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Xenocides posted:Don't be silly. I've played Hearts of Iron. Hitler just had to bump up the Consumer Goods slider to stay solvent. Shouldn't you be sinking the Janpanese Navy?
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Sep 21, 2013 19:27
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Mycroft Holmes posted:Shouldn't you be sinking the Janpanese Navy? I haven't been able to reconstruct the records for that game. I was working on a way to do it but it looks like it would require me to go through every update to pull it together. I probably won't be able to keep going without sinking way too much time into it. 
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Sep 21, 2013 21:12
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Raskolnikov38 posted:To be honest, given what the soviets had experienced first hand it's understandable why they'd want retribution on anyone that had even the slightest to do with the war. What do they give as their opinion in the case of Schacht? There's some funny things too, like when they bring up that "Schacht considered it his duty to greet and congratulate Hitler publicly after the signing of the armistice with France" as evidence that he was still pro-Hitler years after his sacking. Though perhaps the most incredible part is when they dismiss the fact that he was put in a concentration camp (for being tangentially involved in the July 20th plot) by pointing out that, well, Hitler didn't kill him, so how much could he have really been opposed, hm?  Now you're right of course about the Soviets' suffering and desire for revenge, but it's one thing to see soldiers repay atrocities with atrocities on the battlefield, and another to see high-ranking officials dropping any pretense of fairness in a setting like an international court of law. Also, I had reached Schacht's Wikipedia article after reading about Karl Dönitz, whose charges of violating military treaties were partially dropped because of the Allies having done similar things; so I was expecting that the Soviets would have focused more on the accusations of crime against humanity and less on those of aggressive warfare, given that they had enthusiastically partaken in that themselves. Instead I found the opposite. NihilCredo fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Sep 22, 2013 |
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Sep 22, 2013 02:08
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NihilCredo posted:Now you're right of course about the Soviets' suffering and desire for revenge, but it's one thing to see soldiers repay atrocities with atrocities on the battlefield, and another to see high-ranking officials dropping any pretense of fairness in a setting like an international court of law. The interesting part to me is that it was Stalin who pushed hard for trials: the Western Allies would have been fine just putting any surviving higher official against a wall and shooting them without trial. Think both Churchill actually signed an order stipulating this (basically "unit commanders above major are entitled to decide if they execute capture Nazi govt officials") and FDR had drafted an order that was similar (except it applied to the German military too, everyone above Colonel would have been shot straight away as war criminals).
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Sep 22, 2013 07:19
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I don't have a source but I recall reading somewhere that Stalin had plans for a show trial if Hitler was captured alive. Dude just really loved show trials apparently.
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Sep 22, 2013 16:58
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RGASPI is in the process of digitizing Stalin's document library, so if there was such an order, it should turn up in a few years.
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Sep 22, 2013 18:25
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Kemper Boyd posted:Think both Churchill actually signed an order stipulating this (basically "unit commanders above major are entitled to decide if they execute capture Nazi govt officials") and FDR had drafted an order that was similar (except it applied to the German military too, everyone above Colonel would have been shot straight away as war criminals). Holy hell. Do you have a source for that? Because that's firmly in the "totally OK with ordering war crimes" department that of course should change our (folks in countries that were the Allies) perception of the war, but of course won't, because we must have been the good guys.
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Sep 22, 2013 21:50
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Mycroft Holmes posted:None, as the Nazis rearmament program was destroying their economy. They were only kept afloat by seizing other countries currency reserves. I was surprised by this I always had the impression the German economy was quite strong under the Third Reich. Also what was the average quality of life for a normal German living in Germany at the height of Nazi power ?
