Genocide, Variations on a Theme #I
Part Five
The brutality of the language of the Nazis bore fruit. Many young men were willing to become killing machines. Yet the language alone was often not enough. The act of killing itself brutalized them further.
One pilot opined: “On the second day of the war with Poland, I was given the task of dropping bombs on a railway station in Posen. Eight of the sixteen bombs fell into the city, into the midst of the houses. I took no joy in that. On the third day I was indifferent and on the fourth day I delighted in it. We took pleasure in hunting soldiers through the fields…”[1]
Of course, many who killed civilians were simply following orders[2] others took pleasure in it[3], and others still found the matter amusing.[4] Sometimes though officers and men simply didn’t have the heart to kill.
One SS officer said: “I imagined the man – family, children perhaps. Then I said: ‘I’m not doing it.” I left. I couldn’t look at him.” After the prisoner was killed the SS officer suffered sleepless nights.[5]
A corporal said: “When I was in Riga, I once needed a few Russian prisoners to tidy up. So, I went and got a few – five. I asked what I was to do with them when I didn’t need them anymore: ‘Shoot them and then leave them there.’ Well, I didn’t do that. I just delivered them back to where I’d got them from.”[6]
General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma was of the opinion: “If something disgraceful happens I don’t get involved. How should I command my people to become murderers? ... No superior has a right to do that.”[7]
Other high-ranking officers had no such qualms. “As the German invasion of the USSR began, General (later Field Marshal) Erich von Manstein ordered that ‘the Jewish-Bolshevist system must be exterminated…In hostile cities, a large part of the population will have to starve.’ Nothing, Manstein continued, “may out of a sense of mistaken humanness, be distributed to prisoners or to the population – unless they are in the service of the German Wehrmacht.”[8]
As the war progressed, and it looked likely that Germany would lose, some officers lived in fear. One said: “If we capitulate now Germany will be erased once and for all and we’ll meet each other in Siberia…”[9] Others were simply worried about their pensions.[10]
Many officers were acutely aware of the complicity of the generals. One Lieutenant General opined: “…the highest generals went along with this whole business from ’41 onwards. There were enough generals who said, ‘Yes, my Fuehrer’…”[11] Thoma went further and blamed the entire German people.[12] Everyone was complicit in these crimes against humanity.
The war itself however changed many minds. One Lieutenant General said: “I must tell you frankly, I was formerly a great friend of the Nazis… now I hate the whole bunch of them. I have gradually come to see through their corruption, their inferiority, their draconian measures and especially their selfishness... they are only conducting the war for selfish reasons.”[13] Many officers came to see the war as a crime.[14]
Lieutenant General Curt Badinski reflected: “What have we not waged war against? We have waged war against our past, we have waged war against our religion, we have waged war against the Jews, we have waged war against France, England, America, Russia. We have waged war against everything that we didn’t agree with politically – in a stupid, brutal form.”[15]
Many blamed the higher-ranking officers. Rear Admiral Walter Hennecke stated: “…the high-ranking leadership should have said: “We’re no longer participating in these disgraceful crimes! It’s a dishonor to the German name.”[16]
When the Germans perpetrated crimes they committed them, in typical German fashion, thoroughly. After the war one witness recounted: “After the preparations for the execution were over, the prisoners were taken back behind the wall of the bombed building, where they were guarded by the Gestapo people, including the defendant Behrend. The entire area around the site was closed off by the Gestapo and members of the SD in order to prevent the escape of prisoners and to deny access to third parties. With the exception of a few Lithuanian Communists, the prisoners were just Jews. They ranged from the young to the aged. Among them was the already mentioned old rabbi with beard and kaftan. For each one of the participants – including the defendant Schmidt-Hammer – the Jews were clearly identifiable by their typically racial features, some by their beards and the special headgear they wore, the rabbi with his kaftan and beard… Everyone involved, including the defendant Schmidt-Hammer, knew that the victims were almost all Jewish.”
“The Jews were, although some cried and some, including a boy of about twelve, pleaded for mercy, remarkably calm. There can be no talk of any resistance, riot, etc. On the contrary, they, once they recognized their ghastly fate, complied with admirable composure. Some prayed and some rubbed their hands as they stoically awaited death. Among the prisoners was a woman, the wife of a Russian commissioner. Whether she was among the prisoners from the start or whether she came later, couldn't be clarified.”
