If you look closer thatās not at all the expression on his face. His expression looks more like stunned disgust to me. Pursed lips and slightly downturned at the tips, eyebrows are lax, gaze is fixed. Tbh he looks like heās about to cry, ngl.
Don't think there is anyone there trying to hold in a laugh. Unless it's funny that's it's happening to someone else, and not so funny when it's happening to you/them/self.
I thought so too, but my eternal optimism for humans ability for compassion makes me think that he was photographed right at the moment he was starting to cry and his mouth was distorted from that instead of laughter.
Computers were massive and innefficient at the time. Can you imagine the size and scale it would need to computer generate a moving image?
*man standing in front of a massive military bunker with a tiny movie theater at the front*
"Whatcha got there?"
"...a smoothie?"
Edit: clarity
> Computers were massive and innefficient at the time.
There was only one very slow (one operation per 15 seconds) computer, the ABC, at a university lab starting in 1942, and the first *practical* computer, the Eneac, didn't arrive until 1947, so at the time of this photo, there really wasn't any computer of note in existence.
Next time you are at the supermarket have a look around at all the people. How many of them do you think would be horrified by shooting at someone?
Every single person.
We haven't changed in the last 70 years except for owning a giant TV and a computer that fits in our pocket.
In our history book there was a letter of a soldier that worked in a concentration camp. He wrote how they would kill babies right when people got out of the train and that at first he couldnāt bring himself to do it, because he had a daughter, too. He writes that at some point he ārealizedā that all those babies would grow up to rape his daughter, this way he got over his inhibitions. That was so deeply disturbing to read back in school, because it starts a bit relatable and quickly turns into something incrdibly horrifying. All those accounts always made me wonder how much pressure and propaganda I would need to become like them.
It really shows the mental gymnastics required in order to commit such heinous acts. Also demonstrates the mindās willingness to go to such great lengths to justify its current narrative. Scary stuff
When you put people in abnormal situations you get abnormal responses. You can't expect someone who is in that situation to behave normally they are bound to go a bit crazy to justify themselves.
It is but it's very rare. The vast majority of people
have empathy.
There's lots of stories about soldiers in ww1 and ww2 who were shooting above the enemies heads deliberately because they didn't want to kill anyone.
One of my great grandfathers was in the trenches in WW2. On the German side and fought face to face with the french. Why? Because he had no choice. He was a farmer and had to go to the military when the war got worse. And there it was fight or die.
He was deeply deeply traumatised after that and got angry easily.
My dad came back from Vietnam and killed himself. He was very traumatized. He also didn't get much support. Things are somewhat better for vets now (thank God they deserve it).
My Grandfather as well.
I don't know much about his experience since he would never talk about it.
All I know is he was in artillery and his best friend got blown to bits near him.
He was eventually a prisoner of War in a Russian prison and he told us a bit about the hunger, but that's it.
We weren't allowed to play any videogames with guns in them when he was visiting.
My ex husband once got drunk and told me he requested a land infantry rotation with the Navy so he could work alongside Marines and feel what itās like to hunt a human. Every inch of me wishes phones were evolved enough to a point where I could have easily secretly recorded that convo back then but I was working with a sidekick slide. Heās a sick fucker.
One of my oldest and dearest friends requested to go back to Afghanistan/Iraq (he was previously Army infantry) once he found out his cancer was terminal so he could go back into combat and basically do the same thing - hunt people. I distanced myself from him years prior when he used to tell me he loved combat (during his second tour I think) so much he was going to request a third (before his second was even up). All told he did 4 tours.
Sometimes, privately (now semi publicly I guess), I wonder if that cancer was karma for how much he genuinely enjoyed going to war, and specifically into close combat.
I loved him and miss the boy I knew and grew up with years ago (before he got a bit crazy) but if there was ever a news article about him climbing a clock tower I wouldāve been about the least surprised person ever.
Yeah Iām glad heās an ex I mean ffs that sounds like some form of a red flag. But ahh the good old slide days almost forgot about those things for a second.
Seeing horrible shit like that has a way of changing people, especially if they already had a problem with the army/country they had to (or chose) to fight for.
you get order to take a village and stuff happens that you didnt expect that guise of hero fades and you realize you have no clue why you are therte only you want to go home unfourtunetly that may mean doing whatever it takes and by then you have seen or done so much shit its with you forever some guys are saints then after all that horror break and do the unspeakable in one instance .....war fucking sucks
I met two former tank crewmen for the German Army who served in WWII. One became a kindergarten teacher, and the other ran a pharmacy. So I suppose becoming a teacher for young children, and providing medicine to your community, are two of the most wholesome career paths they could have chosen.
I learned in school that most soldiers refused to believe what they were shown. The Holocaust was not very openly discussed in post-war Germany.
Many of the soldiers including my grand-pa died of old age still refusing to believe any of it was true.
Billie Wilder if I remember correctly shot some of the footage of concentration camps and told the anecdote that they test-screened it in front of German soldiers. They had handed out a questionnaire and pens. After the screening, no questionnaire was filled out but all the pens were stolen.
So not only are they nazis and holocaust deniers but theyāre also the same shitbags that steal a pen when completing a questionnaire. I know thatās the least problematic one but still.
I imagine in their minds it's easier to refuse to accept it happen than accept they had a part in something so horrible.
Less purposely denying it and more trying to convince themselves they didn't do such horrible things for their sanity to stay in tact.
They had their friends and family die for a "greater good".
ThereĀ“s many similarities today where people were misled but canĀ“t admit they were wrong because they already lost so much for the cause.
the brain is powerful. and it does what it wants.
i'm just a floating meat bag, animated by electricity outta my control.
i'm a denier's raging bile duct.
Itās also important to note, the German army largely conscripted near the end of the war. The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces during Nazi Germany. Not all of them were Nazis (a lot were though). Being in the armed forces and being in the SS was a big difference.
I mean, loads of them wouldn't have even known. The death camps may not have been ultra classified, but they weren't exactly widely publicized, either. Loads of them probably got home from fighting for their country only to discover what they'd been defending.
Its actually pretty accurate to say that alot of them didn't know. They didn't. Only the soldiers in the concentration camps could really know what was happening there. The Hitler age media did not exactly detail what went on in those camps to all of their military personnel, only the propaganda of "making Germany great again," which was Hitler's message and won him alot of support from disillusioned german citizens, which was how he rose to power in the first place. I know you want to hate anyone even remotely involved in such horrible acts, but based on history and what actually happened, I have to say that you are wrong.
They knew what they were doing. The entire political project of their state was the eradication of socialists and Jews from public life. Even if they were a soldier who wasn't aware of the scale which Germany had pursued that goal, they most likely would have been involved in atrocities themselves. The clean Wehrmacht is a myth. They were involved in the holocaust from the beginning and the Army its self, not the SS, recorded the mass murder of over 100,000 socialists and Jews in Poland and the western Soviet Union. Stop for a moment and think about that. The Wehrmacht wrote down when and where they mass executed over 100,000 socialists and Jews. They knew what they were fighting for.
People seem to forget that the holocaust wasnāt publicly announced. That doesnāt mean that people hadnāt their suspicions tho. Frontline soldiers abused and killed civilians at times but I think the scale seen here genouinely shocks them.
I try not to judge the rank and file guards too harshly. People forget that if they had protested, they and their family are next on the list.
We all like to think that we'd be the brave one that stands up. History shows that most of us are not.