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Sep 22, 2013 22:06
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CreepyGuy9000 posted:I was surprised by this I always had the impression the German economy was quite strong under the Third Reich. People look at the economic miracle of the 50s and 60s in West Germany and tend to back project German economic strength, but Germany after world war one was actually quite poor. The most common occupation was farm labourer and mechanization in agriculture was rare. For example the much touted Volkswagen as originally priced would cost the average German skilled worker the equivalent of a years pay and the Volks??? (cheap radios but my german isn't good enough to guess the name) would cost about 2 months pay. Also the German arms industry never really adopted fordism on a mass scale and as such assembly lines were not really used. The other reason is that the Nazi's whatever there other failures were extremely skilled propagandists. One of the earliest propaganda pushes by the Nazi's was the "Drive for work" campaign which aimed to reduce Germanies massive unemployment. It did work quite well initially and saw major initial spending on infrastructure and providing loans to small businesses but the growing demands of resources for rearmament meant it had to be scaled back and the programme never really took off. Another side effect of the rearmament programme was the diversion of resources from the consumer goods sector of the economy was massive inflation as armaments workers found themselves with high wages but nothing to spend their money on. Says it all really that Germany even with occupied Western Europe contributing could barely manage to equal British production never mind come anywhere near close to matching the industrial behmoths of the USA and USSR.
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Sep 23, 2013 01:24
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Indeed, the very weak shape of the German economy is why I find theories that, had both the Soviet Union and United States remained as neutral as they had been on 1 January 1941, the British alone probably still would have won the war, on a 1948-1950 timeline.
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Sep 23, 2013 04:22
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PittTheElder posted:Indeed, the very weak shape of the German economy is why I find theories that, had both the Soviet Union and United States remained as neutral as they had been on 1 January 1941, the British alone probably still would have won the war, on a 1948-1950 timeline. Elaborate please. I know we'll get into the hypothetical with it but I'd like to hear it.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:09
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PittTheElder posted:Indeed, the very weak shape of the German economy is why I find theories that, had both the Soviet Union and United States remained as neutral as they had been on 1 January 1941, the British alone probably still would have won the war, on a 1948-1950 timeline. Given the shape the British Army was in in 1945, I find that hard to believe. They had serious manpower issues by the end. And without an eastern front, the Germans have no serious drain on resources, and they have a way to circumvent any blockade.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:12
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PittTheElder posted:Holy hell. Do you have a source for that? Because that's firmly in the "totally OK with ordering war crimes" department that of course should change our (folks in countries that were the Allies) perception of the war, but of course won't, because we must have been the good guys. Last I read of it, Roger Spiller mentions it in his essay "The Führer in the Dock" that was published in the counterfactual history book What If? 2. Worth a read, since it lays out a good narrative of how the Nürnberg Trials came to be. Before someone asks, this particular tidbit wasn't in the counterfactual part of the essay, but the background part.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:27
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jaegerx posted:Elaborate please. I know we'll get into the hypothetical with it but I'd like to hear it. Well it was some time ago, but if I'm not mistaken, the gist of it is that Britain continues to fight it out in North Africa, and with naval superiority, generally ekes out a win there. Then it sort of settles into a stalemate where the Germans are unable to force Britain to the bargaining table while the British continue to build up for a naval invasion that never really comes. Then it's just a race to see which implodes first, the German economy or the British colonial empire. Authors bet was on Britain being able to hold out, being floated by American assistance. The British victory is nowhere near as complete as it was in our world. Japan still gets beaten to a pulp by America. Not a whole lot changes. Though it's also very out there as far as alt-history goes, because it's rather doubtful the Germans and Soviets weren't going to come to blows at some point. But I've never really been one for alt-history anyway, so it was more of a "huh, I guess that could happen" and then I moved the hell on. The Alt-History crowd is one of the more bizarre on this internet of ours. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 06:28
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That could make for an interesting wargame. It could start shortly after the failure of Operation Sealion.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:49
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Well Sealion as we know it was such a hilariously poor idea that I can't imagine it would actually be attempted. Unless you just mean the point where it gets called off.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:50
