The human side of NAZI concentration camp guards

[kelpdiver 2]

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It's not a fair comparison. US soldiers can actually do something - they have regulations, media, and the consequence would be to their military careers. It's possible there would be unofficial reprisals.

so you think what the american soldiers did was worse? im not agreeing or disagreeing i just want to make sure you know that that is what is implied by your answer

The actions taken by US soldiers (at least those we know about) are far less severe. Prisoner harassment has been pretty common in war. I'm fairly sure McCain suffered more in Vietnam.

But in terms of their ability to refuse to do it, the US soldiers are in much better shape. The probability of them dying as a result is quite low. This wasn't true for the German, or those much more recently in Darfur or Rwanda. Those African boys are conscripted before their teens. Not play along, and they start losing limbs or their life. So for a given offense, I'd hold the US soldier more accountable than these others.

But as I talked about elsewhere a month or two back, the American soldiers had the chain of command and legal determinations from the White House saying what they're doing was constitutional. It might be expecting a lot for them to refuse, when no lasting physical damage is done.

I think we can sum it all up by saying that war is ugly and it rarely brings out our better characteristics. In a total war like II, it's a fight to the death - there cannot be many rules. The Americans came off more saintly than most, mostly due to the protective oceans and the late entry. But there is still the questions of the fire bombings of cities, along with the nuclear blasts, leaving the soviets alone to die until 1944, and the idly viewing of the camps. As well as our concentration camps for the Japanese Americans.

[DARK 0]

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I'm disgusted at the Israeli government (Nothing to do with the Palistinians this time) and the Jews who not only let operate in Israel but work for Siemens.

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Siemens was involved in funding the rise of the Nazi Party and the secret rearmament of Germany. During the Second World War, Siemens supported the Hitler regime, contributed to the war effort and participated in the "Nazification" of the economy. Siemens had many factories in and around notorious extermination camps such as Auschwitz and used slave labor from concentration camps to build electric switches for military uses. In one example, almost 100,000 men and women from Auschwitz worked in a Siemens factory inside the camp, supplying the electricity to the camp.

you cant compare the companies of then to the ones that operate now i imagine you would be boycotting far far more companies than just siemens (bmw and volkswagen being the first two of the top my head) and for the life of me i cant remember the manufacturers of the crematoriums but i remember it was a very familiar name

there are numerous banks / institutions / companies / organisations that were part of what happened on the german side in world war two. yes they should pay as a company for anything they did that was illegal but you cant imply that this is the opinions they hold now as iw ould be suprised if any of the decsion makers in the companies now were over 18 during ww2


edit; you also have to remember that apaprently hitlers domestic policy and general political ideas (if you leave aside the final solution) were quite brilliant and would be great for germany as a whole so it is no suprise that he had wide ranging support particularly in the lead up to him gaining power

[wmw999 2,452]

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link to these psychological studies

Just the link in Quade's post, taking you to the Wikipedia entry, takes you to a rafterload of links to both Milgram & Stanford, as well as some copies, books about them, etc. It's pretty interesting reading.

Stanford was not all that well controlled, but its implications nevertheless can't be ignored, particularly if one is considering relatively uncontrolled prison environments.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[squarecanopy 0]

Of course they were monsters. They were a degradation of the human being that we all are-any one of us is capable of what they did. Evil is a base part of the human condition. The thing that keeps us from that level of behavior-choice- is also a part of our being. Their environment and a lack of a choices that had any redeeming value made these men do inhuman things.

Just burning a hole in the sky.....

[Skyrad 0]

Siemens of today grew on the back of deaths in the concentration camps, they built them, they had factories in them and produced the energy for them. Sure many companies worked for the Third Reich but few were truly as involved as Simens who also got off scot free afterwards.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[quade 4]

Better unplug your internet then.