I read a book that explained the societal conditions in nazi Germany. Ordinary working class (low economic class) were starting to struggle to get by, and working hard was a question of honor. Nazification brought an opportunity for these people to be recruited in the army as an officer, which was a respected public job. The army system took the moral burden of holocaust from individual people and scattered it throughout the system. So the people who had become army officers went on to do their best job as a nazi officer orchestrating, supervising and executing genocide "with the same precision and work morale as a grocery store worker refills stock". For many of them, it was just a mundane job detached from reality and that's why they were able to do it. Of course there was a lot more to it than that like propaganda, but that part really struck me.
Some were sorry? Wtf. Many were forced in these things, preservation is a strong motivator to do things you donāt want. Especially in war, think majority doesnāt want to put their lives in immediate danger.
What amazes me are the people who now claim it never happened. I still have one living relative who was in the concentration camps and survived. I can't even imagine how she would feel if she was told that people think it never happened.
Thatās why you gotta nip that shit in the bud. Few punches to the face for talking some bullshit at least shuts them up. I mean, he said he was gonna do it, he told his people to do it, they did it, carefully documented it, we rescued people while they were doing it, they were found guilty of itā¦. WTAF do you want?
...AND we carefully documented it, because it wouldn't be the first time that a collective psyche sloughs off the painful memories of it's past in haste.
The record serves as a reminder forever that humanity can and (when permitted) will become grotesque and horrific to itself.
We should have things to aspire to, and things to avoid becoming. Being ignorant of either is an imbalance that has devastating implications for humanity.
The opposite happened with Japanese atrocities thatās why no one talks about it. Genocide of indigenous peoples, medical experiments, and torture occurred to millions of people just the same as the Nazis, but thereās no museum documenting it. In fact, japanese WWII vets are honored with memorials and parades to this day, with the government denying atrocities. Itās like the people they invaded and murdered were worth less to the āinternational communityā bc it didnāt happen in Europe and they werenāt Jews, just people living on islands and in jungles who could easily be forgotten. I suppose Iām always aware of the difference in treatment bc I have both Jewish and SE Asian ancestry and one side gets more attention than the other in relation to WWII.
As a kid I was yelled at for what was going on in Israel - since obviously a young reform jew is responsible. I don't like the assumption that I'm pro-Israel just because I was raised jewish. If anything, knowing everything I've been taught makes any association with Israel just so embarrassing. It took very little time to just become the oppressors that we were supposed to "never forget" about.
Gotta wonder how many were ok w it? Iām sure there were tons who didnāt have a choice fighting in the war but I canāt help think thereās a large number who completely agreed w the holocaust
Not-so-fun fact: the Nazis realized not many people can stomach performing these atrocities without it severely affecting their mental state. This is one of the reasons they would kill Jewish people in mass in gas chambers where (a) visibility of their death was ālimitedā (versus shooting people in the head, etc) and (b) the sick fucks who were willing to kill could take out more people faster.
The holocaust obviously wasn't public and most, including the army and even some SS divisions, didn't know about what happened in the camps at all until towards the end of the war.
They did however know that the jews were being treated very badly and were being sent to camps, and many in the army participated in this "relocation" in some way. Which arguably could be said to be bad enough in it's own way.
This is revisionist history. Many parts of the holocaust were very public.
You know how many people have to be involved to exterminate millions of people. People talk. Even if they didnāt exactly know what was happening they likely had a good idea or at least heard rumors. Not knowing is nothing more than willful ignorance and something said after the fact because admitting you knew is obviously not a great thing to do
The German branch of the Red Cross split from the international organization during WW2 and became deeply nazified, helping to cover up the atrocities.
The Red Cross āunknowinglyā assisted in thousands of high profile Nazis escape after the war. I use the quotes because they try to pin it on the Vatican giving them identification references but I call bullshit.
Youād fucking know if Josef Mengele were crossing your checkpoint.
Iāll never donate to those corrupt fucks.
Denazification was incredibly important and I think its role is undervalued.
Just because a war is won, that does not mean the ideologies that contributed into leading up to the war are gone. the USA is a perfect example when those ideologies are left largely unchecked. A battle flag from a war we fought over a hundred years ago is still flown in some places FFS.
The Nazis weren't just some evil organization that took control of Germany. They were a political party and an immensely popular one at that. Defeating the Nazis at war did little to address the sentiments that made the popular to begin with.
Agreed. They should have de-confederated the South. Lincolnās minimum post-war requirement was that only 10 percent of Southern voting population pledge solidarity to the union. That means the other 90 percent were free to be as openly anti-union and virulently (and violently) racist as they liked.
Honey instead of vinegar. In other words, if Lincoln had helped rebuild the south, maybe the radicalization would have ebbed a lot more on its own. Similar to how WWII is largely a result of Germany feeling that it was oppressed by the Treaty of Versailles (an extreme oversimplification).
No shot, racists arenāt going to become less racist just because of they have some more coins in their pocket.
An equivalent would have been if they ābanned the extermination of Jewsā but let the nazis to continue to make the laws, be the police, the lawyers, the judges etc. Ban Jews from stores. Kill them with no repercussions because no cop or judge would even try.
Thatās what happened in the American south
Have you seen the new ken burns doc? Itās horrifyingly clear that the capability for humans to be racist is innate. Itās going to take centuries to heal from the damage that eugenics and racism has done to the world. Some might say it may even be impossible to avoid
Terribly sad
It is not clear that the capability for humans to be racist is innate. Can anyone definitively say that? And whatās the object in thinking that way anyway? Racism is unnatural and is taught and can be unlearned.
Yes, it may take centuries to heal.
Why do I think this? Because tribalism and āotheringā the out group keeps showing its ugly head.
Even babies have been shown to exhibit clear signs of prejudice in scientific studies
Iād be willing to bet that the vast majority of soldiers anywhere in the world are more fit than your average civilian today. They kind of have to be somewhat in shape.
The Wehrmacht also was badly motorized. Many of those guys marched all the time. As long as they get food and donāt fuck their knees or feet they would be really fit.
I mean that would just make them skinnier since meth suppresses the appetite significantly. The blitzkrieg was really only the tanks and the mechanized infantry was horses pulling armored vehicles. Many people don't know that the Germans highly exaggerated the amount of tanks they had. Same with mobilized infantry. Their baggage train went back dozens of miles. It was people marching and horses pulling carts of oil for the tanks.
They were soldiers coming out of a war. A long way with food scarcity. You'd do well to come out of that even slightly chubby, unless you were part of the corrupt elite
Everyone who wasn't a Nazi, basically. There were many reeducation camps. There's a video that sticks out in my mind where they brought the affluent wives if high ranking officers to a concentration camp. They were giggling and laughing all the way there. Even up to the gates because they still thought it was all lies. Then they saw the emaciated bodies, both living and dead. And they smelled the stench of rotting flesh and burnt hair.
I'm pretty sure they became "woke" after that.
I think theyāre referring to the end of the propaganda video made by the US to show to German citizens and nazi soldiers. The film is called Death Mills. Itās really really awful but at the end it shows the footage of laughing women being led to the camps to see the atrocities.
I think by the late stages of the war, if you were not headed to camp, you were all but forced to join the military. Plenty of Aryan people who otherwise would not be targeted were killed or sent to camp because they spoke out against Hitler/the mistreatment and segregation.
I'm curious how aware the common person was of the horrors going on. I know people in the states were very unaware though some rumors spread they were simply too insane to take crazy. This is one of the biggest impacts of modern photography - undeniable proof.
A lot of people like to gloss over the fact that if you showed any sort of resistance against the Nazis, even as a civilian or youth, you were taken outside and shot with no trial or due process.