“The execution ditch, a former Russian defense ditch, which, as already mentioned, had to be widened and deepened by Jewish prisoners, ran along a half-ruined stable. During the shootings, 10 victims had to face the front edge of the trench with their faces facing the firing squad. The 20-man firing squad was in two rows… about 20m away from their victims. Two policemen each had to shoot at a victim. The Gestapo and SD members took groups from the assembly point and rushed them, with much shouting and screaming, to the edge of the trench. Among other things, a Gestapo man drove the victims forward by beating them on the legs with a crossbar. He shouted: ‘Quick, the faster you move, the sooner we’re done!”
“When 10 victims had lined up or kneeled in front of the ditch, the defendant Schmidt-Hammer read out the statement: ‘At the order of the Fuhrer you are being shot for offenses against the Wehrmacht.” After that he stood, with drawn sword, about 3m in front of the right wingman of the firing squad and gave the order to fire.”
“After the first salvos were delivered, the defendant Schmidt-Hammer checked to see whether all the victims had been fatally wounded. At first the defendant Fischer-Schweder, who was standing nearby, provided mercy shots. Then the defendant Schmidt-Hammer gave two victims mercy shots. After subsequent salvoes, Gestapo and SD men rushed to the victims and fired a shot at each of them with a pistol.”
“A doctor wasn’t present to establish the cause of death of the victims. Whenever one group was shot, the next was led to the site. The new group had no option but to witness the gruesome scene.”
“Sergeant Thomat of the firing squad fell ill and had to be replaced. In the course of the later shootings, several members of the firing squad had to be replaced. They couldn't stand it psychologically…”
“Among the Jews were ... former inhabitants of Memel, some of whom were known by name to the men of the firing squad. Among them were the cattle dealers Funk and Scheer, the three Kaufmann brothers, the manufacturers Amber and Tauer, the soap manufacturer Feinstein and also the Jews Sundel, Falk, Silber, Kahlmann and Pnstow. The soap manufacturer Feinstein called out to his former neighbor and friend, police sergeant d. R. Knoppens, who later fell, ‘Gustav, shoot well!’ One of the young Jews, who hadn’t been mortally wounded, shouted: ‘One more!’”[17]
The men were by no means happy with the job they’d been given. “At the site of the execution various members of the firing squad had grave concerns about the legality of the shooting. Since they saw that the prisoners were almost only Jews, that some of them were already very old, but some were also very young, they couldn’t believe that all these prisoners had been resisting or working as snipers, as they’d been told...”[18]
That lying to soldiers was common practice is also attested to by Christopher Browning’s book: “Ordinary Men”.
“The village was totally quiet. The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 climbed down from their trucks and assembled in a half-circle around their commander, Major Wilhelm Trapp, a fifty-three-year-old career policeman affectionately known by his men as ‘Papa Trapp.’ The time had come for Trapp to address the men and inform them of the assignment the battalion had received.”
“Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke. The battalion, he said plaintively, had to perform a frightfully unpleasant task. This assignment was not to his liking; indeed, it was highly regrettable, but the orders came from the highest authorities. If it would make their task any easier, the men should remember that in Germany the bombs were falling on women and children.”
“He then turned to the matter at hand. The Jews had instigated the American boycott that had damaged Germany, one policeman remembered Trapp saying. There were Jews in the village of Jozefow who were involved with the partisans, he explained according to two others. The battalion had now been ordered to round up these Jews. The male Jews of working age were to be separated and taken to a work camp. The remaining Jews – the women, children, and elderly – were to be shot on the spot by the battalion.”[19]
Browning shows that brainwashing and the pretense of legality were an integral part of the system. The terms “Jew” and “Bolshevik” were used interchangeably. Given that martial law was involved everything was squeaky clean. This wasn’t murder, this wasn’t genocide, this was all good, sound, sober police work. Above all else: it was done all in defense of the Fatherland.
“In his speech Daluege emphasized that the Order Police ‘could be proud to be participating in the defeat of the world enemy, Bolshevism. No other campaign had the significance of the present one. Now Bolshevism will finally be destroyed for the benefit of Germany, Europe, yes, the entire world.’”
“Two days later, on July 11, Colonel Montua of the Police Regiment Center (which included Police Battalions 316 and 322) issued the following order:
Confidential!
1. By order of the Higher SS and Police Leader… all male Jews between the ages of 17 and 45 convicted as plunderers are to be shot according to martial law. The shootings are to take place away from cities, villages, and thoroughfares.
The graves are to be leveled in such a way that no pilgrimage site can arise. I forbid photographing and the permitting of spectators at the executions. Executions and gravesites are not to be made known.