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CreepyGuy9000 posted:I was surprised by this I always had the impression the German economy was quite strong under the Third Reich. Qualitiy of lifing improved over the 30s, but stagnated on the outset of the war for the reason Ferrosol gave. We've touched the situation of foodstuffs already with the hungerplan - there wasn't really much opportunity to improve the agricultural sector as almost any nitrogen formerly used to make fertilizers went to the arms sector. The same is true for the production of tractors. Hitler didn't really think that the allies would declare war so early on - the date for the war that he planned was around 1943. As I recall, that was the year that Stalin too was aiming for with the reorganisation of the red army. Germany would skim the occupied countries for consumer goods and foodstuffs, but as we've mentioned, they couldn't make ends meet to keep the standard of living while the arms production was soaring. Anyway, the german economy of 1939 up to 1941 wasn't ready for war on that scale in terms of structure and organization (still producing consumer goods, and being decentralized), but the reorganization shows in 1942 and especially in the dramatical increase in armaments production through '43 to '44. With the war in the east, the economy would be run alot more centralized. That statement about assembly lines is untrue by the way. From the perspective of planing: Industrial capacities that need to be developed and adapted over a few years don't matter if the germans overrun your country within a few weeks thanks to their new tactics. Once that's impossible, it's logical what follows. It's interesting to read or hear what life was like in Germany and Austria from 1945-50. The war completely destroyed the capital stock and industrial base, people in the cities would turn simple barter for the next years to avoid starvation. The black market was a big thing. They would hike to the farmers in the surrounding area and swap their last belongings for a sack of potatoes or meat. The running joke of that time was "People are desperate what to barter with the farmers. They already have everything. Even their cows now wear diamond earrings." The radio that you meant is the Volksempfänger. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 09:06
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PittTheElder posted:Well it was some time ago, but if I'm not mistaken, the gist of it is that Britain continues to fight it out in North Africa, and with naval superiority, generally ekes out a win there. Then it sort of settles into a stalemate where the Germans are unable to force Britain to the bargaining table while the British continue to build up for a naval invasion that never really comes. Then it's just a race to see which implodes first, the German economy or the British colonial empire. Authors bet was on Britain being able to hold out, being floated by American assistance. Also the UK/Canadian atomic weapons research project was by far the best show going before the Manhattan project (into which it was absorbed), while (as we know with modern hindsight) the Germans were barking up the wrong tree, so if the Americans had spent the 1940s sitting around picking lint out of their navels or something, the first working nukes would have been British. Surely not by 1945 (that was only possible for the Americans because they had effectively unlimited resources to throw at the project so they could attack every problem that showed up in multiple ways at the same time) but probably 1948 or 1949. So if Germany hadn't collapsed already by then I guess we'd be looking at mushroom clouds over continental Europe.
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Sep 23, 2013 11:18
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I remember reading at one point or another some account that towards the end of Hitler's life he came to regard the Russians as the master race and that he cursed the German race for being weak and blamed them for losing the war. Is this just an apocryphal story or did this actually happen?
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Sep 24, 2013 01:15
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Peruser posted:I remember reading at one point or another some account that towards the end of Hitler's life he came to regard the Russians as the master race and that he cursed the German race for being weak and blamed them for losing the war. Is this just an apocryphal story or did this actually happen? This happens in Downfall (film). Which is based on a secretary's first hand account so the bolded part is probably true.
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Sep 24, 2013 02:23
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CreepyGuy9000 posted:Also what was the average quality of life for a normal German living in Germany at the height of Nazi power ? When my father was still alive, we'd sometimes reminisce and wonder why he never asked his father what his father did. In retrospect, he was either a brilliant businessman (and no one inherited one whiff of his acumen), or he was a spy.
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Sep 24, 2013 05:59
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A friend had a small collection of Nazi swag, including the Mutterkreuz, that he had inherited from his grandmother. He donated them to Lemmy Kilmister and got a nice letter as a thank you from Lemmy.
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Sep 24, 2013 07:21
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Peruser posted:I remember reading at one point or another some account that towards the end of Hitler's life he came to regard the Russians as the master race and that he cursed the German race for being weak and blamed them for losing the war. Is this just an apocryphal story or did this actually happen? This is more or less consistent with the worldview that H. held. No idea if there are multiple sources that back this story up, but then, there is also this decree, which was to make sure that Germany was leveled for good. If you look at the wikipedia entry of Speer, it is also mentioned.
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Sep 24, 2013 11:59
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I suppose I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone living in the year 2013, but I just do not understand why the undesirable groups allowed themselves to be treated in this way. Again, easy for me to say in this day and age but I do not get it. Surely, there had to be an inkling of what was in store for them during the later round ups. At the very least, upon entering the camps and smelling that unmistakable smell and realizing what was coming, wouldn't you fight? If someone tried to take my son away from me, I would fight to the death. The prisoners outnumbered the guards by a decent amount, why not just riot? If I realized I was about to die anyway and my family was being threatened, there is just no way I would silently be led to my death. I know a lot of that is my having knowledge of what the camps were about but like I said, once you were there, you had to realize. Had to! Or was the deceit really that convincing?
