12 ms·
Germans Who Refused to Execute Civilians During World War II (1988) [pdf]
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y agoInterestingly, the Geneva Convention was barely used at all, and the "excuses" given were mostly based on the politics of the military instead.
- blattimwind 8y agoThat's because civilian protections where only added in 1949 to the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Convention as-of WW2 would only be applicable to PoWs, not civilians.
- Bayart 8y agoTo be fair I don't think anybody saw systemic violence upon civilians during a war between states (as opposed to a civil one) as a realistic possibility during the inter-war period. It was well outside the customs of war in our corner of the world at that point. The national-social cocktail completely tore apart common decency.
- durnygbur 8y agoI was not only about the land anymore, the massive industry [1] and agriculture [2] needed a lot of free stuff. Mistreatment of civilians was an implication, and we overestimate the destructiveness of hate - until the unification of Germany their fragmented principalities had been trembling from hate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monowitz_concentration_camp#Buna_Werke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monowitz_concentration_camp#Bu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostarbeiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostarbeiter
- blattimwind 8y ago> To be fair I don't think anybody saw systemic violence upon civilians during a war between states (as opposed to a civil one) as a realistic possibility during the inter-war period. It was well outside the customs of war in our corner of the world at that point. Really? Atrocities against civilians in war were common even then. No need to look further than e.g. the colonies.
- ekianjo 8y ago> Really? Atrocities against civilians in war were common even then. No need to look further than e.g. the colonies. I think the point was that scale of it was quite different in WW2. In WW2 the majority of casualties were civilians, which was new compared to previous conflicts.
- markbnj 8y ago> In WW2 the majority of casualties were civilians, which was new compared to previous conflicts I'd have to see data on that, not that I definitely disbelieve it. But it does seem to me that this was more often the case than not.
- blattimwind 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio is of relevance here. WW1 already had an almost 1:1 ratio, though this ratio isn't really indicative of atrocities per se. E.g. previously you might have rather seen pillaging. Going a bit back, the people's crusade of 1096 mostly pillaged European cities and landscape.
- Haga 8y agoRussian pows where murdered by neglect in large numbers
- ekianjo 8y agoIt's true both ways: for the German POWs who were sent to Russia, almost none of them made it back alive.
- ethelward 8y agoThat's just plain wrong. German PoWs in the USSR had a death rate of 15% to 30% depending on the sources, while Soviet PoWs in Germany had a death rate of 57% to 65% depending on the sources.
- Tsubasachan 8y agoWell I don't want to make this into an argument about who was worse but the Russians didn't honor the Geneva convention. The last German POWs weren't released until the mid 50s.
- ethelward 8y agoThe Soviets did not honor the Geneva convention, as they had not even signed it at the time. The Germans explicitely suspended its use in their armed forces for the Eastern Front – which is why millions of Soviet PoWs were left to die of starvation in what was basically large cattle pens while Jews or card-carrying Communists were to be shot on the spot after capture.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoWhat are the sources you are quoting?
- ethelward 8y agoZemskov, Krivosheev, Overmans, Glantz, Goldhagen.
- durnygbur 8y agoCountries east of Germany were not signatories of the Geneva Convention as of WWII. The civilians of these countries were basically considered as and treated as cattle, including when they were kidnapped to inland Germany as slave labor. I don't think the Geneva Convention would change anything though...
- coldtea 8y agoWhy would they care for the Geneva Convention? The whole point of the war was to ignore and bypass all kinds of previous signed conventions (regarding WWI, borders, alliances, etc).
- rolph 8y agoi get a [PDF] from the submission. no complaints from me but usually a tag [PDF] is appended to title. That being said there are those that just love the excuse of just following orders, and those that have a moral boundary stronger than a perceived social duty. in a lot of cases there was a cloak such as, we are not told to do it immediately i have more efficient plans. >Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 - 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.< These people were declared essential servants and diverted from concentration.
- secfirstmd 8y agoHighly recommend watching this 4 minute piece about Sir Nicholas Winton. Makes you feel good about humans. https://youtu.be/PKkgO06bAZk https://youtu.be/PKkgO06bAZk
- telesilla 8y agoThank you so much for sharing. We should know this man's name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton
- secfirstmd 8y agoYou are welcome. Thank you for spreading his name, here and hopefully elsewhere. He and the people he helped deserve it.
