Interview with an Auschwitz Guard: 'I Do Not Feel Like a Criminal'
spiegel.de
spiegel.de
It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.
Arendt's thesis is that Eichmann was banal -- that is so lacking in originality and boring -- in his evil, that he was an unthinking functionary just following orders. This is not what Eichmann's memoirs and interviews from his time in Argentina (after World War II, before Jerusalem) convey. He contemplated and dismissed the philosophy of Kant. He participated in weekly book clubs and laid groundwork for Holocaust deniers. He spoke of his genocidal role as a "duty to our blood".
This is not the talk of a man who was just following orders.
I cannot exactly remember the frame of reference of main character as he read this in the scene. But I do remember thinking: how did I think I would make it through the military as an officer when I was a young little wannabe patriot?
I think we see this now too. Many people complain about gamification of war. I do not think spy planes and Apache gunship HUDs (heads up displays) make that happen, they just add post-modern flare. If society does not gamify war and killing, we have convinced ourselves we will not win, not fight hard enough.
An end to my many anecodtes. My grandfather was a WWII vet, and very much hated it (only was promoted once in the brig for unlawful dissertion). I was always remember his favorite quote: "they trained us very well to kill but never to stop." It haunts me all the time.
All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann
EYES:……………………………………Medium
HAIR:……………………………………Medium
WEIGHT:………………………………Medium
HEIGHT:………………………………Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten
NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten
INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
And, of course, it's not like his actions were that different than things like the slavery of African Americans, the colonization and enslavement of 2/3 of the world by the European colonial powers (with tens of millions of dead, and heinous acts of torture and mass murder), etc.
>Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The Enemy's story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad. If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you'll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy's mind.
However something like 4% of men are sociopaths, so this isn't always true. But as far as I know, Hitler was not a sociopath, nor were all of the countless other people involved.
It is fair to say that there were people such as Arendt painted Eichmann to be. Some went on to quite solid careers on either side of the Cold War.
The guy sleeps well at night. He invited his wife and neighbor, who have all heard it before, to listen to the interview. He stood in front of a permanent bonfire of people, with a gun, and imagines himself as a victim. The power of rationalization is terrifying. And the smarter you are, the better you are at it.
I feel quite certain that I couldn't possibly be brainwashed to do a thing like that willingly. But under threat of pain and death I'm not sure I would be capable of standing up to that kind of force. I honestly don't know what I would do.
On the other hand, my conscience would most certainly not be clear in the aftermath.
Germany invades Yugoslavia, he is drafted, he's picked for Waffen-SS, he is sent to guard a concentration camp. At that point it's too late to do anything short of sacrificing himself.
I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended?
Millions of people have "sacrificed themselves", in the sense that they died fighting to get rid of the nazi regime, and tens or hundrends of thousands also sacrificed themselves by going into the resistance, aiding jews and other fugitives, sabotaging german camps in occupied cities, etc. There are lots of recorded examples of people who faced the firing squad singing or shouting for freedom. So he always had that option too.
>I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended?
Hitler had broad mass appeal for over a decade. He wasn't some crazy dictator who suddenly imposed himself upon the German people. What he preached was actually a general sentiment, repeated by lots of intellectuals, politicians and pundits in one form of another, as was the "historical role" of Germany etc (come to think of it, not that unlike "Manifest Destiny" or the idea of "exceptionalism").
He had detailed his plans, including racial hatred and even extermination, and he had given several bloody examples. He not only was voted for in '33, but he continued to have great popular support even after the war started. It was not just silent forced compliance. Millions applauded those actions, even going out of their way to enable them.
Of course, Hitler only could seize power, because the other parties where in controversy and the whole country political unstable. But you also have to keep in mind, that huge parts of the population where no friends of Democracy and wanted to have the Kaiser back.
Also: As much I know, even in those time, it was not possible for the population to directly elect the chancellor. The chancellor was "appointed" by the president. The precondition was, that he had a sufficient support in the Reichstag. That was the case in 1933, because other parties allied with the NSDAP. That is rather similar, how today the government is formed. In Germany, seldom one party can rule the country alone, even today when we have very much less parties in the Bundestag.
The point I was making is that he wasn't voted by popular support. And when he did ascend, Hitler wasn't appointed Chancellor because Hindenberg thought he had the support of the reichstag. He was appointed because Papen thought he could outsmart Hitler and that he as vice chancellor and Hindenberg as President could control Hitler. They were fools, Hidenberg was old and tired, Papen was delusional.
Anyway, no question it was a fascinating and intriguing time in european history.
