluate their behavior either by relative yardsticks - law and morals of the group/society they belong too - or by absolute yardsticks of good and evil, like don't kill, etc... Using the relative ones is easier and gets you comfortably to the advanced age. Thus evolutionary the relative ones prevail inside given group/society. There is though some kind of correctional feedback at work that when the relative yardsticks of a given group/society drift too far from the absolute ones, the whole group/society is eliminated (or some kind of catastrophically adjusted) from the race.
This is the silliest kind of evolutionary psychology. People had kids in their teens and twenties. Who exactly was being purged for a belief in absolute good and evil before they could reproduce?
Of course not. Being "criminal" is relative to the society one inhabits.
That being said, he ought to feel badly about what was being done and his part in it. Conscience is higher than, and apart from, being criminal.
I feel badly about some of the things my society is doing right now. I regret my part in it, but short of drastic (and probably technically "criminal") measures, there is little I feel I can do. Just small things, and these don't seem to matter much. So I'm just doing the less bad that I reasonably can. But I still feel bad about some of the things we do.
Try Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah". It's a very unusual documentary without any material from historical film archives. He talked to jewish survivors, to their neighbours and also to Nazis, that were discovered by him. He filmed many locations as they were in the 70's (when the documentary was finished) and much much more. The documentary is about 10 hours long, and it took him several years to create. Lanzmann participated in the french résistance.
I happen to live in a country where Nazism is on the rise and everyone might have to eventually pick sides. I hope not, but Greece right now looks very much Germany in 1930 and if things do not change drastically in the next 5 years, I'm not sure how we're gonna void a Nazi regime.
The fact that this guy doesn't feel guilty, makes me sad. To me he is a racist, killer. There are situations in life, where you have to pick-sides. You can't play Switzerland when the whole world around you goes in ruins. At least to me, is not acceptable and says a lot about your character.
It's easy to say that behind a computer screen. It's much harder to choose to die for your beliefs, especially if doing so doesn't even help your cause. Realistically a single guard would not have been able to do much.
To say it say it "says a lot about your character" is ridiculous. The vast majority of people didn't resist.
Well fragging was common on the front lines because it had plausible deniability of the enemy throwing a grenade back. In a prison camp far away from the front, it's more difficult to explain, and harder to get away with.
It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.