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Sep 27, 2013 15:16
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Slip Slap posted:Again, easy for me to say in this day and age but I do not get it. Surely, there had to be an inkling of what was in store for them during the later round ups. You're being sent east to a work camp. Pack a bag, get on a train. Other families have already been sent there. They must have huge labor camps for Jews out east. It's a war and they want your labor. You see work camps around town, too. Shops where Polish women stuff shells or Russian prisoners chop wood. Sure, maybe you've heard of other, darker places, heard some stories. The Wehrmacht took all the Jewish men in another district and shot them by a creek. A young girl is marched through town carrying the sign 'traitor' and they hanged her in front of laughing men. A member of the underground swears to your rabbi that his friend knew of a guy who was sent to a work camp where they put Jews in a huge room and dragged electrical wires across the floor, and the Jews just vaporized when they flipped the switch. Somewhere south of Warsaw, maybe, or out near White Russia. But it doesn't matter when they call for you and your family. Work out east, an "evacuation" under penalty of death. Slip Slap posted:At the very least, upon entering the camps and smelling that unmistakable smell and realizing what was coming, wouldn't you fight? The train ride was really, really long and really hot or cold. You pissed on each other in the train car. Some people, mostly kids, jump off. Most will be shot later by Germans, but a few lucky ones will be taken in my sympathetic families or partisans. When you arrive at some train station deep in the night there are loud dogs and Ukrainians with machine guns shouting at you in broken Polish or German. It smells awful, but you have to go to the baths. Immediately. Some of the men have whips, raining down on everyone. A few people try to run, struck down with bullets and dogs. Some make it, though. At Belzec, two women escape in the confusion. They make it to the Zolkiev ghetto, which is liquidated shortly thereafter. Their story survives in oral history from the area, but they do not. Later, a man hides in the basin of an outhouse during the offloading, only to run to freedom later. Slip Slap posted:If someone tried to take my son away from me, I would fight to the death. Maybe you do. Maybe you fight, like Meir Berliner, who had lost everything, who was only in Poland on holiday with his family from Argentina, a foreign national caught up in it all, who fatally jammed a knife into an SS man at Treblinka. But they will still shoot you, right there, kill you like Berliner. It's not like anyone will know. Of the more than 630,000 people sent to Belzec and Sobibor, for instance, only a couple hundred will survive the war. Dozens and dozens of trains come day after day and not a single person survives. It's possible that sometimes they all fought. The records are unclear. Few of the camps guards will ever be apprehended and none will leave a known written record. Sobibor and Treblinka see major prisoner revolts, one halting Sobibor's operations for good. Belzec probably had one, too, but the sources are opaque and vary. Hell, several of the Trawniki -- the mostly Slavic staff who did the dirty guard work -- were executed for insubordination or plotting their own revolts. MothraAttack fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 15:43
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Slip Slap posted:I suppose I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone living in the year 2013, but I just do not understand why the undesirable groups allowed themselves to be treated in this way. Again, easy for me to say in this day and age but I do not get it. Surely, there had to be an inkling of what was in store for them during the later round ups. At the very least, upon entering the camps and smelling that unmistakable smell and realizing what was coming, wouldn't you fight? If someone tried to take my son away from me, I would fight to the death. The prisoners outnumbered the guards by a decent amount, why not just riot? If I realized I was about to die anyway and my family was being threatened, there is just no way I would silently be led to my death. When the germans disolved the ghettos in Belorussia (read: shoot everyone) in late '41, the elders of other ghettos would argue, that they don't belive the news, and that they germans would keep them as workers, because they were already being put to work. Mind you at that time, these people had shitloads of infos on what the germans did. What you need to realize is, that jews weren't bound to these ghettos hermetically, they would travel from one to the other looking for food or evading the shootings, and so the news spread. I think there's a scene of that in "Defiance" that illustrates that well. When it comes to the transports from the western territories, the level of deception that the nazis used is remarkable. Personal belongings would be taken note of, people were told that it would be transported seperately and they'd get a receipt. People would be animated to send back greeting cards how awesome it's back there, and that the ohters should come too. Nobody could imagine (or wanted to) what was going on there. For the most people that was just unthinkable. You can read about how the early extermination camps were organized, Sobibor for example and it's road to heaven. You surely read about the camoflage of the gas chambers as showers and the whole procedure. That's all part of the masquerade. Later camps would have the areas for the killing more seperate, but also there was an economic aspect connected, where people would have a reason to think that they could possibly stay alive a little longer if they just worked and did as ordered. But yea, you can google for the uprisings. If somebody asks you if you know any people that deserve to be called heroes, it's them. Incredible stories.