But: I only looked on "Reichstag" elections -- not Presidential elections. I might be wrong here, but Reichstag should be Reichstag. The numbers where from the German wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstagswahlen_in_Deutschland...
What we here are discussing is really depending on focus. Fact is, that the NSDAP had more seats in the Reichstag than any other single party in 1932 and 1933 (3 elections -- they had many, because of the instabilities of the governments). In the US, there are only 2 major parties -- so the party with the absolute majority wins. But in Germany (also today) it is very rare, that one single party reaches 50% or more of the votes. It is really very often, that the biggest single party has 33% or less of the votes. What is done, a coalition is made with an other party -- or even two other parties to reach a majority.
Same thing was done 1933. So it was totally normal, totally legal how Hitler reached power (at least by the letter). And: 33% of the people are a big part of the nation. So, the NSDAP had big support even 1932 in the country. That is fact, as sad it is.
The biggest single party in today's Germany had 2009 also only ~33% of the votes, and where building a government with an other party. In 1949 it had even only 31% of the votes and formed the government together with two other parties.
You are right with Papen of course. He was from the Centre (Zentrum) party. The big parties rejected to form a government with the NSDAP, because it was no democratic party. But Papen changed that and formed an evil coalition, where the Zentrum literally supported the devil.
There is a Moral Lesson to be learned from Hitler, but it isn't that functional democracies can just collapse due to a single election going the wrong way. It's that marginal democracies with severe internal problems can collapse if one gang gets more support from the establishment than the others, and if the establishment doesn't check the gang's powers quickly enough.
Not really. Germans were mostly thoroughly enthusiastic, and this has been shown in several historical studies of the era.
Hitlers SA actions were about terrorizing communist and liberal dissent, not about terrorizing the large masses.
E.g:"Few twentieth-century political leaders enjoyed greated popularity among their own people than Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. This remarkable study of the myth that sustained one of the most notorious dictators, and delves into Hitler's extraordinarily powerful hold over the German people"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Hitler-Myth-Image-Reality/dp/019...
"Daniel Goldhagen re-visits a question which history has treated as settled, and his research leads him to the inescapble conclusion that none of the answers holds true. That question is: How could the Holocaust happen? His response is an exploration of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism that demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945. The author marshals fresh, primary evidence - including extensive testimony from the actual perpetrators - to show that the killers were ordinary Germans who were not compelled to act as they did (they knew they could refuse without retribution) yet they killed willingly..."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitlers-Willing-Executioners-Ordinar...
"From the Nuremberg Laws to the Olympic Games, Kristallnacht to the Hitler Youth, this gripping account shows how a whole population became enmeshed in a dictatorship that was consumed by hatred and driven by war."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Third-Reich-Power-1933/dp/014100...
What do you mean Germans ? Austrians were pretty damn enthusiastic. New Yorkers were pretty enthusiastic (until the Poland invasion). Europeans were pretty enthusiastic (again, until Poland).
You might even say that the world was pretty enthusiastic. Well, only half of the rightist nut-cases, and only half of communists (Hitler managed to simultaneously introduce a crap-load of leftist advancements like pensions, right to a job, invalidity benefits ...) and fix the economic situation of the Weimar republic by threatening other leaders, although most was accomplished technically through "negotiation". This made him pretty fucking popular on the left, who saw it as vindication of their ideology (spend your way on social projects out of recessions) and on the right, who saw that he fixed the economy).
I realize this may be hard to believe, but Hitler had 75% of aisle firmly behind him right up till the day he invaded Poland, and after that it only dropped to 40-50% or so until the USSR declared war on him. Of course it varied from place to place and time to time, but if he wanted, he could probably have had himself elected major of Washington. Or Paris, for that matter.
Just compare it with US prisons or Gaza, everyone is fine with those today.
If only it was that clear cut.
Actually higher personel, as well as guards and soldiers were known to be extremely sadistic, from using women as sex slaves (the "joy divisions"), to cruel games with killing, maiming prisoners for fun, and everything in between.
It wasn't just "following orders". There was sadistic enjoyment, and sense of a higher race getting rid of unwanted parasites in lots of these people.
That some prisones built crematoria and operated infrastructure (under threat of death) is just a technical detail.
He was a kind of their mascot against "the reds" and against unruly workers and working classes in the US.
Also, contrary to some belief, before and even during the war, the US mostly could not care less about the plight of Jews at the time, even when it was known what was happening to them. E.g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism_in_the_...
Not sure were you got this idea that guards mostly involuntarily and under force did what the did, without active (and sadistic) participation...
