(The following essay was written for my "Germany Since Hitler" course at the University of Texas at Austin. The prompt for the essay was "Germans Under Hitler: Victims, Perpetrators, or Accomplices?" My response was the latter. The works cited are "Survival in Auschwitz" by Primo Levi, "Nazism and German Society" edited by David Crew (the course instructor), and "The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968" edited by Hanna Schissler)
As the dust settled at the conclusion of the Second World War, Europeans had little time for reflection on the traumatic and horrifying events of the past several years. With the United States and the Soviet Union's mutual threat of Hitler obliterated, and their armies occupying the respective western and eastern halves of Europe generally and Germany specifically, the two new superpowers were far more concerned with their present conflict with each other and their desire to enlist the portion of Germany they were occupying as an ally in that conflict, than they were with delivering justice to former collaborators of the Third Reich and insisting that the German people take responsibility for the crimes of their former regime. Following the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials, the victors of the Second World War were ready to move on to new things, as were most of those Germans who had managed to survive the past twelve years under their murderous former government and the World War that it had started. The Nazi regime's crimes against humanity however, were far too heinous and widespread to ignore or forget, so instead of doing so, many Germans remembered, "a history peopled with innocents in which a handful of zealous Nazis had deluded good Germans" (Moeller, 94 in Schissler). Such a history though, while surely more comforting than one in which ordinary German people are held accountable for the actions of a regime that they overwhelmingly either supported or at least approved of during its moments of greatest perceived successes, simply does not square with the historical record. The truth of course, is that while Germans certainly did not act as a monolith, all those Germans who lent legitimacy to the Third Reich as a popular regime, whether through their political support, military service, acquiescence, or failure to resist in any way, must take some responsibility for that regime's actions, and be considered an accomplice to its many crimes.
In Survival in Auschwitz, author Primo Levi reflects on his time as an inmate in a Nazi concentration camp and argues that the perpetration of the Nazis' crimes was the work of a force inherent in human nature, a force which generally (and thankfully) lies dormant in civilized society, but which had been released in full force in the culture that produced the Nazi regime:
"Many people- many nations- can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that 'every stranger is an enemy.' For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and does not lie at the base of a system of reason. But when this does come about, when the unspoken dogma becomes the major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager. Here is the product of a conception of the world carried rigorously to its logical conclusion..." (9)
In this sense, it could be said that every German who in their hearts or words pinned all of their country's lingering problems in 1933- a devastated economy, defeat in World War I, and the Versailles Treaty- on Jews or other ethnic, political, or religious minorities, was guilty of creating a toxic environment in which National Socialism was not only politically acceptable, but ultimately allowed to become the dominant political force in their country. Of course, as it has been said countless times, it is true that the Nazis never won a majority in any election prior to their rise to power in 1933. It is also true however, that when Adolf Hitler finally did take power, it was not through a coup or violent overthrow of the previous government- it was entirely through legal maneuvers, and the acquiescence of the other political parties. Given those parties' half-hearted or nonexistent opposition to Hitler's claim to dictatorial power following his installation as Chancellor, it must be inferred that these more moderate forces in German society at the very least agreed with "the major premise" of the new Führer's syllogism, even if they were not ready, as he was, to carry it "rigorously to its logical conclusion." But then, once Hitler's rise to power was complete and his program was put into effect, if these forces remained in opposition to the lengths to which Hitler was willing to carry his fanatical racism, their actions utterly failed to prove it.
