Standing accused of accessory to the murder of 300,000 people

Plus, the Nazis were very conscious of the need for certain kinds of people to work in the camps. They were very aware that you needed a certain stomach for the task. Plus, the 'gas' was created as a solution to enable the work to be slightly less abhorrent, and less messy.

My point is, you needed to be inherently evil in order to just be able to get up and function there, because otherwise you'd have crumbled and lost your job.

Corazon de Leon wrote:

Qikz wrote:

Dan. wrote:Qikz, those people weren't directly involved. This guy was right there, working at the scene of the crime.

As I said before, what the hells he supposed to do. He signed up to fight the people who he and most of Germany were told wronged them. That is the purpose of propaganda and especially in a world without mass communication like there was in WW2, there's very little chance of anyone escaping that propaganda. You believed what your government told you.

He was given the order to go as a young SS member to go and work at Auschwitz. He would've had no choice in that fact and even after seeing what he saw, there's not exactly anything he can do about it. If he tries to go AWOL, tries to help the inmates or tries to stop the camp himself then he'll either be shot or turned into one of the inmates himself.

No you didn't believe what your government told you. There was a revolution in Russia in 1917, sixteen years before the Nazis got into power in Germany, because people didn't believe what the government told them. The Weimar Germany years are marked with people who didn't believe what the government told them, and the hyper-inflation crisis of 1923 happened because people didn't believe what the government told them.

As a student of propaganda let me tell you that as good as the Nazis were, there's no propaganda in the world that will actively force a person to drop aspects of their core ideology. Propaganda works because it taps into people's belief system and they agree with the core tenets of the person delivering the propagandist views. Hitler was an especially good orator, but he was helped immensely by the political climate of inter-war Europe and tapped into an incredible right wing bias in Germany.

Let's not forget the facts here. This guy signed up to one of the most infamous paramilitary forces in history, voluntarily. He shipped out to Auschwitz-Birkenau, voluntarily. He acted as a book-keeper and administrator who oversaw the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people for no other reason than their ethnic and religious origins, their sexuality or physical defects which they were born with, voluntarily.

Tell me again why he should not be on trial? If Winston Churchill can be accused of war crimes, this guy is ten times the criminal.

I stand corrected and I apologise if I've caused any offense.

Moggy wrote:

Qikz wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:

captain red dog wrote:It sounds to me like he had no real involvement. Just working at Auschwitz doesn't mean he can be deemed guilty of the crimes committed there. Where would you draw the line, the administration staff, people who delivered supplies and materials?

All accessories to mass murder, yes. They helped to efficiently process and evaporate almost an entire race of people, just because they weren't shooting them or throwing them into the fire or pressing the gas button in the showers personally, doesn't make them any less guilty of aiding in the holocaust.

I don't personally believe someone who was most likely forced to be the bookkeeper at Auschwitz should be held accountable for anything that happened there. What exactly was he supposed to do to stop what went on? Grab a gun by himself and take on the SS?

If we're prosecuting the workers of Auschwitz for being accesory to murder, then should we also prosecute the Jewish Sonderkommando who worked the crematoriums?

He wasn't forced, he joined the SS and he knew what was going on.

Mr Groening was born in 1921 in Lower Saxony in Germany, and his mother died when he was four, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine reports.
His father, a proud nationalist, joined the Stahlhelm paramilitary group after Germany's defeat in World War One. His anger at how Germany had been treated under the Treaty of Versailles increased when his textile business went bankrupt in 1929.

The young Groening joined the Stahlhelm Youth in the early 1930s, and then the Hitler Youth. He later spoke of taking part in the Nazi burning of books written by Jews and others deemed "degenerate".


British historian Laurence Rees says Mr Groening began training as a bank clerk at 17, but after war was declared, he decided he wanted to follow in his grandfathers' footsteps and join an "elite" unit in the German army.

He signed up to the Waffen SS and arrived in Auschwitz in 1942.

For about two years, Mr Groening allegedly counted money taken from the luggage of murdered Jews and sent it back to SS headquarters in Berlin. He also supervised luggage of prisoners being transported to the camp.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32336353

You have to look at how he was brought up, Nationalist father who hated the treaty of Versaille who then loses his business in 1929, its literally perfect timing for him to be a Nazi and millions like him, not saying he's innocent but its clear that cirumstances dictated his choice in dictator.

ProPoser wrote:Plus, the Nazis were very conscious of the need for certain kinds of people to work in the camps. They were very aware that you needed a certain stomach for the task. Plus, the 'gas' was created as a solution to enable the work to be slightly less abhorrent, and less messy.

My point is, you needed to be inherently evil in order to just be able to get up and function there, because otherwise you'd have crumbled and lost your job.