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Sep 27, 2013 20:38
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Slip Slap posted:I suppose I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone living in the year 2013, but I just do not understand why the undesirable groups allowed themselves to be treated in this way. Again, easy for me to say in this day and age but I do not get it. Surely, there had to be an inkling of what was in store for them during the later round ups. At the very least, upon entering the camps and smelling that unmistakable smell and realizing what was coming, wouldn't you fight? If someone tried to take my son away from me, I would fight to the death. The prisoners outnumbered the guards by a decent amount, why not just riot? If I realized I was about to die anyway and my family was being threatened, there is just no way I would silently be led to my death. There were rumors, but not everyone believed the rumors. One documentary that might help make sense of some of the self-deceit is Prisoner of Paradise. Every library that I have a library card has several copies of this documentary. Before TV was common, many people only got news through short films shown at theatres before and after the main movies. These were called newsreels. One major British producer of these newsreels was Pathe. Pathe's YouTube channel has more than 90,000 of these shorts uploaded over the decades from the 19th Century onwards. Humans are very visual and if something is seen, it has a much greater weight towards changing and maintaining your opinions than something heard or read. This is why visual media has been tightly controlled. This makes the propaganda more believable [1]. There was a huge amount of unemployment and there were lots of make-work projects. The make-work projects would appear in newsreels, so that many people would think that the labor camps were no different. The newsreels were carefully managed and used for propaganda purposes. This youtube is an analysis of some German news reels [2]. There were a number of newsreels that showed people sent off to work in the fields (while this one shows Hitler Jungend doing the work, there were similar ones showing adults doing similar labor). Many were fooled into believing that the Jews were being sent off to similar segregated labor projects. This "back to the land" concept played in well to the "Blut und Bloden" (blood and soil) themes in other propaganda [3]. Notes: 1 - One way I observed this in action was during the Oliver North hearings from his activities in the Iran-Contra scandal. People who heard news about Ollie on radio or newspapers thought the guy was a bum who should be thrown out. People who saw his performance on TV were overwhelmingly in favor of saving Ollie and throwing the congressional investigators out. When testifying before Congress, North chose to wear his uniform and he showed many body language poses that made viewers subconciously sympathetic to what he said. The visual "wrapping himself in the flag" caused viewers to ignore what he did. Likewise, when the US was "building consensus" towards the 2003 invasion of Iraq, pro-war demonstrations would appear on the news while anti-war protests got no airtime on television. This is also why many politicians insist on controlling cameras and video when they give public speeches (Anton Scalia is notorious for this). 2 - One thing you may notice if you watch the video is that the bread used for the Orthodox communion is leavened bread, one of the major distinctions between Roman Catholic and Orthodox is that the Roman Catholic church uses unleavened bread (no yeast) for communion. This was just 1 of many differences that lead the the break with each other in 1054. 3 - Another example of using a wide variety of spokespeople and media to make the public believe falsehoods would be the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. All sorts of presentations were made suggesting that that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. quote:An analysis of Bush's speeches that mention 9/11 and Saddam Hussein would demonstrate that those speeches were artfully constructed to convey the idea that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, while avoiding any short, explicit, quotable statements to that effect. Trouble is, for most people that analysis would make very boring reading. Mark Twain is credited with saying "history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme." If you watch Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, you will recognize the themes and presentations of that propaganda piece in every political convention. If you read The Language of the Third Reich (wikipedia article about the book) then it becomes very hard to watch American TV or pay attention to politics.