- Tepix 8y agoIn Dortmund, Germany, on Good Friday, a commemoration ceremony took place in the afternoon at the Bittermark memorial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahnmal_Bittermark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahnmal_Bittermark ). 300 POWs and resistance fighters were murdered there just weeks and days before the end of the war. 1700 demonstrators showed up this year. We must not forget.
- ralfn 8y ago>1700 demonstrators showed up this year. Were they demonstrating against or in favor of the POW's and resistence fighters?
- HarryHirsch 8y agoYou are looking for the keyword "Endphaseverbrechen". Particularly crass: Willi Herold, the Butcher of Emsland.
- cafard 8y agoThere was a movie (The Captain?) released about that guy within the last year.
- jacobush 8y agoThe last line resonated with me a lot "In every case of documented refusal to obey orders to exterminate people, the coercive powers of the Nazi system proved to be impotent or ineffective." I would have expected the opposite. I guess this means, the structures of society and rule of of law were actually sort of still working, but that most people feared going against the zeitgeist.
- choeger 8y agoIn fact, the Nazis had perverted the law and its rule but retained the structure of a lawful state, as chaos and anarchy were pretty much out of fashion in Germany after the 20s. Think of the Nazis as a gang of uneducated mobsters winning some decent hotel in a game of poker. They had to retain the reception, the service personal and the kitchen. But they behave disgustingly at every opportunity.
- hutzlibu 8y ago"Think of the Nazis as a gang of uneducated mobsters" Only that they were quite educated. Not the lower troops of SA. But the party members were very much into classical education, classical music etc. And they totally went by law and order. "Just" a different order. With racism as its core fundamentals and the neglect of humanism in general.
- durnygbur 8y ago> Nazis as a gang of uneducated mobsters Not at all e.g. most of the Wannsee Conference attendants had "Dr." title. Numerous responsible for massacres of civilians or inhumane medical experiments had the "Dr." title. The so called elite can turn into monstrosity as well. It's not "the primitives" which are the real threat most of the time. "The primitives" gain power only after the the elite is purged and/or expelled - see the first decades in Soviet Union after the Bolshevik revolution, or Stalinism in Poland.
- Doubl 8y agoMost people go with the flow. I'd imagine that this was true also when it came to the torturing of prisoners by America post 9/11. How many refused to go along with that I wonder? Nazi Germany, like the USA, seems to have been a country where the courts were able to operate with a degree of independence and due process consequently existed to some extent. By contrast I remember solzhenitsyn writing how he would much prefer to end up in the clutches of the Gestapo than the NKVD. You had a chance of the Gestapo releasing you if you managed to persuade them off your innocence whereas your fate was already sealed with the NKVD from the moment they decided to arrest you.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoWas this post intended as sarcasm, or did you actually mean to equate the torture of a small number of prisoners with mass executions of millions of civilians?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Doubl 8y agoI never said they were equal. I don't know if anyone was punished for doing it though.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoYour post appears to be apologizing for the actions of Nazi Germany by comparing the Nazi legal system's civil protections with those of the modern-day United States of America. The OP discusses instances where individual Germans refused to follow orders. One example: > By his action to obtain this order, Griese refused the request of the SD to have his men participate in the execution of Jews in his area. >In fact, the SD had shot the 365 Jews themselves while he was on his journey to and from Konigsberg Nazi leadership recognized that mass execution of Jews (and others) by firearm was taking a psychological toll on the Germans being ordered to do so, which is one of the reasons that more abstract, industrial methods (e.g. gas chambers) were developed.
- nabla9 8y agoThe courage to stand up against your own ingroup is the highest form of courage and morals. It requires independence of thought and high principles.
- ppod 8y agoI agree with independence of thought, courage, and high principles, but is it moral? An militant anti-semite in present-day Germany is might be just as independent, principled, and courageous.
- yifanl 8y ago(In some views) morals are relative and personal, not absolute.