My guess is that a shit load of it is passing through their equipment somewhere.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[DARK 0]

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Siemens of today grew on the back of deaths in the concentration camps, they built them, they had factories in them and produced the energy for them. Sure many companies worked for the Third Reich but few were truly as involved as Simens who also got off scot free afterwards.

a company is its people back then it was made of people who were willing to take advantage of a horrible situation

now it probably is not( or maybe it is but we wont know until it happens and i doubt it) there have been many and are many companies making billions out of americas numerous wars. are they all as bad as siemens? its basically the same thing it only differs because of scale

as far as i know there are still companies who are making money off of americas domestic prisoners using them as very very cheap labour it is not that much different imo but obviously the large shadow of the holocaust will stand in the way of any rational discussion about it

[Skyrad 0]

Point taken but Siemens in Israel????

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[kelpdiver 2]

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Siemens of today grew on the back of deaths in the concentration camps, they built them, they had factories in them and produced the energy for them. Sure many companies worked for the Third Reich but few were truly as involved as Simens who also got off scot free afterwards.

Every German company that dates back to WWII used slave labor, both from the death camps and from Eastern Europeans. The men were all fighting, so other labor was needed.

As we approach the point where few adults from WWII are still alive, it's time to move on and accept that the Germans today are not the Germans then. Any decision makers would be 90 now, and only if they were 20 in 1939. It would be even healthier to note that in the nationalism of the early 20th, the difference between the Germans and the French or Brits was not significant. Everyone wanted in on the action in WWI.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Point taken but Siemens in Israel????

Why not? Israel is a market, and it has a well educated work force. Wouldn't it be more racist to refuse to employ them?

[DARK 0]

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Point taken but Siemens in Israel????

Why not? Israel is a market, and it has a well educated work force. Wouldn't it be more racist to refuse to employ them?

i think he means israel should refuse to let them trade there due to their history

[Skyrad 0]

The reverse, how can Israel host and staff the very company that was so heavily involved in the Shoah? its just wrong.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[DARK 0]

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The reverse, how can Israel host and staff the very company that was so heavily involved in the Shoah? its just wrong.

hopefully it means they are starting to move on which is a good thing

[tbrown 26]

Some interesting contradictions. At the time, the Nazi SS was the most highly educated officer corps of any army in history, with more PhD's than any other army. A great many of them, including colonel Hoss, the commandant of auschwitz, were known as devoted husbands and family men. They were even kind to dogs. Hoss was justly hung, onsite at the camp he'd once commanded. The gallows stands there to this day.

On the other hand, a man like Oscar Schindler was a vain philandering playboy who joined the Nazi Party for the business connections it offered him. Yet he used his business to hide and save over 1000 Jews and lies buried in Israel, where he is a national hero. None of that stopped Schindler's wife from divorcing him shortly after the war, the womanizing hadn't stopped and she'd had enough of him.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[jakee 1,497]

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Were they humans or monsters?

It always amuses me when people define good men/women as 'human' and bad men/women as 'inhuman' or 'monsters'. It makes me think that these poeple don't have much understanding of history.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[shropshire 0]

Good points... unfortunately 'people' like to see things in black and white, with no shades of grey.... Live's easier that way I guess.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[SivaGanesha 2]

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How do you view the Concentration Camp guards of Auschwitz?

I would roughly consider the people who worked as guards in the concentration camps as belonging to two groups:

1. German Nazis who may very well have been loyal to Hitler from the beginning.
2. Former captured POW's, usually neither German nor Jewish but often from Eastern European countries, who 'volunteered' to assist the Nazis in various ways.

The first group is, of course, the most culpable. I see Hitler as having been a cult leader who probably had the ability to help Germans feel really good about themselves. This in itself is not a bad thing (although there are indications that Hitler was disturbingly anti-Semitic from very early on), but the Germans allowed Hitler unlimited power when he had only earned the limited level of power appropriate to any leader in a democratic system. The dynamics of how cult leaders obtain unlimited power are well understood, but those who give away their power and do not stand up for themselves still bear responsibility for their actions. When this dynamic happens on the scale of a nation there are many individuals who bear some responsibility.

The second group--the former captured POW's who became guards--are a more sympathetic group as a whole, but I don't accept the argument that none of them had any responsibility. Essentially many of the concentration camp guards were themselves former POW's--the Nazis could only spare a few actual Germans at the camps because most of the few Germans were too busy losing the war--and the argument is sometimes made that these people had to 'volunteer' or they would themselves have been killed. While I think that is true in some cases, I think that some of these people had reason to hate the Soviets and actually saw the Nazis as liberators from the Soviets--and were quite willing to join them. While this may actually have been an understandable decision in some cases--the Nazis may at times have been the lesser evil than the Soviets--it still is hard to understand a decent human being being willing to join the Nazis in genocide just because they were less frightened of Hitler than of Stalin. So this second group is very morally ambiguous.