Or killed yourself.

The fact that they hired borderline-to-outright sociopaths to man the walls of the place and do the work should tell you everything you need to know, really.

But let's not forget that this guy was backroom staff. It doesn't change the fact that he administrated the killing of hundreds of thousands of people.

I guess the argument is: would you have tried Heinrich Himmler for war crimes if he hadn't killed himself? He ran the Nazi propaganda machine and never actually killed anyone personally, but was responsible for administrating death camps. If he is guilty, what makes this man, who did the same job at a much more localised level, any less guilty?

Photek wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Qikz wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:

captain red dog wrote:It sounds to me like he had no real involvement. Just working at Auschwitz doesn't mean he can be deemed guilty of the crimes committed there. Where would you draw the line, the administration staff, people who delivered supplies and materials?

All accessories to mass murder, yes. They helped to efficiently process and evaporate almost an entire race of people, just because they weren't shooting them or throwing them into the fire or pressing the gas button in the showers personally, doesn't make them any less guilty of aiding in the holocaust.

I don't personally believe someone who was most likely forced to be the bookkeeper at Auschwitz should be held accountable for anything that happened there. What exactly was he supposed to do to stop what went on? Grab a gun by himself and take on the SS?

If we're prosecuting the workers of Auschwitz for being accesory to murder, then should we also prosecute the Jewish Sonderkommando who worked the crematoriums?

He wasn't forced, he joined the SS and he knew what was going on.

Mr Groening was born in 1921 in Lower Saxony in Germany, and his mother died when he was four, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine reports.
His father, a proud nationalist, joined the Stahlhelm paramilitary group after Germany's defeat in World War One. His anger at how Germany had been treated under the Treaty of Versailles increased when his textile business went bankrupt in 1929.

The young Groening joined the Stahlhelm Youth in the early 1930s, and then the Hitler Youth. He later spoke of taking part in the Nazi burning of books written by Jews and others deemed "degenerate".


British historian Laurence Rees says Mr Groening began training as a bank clerk at 17, but after war was declared, he decided he wanted to follow in his grandfathers' footsteps and join an "elite" unit in the German army.

He signed up to the Waffen SS and arrived in Auschwitz in 1942.

For about two years, Mr Groening allegedly counted money taken from the luggage of murdered Jews and sent it back to SS headquarters in Berlin. He also supervised luggage of prisoners being transported to the camp.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32336353

You have to look at how he was brought up, Nationalist father who hated the treaty of Versaille who then loses his business in 1929, its literally perfect timing for him to be a Nazi and millions like him, not saying he's innocent but its clear that cirumstances dictated his choice in dictator.

Undoubtedly his background is a factor in his choices, but at what point do you absolve someone of blame because of the circumstances they grew up in, or the propaganda that they took in as a young man? Individual choice is the most important factor, and his individual choice led to him working in what I can only describe as an actual factory of murder. It's murder on an industrial scale, that had never been seen before and has never been seen since, as well. An absolute aberration of an event.

You dont absolve them at all. Their background obviously contributed to their crimes, but they were crimes nonetheless.

You dont absolve some council estate fuckwit after he breaks into your house and nicks your telly because he is poor.

Exactly my point.

Photek wrote:You have to look at how he was brought up, Nationalist father who hated the treaty of Versaille who then loses his business in 1929, its literally perfect timing for him to be a Nazi and millions like him, not saying he's innocent but its clear that cirumstances dictated his choice in dictator.

No we don't have to look at how he was brought up. A nationalist father and the loss of a business should not lead people to become the money counters for death camps. He made the choice to join the SS and he worked at the death camp knowing exactly what was going on.

While he was counting out the money that he knew was just stolen from a murdered Jew, I couldn't give a gooseberry fool what his thought were on the fairness of the Treaty of Versailles.

captain red dog wrote:I just don't know what we could realistically have expected him to do. It's not like he could have prevented what was going on.

But that invites the question - misleading in my opinion - that he might have wanted to try and prevent what he was a part of. He clearly didn't. He was a fully signed-up SS Jew-hating Nazi, by his own admission. He knew what he was a part of and all his young life he'd willingly embraced Nazi ideology. There are no excuses. He could have joined the regular German Army, but he wanted to be part of the SS (an ideological army). I don't know how much more complicit in the Holocaust his own personal history can make him.

Corazon de Leon wrote:[quote="Qikz"][quote="Dan."]Qikz, those people weren't directly involved. This guy was right there, working at the scene of the crime.

As I said before, what the hells he supposed to do. He signed up to fight the people who he and most of Germany were told wronged them. That is the purpose of propaganda and especially in a world without mass communication like there was in WW2, there's very little chance of anyone escaping that propaganda. You believed what your government told you.

