This podcast episode is an interesting story about an escape in WWII from an illegal labor camp (Geneva Convention prohibits slave labor for PoWs) by several American POWs. Covers a lot about the way the camps worked too: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3MnBvZGNhc3QubGl...
I'm not naive, I understand a man can break and tell on his friends under duress. But to commit actual rape and murder without a second thought, that makes you the worst of the worst, a stain on the planet.
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
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!
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.
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)
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.
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.
They did, keyword "AEL". Plenty Gestapo were SS-members too. Yes, there were some differences, but in many areas they did plenty of the same things, and were different parts of overall the same system.
Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer#The_Speer_myth
Second, antisemitism itself is not nazi invention. It was pre-existing in Eastern Europe, Ukraine and so on.
Third, "might is right" was strong aspect of nazi ideology where stronger have no responsibility toward weaker. So was "empathy is feminine weakness" and "manly men suppress these emotions and are brutal". Once you indoctrinated people into this, it does not matter whether they are Germans or Ukranians, they are more likely to be ok with committing atrocities.
> in exchange for warm clothes, gear and food, and the feeling of importance you must get when you can freely terrorize other people
It also needs to be acknowledged that lack of warm clothes means death and so does lack of food. We are not talking here about slight discomfort due to somewhat malnutrition. We are talking about no food full stop. Neither of those will make you nicer well empathetic person. Instead, they will make you focus on survival and loose whatever empathy you was previously capable of.
Put it this way: say an alien race enslaves humanity, you're first a starved POW, later given some privileges for good conduct, and later put in charge of some tasks on behalf of the aliens, which you must do in order to keep your privileges.
In this thought experiment, do you see betraying your fellow humans? I want to think I wouldn't, but maybe I would. Telling on people, maybe even shooting some? Sure, it's possible. But you must remember the Trawnikis enacted much of the Holocaust. They raped and murdered women and children, and did so of their own free will. Do you see yourself raping a mother and murdering her children for the sake of keeping your privileges with the alien overlords?
I don't. The Trawniki embraced this with willingness. They are the worst of the worst, unforgivable human scum.
> People in brutal conditions become brutal.
I reject this. People with the potential for brutality fully unleash this under brutal conditions. But there are decent people too, people you can break with brutality but which will never descend into it, they won't pillage, torture and rape no matter what you do to them -- and examples of this abound!
I think that most of us like to think we would be the moral exception, it offers some mental comfort, but it's far more likely that we won't.
> what does (and doesn't) happen to them if they don't
This is key. What happens if they didn't follow orders? It turns out that... pretty much nothing. You could get away with not following orders. So those who did anyway, murdered, tortured and raped, are monsters in my eyes. Their lives weren't even in immediate danger!
> I think that most of us like to think we would be the moral exception, it offers some mental comfort, but it's far more likely that we won't.
If you think you would break down and commit rape, torture and murder, then I'm sorry for you. I'm nothing like you then, and most decent people aren't either.
I'm not naive: I know there's a lot of behavior people will engage in under extreme conditions -- I can admit cannibalism, robbery, violence and lots of things unacceptable in normal society -- but there IS a line, and torture and rape are way beyond that line. I'm willing to admit under exceptional duress I'd betray my country and my friends. I can see myself being forced to shoot another human being "or else". What I cannot absolutely accept from you or anybody else is to claim "well, if I'm threatened with torture or death then I can break and be willing to rape women and crush their babies". I'm sorry but I cannot, and if you think you would, I hope I never meet you in person: you terrify me.
If it comes to a point where someone tells me "unless you rape this child, I'll do the same to your children" then I might as well accept we're all doomed and it's beyond anything I can do. I won't commit rape, period.
Note we're discussing the Trawniki men in this context. Read about what they did before claiming everyone in their position would do the same. These were really scum, the worst of the worst.
