Germany Knew

This is a research paper I wrote for a college class several years ago about how the Holocaust and Genocide were more well known in Germany at the time than is often claimed. I hope it doesn't upset anyone, and am sorry if it does, but I took a lot of time to research and write on the topic and stand by my words.

I can provide any documentation cited on request.

“We didn’t know anything about it.” “If I’d known about it I would have done something to stop it.” “I was just following orders.” These are all familiar responses to accusations of culpability in probably the biggest crime in the history of mankind. One by one, defendants stood up in court proclaiming innocence in a pathetic and futile attempt to escape the hangman’s noose. Only a few people would argue that the top Nazis knew nothing about the Holocaust, but the extent of knowledge among the German population is debatable. Some people can not imagine how around six million Jews, plus gypsies, communists, homosexuals, the mentally retarded, and other enemies of the National Socialist regime could have just disappeared without a trace, and without anyone’s knowledge.

Indeed, there was plenty of information and rumors for any rational human being to, at the very least, strongly suspect that there was a systematic program to exterminate so called enemies of the state. A plethora of information was available to the ordinary German citizen, which includes talking to soldiers on leave, direct witnessing of atrocities, and working within multi-national organizations or industrial and economical entities within the Reich. The variety and widespread nature of information available to citizens of the Third Reich strongly suggests that the majority of the population were well aware of the realities of the Holocaust.

So how can so many people, even after many years, claim that they did not know anything? According to history professor and co-author of In the Shadow of the Swastika , John McDonald, civic responsibility could play a part: In Italy, for example, people were far more likely to act independently of the state. The nature of the average German citizen was such that he felt more of a responsibility to his country and was more likely to behave as the regime expected. Germans were certainly aware of enormous movements of Jews going east, supposedly to work, and that many must have realized that the old, young, and sick were of little value in that sense. That they also had many other sources of information regarding the fate of the Jews is certain; however, the key is whether or not they were able to rationally interpret this information into true knowledge, or had subconsciously decided that it was too unbelievable to be true _(McDonald). As Hubert Lutz, a former Reich citizen, said, “. . . people didn’t do anything about it. They just stood by and closed their eyes and ears” _{(qtd. in Johnson and Reuband 150)}. Historian John Claydon goes further: “. . . of the culpability of the majority of the German population, the harsh truth seems to be that there was a wide consensus across all sectors of society of willingness to support the mass killings” _(Claydon).

That the National Socialist regime was less tolerant of crime is obvious by press reports of police-ordered executions having taken place without trial. According to Historian Robert Gellately, the Nazis were keen to show that they were tough on crime and the people tended to support such steps ₍₇₇₎. After the Nazis took control, there was a massive expansion in the use of the death penalty and this was extended to even petty crimes ₍₈₅₎. The nature of this new order should have raised suspicions when so many rumors were heard from so many different directions. The famous Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer noted in November 1942 of people returning from vacations in Poland and reporting that hundreds of people were being shot on a daily basis _(148-9). A Jewish woman, Edith Hahn-Beer, managed to survive the war in Nazi Germany due to a false identity and a non-Jewish husband. She said in her memoirs that they had heard the Nazis were gassing the retarded and the insane, that people were being worked to death, and even that cruel guards devised ingenious punishments and tortures ₍₁₁₆₎. One Berlin woman even wrote in her diary in February 1944 that “’they are forced to dig their own graves’ people whisper. . . ‘they are sent naked to their death’. . . The horror is so incredible that the imagination refuses to accept its reality” _{(qtd. in Horowitz 4-5)}. Clearly, many people were aware of Nazi atrocities even if they were not yet ready to accept their reality.

The Nazi regime itself even gives evidence of the widespread knowledge in this example from the trial verdict of SS-Untersturmf ührer Max Täubner in May 1943:

The accused took a number of photographs of the executions . . . show[ing] the most deplorable excesses, many are shameless and utterly revolting. The photographs were developed in two photographic shops in southern Germany and the accused showed them to his wife and friends. _{(qtd. in Klee, Dressen and Riess 199)}

Not only did his wife and friends see the pictures but, more importantly, sending the film to regular shops for developing indicates how such events were far from secret. Even Heinrich Himmler, on closing the Grafeneck euthanasia facility in December 1940, said that “what takes place there is a secret, and yet it is no longer a secret” _{(qtd. in Reed-Purvis)}. Similarly, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller reported in February 1942 that letters are “constantly arriving, from practically all areas of the Reich concerning mass-executions of Jews” _{(qtd. in Gerlach 771)}. In the post war trial of the German chemical giant I.G. Farben, a former British prisoner of war testified that

The people in the city [Auschwitz], the SS men, the camp inmates, foreign workers, all the camp knew it, they complained about the stench of the burning bodies. Even the I. G. Farben employees to whom I spoke, a lot of them would admit it. It would be utterly impossible not to know. _{(qtd. in Laqueur 23)}

Comments like these as well as leaflets distributed by communist organizations such as the “White Rose” _{(Gellately 149)}, and the fact that many Jews, fearing arrest and deportation, even killed themselves _(Gruner) should have led to the conclusion that there was some substance to what was being heard.