- staticautomatic 8y agoThey don't have to be objective or subjective. I've never understood the argument that morals are individually subjective. If individual people freely did anything all the time then where would morals come from?
- fit2rule 8y agoMorals are for the individual, ethics is for the group. The level and state of each realm, defines the state of the other.
- staticautomatic 8y agoEven if that's true, which I'm not sure it is, it doesn't necessarily mean that morals emerge from individual choice. Personally I think morals are emergent from groups.
- fit2rule 8y agoMorals are an individual personal choice - derived from the word 'morales', which means 'custom'. Individuals adopt customs - both learned individually, and mores adopted from a group. Ethics are a group choice - a set of morals, in the plural, derived from "ethike" - the 'science of morals'. They're interlocked, sure, but it is an individual who makes a moral decision for themselves, but an ethical decision for their group... EDIT: I mean, all you have to do is look at the definition of both words in a few dictionaries. Its pretty clearly stated that ethics are a group of morals formulated around the purposes of a group, where morals are derived from and based on an individual decision. Can't have one without the other. Of course, you are within your rights to disagree - such is the nature of the ethics of philosophical discussions.
- grobibi 8y agoConclusion at the end is the biggest surprise.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoI think it's worth noting that the armed forces and the Nazi party itself were not in lock step for the duration of the 3rd Reich. While the SS answered more or less directly to the Nazi party there were certainly individuals throughout the leadership of the armed forces that did not like their resources being used to carry out genocide and or help the SS because they had little interest in that, they wanted to fight a real war. A lot of the leadership of the armed forces resented the fact that the Nazi party has usurped some of their power so they weren't too keen on bending over backwards to further the goals of their unspoken political opponents. Also have to remember that until they got the death camp system up and running most executions were done by firing squad. Doing this to civilians at large scale is kind of a shitty task so there's going to be really little enthusiasm for it from the lower officers and the grunts who will generally drag their feet and stall.
- eru 8y agoThe relationship between the armed forces and the Nazi party was indeed complex. Eg the noble officiers didn't like the Nazis' populism. They were however mostly happy to fight a war, especially when it was going well.
- chewz 8y agoIt is always better to study history then to make broad general statements. As an example Babi Yar one of largest mass execution of Jews during II WW. > Contrary to the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht", the Sixth Army under the command of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau worked together with the SS and SD to plan and execute the mass-murder of the Jews of Kiev.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar
- muglug 8y agoThe Milgram Experiment[1] shows that most people do go along with what an authority figure tells them. It’s one of the more depressing experiments in social psychology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- DanBC 8y agoThe Milgram experiment shows people will role-play if you put them in a role play situation. It doesn't tell you anything about what people do in the real world in real situations.
- spamizbad 8y agoThat’s just not correct. In the original form of the experiment (and several subsequent replications), the “teacher” was under the impression everything was real and wasn’t aware the “learner” (the person pretending to get shocked) was an actor. Today, you’d never get an ethics board to approve the experiment in this form, as several former “teachers” were distraught, after being told the true nature of the experiment, because they naturally assumed they’d never be capable of such terrible acts. There is no evidence to support the view that the “teachers” who administered dangerous shocks were somehow clued into the fact that it was an actor. That would have made the entire experiment worthless, as “Will people pretend to do evil things while role playing?” isn’t an interesting question because thats well understood to be true. Milgram set out specifically to see if every-day people would commit acts that go against their personal conscience if directed to do so by authority.
- tptacek 8y agoEh. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram-participants-provide-little-support-for-the-contemporary-theory-of-engaged-followership/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram...