He was given the order to go as a young SS member to go and work at Auschwitz. He would've had no choice in that fact and even after seeing what he saw, there's not exactly anything he can do about it. If he tries to go AWOL, tries to help the inmates or tries to stop the camp himself then he'll either be shot or turned into one of the inmates himself.[/quote]

No you didn't believe what your government told you. There was a revolution in Russia in 1917, sixteen years before the Nazis got into power in Germany, because people didn't believe what the government told them. The Weimar Germany years are marked with people who didn't believe what the government told them, and the hyper-inflation crisis of 1923 happened because people didn't believe what the government told them.

As a student of propaganda let me tell you that as good as the Nazis were, there's no propaganda in the world that will actively force a person to drop aspects of their core ideology. Propaganda works because it taps into people's belief system and they agree with the core tenets of the person delivering the propagandist views. Hitler was an especially good orator, but he was helped immensely by the political climate of inter-war Europe and tapped into an incredible right wing bias in Germany.

Let's not forget the facts here. This guy signed up to one of the most infamous paramilitary forces in history, voluntarily. He shipped out to Auschwitz-Birkenau, voluntarily. He acted as a book-keeper and administrator who oversaw the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people for no other reason than their ethnic and religious origins, their sexuality or physical defects which they were born with, voluntarily.

Tell me again why he should not be on trial? If Winston Churchill can be accused of war crimes, this guy is ten times the criminal.[/quote]

Completely off topic but studying propaganda sounds great, well interested in that stuff.

ianf wrote:Completely off topic but studying propaganda sounds great, well interested in that stuff.

You could have studied it a few years ago but the Jews won't let you anymore.

ianf wrote:Completely off topic but studying propaganda sounds great, well interested in that stuff.

It's really not.

This is all I've seen since 9.30 this morning, and all I will see until 8 tonight:

Well yeah but you could say the same for studying any subject!

Any books on the subject for the layman you would particularly recommend? Sorry for dragging this further ot everyone else

Studying propaganda can be interesting. Watching Triumph of the Will was an interesting experience for me as a media student because you could see how many films have been influenced by it's imagery.

Depends what you're looking for really. If you're interested in German propaganda(Goebbels'* ministry of public enlightenment and propaganda was unique and horrific ) , look for some stuff on Leni Riefenstahl - it's very interesting and her propaganda films are quite bizarre to look back on today. One of her works (Triumph of the Will, from memory) was reshot almost scene for scene into one of the ludicrous propaganda items featured at the start of Starship Troopers. She's a very interesting character, from a historical standpoint. It's also worth looking up some of the pioneering British stuff - we were quite incredible at propaganda work during the World Wars and specifically WWII.

General books, stuff by Noam Chomsky is interesting, if hyper-critical of the idea of propaganda. For war propaganda, Munitions of the Mind by Phil Taylor. Also I really like the book Propaganda, by Jacques Ellul. It was first published in English in 1966 but has been weirdly prescient in it's description of advertising as the propaganda of the West. Definitely worth a look, and can be bought for buttons on Amazon, but is quite... academic. Which is to say, dry as strawberry float.

American stuff has been the focus recently, as the PhD I'm working on is about Lyndon B Johnson's possible failure as a propagandist. Lots of interesting work by guys like Harold Lasswell in there.

*I said it was Himmler who dealt with propaganda on the last page, that was a slip.

Nice one man.

Already read pretty much all of Chomsky's works, formed a lot of my thoughts a good few years back now. Find his work incredibly interesting - as you say it's incredibly critical of propaganda and the Western imperialist model as a whole but think a lot of what he says makes sense and tends to be well thought through.

Gonna see about getting the Phil Taylor book from the library, will buy Propaganda too since it barely costs anything.

Watched about 20 minutes worth of Triumph of the Will now, didn't think I'd be spending my Tuesday night watching Nazi propaganda.

And I thought Phil Taylor was just a darts player.

Quite.

Anyway yeah, Chomsky's really good if you want dissenting opinion. I don't really buy into everything he says, but you can't really operate in the field without knowing what he thinks and it's definitely healthy to have a serious skeptical voice, especially in a topic as inherently murky as propaganda. I was slightly wrong about the Ellul book, it's a fiver on Amazon. If that sounds inexpensive, I've been buying up the memoirs of various Johnson administration staffers for £1 or less over the last week.

ITT Qikz defends a confessed Nazi who aided in the attempted ethnic cleansing of the Jews at Auschwitz.

GG, Qikz. GG.

For all Qikz's talk about Churchill being a war criminal, he seems to give a lot of benefit of the doubt to actual war criminals.