Most rumors began with direct witnesses of atrocities; whether they themselves were perpetrators, helpers or merely innocent bystanders, a good cross section of the population is represented. Servicemen at the eastern front often witnessed atrocities first hand. Adam Grosch, for example, witnessed a mass shooting in October 1942 and was shocked enough to have written about it to his wife _{(Johnson and Reuband 232-3)}. Similarly shocked was communications officer Walter Sanders who not only told his parents about the atrocities he saw, but also good friends and relatives ₍₂₅₈₎. One event in Lithuania in June 1941 was witnessed by an Army adjutant: Crowds of people, including women and children who positioned themselves for a good view, were surrounding the scene where a man was clubbing Jews to death, one by one. While a hose ran to wash the blood away, the blows were accompanied by cheers from the crowd _{(Klee, Dressen and Riess 28)}. Witnessing the same incident, a photographer reported that after the entire group had been killed the man stood on a pile of corpses and played the Lithuanian national anthem ₍₃₁₎. Little effort was expended on keeping mass killings a secret. According to the head of reserve police battalion 13, one mass execution in Latvia in July 1941 “was visited by scores of German spectators from the Navy and the Reichsbahn (railway)” _{(qtd. in Klee, Dressen and Riess 127)}.

Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone was afraid to talk about atrocities they had seen. Soldiers in particular were open in their letters home to family. One soldier wrote to his family about his “. . . great satisfaction . . .” and “. . . quality work. . .” concerning the “. . . complete destruction of the Jewish ghetto” _{(qtd. in Cary)}. Another soldier, in 1942, penned a series of letters to his family frankly explaining that

The sight of the dead (including women and children) is not very cheering . . . Here in Russia, wherever the German soldier is, no Jew remains . . . we can get everything here. The clothes belonged to people who are no longer alive today. _{(qtd. in Klee, Dressen and Riess 163)}

In a later letter he claims that “it is a weakness not to be able to stand the sight of dead people; the best way of overcoming it is to do it more often. Then it becomes a habit” _{(qtd. in Klee, Dressen and Riess 171)}. Hubert Lutz remembers overhearing his mother talking to the wife of a Gestapo officer who lived in their building. In the conversation, she said that her husband was in hospital because he had had a nervous breakdown due to the mass killings in Russia and Poland. However, perhaps typical of many reactions to such news, his mother refused to believe the rumors were true _{(Johnson and Reuband 146)}. In Historian, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, he concentrates on the service of Police Battalion 101 near the Russian front: Not satisfied with just writing home about his exploits one summer, Captain Julius Wohlauf even had his wife, Vera, present in August 1942 when his battalion conducted a mass shooting of Jews in Międzyrzec, Poland. Also present at this event were some wives of locally stationed soldiers and some German Red Cross nurses _(241-2).

Other than servicemen in the east, there were many people who lived near camps within the Reich itself and could not have escaped the reality of what was happening nearby. Eleanore Gusenbauer, a farmer living near Mauthausen, witnessed in 1941, “. . . inmates being shot repeatedly. . .” _{(qtd. in Horowitz 35)}. Similarly, a local restaurant worker reported the following: “There stood a truck upon which they hurled the dead and half-dead from the day. The blood ran down. The whole day one heard the whimpering of those who were not dead. . .” _{(qtd. in Horowitz 128)}. Hermine Pimpl was a nurse at nearby Castle Hartheim and remembers that she “. . . helped the patients in undressing. Then I had nothing more to do . . . I knew that there would be gassing there” _{(qtd. in Horowitz 77)}. Many other local witnesses testify that soon after a bus of patients arrived, there would follow smoke from the chimney accompanied by a terrible stench. Many even remember that “. . . tufts of hair flew . . . onto the street. . .”, and bones were later found amongst dumped ashes _{(qtd. in Horowitz 60-1)}.

Germans who witnessed atrocities or knew something about the genocide did not all keep quiet; some people just passed on rumors while others talked quite openly. While on a motorcycle ride with a friend sometime during the war, Reich citizen, Ernst Walters remembers that they stopped in a small town and noticed a stink. His friend told him that there was a concentration camp nearby and that “. . . corpses are being burned, where soap is being made from the Jews” _{(qtd. in Johnson and Reuband 208)}. Likewise, in the early 1940’s, Hiltrud Kühnel studied dentistry at the University of Frankfurt. She vividly remembers her anatomy professor telling the class that he visited concentration camps to pick out skulls of Jews he wanted to measure ₍₁₈₉₎. Just as informative, a January 1942 letter from the Liepaja SS police chief to his Riga colleague states that “. . . the execution of the Jews . . . is still the main topic of conversation among the local population. . .” _{(qtd. in Klee, Dressen and Riess 134-5).}

