Do you think the German men who helped carry out Jewish holocaust felt any sort of remorse or regret?

Question

I realize it was war. These men were doing what there leader asked, but do you think as they were throwing men, women, and children in the oven, they ever struggled with it morally? Weren't most of these men Christian?

It seems there are basic brutal truths associated with any war, men do what they must. I have always wondered though if these men's moral code was screaming at them from within all the while? Does anyone else wonder?

Answer 1

I think this is an excellent question. Such a breath of fresh air.

I believe that the Nuremberg Trials really set the tone on what exactly IS obedience.

Obedience to authority when the authority is corrupt or Obedience to a Higher power; your conscience; Natural Law. One does supersede the other, and that being Natural Law/Higher Power (God to many).

It is the mistaken belief that you are to follow authority at all costs, as we can attest to in regards to the German soldiers. Many -as a poster previously stated-were just very hardened. But most were just simply 'drafted' so to speak not understanding the ideology of the Nazi regime; scared, hungry, and really not alot of other prospects employment wise.

I really believe that many of these men that did have a conscience began to see these people (particularly those within the concentration camps) the prisoners--as subhuman, human excrement, whatever they could come up with to justify the horror. Justification so they could sleep at night. You don't hear alot about any of these men now or even post war due to their great shame.

In regards to Christians, I think this is really almost a moot point. The fact that they had a religious belief does not constitute the ability to KEEP your right reason in times such as these, I can envision a sense of losing your sanity to the horror of this war.

You and I did not live in their shoes. We have no idea if faced with same predicaments they have would we make same or similiar choices?

Answer 2

Good question, but it seems that most of them didn't. The best answer to this I've found in "Hitler's Willing Executioners". The main these of the book is that the majority of Germans were so much antisemite at that time that they hardly understood that they were actually murdering human beings but instead felt they were doing a "disgusting but necessary work". Himmler said to his men that it had been a "glorious chapter" for them that they could see all these thousands of corpses and "remain decent". I've also read some protocols from trials and you see that the men rather express they felt a physical disgust because of the corpses and blood and all that than a real moral problem, although they were on trial after the war and it would have helped them if they had expressed such a moral problem. Goldhagen comments this with: "There are also convinced meat eaters who feel disgust in a slaughterhouse." It is really not comprehensable, but it was the antisemitic ideology that made this possible. It seems that it became their "moral code" that killing Jews would be something right and necessary. It was not Hitler alone who had these views. I've also read some documents from that time like excerpts from notebooks or letters that the murderers wrote and their total lack of moral feeling is the most scary thing in them. For example one wrote: "Now I have really understood how dangerous the Jews are and I hope that very soon even the last one of them will have dug his own grave", and someone proudly wrote to his parents that he had already shot 1000 Jews and they exhibited this letter in a showcase of their shop.

By the way Germans didn't throw anyone into ovens personally. The Holocaust victims were mostly gassed, shot or starved to death and then cremated or buried in mass graves. In the extermination camps like Auschwitz most of the Jews were gassed in the gas chambers which they were mostly made to enter with the trick of telling them that they would be showers. Afterwards the bodies were cremated in the associated crematories and the ones who had to carry the corpses from the gas chambers to the crematories and to cremate them were concentration camp prisoners, often themselves Jewish, who were forced to do that and were otherwise killed immediately. Some of those of them who have survived have later testified it. Here is a link about these "Sonderkommandos":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando

Another method of killing where the mass shootings that happened mostly in the Soviet Union and were executed by German SS and policemen and are a main topic of "Hitler's Willing Executioners". More than a million Jews were killed this way.

It is no excuse for the murderers that "it was war" and they were "following orders". They often even exceded their orders to be more brutal. And the murder of the Jews was not at all in a war situation, although it happened during the war, but it was murder of civilians in regions where there were no battles at the moment the murders happened and this murder didn't serve any military goals of any kind. So it was quite something different than "basic brutal truths associated with any war". These "basic brutal truths" can explain a lot of the civilian casualties of WW2, but not this genocide.

You can e-mail me if you have any questions or comments.

Answer 3

I think some of them did. I think soliders almost always consider following orders a higher moral priority than following their conscience, so they will do things that go against their conscience. I'm not a soldier, but even I can see a certain logic to it. A nation can't defend itself without people willing to follow orders.

But at some point, when the orders become absurd enough, I think a reasonable human being should be able to see that his orders aren't a moral imperative by any stretch of the imagination. So I wouldn't excuse them even if they expressed remorse.

Answer 4

As with all human beings, you can not make a generalization about how individual members of this group felt about their actions. Some enjoyed the power to inflict horror and death. Some obeyed out of legitimate fear for their own lives. Some who were Christian were made to believe that the death of a Jew was a positive thing. Some were genuinely disgusted with their own actions, but saw no other choice in the situation.

Answer 5

If you read more about it, you will find that the more brutal psycho men were stationed to work the camps.
Germans have a strong belief system as a whole. They can justify anything by following orders. They are not prone to thinking for themselves as tha would be too dangerous.

Answer 6

i think that , this story is not real from the beginning
no evidence that this story ever happened
but tell me please do Israeli solders ever felt regret when they are killing the small Palestinian children's every day!!!???
and how many thousand they should kill to satisfy them

Answer 7

I seriously doubt it. They were not christians, they were devils.