Did the German people know what was happening in their country during world war II?

Question

I think it would be real hard to hide operations on that scale.
The bureaucracy alone would have been thousands. The individuals with direct experience would have numbered in the tens of thousands.

I once met an American who had been a paratrooper, he said: "I thought I was doing the right thing."

(A German paratrooper)

Answer 1

Go to a retirement home and find a German operson about 80 years old and ask that person. First hand info is somewhat more reliable. Mind you it will have the personal twist of actually being there and not having any food, electricity or water for months on end!

TFTP

Answer 2

Of course they did.

I suggest you read "Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.

It explodes the myth that the average German didn't know. They not only knew they approved. The promise to wipe out the Jews was the primary basis of Hitler's popularity and Germans were happy to see the program carried out.

Indeed, all over Europe, the local populations gleefully collaborated with the Germans in rounding up Jews and sending them to what they knew would be torture and death. The notable exception was Denmark. The French and the Poles were particularly enthusiastic anti-Semites (and still are).

NB:I find it very amusing that the same people will say 1)We didn't know and 2) We were afraid to do anything about it. Odd isn't it? What would they be afraid about if they didn't know in the first place.

Edit(1): What's even more outrageous is the long winded explanation of how Hitler really was a good guy...at first...who made everything just wonderful for ordinary Germans. Right, he made the trains run on time so what the heck if he killed six million Jews.

Even more amusing (or disgusting depending how you look at it) is the idea that it was only a "handful" of Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust. Right. It was Hitler and three friends who did all the killing and bad stuff. Otherwise everybody else was just as nice as can be.

Answer 3

Well, many Germans were aware that some kind of genocide was going on in their country, but there were three things preventing them from doing anything about it. 1) They weren't aware of the scale of the genocide. 2) They knew about everything but didn't care (only accounted for a small minority of the people) or 3) They knew about it but were too afraid to say anything for fear that they themselves would be blacklisted (most of the Germans). They were more worried about themselves and their own families, and knew that if they were blacklisted, they would not be able to get any jobs or would be fired from their current ones. They behaved as most people would, they were more concerned about their families than they were about the people around them. This is a natural reaction from anyone; the instinct to survive is one of the strongest of the human reactions.

The Nazis also justified the concentration camps by getting certain priests of various religions to approve it. These "priests" would proclaim that this cleansing was necessary. They brainwashed the German people into believing that God had deemed it okay and they should therefore do the same.

Another motive could have been that they were also scared that they would be sent to concentration camps if they voiced any rejections. Remember, the concentration camps were not only for Jews; gypsies, homosexuals, and cripples among many other groups were sent to these camps. Protestors were not excluded from the criteria of being sent away.

Of course, I don't mean to say that all Germans felt this way. There were many who agreed with what the Nazis were doing and went on to become Nazis themselves. But this was a minority of the population.

In hindsight, everything is always 20/20. You can always say, "I would have made the right decision. I would have stuck up for my fellow countrymen. I would not have let the Nazis take control of the country and allow such destruction." But when faced with the real decision, whether or not you'd be able to risk everything for people unrelated to you, it might be a little harder to make.

Answer 4

Those around the death camps certainly did, the others didn't. Germans were too scared to oppose, contradict or even just voice their opinion, coz they would have been killed on the spot. Hitler and his buddies didn't hesitate to kill everything in their way, no matter if countryman, foreigner or Jew. And yes - the Germans with guts and which knew did care and even tried to do something against it. Plenty of them were hiding their Jewish friends, risked their own life and died with pride, if they were caught. Don't condemn a whole country for a couple of people. Yes, the Nazis were elected, but only because they knew which buttons to push. What the world did to Germany after WW1 was embarrassing and wrong, since Germany wasn't the country that started WW1. But it had to pay. It had to take the guilt and it had to pay way too much. The Nazis and Hitler pushed this button to get empowered and at the beginning Hitler was a briliant leader. He managed to bring jobs, raised the economy and so on. Nobody could have ever known, what his actual intensions were. And by the time the people got aware of it, it was too late. He and his Nazis didn't hesitate to kill their own family, so you can imagine how big the fear was that was lying over the country. Everybody was spying on everybody. You couldn't say what's on your mind and if you dared to say something against the politics of Hitler, Göhring and Goebbels and their buddies, you were a dead man walking.