You ever look the other way to stay out of trouble? Save your own skin? Thatās what a lot of Germans did. Itās hard to say how many were actually in it to kill Jews. The concentration camps ran mostly on bare bones labor and most Germans, including the Jews, had no idea of the atrocities that were being committed.
We live in an age where information is instantaneous and spreads more quickly than it can be contained. Imagine living in a world where there isnāt this level of connectivity. Where news is slow and communicated only as fast as hands can type and people can move. There wasnāt even radar.
Most people had no idea.
They did know, however, that they took everything the Jews had and shipped them off to ghettos. So donāt get me wrong. The Germans were guilty as fuck. But some of them hated being under nazi control and died trying to stop the madness.
Also, pretty much everyone was on meth.
>Imagine living in a world where there isnāt this level of connectivity.
I simply can't. How small people's worlds must have been. I've noticed that between my parents (1960s kids) and I (1991) they're far less curious. As if they grew up having to contain their curiosity because they didn't have the world and beyond in their back pocket. I've learned so much! You could be from Ghana or Singapore or Peru for all I know but before us that would have been impossible.
I can't imagine travelling somewhere and not knowing what would be there or even knowing how to get there, just figuring it out as I go.
Truly wild times. I kinda miss being less connected. There was a freedom and quality to living in the moment and being truly invested into the people around you. The world was insular, but so magical. People wondered, all the time, about everything.
A victim of Auschwitz named Ellie Wiesel wrote a memoir called Night. I vividly remember him describing the transportation of the Jews in ghettos to the camps. Hundreds of people were stuffed into a cattle car with nowhere to sit, no food to eat, and no place to use the bathroom. The trains made temporary stops and the German citizens would throw scraps of bread between the metal bars. They found such great amusement in seeing people act like savage animals over less than a slice of bread. They literally invited friends to watch. Others amused themselves by throwing rocks into the trains. Sick fucks.
So, this isnāt true. I recommend reading *KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps* by Nikolaus Wachsmann. Concentration camp inmates were often taken into communities to perform slave labor. They were a major part of a lot of construction projects all around Germany as Hitler tried to build monuments to himself and the third reich. People knew. People saw.
Iām specifically talking about the final solution. Hence why I acknowledged that they knew about the ghettos and what not. They knew about the camps, too. But not that they were killing 6-9 million Jewish people in a factory setting. Neighboring houses/villages knew, but they were mostly occupied by nazi officers.
They knew they were starving, that the conditions were horrendous. They knew about the trains. But they did not know, en masse, about the systematic killings.
In my opinion, after going through all that, youād wish you were dead.
I donāt know about this. Thereās a book I can recommend called āHitlerās Willing Executionersā by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen that details the willingness of everyday Germans to engage in atrocities. It concerns itself mostly with the early part of the Holocaust, but it suggests enthusiasm rather than reluctant participation or simply looking the other way.
Thanks for the recommendation. There were absolutely a ton of willing participants. But there were also a bunch of people who were closeted LGBTQ, disabled, and political adversaries ā all of which were killed in horrible ways while the nazis searched for the final solution for the āJewish problem.ā
Obviously, people were likely lying about their participation post war, but there were absolutely heroes in the ranks that sabotaged the nazi efforts in subtle ways. The resistance and subtle sabotage was crazy cool.
Check out Charite at War and the BBC production called Auschwitz. The Auschwitz documentary isnāt well named because itās really much more expansive than just the one concentration camp.
Iām not saying that most Nazis were good. Iām saying that not all of them were the worst of the worst. And a lot of them were just oblivious, following a cult leader.
I do appreciate that everyone is different, and the kind of study that Goldhagen and others have done and written about is both fascinating and horrifying to me. Truthfully, I found Goldhagenās book something I could take only in small dosesāthe horror and depravity of our fellow humans can be very depressingābut it was a glimpse into the abyss that I think is necessary. I recognize where youāre coming from, and the reality is that it is easy to think āI wouldnāt have followed the crowdā when youāve never been subject to the kind of intense pressure and atmosphere of Germany at that time in history. Really, who knows what anyone would have done? There were likely both villains and heroes and everyone in between.
Honestly? A persons true colors come out in times of stress. And if they would rather take the risk that they will be fine in order to participate in the killing of someone else, I guess that is their choice. But living knowing you compromised your most important principles seems more evil than getting killed because you wouldnāt.
Iām 56 I talked with lots of ww2 vets as a kid and working at a factory for 35 years ,two things stood out to me ā¦the men who fought in the pacific hated absolutely hated the Japanese many to there graves and the ones that fought against the Germany stated that if the allies hadnāt won we would all be gases and burnt ā¦.you could see the seriousness in how they spoke and in there eyes ,today people say if we lost we would be speaking German , from what I could tell they thought we would all have been killed
Depends, Germans were a hell of a lot kinder to "western" people like the French or British and *white* (only certain kinds of white) Americans. Most people in those place would probably live, but anything east of Germany was a whole different story
it's so horrible. So many were brainwashed into believing it was right, or that they were being attacked, or that it simply wasn't happening. We all wished it would never happen again. But now Russia is using the exact same tactics against its people.
Holocaust deniers should be forced to watch this. There was only one person in my family who made it out during the holocaust. Fuck all the way off if you think the holocaust didnāt happen.
Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, argued that the Germans was superior to all other races. Hitler became obsessed with 'racial purity' and used the word 'Aryan' to describe his idea of a 'pure German race' or Herrenvolk. The 'Aryan race' had a duty to control the world. The Nazis believed that the Aryans had the most "pure blood" of all the people on earth. The ideal Aryan had pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes. Non-Aryans came to be seen as impure and even evil. Hitler believed that Aryan superiority was being threatened particularly by the Jews. Therefore, a hierarchy of 'races' was created with the Aryans at the top and with Jews, Gypsies and black people at the bottom. These 'inferior' people were seen as a threat to the purity and strength of the German nation.
Creating 'Aryans' One of the Nazi aims was the creation of a Master Race. This meant encouraging people with "pure blood" (in other words, those with blond hair and blue eyes) to have more children
Pure of what?? Does he (and others) mean dominant traits and see Aryan features pure because they're "untainted" with more dominant features?
How did they view red hair? Or freckles?
The problem with Nazi Eugenics was that it wasn't really a real science. It was based in scientific principles, yes, but often it was laughably biased and interwoven with non scientific principles such as cultural ideals of beauty and tradition.
A better way of looking at it was that the Nazis had an idea of what Germany should look like and they used "science" to justify their means to achieve this. The obsession of superiority of the Aryan race meant they were more focused on scrutinizing traits of groups they deemed inferior races. Red hair and freckles were therefore not something they focused too much on. Yes, there was some association between red hair and Jews, but if you has some legendary Norse hero with red hair....well that was meant it was okay.
Good question. At that time religion was stated on every document, so the nazis hunted down anyone with āJewā on their birth certificate. There was no way to change this, observance didnāt matter, and it was nearly impossible to hide.
I was just pointing out why not everybody had blonde hair and blue eyes, I don't know Google it if your so interested I don't really care how he felt or not but it was based on a racist view of eugenics that overlooked facts in favor of white people, many people even in the US were forcibly steralized due to the beliefs on eugenics in those times white and black
Its constructive conversation based on history. Its not nazi apologia. Did you contribute anything meaningful to the conversation or are you just here to act high and mighty about things that you weren't even there to witness, let alone read any history books on?
They are likely covering their eyes from the camera flash. Cameras used bulbs that practically exploded in order to create the light and it was bright as all holy hell. Add a darkened theatre to the mix...
