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My understanding is that a lot of the Trawnikis were simply trying to stay alive, at least the ones who started as POW's at the time they volunteered for the tr

My understanding is that a lot of the Trawnikis were simply trying to stay alive, at least the ones who started as POW's at the time they volunteered for the training. The vast majority of Soviet POW's in Wehrmacht hands were starved to death which is something that doesn't get talked about enough in my opinion - it absolutely shreds any "clean Wehrmacht" revisionist nonsense. I tend to view collaborators as requiring less explanation in general, did some jump on the opportunity to unleash their inner sadist? Undoubtedly, but I think most were simply trying to survive the task of navigating the conflict between two brutal regimes and I believe their motivations and reasoning were individual and covered a whole spectrum of rationale. The people I think require the most explanation are the highly educated, well off volunteers of organizations like the SS and NKVD. People who had a choice and chose the secret police.

watwut 5y ago
> The people I think require the most explanation are the highly educated, well off volunteers of organizations like the SS and NKVD. People who had a choice and chose the secret police. They believed they are doing the right thing or simply the job. They were convinced they are the good ones. Tho, these two are massively different organizations. SS were not secret police, they were basically army doing a lot of actual combat. Gestapo would be closer equivalent of NKVD.
- seniorThrowaway 5y ago
  If you remove the Waffen SS I think the comparison holds, both Allgemeine SS and NKVD were overarching internal security / police type organizations. Like a lot of Nazi organizations the SS had somewhat nebulous duty boundaries that overlapped some other groups and evolved over time.
  - the_af 5y ago
    There were also NKVD combat units, most famously one which did a lot of heavy fighting in Stalingrad. (Actual desperate fighting against Germans, not the scene from the awful "Enemy at the Gates" where they fire on retreating Soviet troops -- that's mostly made up for the movie).
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  > they were basically army doing a lot of actual combat This was mainly the Waffen-SS which was only built up during the war, the SS as a whole was responsible for the worst atrocities in the occupied areas and within Germany (for instance running the extermination camps). (also, Himmler was both head of the SS and Gestapo by 1934, I guess there wasn't much of a distinction between the two organizations)
  - watwut 5y ago
    SS was responsible for camps and extermination, but they were also elite combat body. They were given responsibility for camps because they were supposed to be better soldiers then army itself. SS were also willing to take more risk and more losses then army would normally do. Mostly because they were eager to prove themselves uber soldiers they believed themselves to be. The army itself had ethnic cleansing as one of the goals too. I mention this mostly because after war there was tendency to blame everything on SSand create myth of "clean" Wehrmacht. Because that felt better to Germans. Gestapo was literally professional police. They were people who did criminal inveatigations prior and repurposed many of the same tactic. That is massive difference.
    - detaro 5y ago
      Gestapo did run camps (and had the power to put people in camps without courts being involved), oversaw forced labor, hunted resistance in occupied territories and tortured and murdered prisoners, sometimes in cooperation or under shared orders with the SS, sometimes as parallel structures with different primary victim groups. "Professional police" alright...
      - watwut 5y ago
        None of it makes it not professional police tho. Police does not mean "hollywood movie good guys". It just mean police and in authoritarion setups it means more violence then in liberal setups. Police tortures people all around the world, both now and in the past. You never seen them at battlefield. It was organized, effective, produced bureaucracy. They were police force. They did not run camps, tho they could send people there.
BurningFrog 5y ago
AFAIK, highly educated, well off people who are a bit lost in the world provide the bulk of cult/extremist members in this era.
- mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
  I assume you've read it. But for other readers of this thread, Eric Hoffer's book The True Believer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer Is a great exploration of educated people becoming extremists. It's an easy read and the literal origin of the phrase 'True Believer' in modern English
the_af 5y ago
> My understanding is that a lot of the Trawnikis were simply trying to stay alive My understanding was different. These were willing participants, going above and beyond the mere instinct to survive. See my other replies. At the behest of their Nazi masters, the Trawniki enacted key parts of the Holocaust and of Generalplan Ost -- the plan to exterminate most of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe. I urge everyone commenting here to read what the Trawniki actually did. These weren't mere collaborators!

watwut 5y ago

> The people I think require the most explanation are the highly educated, well off volunteers of organizations like the SS and NKVD. People who had a choice and chose the secret police. They believed they are doing the right thing or simply the job. They were convinced they are the good ones. Tho, these two are massively different organizations. SS were not secret police, they were basically army doing a lot of actual combat. Gestapo would be closer equivalent of NKVD.

seniorThrowaway 5y ago
If you remove the Waffen SS I think the comparison holds, both Allgemeine SS and NKVD were overarching internal security / police type organizations. Like a lot of Nazi organizations the SS had somewhat nebulous duty boundaries that overlapped some other groups and evolved over time.
- the_af 5y ago
  There were also NKVD combat units, most famously one which did a lot of heavy fighting in Stalingrad. (Actual desperate fighting against Germans, not the scene from the awful "Enemy at the Gates" where they fire on retreating Soviet troops -- that's mostly made up for the movie).
flohofwoe 5y ago
> they were basically army doing a lot of actual combat This was mainly the Waffen-SS which was only built up during the war, the SS as a whole was responsible for the worst atrocities in the occupied areas and within Germany (for instance running the extermination camps). (also, Himmler was both head of the SS and Gestapo by 1934, I guess there wasn't much of a distinction between the two organizations)
- watwut 5y ago
  SS was responsible for camps and extermination, but they were also elite combat body. They were given responsibility for camps because they were supposed to be better soldiers then army itself. SS were also willing to take more risk and more losses then army would normally do. Mostly because they were eager to prove themselves uber soldiers they believed themselves to be. The army itself had ethnic cleansing as one of the goals too. I mention this mostly because after war there was tendency to blame everything on SSand create myth of "clean" Wehrmacht. Because that felt better to Germans. Gestapo was literally professional police. They were people who did criminal inveatigations prior and repurposed many of the same tactic. That is massive difference.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Gestapo did run camps (and had the power to put people in camps without courts being involved), oversaw forced labor, hunted resistance in occupied territories and tortured and murdered prisoners, sometimes in cooperation or under shared orders with the SS, sometimes as parallel structures with different primary victim groups. "Professional police" alright...
    - watwut 5y ago
      None of it makes it not professional police tho. Police does not mean "hollywood movie good guys". It just mean police and in authoritarion setups it means more violence then in liberal setups. Police tortures people all around the world, both now and in the past. You never seen them at battlefield. It was organized, effective, produced bureaucracy. They were police force. They did not run camps, tho they could send people there.

BurningFrog 5y ago

AFAIK, highly educated, well off people who are a bit lost in the world provide the bulk of cult/extremist members in this era.

mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
I assume you've read it. But for other readers of this thread, Eric Hoffer's book The True Believer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer Is a great exploration of educated people becoming extremists. It's an easy read and the literal origin of the phrase 'True Believer' in modern English

the_af 5y ago

> My understanding is that a lot of the Trawnikis were simply trying to stay alive My understanding was different. These were willing participants, going above and beyond the mere instinct to survive. See my other replies. At the behest of their Nazi masters, the Trawniki enacted key parts of the Holocaust and of Generalplan Ost -- the plan to exterminate most of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe. I urge everyone commenting here to read what the Trawniki actually did. These weren't mere collaborators!