You can blame Germany and the Germans all you want, but you must face the fact that the majority of the people simply couldn't do anything against it. Plenty of people tried to help in their own way, in secret, others had no possibility or were too scared. Living in a regime like this brings out either the best or the worst of a human being.

amfound2 - that's total bullshit. Read your history books, before opening your mouth. And just so you know, in almost every country throughout the time, the Jews were chased, hunted and killed. America is no expection.

Answer 5

Are you talking about the Holocaust? The surprising fact is that it could have been done covertly, as it was under the control of the Special Services branch, and much of the work was done by the Jewish prisoners, who were literally worked to death, then replaced when the next trainload of prisoners came in. The other factor is that the German people themselves were under a lot of stress. They were being bombed, their armies were being decimated, they had food shortages and towards the later stages of the war, had to scramble to keep themselves and their families alive.
That's not saying none of them knew what was going on. Certainly those in the vicinity of the death camps must have known. There were too many physical clues that couldn't be hidden. But it's quite possible that Germans who lived in other parts of the country didn't know. Don't forget, all media was rigidly controlled by the Nazis. There was no television, radio was censored, newspapers were censored, and the German people were told only what the Reich wanted them to know, which was usually that the Nazis were winning the war.

Answer 6

First off, a good source of personal accounts, from all sides, as well a variety of life positions in World War 11 , is a book called: "The Good War" An Oral history of World War Two, Studs Terkel.

In one account , a anti Nazi, in Germany during the war, said, that any German , such a German Sailor, might say; "I never say any Jews being hurt" or the like.

The anti Nazis, would remind them, "Have you ever seen the smoke coming from the towns, from the synagogues? ( The Nazis would gather Jews in them , lock the doors, set them on fire and shoot any that ran from the door or window.

All Germans would have seen, heard and had some knowledge of these events;they all knew.

Answer 7

While there was certainly no free press to report on the concentration camps and the killings of Jews, it is incorrect to say that most Germans knew nothing of it. Some of those camps are right on the edges of little towns, where one doesn't just build a 50-acre prison-camp without attracting the notice of locals. Even worse, it was very common for German civilians to visit the camps and even have their photos taken with prisoners -- or their corpses. Very, very few Germans could really claim to have not known what was happening -- and, considering their situation, their ignorance is unexcusable.

Answer 8

The great majority did not know. Those who heard the rumors of genocide were loathe to believe it. Those living near and around the death camps were fully aware of it, but could do nothing unless they too wanted to be part of the Final Solution. Generally speaking, only those few intimates of Hitler understood the full scale operations. SS Officers were given limited and selective duties only, preventing any knowledge of the scope of the operation. For instance, an officer stationed at Auschwitz would believe that perhaps this was the solitary 'death camp'. Nevertheless, they were brainwashed, desensitized and highly indoctrinated servants of the Fuhrer. They had lost much of the human capacity for reason and compassion.

Answer 9

No doubt the German people knew what was happening just as there is no doubt the citizens of America know what is happenning in the world today vis a vis their country. The question is did the Germans know whether what their country was up to at that time was right or wrong? The citizenry of a nation ALWAYS know what is happenning but they seldom make a judgement of it or act upon that judgement (if one is ever made).

Answer 10

Ask yourselves what the citizens of the U.S. or the U.K. or France or Germany know about what is going on in their countries now? If they think some things are wrong, then ask how much power do they feel they have to change them? Ask yourself how many of them embrace the things which are wrong for personal gain, or from personal fear?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, about the Soviet Prison system--just a chronicle of it, really.
One of the first things he said was that we shouldn't think of it as us and them. It's all us. All humans and societies are capable of doing terrible things under certain circumstances and I am going to add and justify those things to themselves.
I don't think the Germans were any different.