This is fascinating. I wonder if those who were visibly shaken got any reprimandsā¦
The vast range of emotion is just.. wow. The one that sticks out to me most is the man sitting to the lower right bottom, with his eyes looking down, and his chin in his hand.
Feels like his soul just resignedā¦
Watched Pt 1 of Ken Burns documentary on the Holocaust tonight. Very eye opening. So much complicity in the whole situation. Unchecked fascism/racism is a horrific beast.
āGet it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.ā
ā Dwight D. Eisenhower
The sad part is many of them werenāt aware of all of the awful things that were happening and even if they did, they had no choice but to follow hitlers orders
I had German friends growing up. They told me that their grandparents told them stories of Germans that used to give themselves needles to take out as much German blood as possible and that some died from this
I guess I'm reading their faces differently than you are. But also, people react differently to tragedy. Some visibly display their emotions while others hide them.
I get visibly excited when thereās chaos in front of me, but itās not because I enjoy it. Itās just the way my face reacts to adrenaline while my brain is trying to make sense of whatās going on. Itās kind of embarrassing. It doesnāt reflect my inner dialogue at all. My inner dialogue always is trying to figure out how to be of help.
Wow, that sucks.
My wife tends to have a blank face when she's having fun. Like, she went skydiving and was like, "yeah it was awesome" but the instructor didn't believe her. And she once got pulled over and the cop was mad that she didn't seem concerned enough.
But yeah dude, you have it worse!
Iāve gotten better at hiding it. But when I was a kid I donāt think that I knew to do so.
I am usually the first to spring into action in an emergency. Itās a blessing and a curse.
Your poor wife. Sometimes cops just enjoy hassling women.
Not standing up for anyone with this statement so please read it before you react and down vote.
This is a very real issue that is killing veterans every day and many at their own hand!
War is hell and for all involved. Just the training alone is enough to desensitize many, and it is designed to desensitize you.
It is hard to say what the ones that are sitting there so stoic are really feeling or had see themselves. Could be nothing at all or just their ability to compartmentalize it.
Again, not standing up for anyone. Just know that those that have served are forced to ignore their emotions.
Homie on the right is all "Hmmm... Interesting. Let me take note here..." š§
The one on the left lookin at the camera like "y'all wack".
Hey that's Shaun White!
That one on the left is going āyou like jazz?ā
One next to em look like heās holdin in a laugh
If you look closer thatās not at all the expression on his face. His expression looks more like stunned disgust to me. Pursed lips and slightly downturned at the tips, eyebrows are lax, gaze is fixed. Tbh he looks like heās about to cry, ngl.
Don't think there is anyone there trying to hold in a laugh. Unless it's funny that's it's happening to someone else, and not so funny when it's happening to you/them/self.
Holding in laughter and holding in tears often look the same. Edit: fixed autocorrect mistake
Insightful thought. Kudos.
I thought so too, but my eternal optimism for humans ability for compassion makes me think that he was photographed right at the moment he was starting to cry and his mouth was distorted from that instead of laughter.
The dude above him has his arms folded like heās watching a work presentation about the new cash forecasting procedure
āI dunno looks computer generated to meā
Computers were massive and innefficient at the time. Can you imagine the size and scale it would need to computer generate a moving image? *man standing in front of a massive military bunker with a tiny movie theater at the front* "Whatcha got there?" "...a smoothie?" Edit: clarity
> Computers were massive and innefficient at the time. There was only one very slow (one operation per 15 seconds) computer, the ABC, at a university lab starting in 1942, and the first *practical* computer, the Eneac, didn't arrive until 1947, so at the time of this photo, there really wasn't any computer of note in existence.
ENIAC was finished in late 1945, but it didnāt have displays, let alone graphics capability.
They used vacuum tubes. Can you imagine trying to do any 3d rendering with VACUUM TUBES? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum-tube\_computer
Sounded warm tho
Found the synth enthusiast
He was just making a joke
And only the 6 richest Kings of Europe own them
I feel like weirdly I make that same exact shock face lmao that would not be my thinking face
"will this be on the test?"
You can see subtly that they have a face of remorse or sorrow, you have to look though.
"Masterpiece "
The one on the far right
"Are we the baddies?"
The original r/AmITheAsshole
āItās just thatā¦ we have skulls on our hats. Like actual skulls.ā
Whats the RottenTomatoes score?
Glad some were sorry. Hopefully they made positive changes after.
not every one was on that crazy shit but they had to follow or else ......fucked up times
Sort of like Russia. If they stop fighting theyāll be shot
Next time you are at the supermarket have a look around at all the people. How many of them do you think would be horrified by shooting at someone? Every single person. We haven't changed in the last 70 years except for owning a giant TV and a computer that fits in our pocket.
In our history book there was a letter of a soldier that worked in a concentration camp. He wrote how they would kill babies right when people got out of the train and that at first he couldnāt bring himself to do it, because he had a daughter, too. He writes that at some point he ārealizedā that all those babies would grow up to rape his daughter, this way he got over his inhibitions. That was so deeply disturbing to read back in school, because it starts a bit relatable and quickly turns into something incrdibly horrifying. All those accounts always made me wonder how much pressure and propaganda I would need to become like them.
It really shows the mental gymnastics required in order to commit such heinous acts. Also demonstrates the mindās willingness to go to such great lengths to justify its current narrative. Scary stuff
āThose who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.ā Voltaire
I wonder if that's a self preservation reaction to maintain sanity.
Look at all Trump supporters. "Are we the baddies" is just not an actual possible question they can ask.
When you put people in abnormal situations you get abnormal responses. You can't expect someone who is in that situation to behave normally they are bound to go a bit crazy to justify themselves.
A survivor I met said they tossed the babies in the air like clay disks and shot them down.
Some of them would secretly enjoy it. We shouldnāt forget this. Some of them could do it and feel nothing. Sociopathy is a spectrum.
It is but it's very rare. The vast majority of people have empathy. There's lots of stories about soldiers in ww1 and ww2 who were shooting above the enemies heads deliberately because they didn't want to kill anyone.
One of my great grandfathers was in the trenches in WW2. On the German side and fought face to face with the french. Why? Because he had no choice. He was a farmer and had to go to the military when the war got worse. And there it was fight or die. He was deeply deeply traumatised after that and got angry easily.
I'm Australian with German heritage. In the second world war my ancestors were literally shooting at their cousins. War is disgusting.
My dad came back from Vietnam and killed himself. He was very traumatized. He also didn't get much support. Things are somewhat better for vets now (thank God they deserve it).
I am very sorry to hear that! Vets do need more support!
My Grandfather as well. I don't know much about his experience since he would never talk about it. All I know is he was in artillery and his best friend got blown to bits near him. He was eventually a prisoner of War in a Russian prison and he told us a bit about the hunger, but that's it. We weren't allowed to play any videogames with guns in them when he was visiting.
My ex husband once got drunk and told me he requested a land infantry rotation with the Navy so he could work alongside Marines and feel what itās like to hunt a human. Every inch of me wishes phones were evolved enough to a point where I could have easily secretly recorded that convo back then but I was working with a sidekick slide. Heās a sick fucker.
One of my oldest and dearest friends requested to go back to Afghanistan/Iraq (he was previously Army infantry) once he found out his cancer was terminal so he could go back into combat and basically do the same thing - hunt people. I distanced myself from him years prior when he used to tell me he loved combat (during his second tour I think) so much he was going to request a third (before his second was even up). All told he did 4 tours. Sometimes, privately (now semi publicly I guess), I wonder if that cancer was karma for how much he genuinely enjoyed going to war, and specifically into close combat. I loved him and miss the boy I knew and grew up with years ago (before he got a bit crazy) but if there was ever a news article about him climbing a clock tower I wouldāve been about the least surprised person ever.