My point is that nobody can really blame individuals, who are protecting their ass, for participating on evil.
We probably both agree there is something wrong with overblown prison system. But we would hardly blame prison guard for participating. Also we would probably agree to punish prison guard who helps prisoner to escape.
Also some innocent civilians died in last Intifada, but nobody is demanding head of soldiers who killed those civilians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eichmanns
This ties into the concept of the "Banality of evil" which plays out pretty much exactly as you described.
Once the machinery is in place, inertia makes it very hard to stop: the cogs don't need to worry about the bigger picture, they can just keep on turning.
Compare to those of us who are complicit (even if tacitly) in all sorts of crimes, from war to global climate destruction to mass incarceration. Much more responsible than this Auschwitz guard, since we have more freedom to act effectively.
(Assuming he's truthful, and couldn't frag his Nazi commanders nor organize his peers.)
There's a limit to everything. Then again... when individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making[1].
[1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924174331.ht...
Many people were in the same position as Kiriakou, Snowden, Manning, many were fully aware of the wrongs that were going on, how many put up a resistance at a cost to themselves ?
Do I consider John Yoo to have committed worse acts than this guy, well, absolutely, assuming his account is truthful.
A nonignorable artifact is that we turned out to be on the winning side. Had the winners and the world order been different, Wolfowitz and their ilk would have been the new Eichmann's in the then popular narrative.
@tptacek Just to be clear I am not making a case for a moral equivalence, far from it. The only connection is that many people were in a position where they could have mitigated wanton civilian casualties and gross miscarriage of justice, if they chose to adopt certain personal inconveniences. However very few actually did. A sizeable portion of US were dead against the Iraq war, but among them many still continued to fund some of it with taxes, why ? because among other things, not paying taxes would cause considerable inconvenience.
And again this not by any means directed at you. I am not an US citizen but had I been one, I would have paid the taxes anyway and rationalized it away that taxes does good and very little of that is funding the war.
I don't know if that's interesting to you or not. Just a difference in our worldviews.
I think we probably agree about Yoo, though!
> think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt
> if the majority would.
This.
I thought about it yesterday, and I believe the most important difference between people living "in the situation" and commentators today is this: we know the Nazis lost the war big time.
1. I truly believe that quite a few people would try to act if they knew the war was coming to an end, their action would be seen as heroic, and therefore they either live as heroes or at least be remembered as such. Conversely, it's not tempting to act if you're going to be vilified when the Nazis win and rule the world.
2. Wasn't it clear by 1944 (or whenever) that the Nazis would lose? In a way yes, but if you want to argue that, think about Syria. A year ago it was clear that Assad was finished, he would certainly lose his power and quite possibly his life. Today he's not only in power (over a smaller Syria), but some in the West are actually wondering if we shouldn't include him in a coalition against IS. Now that he gave up his chemical weapons, we're clearly fine with whatever he's doing.
The problem is, that we are so far away from all that, that we think, we are immune to such things ... but we are not. Because humans are essentially the same today as yesterday. The only thing we could/should do is, remember what happened in the past. But we do the opposite: We make unnatural beasts of those people, that existed in the past -- some fairy-tale like creatures, that existed only in a nightmare of humanity.
But it was no nightmare and it can come back to us very quickly. Look into the nearer past -- what happened even in the "peaceful" Europe (e.g. Yugoslavia) -- humans can easily be beasts again and much easier, when we think, that it all was a fairy-tale.
There are psychologists living and working in the US who designed torture programs.
Apropos science: the EU decided, that in the future, costs of the military will now be accounted for in the same category as investments into science, universities or infrastructure. Thus, countries of the EU can put more money into weapons without missing the EU targets for investments into the future. Sometimes politics can just be a totally dirty business.
Sometimes morality isn't about biology.
That being said, he ought to feel badly about what was being done and his part in it. Conscience is higher than, and apart from, being criminal.
I feel badly about some of the things my society is doing right now. I regret my part in it, but short of drastic (and probably technically "criminal") measures, there is little I feel I can do. Just small things, and these don't seem to matter much. So I'm just doing the less bad that I reasonably can. But I still feel bad about some of the things we do.
The fact that this guy doesn't feel guilty, makes me sad. To me he is a racist, killer. There are situations in life, where you have to pick-sides. You can't play Switzerland when the whole world around you goes in ruins. At least to me, is not acceptable and says a lot about your character.
To say it say it "says a lot about your character" is ridiculous. The vast majority of people didn't resist.
The vast majority of which population? Are you referring to Europeans or Germans alone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging
I suppose the soldiers asked to do bad things (like this man) rationalize it away.