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Sep 27, 2013 20:57
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That all makes sense of course. I suppose that is something you almost can't believe could be coming your way and wouldn't accept as truth. Having a one year old now, the whole business of the Holocaust has really skyrocketed to new levels of horrifying-ness. Just imagining all those screaming and terrified little kids, trying in vain to protect them from the gas to the last second and saying goodbye in there, Jesus Christ. Jesus loving Christ. How badly did working in a concentration camp break those SS workers? I know the offical line they all took was "oh I just washed uniforms man, I had nothing to do with people dying" but were there reports of these guys ever offing themselves, even years later? Sorry, I know this is straying a bit from the academic tone of this thread.
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Sep 28, 2013 13:04
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Slip Slap posted:That all makes sense of course. I suppose that is something you almost can't believe could be coming your way and wouldn't accept as truth. I'd be surprised if any of them killed themselves or even really felt bad about it, generally people develop narratives that justify their actions in their own mind. They usually believe that "those" people deserved it, or, in the case of children, that they'll just grow up to be like the rest of "those" people and that killing them before they can do bad things is good.
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Sep 28, 2013 22:55
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Several of the Slavic guards had severe drinking issues. They didn't really leave any records for us to analyze, though. Many death camp guards simply died. From Sobibor, a few of the Germans wound up committing suicide, one during the war and a couple years later. Platedlizard is generally right, though. In the '70s a journalist spent days interviewing the former commandant of Treblinka, and I think there were lots of rationalizations. Some were disgusted, though. Officers expressed disgust at how Imfried Erbl had had failed to manage Treblinka, and I believe Wilhelm Pfannenstiel was disgusted in his later life by the gassing process, judging by his private correspondence with a prominent Holocaust denier.
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Sep 29, 2013 05:39
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What is Wehrkraftzersetzung? And what is the deal with green potatoes?
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Sep 29, 2013 06:26
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Wehrkraftzersetzung can probably best be translated with "Diminishing/Disrupting the fighting strength/spirit". It was a catch-all term for all activities that were not in full support of the war, such as saying that it sucks or telling someone that Germany would lose the war.
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Sep 29, 2013 07:09
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platedlizard posted:I'd be surprised if any of them killed themselves or even really felt bad about it, generally people develop narratives that justify their actions in their own mind. They usually believe that "those" people deserved it, or, in the case of children, that they'll just grow up to be like the rest of "those" people and that killing them before they can do bad things is good. Since there's a bunch of records we don't have, it's possible that a whole lot of people just got transferred out of the camps after not being able to cope. It was mentioned earlier on in either this thread or the military history thread that the Nazis were concerned with the ability of the soldiers to keep functioning while carrying out mass killings.
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Sep 29, 2013 09:53
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Kemper Boyd posted:Since there's a bunch of records we don't have, it's possible that a whole lot of people just got transferred out of the camps after not being able to cope. It was mentioned earlier on in either this thread or the military history thread that the Nazis were concerned with the ability of the soldiers to keep functioning while carrying out mass killings. And yeah, anyone interested in the psychology of it should, as has been suggested, check out Ordinary Soldiers by Christopher Browning. In it you'll learn about the PTSD, alcoholism and depression attendant with mass killing, of which almost anyone is capable, according to Browning's research.