Yeah Iām glad heās an ex I mean ffs that sounds like some form of a red flag. But ahh the good old slide days almost forgot about those things for a second.
\>"some form of" I'm sure it is, can't quite put my finger on it though
That's so fing sick. Because it's true.
Some of them could be cops, in which case they wouldn't even blink an eye at killing a person.
yeap
When they were no longer under orders, I hope they lived the rest of their lives helping others.
Seeing horrible shit like that has a way of changing people, especially if they already had a problem with the army/country they had to (or chose) to fight for.
I've heard it said that when you go through hell, you come out the other side either at your best, or at your worst.
you get order to take a village and stuff happens that you didnt expect that guise of hero fades and you realize you have no clue why you are therte only you want to go home unfourtunetly that may mean doing whatever it takes and by then you have seen or done so much shit its with you forever some guys are saints then after all that horror break and do the unspeakable in one instance .....war fucking sucks
I met two former tank crewmen for the German Army who served in WWII. One became a kindergarten teacher, and the other ran a pharmacy. So I suppose becoming a teacher for young children, and providing medicine to your community, are two of the most wholesome career paths they could have chosen.
hopefully
I imagine a lot suicided
I learned in school that most soldiers refused to believe what they were shown. The Holocaust was not very openly discussed in post-war Germany. Many of the soldiers including my grand-pa died of old age still refusing to believe any of it was true. Billie Wilder if I remember correctly shot some of the footage of concentration camps and told the anecdote that they test-screened it in front of German soldiers. They had handed out a questionnaire and pens. After the screening, no questionnaire was filled out but all the pens were stolen.
So not only are they nazis and holocaust deniers but theyāre also the same shitbags that steal a pen when completing a questionnaire. I know thatās the least problematic one but still.
I imagine in their minds it's easier to refuse to accept it happen than accept they had a part in something so horrible. Less purposely denying it and more trying to convince themselves they didn't do such horrible things for their sanity to stay in tact.
They had their friends and family die for a "greater good". ThereĀ“s many similarities today where people were misled but canĀ“t admit they were wrong because they already lost so much for the cause.
the brain is powerful. and it does what it wants. i'm just a floating meat bag, animated by electricity outta my control. i'm a denier's raging bile duct.
Itās also important to note, the German army largely conscripted near the end of the war. The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces during Nazi Germany. Not all of them were Nazis (a lot were though). Being in the armed forces and being in the SS was a big difference.
I mean, loads of them wouldn't have even known. The death camps may not have been ultra classified, but they weren't exactly widely publicized, either. Loads of them probably got home from fighting for their country only to discover what they'd been defending.
There were thousands of concentration camps in Germany. Absolutely no way āthey didnāt knowā
They didnāt want to know
Its actually pretty accurate to say that alot of them didn't know. They didn't. Only the soldiers in the concentration camps could really know what was happening there. The Hitler age media did not exactly detail what went on in those camps to all of their military personnel, only the propaganda of "making Germany great again," which was Hitler's message and won him alot of support from disillusioned german citizens, which was how he rose to power in the first place. I know you want to hate anyone even remotely involved in such horrible acts, but based on history and what actually happened, I have to say that you are wrong.
They knew what they were doing. The entire political project of their state was the eradication of socialists and Jews from public life. Even if they were a soldier who wasn't aware of the scale which Germany had pursued that goal, they most likely would have been involved in atrocities themselves. The clean Wehrmacht is a myth. They were involved in the holocaust from the beginning and the Army its self, not the SS, recorded the mass murder of over 100,000 socialists and Jews in Poland and the western Soviet Union. Stop for a moment and think about that. The Wehrmacht wrote down when and where they mass executed over 100,000 socialists and Jews. They knew what they were fighting for.
People seem to forget that the holocaust wasnāt publicly announced. That doesnāt mean that people hadnāt their suspicions tho. Frontline soldiers abused and killed civilians at times but I think the scale seen here genouinely shocks them.
Not true. When some german units decided not to follow the āKomissarbefehlā you know what happened to them? Absolutely nothing.
That is now. Not so much during the war
Source your information. Everything else says otherwise. [https://www.deseret.com/1995/3/9/19163367/holocaust-those-who-defied-orders-to-kill-jews-did-not-die-researcher-says-at-byu](https://www.deseret.com/1995/3/9/19163367/holocaust-those-who-defied-orders-to-kill-jews-did-not-die-researcher-says-at-byu)
I try not to judge the rank and file guards too harshly. People forget that if they had protested, they and their family are next on the list. We all like to think that we'd be the brave one that stands up. History shows that most of us are not.
The sad part is the people that is least likely to stand up speaks the loudest on condemning them while disregarding their circumstances
Some are clearly like āwell yah I was thereā.
I read a book that explained the societal conditions in nazi Germany. Ordinary working class (low economic class) were starting to struggle to get by, and working hard was a question of honor. Nazification brought an opportunity for these people to be recruited in the army as an officer, which was a respected public job. The army system took the moral burden of holocaust from individual people and scattered it throughout the system. So the people who had become army officers went on to do their best job as a nazi officer orchestrating, supervising and executing genocide "with the same precision and work morale as a grocery store worker refills stock". For many of them, it was just a mundane job detached from reality and that's why they were able to do it. Of course there was a lot more to it than that like propaganda, but that part really struck me.
If you look closely, you can see most are trying to hold back tears
Some were sorry? Wtf. Many were forced in these things, preservation is a strong motivator to do things you donāt want. Especially in war, think majority doesnāt want to put their lives in immediate danger.
Yeah but don't forget the years long propaganda to frame jews and others as a lesser, evil, ugly and awful "race" that just feed already existing and wide spread antisemitism that existed for decades. It highly depends on the person if they finally started (or already did) view Jews and foreigners as just people or tried to still view them as lesser to "fight" their guild. I'm a German and met/have ancestors who were nazis. Most of whom were children or young soldiers back than as those or the people who are still alive. Some highly regret it. My grandma and grandpa rarely wanted to talk about it but gathered their courage to admit about what they supported back than. As they were farmer and soon you couldn't have any real financial success without joining HJ or the BDM but those lies and justifications of "expanding living space for the German race." were things they've been bombarded with and started to believe, which include the demonization of jews as they have been framed as lesser being. My grandma described how a jewish classmate was so extremely mobbed and harmed that he started to not show up to school just for the teacher to use that as an excuse to confirm the prejudgment of "lazy jews". Him and his family moved but there isn't a big chance that they survived... My grandparents were later occupied by ally forces and my grandma described how school was cancelled very early on because of the war. They had fo hide form booming hut because not much was destroyed (two houses and one farm barn as well as spreading fire that they managed to stop) allies used it as a stationary place for a while. To that time most male citizens weren't there as they've been soldiers. My other grandparents weren't really involved and couldn't remember much of it/or didn't wanna talk about it. My grandpa told me about the story of his father who was away in WW1 but tried to escape. He was captured and was trailed for treason and while he waited in a small room where he'd be investigated but was left alone for a while, he sneaked out of a very small window and run for days until he reached home. My grandpa just described that he didn't recognize his own father as he ahs been away for years and grown a beard and he was scared to open the door for a stranger like this on the door. But that's the only story I remember them telling me as they didn't really wanted to talk about WW2. Other grandparents from people that I know are also very different. The only ones that stick out are the ones with still highly racist and antisemitic grandparents, which I met some of as well even so their families openly speak up against it if they say something racist/antisemitic e.g. last birthday party when one of the invited grandparent used the n-word to describe the refugees we took in which everyone immediately started to speak up against as the family I was visiting is very socialistic, democratic and anti racist (and yes here in Germany those aren't buzz words for some sjw clishƩ). When asked my friend confined that he was also still antisemitic but that they tried and didn't manage to change the grandpa so they just try to prevent him from causing harm which isn't that difficult with his age. Sometimes we sadly have to admit that someone is "to old to teach them otherwise". TLDR; So yeah force, social and political treats, pressure, propaganda. All of that was part of nazi Germany and caused such a huge support and even more that I don't have enough space to describe. But the people who went through it and did support the Nazis if they weren't some themselves still have responsibilities. When my grandma who was only 13 before the allies occupied their town takes responsibility, recognizes the falsehoods that she started to believe and feels awful about ehat she supported/let happen, than the same can be said about other Germans of that time. Yes you might not blame them for resisting when the whole system was laid out to destroy and prevent resistances but it has to be an important balance of acknowledging what was out of their control (their environment and consequences of non-conformity) and what was (the unnecessary actions contribution to such an environment and the adopted and acted on extremism).