So I think the bottom line is that I see the guards as humans, but humans who bore a lot of responsibility for their actions which they sometimes were allowed to get away with evading after the war.

"It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

[kelpdiver 2]

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[r I think that some of these people had reason to hate the Soviets and actually saw the Nazis as liberators from the Soviets--and were quite willing to join them. While this may actually have been an understandable decision in some cases--the Nazis may at times have been the lesser evil than the Soviets--it still is hard to understand a decent human being being willing to join the Nazis in genocide just because they were less frightened of Hitler than of Stalin. So this second group is very morally ambiguous.

I put Stalin on a pretty equal playing field with Hitler on the scale of evil.

[diablopilot 2]

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desertion happens over much less

Yeah, like this, right? [/url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment[url]

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[crustySCSA69 0]

What a great topic !!! What a lack of knowledge !!!

ANY company in Germany was benefiting from, at least., 'forced labor'

Werner Von Braun laid the foundation for the trip to the moon on the backs of thousands upon thousands of forced laborers (see Peenemunde).

Someone said, you'd do it if your alternative was a bullet.
The average guard/executioner could ask for a transfer AT ANY TIME, no questions asked, no stain on their record.

Please read something on the EinzatsGruppen (spelling?) .. they followed the initial invasion of Poland and Russia and shot HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS ... this was not faceless gassing in a concentration camp... this was blasting away, right there, with blood spraying all over you. They moved to ovens and such because the shooting was just not efficient.

The Einzatsgruppen was ... what ? dedicated Nazi idealogue nutcases?? NO ... it was overwhelmingly normal German Policemen who got called up for 'special' duty ... they could ask to leave at ANY time with no questions asked, the government documents clearly laid that out... they knew it was nasty and DID NOT FORCE ANYONE to stay ...

by all accounts, many of them got drunk... a lot... but figured it was their 'duty'., so very few (they documented cases of some that did) transferred out...

they should have hung every last one of them ...

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Point taken but Siemens in Israel????

Money is money. Israel has no problem hosting the two Bush presidents, or taking money from the US during their presidencies. Even though their family fortune is for a large part due to lucrative business with the nazis.

[beqa 0]

I know for a fact, that I would have chosen death, than to do to those people what was done.

I have been to the Israel Memorial Museum. Yes, the one in Israel. They have photos of people after they had been tortured.

It's easy to sit and talk about millions of people dying, it is another to see what they went through, and actually get a scope of how many people that really was, and to have faces to go with it.

I would suggest that anyone who has the chance to goto one of these museums, to go. It will open your eyes to the horrors these people suffered.

I know I couldn't have been part of the torture. I couldn't stand before God, and tell him that I had done that to another person. I would rather have died.

[Skyrad 0]

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Point taken but Siemens in Israel????

Money is money. Israel has no problem hosting the two Bush presidents, or taking money from the US during their presidencies. Even though their family fortune is for a large part due to lucrative business with the nazis.

I hadn't heard that.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[DJL 235]

I'm never surprised so see such ambivalence on this issue. It's because people want to call these people monsters, mark it in stone, and then be able to say, "That's why this won't happen to me." I'm sorry to say that most of us just happen to be able to identify ourselves with the other side of the WWII conflict and therefore there was only a historical separation from who we are and a geographical separation from who our grandparents were. Basically, we just happened to have not been a German 22 year-old station at a prisoner camp durring World War II. That's the ONLY reason that when we look back on history that those picture are not of you and me and the only reason we did not do those things.

The only way this will not happen again is for you to understand that YOU AND I are capable of being monsters. It's inside of you. That ability is there. Once you understand this problem with yourself THEN you can start to say that you will not do something like this.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[downwardspiral 0]

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desertion happens over much less

Yeah, like this, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

Im disappointed in you. fixed.

www.FourWheelerHB.com