The logistical, industrial and commercial support needed to build and support the camps was such that there were many people involved indirectly in their operations. In an interview at Nuremburg after the war, former commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess was asked how the German people could not know what went on in his camp. His reply indicates how widespread knowledge must have been: “I can’t answer that because there is no doubt that it was widely known among many people, but certain precautions were taken” _{(qtd. in Goldensohn 305)}. He explained how, as much as possible, the same train crews were used and that almost all camp workers were forced to sign a statement not to talk. As well as 3,500 guards, he employed about 500 administrative staff including supervisors of testing labs, extermination chambers and the crematorium ₍₃₀₅₎. Another concentration camp, Mauthausen, was located in an inhabited area in Austria and its creation involved gaining title to the land, “. . . material and logistical assistance of local contractors, suppliers, and laborers; and winning the compliance of the local population” _{(qtd. in Horowitz 26)}. Furthermore, the camp gave jobs to local citizens as well as opportunities to trade agricultural goods for items taken from the prisoners ₍₂₆₎. According to John McDonald and co-authors Matthew Seligmann and John Davison in their book, In the Shadow of the Swastika , German industrialists “. . . competed keenly. . .” for contracts to build killing facilities, the “. . . embossed plates on the furnaces a solid testament to their manufacturers’ pride” ₍₁₅₅₎. Even before the furnaces were built, the director of City Enterprises of Steyr was glad to fight off competition from the Linz crematorium for the business of disposing of bodies _{(Horowitz 43)}. Another Linz company, A. Slupetzky did, however, win the contract to supply Mauthausen with its supply of the deadly gas, Zyklon-B ₍₄₁₎.

Copious evidence points towards knowledge of the Holocaust not only among the allies, but also among organizations that had ties to or within the Reich. Specific examples include the Vatican and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). According to Hugo Slim, Senior Lecturer in International Humanitarianism at OxfordBrookesUniversity, the ICRC “. . . witness[ed] the atrocities of the Holocaust at first hand. . .”, visiting concentration camps Dachau, Esterwegen and Oranienburg before the war and, from 1942 onwards, with representatives regularly dropping in to visit with camp commanders ₍₁₃₀₎. Even the acting head of the German Red Cross, Ernst Grawitz, was the chief medical officer for the SS. He was the one responsible for introducing Himmler to Zyklon-B which was even transported to the camps in Red Cross vehicles ₍₁₃₄₎. Historian Jean-Claude Favez insists that ICRC knowledge of the Holocaust was such that by the end of 1942, they had “. . . reached the conclusion that organized, systematic massacre was taking place. . .” _{(qtd. in Slim 135)}.

Many official documents survive to testify that knowledge within the Vatican was widespread and complete. Countless letters arrived in the Vatican during the Holocaust from various representatives and witness to the atrocities. For example, the VaticanCharg é d’affaires sent a letter in October 1941 which included the following line: “All the Jews from a given locale were concentrated far from inhabited areas and massacred with machine-gun fire” _{(qtd. in Madigan)}. In a similar letter of May 1942, priest Pirro Scavizzi says that the massacre of Jews in Ukraine was complete and that the situation in Poland was accelerating by way of deportations and mass executions _(Madigan). By September 1942, the Vatican had received word from its US representative that mass executions were taking place in “. . . especially prepared camps. . .” _{(qtd. in Madigan)}. Pope Pius XII himself even sent a letter to the archbishop of Berlin in 1943 telling him of the reports of atrocities that he was receiving on a daily basis _(Madigan). Furthermore, the Pope, in his Christmas 1942 speech admitted that “. . . hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or gradual extinction” _{(qtd. in Madigan)}.

Not only were rumors of the realities of the Holocaust widespread throughout Germany, but there was also real information available that, if studied rationally would have led most Germans to realize that their country was steadily wiping out entire populations. However, even though most Germans at least heard the rumors, they were disbelieved as too horrible to be true and that it must just be enemy propaganda. A Rabbi of Grabow, Poland summed up many people’s attitudes when, in a 1942 letter explaining the genocide, he asked of his brother-in-law, “Do not think that I am mad. Alas, this is the tragic, cruel truth” _{(qtd. in Laqueur 131)}. Not until after the end of the war did the scale of the Holocaust become apparent, followed by years of guilt and reconciliation. Since then, this episode of history has become just that, something to be studied rather than something to remember and learn from. Children are growing up knowing little of how many millions of people suffered and died so needlessly. This was starkly apparent to Claudia Dreifus, American journalist and grandchild to Jewish Holocaust victims, while she visited Berlin in 1998. Visiting a Berlin Holocaust memorial she was saddened to see two young joggers urinating up against a wall. Although they were probably not anti-Semitic, she found their ignorance maddening ₍₇₅₎. Such incidences are indicative of how ignorance of terrible events from history can be so easily denied or forgotten. If lessons from history are remembered then future generations will grow up aware of mans’ destructive potential and the human race will be in a better position to see evil before it happens.

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Slim, Hugo. “Humanitarianism and the Holocaust: Lessons from ICRC’s policy towards the Jews.” The International Journal of Human Rights 5 (2001): 130-44.