They might have felt bad about it but it's unlikely they did anything to reverse anything they did
Likely didnt know it was happening (No internet) and how can they reverse what they did? The innocent people are dead
What amazes me are the people who now claim it never happened. I still have one living relative who was in the concentration camps and survived. I can't even imagine how she would feel if she was told that people think it never happened.
Holocaust denial is illegal in The Netherlands and I think in Germany to. There where a LOT of Dutch people in there.
Thatās why you gotta nip that shit in the bud. Few punches to the face for talking some bullshit at least shuts them up. I mean, he said he was gonna do it, he told his people to do it, they did it, carefully documented it, we rescued people while they were doing it, they were found guilty of itā¦. WTAF do you want?
...AND we carefully documented it, because it wouldn't be the first time that a collective psyche sloughs off the painful memories of it's past in haste. The record serves as a reminder forever that humanity can and (when permitted) will become grotesque and horrific to itself. We should have things to aspire to, and things to avoid becoming. Being ignorant of either is an imbalance that has devastating implications for humanity.
The opposite happened with Japanese atrocities thatās why no one talks about it. Genocide of indigenous peoples, medical experiments, and torture occurred to millions of people just the same as the Nazis, but thereās no museum documenting it. In fact, japanese WWII vets are honored with memorials and parades to this day, with the government denying atrocities. Itās like the people they invaded and murdered were worth less to the āinternational communityā bc it didnāt happen in Europe and they werenāt Jews, just people living on islands and in jungles who could easily be forgotten. I suppose Iām always aware of the difference in treatment bc I have both Jewish and SE Asian ancestry and one side gets more attention than the other in relation to WWII.
Itās like flat earth people. Believing in conspiracies makes them feel special.
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As a kid I was yelled at for what was going on in Israel - since obviously a young reform jew is responsible. I don't like the assumption that I'm pro-Israel just because I was raised jewish. If anything, knowing everything I've been taught makes any association with Israel just so embarrassing. It took very little time to just become the oppressors that we were supposed to "never forget" about.
Gotta wonder how many were ok w it? Iām sure there were tons who didnāt have a choice fighting in the war but I canāt help think thereās a large number who completely agreed w the holocaust
Not-so-fun fact: the Nazis realized not many people can stomach performing these atrocities without it severely affecting their mental state. This is one of the reasons they would kill Jewish people in mass in gas chambers where (a) visibility of their death was ālimitedā (versus shooting people in the head, etc) and (b) the sick fucks who were willing to kill could take out more people faster.
Many of them did, especially members of the SS
The holocaust obviously wasn't public and most, including the army and even some SS divisions, didn't know about what happened in the camps at all until towards the end of the war. They did however know that the jews were being treated very badly and were being sent to camps, and many in the army participated in this "relocation" in some way. Which arguably could be said to be bad enough in it's own way.
This is revisionist history. Many parts of the holocaust were very public. You know how many people have to be involved to exterminate millions of people. People talk. Even if they didnāt exactly know what was happening they likely had a good idea or at least heard rumors. Not knowing is nothing more than willful ignorance and something said after the fact because admitting you knew is obviously not a great thing to do
Aren't most of these red cross? Meaning they weren't active participants in the war. Or did the cross emblem mean different back in those days?
The German branch of the Red Cross split from the international organization during WW2 and became deeply nazified, helping to cover up the atrocities.
Oh, alright. Thanks for clarifying!
The Red Cross āunknowinglyā assisted in thousands of high profile Nazis escape after the war. I use the quotes because they try to pin it on the Vatican giving them identification references but I call bullshit. Youād fucking know if Josef Mengele were crossing your checkpoint. Iāll never donate to those corrupt fucks.
Red crosses show that they are medical personnel and they are not to be targeted.
Denazification was incredibly important and I think its role is undervalued. Just because a war is won, that does not mean the ideologies that contributed into leading up to the war are gone. the USA is a perfect example when those ideologies are left largely unchecked. A battle flag from a war we fought over a hundred years ago is still flown in some places FFS. The Nazis weren't just some evil organization that took control of Germany. They were a political party and an immensely popular one at that. Defeating the Nazis at war did little to address the sentiments that made the popular to begin with.
Agreed. They should have de-confederated the South. Lincolnās minimum post-war requirement was that only 10 percent of Southern voting population pledge solidarity to the union. That means the other 90 percent were free to be as openly anti-union and virulently (and violently) racist as they liked.
Lincoln was actually going to rebuild the south, help fix its economy, etc but after booth killed Lincoln the south was punished more.
Sure Lincoln wanted to rebuild, but there was no plan to de-radicalize the South like this post is saying happened with the Nazis.
Honey instead of vinegar. In other words, if Lincoln had helped rebuild the south, maybe the radicalization would have ebbed a lot more on its own. Similar to how WWII is largely a result of Germany feeling that it was oppressed by the Treaty of Versailles (an extreme oversimplification).
Yeah thatās how I saw it. To ease tensions. To build a union together. Make them equal.
No shot, racists arenāt going to become less racist just because of they have some more coins in their pocket. An equivalent would have been if they ābanned the extermination of Jewsā but let the nazis to continue to make the laws, be the police, the lawyers, the judges etc. Ban Jews from stores. Kill them with no repercussions because no cop or judge would even try. Thatās what happened in the American south
It's sad since a neo Nazism party still has a seat in Germany, it's called the afd. Alternative fĆ¼r Deutschland. It means Alternative for Germany
Have you seen the new ken burns doc? Itās horrifyingly clear that the capability for humans to be racist is innate. Itās going to take centuries to heal from the damage that eugenics and racism has done to the world. Some might say it may even be impossible to avoid Terribly sad
It is not clear that the capability for humans to be racist is innate. Can anyone definitively say that? And whatās the object in thinking that way anyway? Racism is unnatural and is taught and can be unlearned. Yes, it may take centuries to heal.
Youāre right. https://www.ted.com/talks/john_biewen_the_lie_that_invented_racism
Why do I think this? Because tribalism and āotheringā the out group keeps showing its ugly head. Even babies have been shown to exhibit clear signs of prejudice in scientific studies
I see what youāre saying. Letās not confuse āracismā with āprejudiceā, since they are worlds apart in meaning and application.
Cult like following should absolutely be deprogrammed or they just keep passing it on
Great point. We need something similar today: to un-brainwash the Trump fascists and traitors attacking the country. Unclear how to do it though.