I'm not talking about that level, I'm talking about:
>I can see myself being forced to shoot another human being "or else"
I was speaking in the context of the reservists described in Ordinary Men in this comment, not the Trawnikis, though I still don't agree with your blanket characterization of them. Please provide the references you speak of about them being the worst of the worst. Their wikipedia article claims with references that approximately 1000 out of 5000 ran off during operations, that hardly seems like the actions of a bunch of willing sadists frothing at the mouth to kill.
They were righ-wing supporters and their political convictions made them ok with those orders. They perceived Reich as free long after everyone else was persecuted, after synagoges were burned etc.
Since not all of us are right-wing supporters, antisemites, or believe in the racial superiority and the innate right to rule of this or that race, this means it's not true that all of us would happily engage in rape and ethnic cleansing just because we're told by some authority figure that it's right to do so.
Also, literally all armies raped, some more then others. Rape is horrible, but it went on in wars a lot. Germans raped, some units really very much a lot. Russian soldiers raped. Both on the way to Germany and then a lot inside Germany. American soldiers raped (less then Germans and Russians). You are bringing it up and it is horrible, but it was not unique to these units at all.
Second, I have no idea how I would acted. I think I would die, because I am sickly in general. Which absolve me of moral choices I guess.No one of us knows how he would really act in such situation. Ressentment and hunger and genrally violence make people ok with things they are not normally.
Go even read that comic about Elan school someone posted on HN. Exact same dynamic in nutshel.
Third, the more I read about history, prisons, wars, genocides and cults and such, the more I became convinced of this. When you create brutal environment, people in it will become brutal gradually. Some more then others and yet others will be victims. But that is what happens every single time.
The scale and horror that Nazism and their willing lackeys inflicted upon the (modern) world is terrifying. No, under no set of conditions I would have behaved like the Trawniki. You say that every army raped, and this is true, but
> You are bringing it up and it is horrible, but it was not unique to these units at all.
I'm sorry, but again read what the Trawniki did and tell me it's of the same order of magnitude than what other armies "regularly" did. You can't, because it's not. Nazism enabled them, and these men, out of their own free will, went above and beyond the "call of duty", embraced it and rejoiced in this monstrous behavior. In many cases they weren't frontline units -- so their savagery upon civilians cannot be excused by saying "they were numbed and desperate by combat, and their prisoners suffered because of it" -- they conducted reprisals on civilians and served as guards in extermination camps, and were a key part of the Holocaust. They were reasonably well fed and clothed, and they chose to murder women and children. What's their excuse then?
I've read a lot about history, and know of men and women that perished because they refused to behave like savages, to know this is not the only possible course of action.
The Trawniki were really scum and there's no excuse for what they did.
> I'm sorry, but again read what the Trawniki did and tell me it's of the same order of magnitude than what other armies "regularly" did
Germans had units composed of criminals run by rapist. Like, literally guy convinced of that. It was largely uncontrolable body, not that anyone tried to controlled the rape away.
The history of armies and wars are people exactly like that. There were multiple genocides in history and it involves killing children each time. ISIS included. Rape included.
> The history of armies and wars are people exactly like that. There were multiple genocides in history and it involves killing children each time. ISIS included. Rape included.
In recent history very little resembles WWII in scale, savagery and murder. Things in Africa in more recent history, I guess, and the Armenian genocide that even Hitler paid attention to. But WWII's scale of bloodshed and ethnic cleansing is unmatched, as is the systematic, planned nature of said cleansing.
> There were multiple genocides in history and it involves killing children each time.
I'm not even sure what you're arguing here. Maybe that because killing of children happened before and after, that the Trawniki weren't monsters to be singled out and repudiate every time they are mentioned? I disagree. They were monsters, the worst of the worst. Notice I didn't claim the Trawniki invented ethnic cleansing or rape though. If you mention some other army that killed children, maybe hacked them to pieces using machetes during one of Africa's stomach churning conflicts, I'm ready to call them monsters too. Are you?