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Sep 29, 2013 12:19
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WrathofKhan posted:What is Wehrkraftzersetzung? And what is the deal with green potatoes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine Not the first choice if this will be the only meal for you and your kids. Kemper Boyd posted:Since there's a bunch of records we don't have, it's possible that a whole lot of people just got transferred out of the camps after not being able to cope. It was mentioned earlier on in either this thread or the military history thread that the Nazis were concerned with the ability of the soldiers to keep functioning while carrying out mass killings. I think it's useful to clear up a few things. The SS guarding the camps has nothing to do with figthing forces whatsoever. They were dedicated for this job, and weren't forced to do this. "We got a nice job for you in the east, you might make a career - but we need tough men for the job. Are you a tough man?". If you look at the personel it's mostly people of questionable character and skill that used this as a way to at last make some halfway decent career in the system. For the really dirty work, they were also using Hiwis (= Hilfswillige), who were often formerly Red Army soldiers of different nationality, like Ukrainians, Belorussian or Lithunians. They looked for these guys in the "pow camps" that we mentioned earlier, and gave them a choice instead of starving. If we digress a bit and look at the mechanisms to cope with shooting truck/trainload after truckload of women and children, it's amazingly horrible that the men used for this would find ways to rationalize it and the large majority kept on going. There *never* was any backlash that personally put you in danger if you couldn't keep on doing it (my Professor did look into that for some time). Peer pressure - yes, or you'd get transfered to some other lovely job and could kiss your career as a gasman or shooter goodbye. The man that run Sobibor or Treblinka "sucessfully", I forgot his name, found the job horrible, but still did it and took pride in running everything perfectly. He was planting flowers all over the camp to give it all a nice touch. I read other stuff of a guy in one of the Einsatzgruppen that meant that at his first truckload of women and children, his hands shook and he cried and vomited, but after a few loads he didn't give and second thought and his hands and aim were sure. Another guy would just shoot children, and his friend just their mothers. So he rationalized that he'd redeemed them from not being able to live with their mothers, and the other guy would do the same just the other way around. I think I need a drink now. If we now switch to the Wehrmacht, people in the Truppenführung and OKH were concerned that the unlawful and arbitrary killings of pows and civilians would erode discipline and brutalize the men, so that the officers would lose the grip on them. Remember, that this arbitraryness was exactly what H. called for, what was known to every soldier in the east, but it wasn't covered legally or in any other sense, other than what H. proclaimed about what the war is going to be and that there won't be prosecution for anything that went that way. Mind you that then still enough officers would be filled with classical prussian ideas about knightly honour and would forbid such actions, but they were being overridden by H. vague orders - so short or long undermining their authority and making every single soldier master about life and death. The OKH and higher leadership let these officers out in the rain. No support whatsoever. You can look at the orders and see that they were still within a traditional frame (Partisans will be shot), in the sense that they didn't just openly state "well, just shoot everyone you like", but they were enabling a simple soldier to use the term "Partisan" or "resisting" on just about anyone they came across and shoot them without any retribution. Wrong haircut, bad luck - swing on the piano string. We already said enough about the role that the Wehrmacht played in the extermination politics and planned events like "Partisanenaktionen". Alcohol was never far away from such actions. The men were often issued double rations for that task, or more precicely, the drinking started afterwards. It's hard to make a general statement about the common soldier. The degree that these men were brutalized was enormous. Some would still feel being sullied by such actions, others would join in for shooting, like tourists, some would feel forced and used, but still do it, because they didn't want to appear like wimps or fear for their career, others will supress their memories so profoundly that they'll claim to have never heard of anything and even belive that. Others will point to their honour and claim that it was just the SS and curse their names. Think of other possibilities. If you understand german, there is a cheaply made documentation about the Wehrmachtsausstellung on youtube, where these memories and the men clash and try to speak about it. Look for "Jenseits des Krieges" A cherry on top of that - they recruited many many police officers for "security services" in the east. Lots would serve in either the Einsatzgruppen or the SD, so you know what that means. After the war, these people would just go back to their jobs. No questions asked. Daddy is home. e: To add something to the psychological aspect: My Professor was one of the organisators/advisors of the Wehrmachtsausstellung. I'm a bit too young to have noticed what was going on at the first exhibitions, but others have been put to the task of looking into that. One word: supression. About the documentation that I mentioned, there's more. Angry demonstrations, bombthreats, wild attacks in the press, families quarreling. You can get a taste of that if you look for Wehrmachtsausstellung on youtube. It's hard to understand for somebody who is not part of this society and grew up with silence or this place in memory, where we don't look. This was one of the more massive erruptions of different narratives, and for the most part supressed memory - on a collective scale. It's like sticky tar that gets passed from father to child. "Where were you, what did you do?" Suddenly, large numbers of people who were there in Russia would errupt with stories, after they were dead silent for decades. Others would deny everything with a vehemence that was telling and desperate. It's really incredible how a person is able to supress memory. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 19:10