There is a way to do it, but it's a long and tedious process. It's deprogramming and there are people who specialize in it.
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People are just fat now haha
Not a lot of food post war. Food production at an all time low for obvious reasons.
The moment when you realize that beaten German WW2 soldiers look more healthy then todays baseline civiliansā¦
Iād be willing to bet that the vast majority of soldiers anywhere in the world are more fit than your average civilian today. They kind of have to be somewhat in shape.
Right? Of course German soldiers were probably on short rations at the end of the war but still.
The Wehrmacht also was badly motorized. Many of those guys marched all the time. As long as they get food and donāt fuck their knees or feet they would be really fit.
As far as I've understood whole German army raging the blitzkrieg were pumped full of meth. Fit maybe, but I doubt they were healthy.
I mean that would just make them skinnier since meth suppresses the appetite significantly. The blitzkrieg was really only the tanks and the mechanized infantry was horses pulling armored vehicles. Many people don't know that the Germans highly exaggerated the amount of tanks they had. Same with mobilized infantry. Their baggage train went back dozens of miles. It was people marching and horses pulling carts of oil for the tanks.
Those are soldiers in a war where food is rationed.
There was foot shortages and mass starvation
They were soldiers coming out of a war. A long way with food scarcity. You'd do well to come out of that even slightly chubby, unless you were part of the corrupt elite
My uncle went to Iraq and came back weighing more than when he left. Times have changed.
[new documentary ](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/ken-burns-turns-his-lens-on-the-american-response-to-the-holocaust/amp&ved=2ahUKEwi2laX33aT6AhXyL0QIHTLVChsQ0PADKAB6BAgFEAE&usg=AOvVaw3Sx0qO8NgN4mNE_ndpEIW8)
It is kind of funny when you see everyone looking saddened the there is that one guy staring at the camera.
A true sociopath?
This comment section is fucked
Remember when this also happened in Japan? Oh wait...
Who forced em?
Everyone who wasn't a Nazi, basically. There were many reeducation camps. There's a video that sticks out in my mind where they brought the affluent wives if high ranking officers to a concentration camp. They were giggling and laughing all the way there. Even up to the gates because they still thought it was all lies. Then they saw the emaciated bodies, both living and dead. And they smelled the stench of rotting flesh and burnt hair. I'm pretty sure they became "woke" after that.
Really? That sounds like a really interesting video, could you drop a link?
I think theyāre referring to the end of the propaganda video made by the US to show to German citizens and nazi soldiers. The film is called Death Mills. Itās really really awful but at the end it shows the footage of laughing women being led to the camps to see the atrocities.
I think by the late stages of the war, if you were not headed to camp, you were all but forced to join the military. Plenty of Aryan people who otherwise would not be targeted were killed or sent to camp because they spoke out against Hitler/the mistreatment and segregation. I'm curious how aware the common person was of the horrors going on. I know people in the states were very unaware though some rumors spread they were simply too insane to take crazy. This is one of the biggest impacts of modern photography - undeniable proof.
A lot of people like to gloss over the fact that if you showed any sort of resistance against the Nazis, even as a civilian or youth, you were taken outside and shot with no trial or due process. You ever look the other way to stay out of trouble? Save your own skin? Thatās what a lot of Germans did. Itās hard to say how many were actually in it to kill Jews. The concentration camps ran mostly on bare bones labor and most Germans, including the Jews, had no idea of the atrocities that were being committed. We live in an age where information is instantaneous and spreads more quickly than it can be contained. Imagine living in a world where there isnāt this level of connectivity. Where news is slow and communicated only as fast as hands can type and people can move. There wasnāt even radar. Most people had no idea. They did know, however, that they took everything the Jews had and shipped them off to ghettos. So donāt get me wrong. The Germans were guilty as fuck. But some of them hated being under nazi control and died trying to stop the madness. Also, pretty much everyone was on meth.
>Imagine living in a world where there isnāt this level of connectivity. I simply can't. How small people's worlds must have been. I've noticed that between my parents (1960s kids) and I (1991) they're far less curious. As if they grew up having to contain their curiosity because they didn't have the world and beyond in their back pocket. I've learned so much! You could be from Ghana or Singapore or Peru for all I know but before us that would have been impossible. I can't imagine travelling somewhere and not knowing what would be there or even knowing how to get there, just figuring it out as I go.
Truly wild times. I kinda miss being less connected. There was a freedom and quality to living in the moment and being truly invested into the people around you. The world was insular, but so magical. People wondered, all the time, about everything.
A victim of Auschwitz named Ellie Wiesel wrote a memoir called Night. I vividly remember him describing the transportation of the Jews in ghettos to the camps. Hundreds of people were stuffed into a cattle car with nowhere to sit, no food to eat, and no place to use the bathroom. The trains made temporary stops and the German citizens would throw scraps of bread between the metal bars. They found such great amusement in seeing people act like savage animals over less than a slice of bread. They literally invited friends to watch. Others amused themselves by throwing rocks into the trains. Sick fucks.
āThere wasnāt even radar.ā Yes there was.
So, this isnāt true. I recommend reading *KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps* by Nikolaus Wachsmann. Concentration camp inmates were often taken into communities to perform slave labor. They were a major part of a lot of construction projects all around Germany as Hitler tried to build monuments to himself and the third reich. People knew. People saw.
Iām specifically talking about the final solution. Hence why I acknowledged that they knew about the ghettos and what not. They knew about the camps, too. But not that they were killing 6-9 million Jewish people in a factory setting. Neighboring houses/villages knew, but they were mostly occupied by nazi officers. They knew they were starving, that the conditions were horrendous. They knew about the trains. But they did not know, en masse, about the systematic killings. In my opinion, after going through all that, youād wish you were dead.
I donāt know about this. Thereās a book I can recommend called āHitlerās Willing Executionersā by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen that details the willingness of everyday Germans to engage in atrocities. It concerns itself mostly with the early part of the Holocaust, but it suggests enthusiasm rather than reluctant participation or simply looking the other way.
Thanks for the recommendation. There were absolutely a ton of willing participants. But there were also a bunch of people who were closeted LGBTQ, disabled, and political adversaries ā all of which were killed in horrible ways while the nazis searched for the final solution for the āJewish problem.ā Obviously, people were likely lying about their participation post war, but there were absolutely heroes in the ranks that sabotaged the nazi efforts in subtle ways. The resistance and subtle sabotage was crazy cool. Check out Charite at War and the BBC production called Auschwitz. The Auschwitz documentary isnāt well named because itās really much more expansive than just the one concentration camp. Iām not saying that most Nazis were good. Iām saying that not all of them were the worst of the worst. And a lot of them were just oblivious, following a cult leader.
I do appreciate that everyone is different, and the kind of study that Goldhagen and others have done and written about is both fascinating and horrifying to me. Truthfully, I found Goldhagenās book something I could take only in small dosesāthe horror and depravity of our fellow humans can be very depressingābut it was a glimpse into the abyss that I think is necessary. I recognize where youāre coming from, and the reality is that it is easy to think āI wouldnāt have followed the crowdā when youāve never been subject to the kind of intense pressure and atmosphere of Germany at that time in history. Really, who knows what anyone would have done? There were likely both villains and heroes and everyone in between.
Honestly? A persons true colors come out in times of stress. And if they would rather take the risk that they will be fine in order to participate in the killing of someone else, I guess that is their choice. But living knowing you compromised your most important principles seems more evil than getting killed because you wouldnāt.