Hitler's popularity only continued to increase over the course of his first decade in power, falling only when the tide turned in his war with the Soviet Union. Even then though, most Germans had so fallen under the spell of the Führer's charisma that not even the war's conclusion and its leaving Germany a politically divided and obliterated wasteland, was able to convince many members of German society that the Nazi movement and the man who led it had always been wrongheaded and evil:
"...Around one in two Germans in both the American and the British zones... thought that National Socialism had basically been a good idea, badly carried out, and were far more favorably disposed to it than to communism... As late as 1950, 10 percent of a nationwide opinion survey sample in West Germany regarded Hitler as the statesman who had achieved most for Germany- second only to Bismarck. In summer 1952, around a quarter of the population had a "good opinion" of Hitler. A tenth of those questioned thought that Hitler was the greatest statesman of the century, whose true greatness would only be recognized at a later date, and a further 22 percent thought that, while he had made "some mistakes" he had nevertheless been an excellent head of State." (Kershaw, 210 in Crew)
Germans who responded to these polls with a favorable opinion of Hitler and Nazism in the abstract, must have mentally differentiated between what they perceived as the Nazi state's triumphs, which they listed as "good social conditions, good living conditions, full employment, unified State and government, and order and security" (Kershaw, 210 in Crew), and that which they found shameful, namely the atrocities that it committed against Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. Such a distinction however, ignores the fact that everything the Nazi state did, whether perceived as a "success" or a failure by those it left behind, was motivated by a concept of racial struggle that always sought as its highest aim the elimination or subjugation of inferior races, and Aryan domination of the Eurasian landmass and the world. Everything else, including and especially those things which motivated ordinary Germans to support the Nazi regime, were merely a means to that end, an end whose horrifying pursuit could never have been possible without the German peoples' acquiescence:
"The plebiscitary acclamation which could always be mobilized by Hitler provided him with an unassailable base of popularity, and as such offered the regime legitimation both within Germany and in the eyes of foreign powers, allowing the scope for further mobilization and a gathering momentum of Nazi policy. The massive popularity of Hitler, recognized even by enemies of the regime, formed therefore a decisive element in the structure of Nazi rule in Germany." (Kershaw, 203-204 in Crew)
But while some Germans supported the Nazi regime for what they considered to be its services to the nation, still others participated enthusiastically in the culture of National Socialist fear and repression for more individualistic, selfish reasons. This phenomenon played out most notably in the operations of the Gestapo, the Nazi state's secret police. Long thought of as "omnipotent, omniscient, and ubiquitous" (167 in Crew), Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul demonstrate that in reality the Gestapo was an understaffed and overwhelmed organization that never could have fulfilled the functions it was assigned, had it not been for the enthusiastic assistance it received from the German people:
"Denunciations were the key link in the interactions between the police and the population...they were among the most important factors that kept the system going... This viewpoint, in turn, in which Germany no longer appears as "the first occupied territory" and the gestapo is no longer seen as a foreign institution imposed upon the population, but rather as one rooted in German society, requires a real change in the paradigm which has guided research until recently; instead of the image of a state capable of (almost) perfect surveillance of the whole population we need now to see a society that produced mass denunciations." (188 in Crew)
This is not to say, however, that the many Germans who produced denunciations were all enthusiastic Nazis (no doubt some of them were). Rather, for the most part, "ordinary Germans used the Gestapo to settle scores with neighbors or relatives, to rid themselves of inconvenient spouses or to acquire Jewish property" (Crew 166). This example illustrates a theme which one encounters time and time again in studying the German peoples' relationship with the Nazi regime; while the "ordinary German" was not motivated by the same fanatical obsessions as Nazi leaders were in their support and participation in the National Socialist regime, they were no less guilty of lending the support and legitimacy necessary to the Nazi leadership for it to pursue genocidal policies.
This is no less true of the German woman who lends her support to the Nazi cause through her establishment of a comforting home environment for her SS husband following a day of killing Jews, than it is for the one who denounces her husband to the Gestapo in the interests of getting him murdered so she may find a new one. Though the former's motivation of nurturing a man whom she loves (even if he is a monster) may legitimately be more understandable and forgivable than the sociopathic motivations of the latter, the practical reality is that the former was considerably more responsible for creating an environment in which Nazi soldiers could slaughter millions of innocent people without facing the social consequences such a repulsive action should warrant. Adelheid von Saldern notes:
"At first glance, it appeared that nothing had changed in the private sphere in comparison with the preceding decades. But, in fact, a great deal had changed. The Nazi state which many women tolerated was a barbaric system, a system made possible by the passive acquiescence of the overwhelming majority of the German people. The continued existence of a seemingly intact private sphere made it easier for the Nazi system to wield power... People's behavior did not have to change: although behavior in the private sphere may have remained "the same," its impact changed as an automatic consequence of the transformation of the public-private sphere" (150 in Crew)
Allowed to retain some attachment to the realm of acceptable human behavior in the form of their homes and families, Nazi soldiers and SS officers could perpetrate their crimes against humanity assured that their wife was no more likely to end her relationship with him on account of them, than the German people were to end theirs with the Third Reich for the same reason.
Study of the Nazi period presents as difficult a challenge as there is to anyone who likes to keep an optimistic view of human nature. The period represents nothing less than the near-unanimous consent, whether tacit or overt, of a people considered civilized, towards a regime whose policies were more odious and reprehensible to any notion of civility than any other before or since. As a victim of that regime, Primo Levi reflected during his time in Auschwitz whether grosser acts of indecency than those perpetrated by the Nazis were even possible:
"We became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains." (26-27)
If such senseless cruelty had been committed by an individual rather than a state, it would be universally expected that anyone aware of such a crime who did not do everything that they reasonably could to stop it from going on, would be held accountable for their responsibility in allowing the crimes to continue. That such a standard was not applied to the countless Germans who were complicit in the crimes of the Nazi state, was due not to any innocence on their part, but to the sheer impracticality of prosecuting so many people. While justice cannot demand the prosecution of an entire nation though, it can and must demand that this nation should tell the truth and acknowledge its complicity in the crimes of its former government, begging forgiveness from those whom it watched be persecuted, tortured, and murdered for twelve long years.
© Joey Sorenson, 17 February 2012
© Joey Sorenson, 17 February 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment