Godwin's Law: Where's the line?

[Case]

Believe it or not, IJ, but killing Jews was not the defining feature of Nazis. The defining feature of Nazis was membership of or adherence to the National Socialist German Worker's Party.

 

[DepricatedZero]

Believe it or not, IJ, but killing Jews was not the defining feature of Nazis. The defining feature of Nazis was membership of or adherence to the National Socialist German Worker's Party.

This.

Most Nazis knew nothing of the death camps, for instance. Yes they were guilty of inaction, but they weren't all gestapo. This is why Himmler and Goring are so vilified - the camps were their brainchild, not Hitler's. Hitler just charged Himmler with finding the final solution to the Jewish question.

Hitler had threatened to exterminate all Jews if they caused another World War. When the gestapo started taking families away and sending them off on trains, everyone knew those people weren't coming back. I suspect the vast majority of Germany did not know about the camps, though. Those who did, possibly by proximity(such as the village in a Band of Brothers) likely lived in fear that speaking out against it would land them in the camp as well. I suspect it was a rather well veiled atrocity until the camps were found towards the end of the war.

More than likely they were aware of the labor camps like Auschwits III but not of the horror inside them, and were likely ignorant of the death camps.

Nazis themselves, the vast majority, were no more evil than the soldiers of Napolean, Alexander the Great, or any other conqueror with dreams of a united Europe. Soldiers are soldiers, and it doesn't matter which side of the war they fought on, they followed orders. Nazi Youth like the Pope didn't support or contribute to the camps.

And lets face it, the only atrocities that Nazis are guilty of are the camps. The inhuman treatment of their prisoners. This falls on those who participated, not on the entire country. Germany itself is fairly awesome, and the Nazis weren't bad people, just the officers who ordered what was done.

 

[lilablassblau]

Okay, I have to go off topic here a bit.

Towards the end of the War about 1200 concentration camps were established in Germany. Those camps were often close to a village or even in the village itself and often easily accessible for parts of the population. Prisoners were working in the villages during the day and brutality against them or even murders on the open street occured. So yes, those camps were a well known fact to many Germans and so was the brutality of them.

And even the big camps, like Dachau for example, were not as closed off to the population as it was generally believed. It is of course not completely untrue that the SS, who was mostly in charge of the camps, did threaten people who were seen helping prisoners, but generally the people just didn't care or were convinced that the treatement the prisoners were facing were actually justified.

And well, when it comes to the Germans, as much as I would like claim that only some few were "evil", I'm afraid that the vast majority actually identified with the Nazis. You can't extablish such a system where 90 % is seriously against it, but you need the support of the majority. However, I don't think you have to be a comic like super villan to support politics like that. "Normal" people, meaning people that were not psychological ill, commited those terrible crimes. I think many would be dissappointed if they ever met Ex-Nazis, because often they are astoundingly average people.

 

[DepricatedZero]

I can see the sense in that, if it were fueled by a constant frenzied, mob mentality. Which as I understand it fairly well was.

So I retract, I'm sorry - I've always been under the impression that the real atrocities were unknown to most of the German people. I do think there was a fair degree of thought evasion involved though - theres no way that normal people truly find that acceptable. Their support would come from two ends I think - the one of crowd mentality and the other of avoiding thinking about what that crowd is doing. Those combined, yes I can see the german citizens accepting death camps.

It's disturbing, but I still don't think it makes them any more inherently evil than, say, non-fundamental Muslims or Christians.