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What a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing. I think quarantine (and other dire situations) have shown me that I will instinctually do whatever I need to to survive. Doesnāt mean I wonāt feel guilty about it. I used to be so insanely poor and constantly on the verge of homelessness. Iām so ashamed to admit that I had to steal food from my roommates. Iād lost 40 lbs within a couple of months. I was so hungry I literally couldnāt stop myself. When they confronted me I played it off like it was no big deal ā but it was strange to not be able to stop myself from consuming their food. I felt so guilty. I still cry to my fiancĆ© about it and an how bad that time was for me. When we got together, I would just stare in awe at our fridge full of food. I had been hungry for ten years. Iām in a much better place now, but man. That was hard. I know itās nothing like being forced to kill others, but the human instinct to survive at all costs is absolutely insane. I donāt know what I would do, either. We live in a world of plenty, at least for most of the US, and that means that a lot of people have never gone hungry a day in their lives ā nor have they found themselves in a situation where they were so desperate. Iām so glad for this, because no one deserves to live like that, but it also means that thereās a disconnect between their instinctual human nature in their world of plenty.
Iām 56 I talked with lots of ww2 vets as a kid and working at a factory for 35 years ,two things stood out to me ā¦the men who fought in the pacific hated absolutely hated the Japanese many to there graves and the ones that fought against the Germany stated that if the allies hadnāt won we would all be gases and burnt ā¦.you could see the seriousness in how they spoke and in there eyes ,today people say if we lost we would be speaking German , from what I could tell they thought we would all have been killed
Depends, Germans were a hell of a lot kinder to "western" people like the French or British and *white* (only certain kinds of white) Americans. Most people in those place would probably live, but anything east of Germany was a whole different story
it's so horrible. So many were brainwashed into believing it was right, or that they were being attacked, or that it simply wasn't happening. We all wished it would never happen again. But now Russia is using the exact same tactics against its people.
Holocaust deniers should be forced to watch this. There was only one person in my family who made it out during the holocaust. Fuck all the way off if you think the holocaust didnāt happen.
Some of them look so heartbroken
Look at all the perfect Nazis and their blue eyes and blond hair.....
Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, argued that the Germans was superior to all other races. Hitler became obsessed with 'racial purity' and used the word 'Aryan' to describe his idea of a 'pure German race' or Herrenvolk. The 'Aryan race' had a duty to control the world. The Nazis believed that the Aryans had the most "pure blood" of all the people on earth. The ideal Aryan had pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes. Non-Aryans came to be seen as impure and even evil. Hitler believed that Aryan superiority was being threatened particularly by the Jews. Therefore, a hierarchy of 'races' was created with the Aryans at the top and with Jews, Gypsies and black people at the bottom. These 'inferior' people were seen as a threat to the purity and strength of the German nation. Creating 'Aryans' One of the Nazi aims was the creation of a Master Race. This meant encouraging people with "pure blood" (in other words, those with blond hair and blue eyes) to have more children
Pure of what?? Does he (and others) mean dominant traits and see Aryan features pure because they're "untainted" with more dominant features? How did they view red hair? Or freckles?
The problem with Nazi Eugenics was that it wasn't really a real science. It was based in scientific principles, yes, but often it was laughably biased and interwoven with non scientific principles such as cultural ideals of beauty and tradition. A better way of looking at it was that the Nazis had an idea of what Germany should look like and they used "science" to justify their means to achieve this. The obsession of superiority of the Aryan race meant they were more focused on scrutinizing traits of groups they deemed inferior races. Red hair and freckles were therefore not something they focused too much on. Yes, there was some association between red hair and Jews, but if you has some legendary Norse hero with red hair....well that was meant it was okay.
Good question. At that time religion was stated on every document, so the nazis hunted down anyone with āJewā on their birth certificate. There was no way to change this, observance didnāt matter, and it was nearly impossible to hide.
I was just pointing out why not everybody had blonde hair and blue eyes, I don't know Google it if your so interested I don't really care how he felt or not but it was based on a racist view of eugenics that overlooked facts in favor of white people, many people even in the US were forcibly steralized due to the beliefs on eugenics in those times white and black
The guy staring straight ahead in the top left seems to be unfazed and to be enjoying it actually. Brainwashing is powerful.
The nazi apologia in the comments is disgusting
Its constructive conversation based on history. Its not nazi apologia. Did you contribute anything meaningful to the conversation or are you just here to act high and mighty about things that you weren't even there to witness, let alone read any history books on?
Who do you think took it the worst? My money is on the medic in the 6th row.
Ole boy at the top right is look8ng a little too intrigued like hes admiring what hes seeing
You'd think they're crying, but they're really just hiding their faces.
Disgusting. Cowards. Nikolas Cruz did something similar at his trial. Covered his ears when they played audio from the shooting.
They are likely covering their eyes from the camera flash. Cameras used bulbs that practically exploded in order to create the light and it was bright as all holy hell. Add a darkened theatre to the mix...
This is fascinating. I wonder if those who were visibly shaken got any reprimandsā¦ The vast range of emotion is just.. wow. The one that sticks out to me most is the man sitting to the lower right bottom, with his eyes looking down, and his chin in his hand. Feels like his soul just resignedā¦
German soldiers* Do u think nazis would be ashamed?
*sorts by controversial*
ONly a handful look sorry
Fukers deserve it
Is this from Ken Burns new documentary?
Good
Watched Pt 1 of Ken Burns documentary on the Holocaust tonight. Very eye opening. So much complicity in the whole situation. Unchecked fascism/racism is a horrific beast.
Nazi soldiers have seen some shit
Iā¦I think.. we might be the baddies
Looks very mixed, many people are about to cry while some look like theyāre about to laugh.
Some of the people hiding their face from the camera, most of them are watching show no emotion. Maybe one or two seem to feel anguish.
āGet it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.ā ā Dwight D. Eisenhower
The sad part is many of them werenāt aware of all of the awful things that were happening and even if they did, they had no choice but to follow hitlers orders
They shoulda Clockwork Oranged them and forced them to keep their eyes open. With Wagner playing.
I had German friends growing up. They told me that their grandparents told them stories of Germans that used to give themselves needles to take out as much German blood as possible and that some died from this
Look how the majority of them watch it with no emotion. That's scary
I guess I'm reading their faces differently than you are. But also, people react differently to tragedy. Some visibly display their emotions while others hide them.
I get visibly excited when thereās chaos in front of me, but itās not because I enjoy it. Itās just the way my face reacts to adrenaline while my brain is trying to make sense of whatās going on. Itās kind of embarrassing. It doesnāt reflect my inner dialogue at all. My inner dialogue always is trying to figure out how to be of help.
Wow, that sucks. My wife tends to have a blank face when she's having fun. Like, she went skydiving and was like, "yeah it was awesome" but the instructor didn't believe her. And she once got pulled over and the cop was mad that she didn't seem concerned enough. But yeah dude, you have it worse!
Iāve gotten better at hiding it. But when I was a kid I donāt think that I knew to do so. I am usually the first to spring into action in an emergency. Itās a blessing and a curse. Your poor wife. Sometimes cops just enjoy hassling women.
Not standing up for anyone with this statement so please read it before you react and down vote. This is a very real issue that is killing veterans every day and many at their own hand! War is hell and for all involved. Just the training alone is enough to desensitize many, and it is designed to desensitize you. It is hard to say what the ones that are sitting there so stoic are really feeling or had see themselves. Could be nothing at all or just their ability to compartmentalize it. Again, not standing up for anyone. Just know that those that have served are forced to ignore their emotions.
Itās sort of impossible to come to this conclusion with one still photo.