Extent to which Germans knew about Holocaust?

Question

How much did "ordinary" non-jewish Germans know about the goings-on of the Holocaust and how early did they know about it? Any online sources that discuss this?

Answer 1

Good question, but it's hard to say because there is a tendency that people admit less than what was the reality. Most of the people who lived then say they didn't know anything, but I don't think that this is credible.
The question is how much they knew and who you define as an "ordinary" German. There were "ordinary" Germans who were executioners of the Holocaust, i.e. the members of police bataillons who massacred Jews and others in the Soviet Union and also in Poland. Read "Hitler's Willing Executioners" by Daniel Goldhagen or "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning about this. There were even cases that they proudly wrote letters to their home about what they did. I've heard of one case that someone wrote to his home that he had already killed thousand Jews and his parents exhibited the letter in the showcase of their shop.

In a leaflet of the resistance group White Rose from June 1942 there is a passage that says: "We don't want to write about the Jewish question, we don't want to write a defence, but just as an example we want to briefly show the fact that since Poland was conquered, 300 000 Jews in this country have been bestially murdered. In this we see the most horrible crime against human diginity, a crime to which none in the entire history of mankind comes close. After all the Jews are human beings too - no matter what's your position in the Jewish question." The number 300 000 is much lower than the reality, but you see they knew something.

Hitler had announced the Holocaust in a speech in 1939: "If international finance Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" - and as soon as the war started Nazi propaganda constantly said that the Jews would have "plunged Europe into the war". Goebbels wrote in an article in the newspaper "Das Reich" in November 1941, some months after the mass executions of Jews in the Soviet Union started: "We are experiencing the fulfillment of that prophecy, and the fate of Jewry is thus being realized, which may be hard, but is more than deserved. Any sympathy or regret is completely misplaced". I read the whole article but don't find it on Internet, it goes on telling that people should understand that Jewish children and old people had to be killed too because they would also be incredibly dangerous and that now Germany would absolutely have to win the war because otherwise Jews would exterminate Germans in revenge.

People probably knew nothing or little about the extermination camps and the gas chambers, at least at the beginning, because this was kept secret, but that Jews were killed was not a big secret and the part of the Holocaust that took place at the mass graves in the Soviet Union was not much hidden, it was in large part executed by "ordinary" policemen and the Wehrmacht was also involved in it to some extend or at least witnessed it. The fact that there were deportations was also known to everyone, the Jews were rounded up in public in German cities and don't forget all the people who worked for the railway and scheduled these trains and all that.

You could also ask what the Jews knew and you see they didn't really know where they were going when they were deported to the death camps, they were told they would be resettled, and they took baggage, money and valuables with them, but I think they all knew at least that their lives were in serious danger.

There were people who risked their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust, who hid them or provided them with "Aryan" documents, and why would they have done that if they hadn't known anything? If you read Anne Frank's diary for example, you see she knew why she had to hide and those who hid her and her family knew it and they knew they risked their lives this way. There were also some people in Germany who hid Jews, and there were such people in all countries that were occupied by Germany.

About my own grandparents who lived at that time in Germany I can't say anything because I don't believe them anything. I know that one of my grandfathers knew German policemen who had been in the Soviet Union and had shot hundreds of Jews each and who were trialed by a Soviet military court because of this after the war. He claimed he didn't know anything but I can't believe this because I read many times that these killers often even bragged about their murders.

Answer 2

Given that concentration camp inmates were used as slave labour, a lot of people had to know something. Ordinary Germans worked in plants that contracted with the camps for workers, so they had to know something very unpleasant was going on. The holocaust was a commercial venture, so lots of folks profited from it in one way or another.

Also the possesions of Jews sent to the camps were distributed to ordinary Germans. So if you have someone else's furniture and cigarette lighter, watch, etc. wouldn't you be curious? I can accept that ordinary Germans didn't know the exact details of the holocaust, but I don't buy it that they knew nothing. They weren't so stupid that they thought all the Jews rounded up in their own communities were sent to holiday camps or whatever.

Answer 3

Germans absolutely did not know about it . Only rumors prevailed and those were thought to be planted by the enemy in order to cause doubt about the regime . Some Germans had close Jewish friends that they kept regardless of how dangerous it was . My father was such a person who had an old friend and family who was Jewish . I was a young girl but fully understood the danger and kept quiet . Nobody ever told on them . I often played with the children at night when it was safe. We had black-out then and streets were deserted and dark. It was safe to go out to visit them . The memory followed me for a better part of my life as I was sent away with my school to the country because of the air-raids and our jewish friends were re-located . At that point the grown ups must have had an inkling as to what became of them . I later on in life realyzed the implications . People were intimidated and afraid . Germans who socialyzed with jewish people were taken into custody and also sent away .
Look what happened to the Japanese people in this country . It's a terible injustice and cries to heaven . Which one of us is going to speak up for the next batch of oppression .
Today we have homeless people who need understanding . Each and every individual can do a little something to see to it that no government contributes to their misery . Fat and safe is not the way to live . Care about your neighbor .

Answer 4

While the argument was made that german citizens up 10 miles away from a concentration camp "knew what was going on" I find that kind of logic rediculous. I have no idea how many people were knifed or killed at the local bars much less a prison. And imagine the german locals were much the same.

Then once you add the fact that all news was censored by the state, whom were they to find out about these things from? Truly, all they knew for sure was that the government had decided that jewish people were too much of a risk and had to be relocated - much like the US did to japanese people here in WW2.

Answer 5

So I am an American, living in Germany. I have asked my husbands grandparents.. and we have discussed this topic many times before. They were teenagers during WW2, and they say that they used to have a lot of jewish neighbors, but then every now and then some of them would just be gone the next day.. and no one knew where they went, they just figured that they escaped into a foreign country or something. They absolutely had no idea what had really happened to them. When they found out after the war they were so shocked and appauled. Now there are monuments in almost every town and village where jews were taken from, in commemoration for their lives.

Answer 6

I think Tehran Conference held by President Ahmadi Nejda in 2006 and 2007 are the best source of all true answers for Holocaust... I think most of Nazi criminals have came to Canada, Ontario and build the same type of gas chamber here in Toronto... You may not believe but Canadian are expert in all types of crimes that leave no evidence behind. Even Judges in Toronto they advice was the same. Don't leave evidence.