- mannykannot 8y ago
- PavlovsCat 8y ago> There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. -- Mario Savio I really think there is something to the idea of not going along because you just cannot. I think sometimes the "no" comes first, and then comes finding or making a way, maybe. Though I think disgust with what one is complicit in, and the sheer inability to go on with it, are ultimately also based on positive values, and on not betraying oneself, so it's always a "no to X, to uphold a yes to Y" IMO. from https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-trial-hannah-arendt https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-t... > Arendt had removed the guarantee of absolute innocence and automatic guilt from the question of moral responsibility. What did she put in its place? The capacity to exercise an “independent human faculty, unsupported by law and public opinion, that judges in full spontaneity every deed and intent anew whenever the occasion arises.” And who evidenced this capacity? They were not distinguished by any superior intelligence or sophistication in moral matters but “dared to judge by themselves.” Deciding that conformity would leave them unable to “live with themselves,” sometimes they even chose to die rather than become complicit. “The dividing line between those who want to think and therefore have to judge by themselves, and those who do not, strikes across all social and cultural or educational differences.” Hannah Arendt's essay "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship": https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt-personal-responsibility-under-a-dictatorship.pdf https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt-pe...
- chewz 8y agoI recommend reading book - Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Well researched (based on testimonials) and well written. Some men get used to the job, some enjoyed it, some kept refusing. > Twelve out of 500 soldiers opted out when allowed to leave freely.[34] Those of them who felt unable to continue shooting at point-blank range of prisoners begging for mercy, were asked to wait at the marketplace where the trucks were loaded.[35] The action was finished in seventeen hours. The bodies of the dead carpeting the forest floor at the Winiarczykowa Góra hill (about 2 km from the village, pictured)[36] were left unburied. Watches, jewelry and money were taken.[3] Unfortunately some of those men who refused were hanged after the war for made up war crimes. History has bitter sense of humor. > For a battalion of less than 500 men, the ultimate body count was at least 83,000 Jews.[50] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068 https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti... [2] http://hampshirehigh.com/exchange2012/docs/BROWNING-Ordinary%20Men.%20Reserve%20Police%20Battalion%20101%20and%20the%20Final%20Solution%20in%20Poland%20(1992).pdf http://hampshirehigh.com/exchange2012/docs/BROWNING-Ordinary... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101
- stcredzero 8y agoIt makes me angry, when I see people online talking about the whole of the WWII Wehrmacht as if they are all uniform, fungible movie villains. This was a huge organization of human beings. The degree to which any individual is culpable needs to be considered on an individual basis. Human rights are absolute, even for the soldiers of the enemy. Principles like that are what separate free countries from tyranny. This is not to say, that there isn't a group accountability for an organization like an army, where people are all wearing the same regalia and literally marching under the same banner. This implies a group responsibility for calling out the wrongs of one's own side. The morality of the faction can be measured as a whole by how well it calls out its own failures of principle, and by what principles it says it upholds and by what principles it eschews.
- claydavisss 8y agoWhat most Americans know about WW2 they learned by watching Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The image of WW2-era German males is nothing more than cartoonish at this point.
- iknowordidthat 8y agoAs the paper clearly illustrates, there were so few documented cases of refusal that they are negligible when weighing the war crimes of the Wehrmact and its members. Less than one hundred out of millions. Viewing them all as “fungible villains” is a very accurate approximation with a ridiculously low error.
- stcredzero 8y agoHey, we'd only disregard the truth for a couple of complete innocents, so let's just treat this entire group of individuals as fungible and disposable? Sorry, but that's not properly valuing individual human rights. As I point out above, almost every one in the faction is culpable. However, they should still be held individually culpable, in accordance with their particular facts and individual human rights and the stated principles of the founding of the United States. If one starts allowing group culpability without regard for the innocents, no matter how few, then this destroys the principle of individual culpability. Sorry, but that's something the good guys shouldn't be doing, and only something one should expect the bad guys to do. Good guys don't treat entire groups of people as fungible and disposable. Period.
- jasonhansel 8y agoThe White Rose pamphlets, by Germans who opposed Nazism during World War II, are fascinating -- http://whiterosesociety.org/WRS_pamphlets_home.html http://whiterosesociety.org/WRS_pamphlets_home.html
- dannyw 8y agoThis link doesn’t seem to work in Australia (Optus). Censorship?
- anigbrowl 8y agoServer overload. You can get it from here for the price of creating a login: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1429971 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1429971
- AlexCoventry 8y agoThe OP link is dead for me: returns 0 bytes. Anyone got another link?
- FabHK 8y agoTry this: https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/1429971 https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/1429971
- AlexCoventry 8y agoThanks, that worked.