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Slip Slap posted:That all makes sense of course. I suppose that is something you almost can't believe could be coming your way and wouldn't accept as truth. It's not straying at all - these are legit psychological and sociological questions. On your last question: the Germans who administered the camps "hired" other prisoners, Polish, German, or often Jewish, to keep the others in line. Others were forced to do so. Being a Kapo could easily break your soul. Picture being twenty years old and being sent to a camp along with your mother, father, and brother. If you accept the offer to become a Kapo, you've got pull within the camp's prisoner community and can approach the Germans on closer to even terms. You can score extra rations for your family, edit the death lists to keep your family and townspeople off them, and take anybody's coat or shoes if they look warmer than yours. Of course all the other Jews hate you. Because you're stealing bread from out of their mouths, their friends and families' mouths. You have to keep the numbers on the death lists matching up, so you swap the name of a woman from some other town for your mom's. She had kids too. And you're literally stealing the clothes off of others' backs. You're told to kill fellow Jews by the Camp Elders, which were the Kapos on the top of the food chain and were often highly corrupt. And you kill those other Jews because you need to maintain your own privileges. And sooner or later another prisoner scowls at you and calls you a bastard, so you break his teeth in order to not appear soft in front of the people you're tasked to keep in line. You've become as bad as the SS. Maybe even worse, because at least they have an excuse: they're Nazis. And eventually all you have left is your German-given authority, which can be revoked at any time. And if you survive the war by being an accessory to genocide? You're a pariah for the rest of your life. Unless you end it. This degradation of the soul is one of the worst things about the Holocaust, and it's what I spent most of my time researching while a grad student. It's fascinating, but horribly dark. MothraAttack posted:And yeah, anyone interested in the psychology of it should, as has been suggested, check out Ordinary Soldiers by Christopher Browning. In it you'll learn about the PTSD, alcoholism and depression attendant with mass killing, of which almost anyone is capable, according to Browning's research. It's a great book, and one of the most influential on our understanding of the Holocaust. (It's also titled Ordinary Men, at least in English). Kangaroo Jerk fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 20:49
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I read that Hitler was on a cocktail of drugs/medications to help with his health problems: ive heard some say his doctor was running like trials on him to see how he would turn out, ive read in other places the different medications he was on only made his condition worse. Whats your knowledge on this?
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Sep 30, 2013 14:53
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I've read that it's most likely that H. had Parkinson's disease. Dr. Morell was treating him with a huge cocktail of substances, among them something called Pervitin - which reminds me to watch the last episode of breaking bad. I'm not exactly sure, but I think around mid 1942 H. starts to take over more and more competences in warfare, putting enormous workload on him. He wanted to micromanage alot of things at the front, so it's likely that the stress and the pressure of the failures that started then excacerbated his symptoms. I don't know if you've seen it yet, but there are is also film material from the olympic games of '36 that was censored, that shows H. displaying some weird tics, but then that's not so unlikely for somebody who was in WWI. At a certain point H. stops to appear in public, people that meet him then find the man changed. Aged rapidly.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:27
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InspectorBloor posted:I've read that it's most likely that H. had Parkinson's disease. Dr. Morell was treating him with a huge cocktail of substances, among them something called Pervitin - which reminds me to watch the last episode of breaking bad. I'm not exactly sure, but I think around mid 1942 H. starts to take over more and more competences in warfare, putting enormous workload on him. He wanted to micromanage alot of things at the front, so it's likely that the stress and the pressure of the failures that started then excacerbated his symptoms. I don't know if you've seen it yet, but there are is also film material from the olympic games of '36 that was censored, that shows H. displaying some weird tics, but then that's not so unlikely for somebody who was in WWI. That makes more sense then what I have heard. I have not seen that piece of film but Ill try to find it, sounds interesting. I just watched the last episode of Breaking Bad, its always sad when any good tv show is finally over
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Sep 30, 2013 18:02
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I saw it once in a german documentary, but then never again. He was sitting in his seat at the games and had the upper body tilted slightly forward, circling around with his torso back and forward, left and right. Reminded me of the tics that people with shell shock displayed. Hats off to you if you manage to find it. I didn't.
Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 18:34
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