2. The battalion and company commanders are especially to provide for the spiritual care of the men who participate in this action. The impressions of the day are to be blotted out through the holding of social events in the evenings. Furthermore, the men are to be instructed continuously about the political necessity of the measures.”[20]
Propaganda was vital, as Raul Hilberg pointed out: “to combat doubt and guilt feelings wherever they arose…”
“In fact, we find that in April 1943, after the deportations of the Jews from the Reich had largely been completed, the press was ordered to deal with the Jewish question continuously and without letup. In order to build up a storehouse the propaganda had to be turned out on a huge scale. ‘Research institutes’ were formed, doctoral dissertations were written, and volumes of propaganda literature were printed by every conceivable agency.”[21]
Not only were the soldiers, policemen and masses subjects of propaganda. The bureaucracy sought to anaesthetize itself. It really didn’t really want to know what it was doing.
“The reader of these reports is immediately struck by their camouflage vocabulary: Endloesung der Judenfrage (‘final solution of the Jewish question’), ‘Loesungsmoeglichkeiten’ (solution possibilities), Sonderbehandlung (or SB – “special treatment’)…”[22]
Executions were carried out “inconspicuously” and “as far away as possible from the troops”. “Secrecy” was of primary importance, which is why instructions were passed on orally. Photography and onlookers were forbidden. Areas were “pacified”, “secured”, “cleansed” and “freed from Jews”. Jews were “evacuated”, “relocated” and “deported”.
In November 1941 the 339th infantry division reported: “If the provision situation doesn’t allow for more plentiful rations for ancillary workers, it would be better, before proceeding to tighter rationing, to eradicate all pests and useless eaters (escaped prisoners of war, vagrants, Jews, and Gypsies).”[23]
Given the fact that the terms “Jew” and “Bolshevik” and “Jew” and “partisan” (“Where the partisan is, is the Jew, and where the Jew is, is the partisan”[24] were interchangeable it should hardly surprise that the Russians suffered appallingly at the hands of the Nazis. And this was despite the fact that the Germans were often greeted as liberators.
Alone in White Russia 2.2 million of the 10.6 million inhabitants were murdered.[25] It has been said that over 10 million Russian civilians were killed while over 2.3m POWs perished. Some think this a conservative estimate.
In the same way that Jews were murdered for no reason whatsoever so Russians were killed in a pointless, brutal fashion.
Johann Gruenbart reported: “I was a member of the 2nd SS Cavalry Regiment. In August 1941, we were in the Ukraine, on the Pripet River, near the railway. For no apparent reason, we received orders from the regimental commander, a SS-Sturmbannfuehrer, to take out and shoot the entire male civilian population over the age of 18 from the villages of Tscherschovitzi, Laschovitzi and Tevnovitzi. In the first village there were about 350 of these unfortunate, innocent people. They had to dig their own grave, a big, long hole. At a distance of about 10 meters, the entire unit then shot the victims, who were standing in a semicircle. There were 200 in the second village and 125 in the third.”[26]
The POWs didn’t fare much better. Leo Mellert reported: “From August 21-28, 1941, I was at the collection point for the wounded in Geisin near Uman. The battle of encirclement had just ended. Every hour 2,000-3,000 prisoners arrived at the transit camp. They were supposed to be cared for and then sent on. Due to poor organization on the part of the German military authorities, about 8,000 prisoners had accumulated by the evening of August 27, 1941. There was no food for them and they were, despite the heat, crammed into a space that would normally hold 500-800 people.”
“In the middle of the night I was woken up by the sound of shooting and shouting. I went out to find that the nearby 2- or 3-anti-aircraft batteries, each with 4 8.3 cm guns, had fired directly into the prisoners in the storage facilities...”[27]
[1] p.84 Soldaten Protokolle vom Kaempfen, Toeten und Sterben Soenke Neitzel, Harald Welzer
[2] p.110 Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] p.129
[5] pp.138-139
[6] p.139
[7] pp.94-95 Abgehoert, Soenke Neitzel
[8] p.14 Blowback, Christopher Simpson
[9] p.109 Abgehoert, Soenke Neitzel
[10] p.121 Ibid
[11] p.111 Ibid
[12] p.118 Ibid
[13] p.124 Ibid
[14] Ibid
[15] p.126 Ibid
[16] p.132 Ibid
[17] pp.86-88 Das Echolot, Walter Kempowski
[18] p.89 Das Echolot, Walter Kempowski
[19] p.2 Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning
[20] p.13 Ibid
[21] p.654 The Destruction of the European Jews, Raul Hilberg
[22] p.652 Ibid
[23] pp.162-166 Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944
[24] Ibid
[25] p.103 Ibid
[26] p.181 Ibid
[27] Ibid
Horrific.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/8AFzp0YkYUW1/?fbclid=IwAR22L0C4WzJ15gECyIyE15jd8qitevfvmCTYYwioTO0XRVvDzYQgIAD8EKo