The Holocaust and German Civilians.

[merlin58]

Just how aware were the ordinary German civilians of the Holocaust?

I think many more knew (at least to some degree) than are/were prepaired to admit to knowing.

I also feel that the majority who knew (even if secretly) did in fact support the 'final solution' though they would not admit to doing so in public.

Am I way off the mark?

[-=BigD=-]

Its a difficult one. In school where were taught that the citizens knew of the concentration camps just not what went on in them or about the extermination camps.

Thinking about it they must have been aware of the concentration camps as not only millions of Jews but millions of gypsies, Jehovah�s Witness, political prisoners, homosexuals, Polish and other "un-desirables" where taken to the camps, not the sort of numbers to go un-noticed.

Also the Nazi party had been enforcing euthanasia on intellectually and physically disabled (wiki says 75,000 to 250, 000 of all ages were killed between 1939-1940).
I shouldn�t think the possibility that this kind of systematic murder could extent to others on the Nazi�s undesirable list could have been too far in the mind of German citizens?

Looking at the Wikipedia page on the Holocaust this is interesting:
�Debate also continues on how much average Germans knew about the Holocaust. Recent historical work suggests that the majority of Germans knew that Jews were being indiscriminately killed and persecuted, even if they did not know of the specifics of the death camps. Robert Gellately, a historian at Oxford University, conducted a widely-respected survey of the German media before and during the war, concluding that there was "substantial consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans" in aspects of the Holocaust, and documenting that the sight of columns of slave laborers were common, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known�

But there are plenty of cases of Germans helping Jews (and surely other Nazi targets). Living in a Nazi dictatorship must have been difficult to be openly repulsed by the camps, turning a blind eye will have been the easier than questioning from Gestapo.
Maybe the shame of not being able to do anything to help led to silence post war?

[paddywak]

Keep your eye open for a series called "The Nazis. a Warning From History" writen by Laurence Rees & narrated by Prof Ian Kershaw it is repeated every so often on sky and it has lots of interviews with people who were involved both as victims and perpertrators. Its amazing how many of the people interviewed believed they were right in doing what they did and showed absolutley no remorse. Even people who had no direct involement gave the impression that what was happening had gradually become common knowledge but by not talking about it they could pretend it wasnt happening

[Count_Emmup]

What follows is slightly 'off-topic' I know, but it is vital that it is widely known. It all comes from a very authoritative Ch 4 documentary I saw a few years ago, which stunned me.

Very soon after the Nazi occupation of France, the Germans hadn't even begun to arrange the deportation of Jews when they were approached by the Gendarmes. They were told arrangements would begin as soon as full administration was consolidated. The 2nd and 13th detachments of Gendarmerie immediately volunteered to do it all for them.

They commandeered a large unfinished housing development in a district called Drancy, Just shells - no mains services nor windows - nothing, fortified it and turned it into a ghetto.

They compiled the list of Jews, arrested and detained them , conveyed them to a rail freight depot, arranged rail transport in cattle trucks across France and only on arrival at the German border did the SS take over. Every aspect of the French part of it was wholly performed by French personnel, with no SS input at all.

Les belles Fran�ais, eh!

[Count_Emmup]

Paddywack is 'spot-on' with his posting - that series should be compulsory viewing in all secondary schools.

I wrote down a very, very memorable (and eerily prophetic) quotation from it. After the appointment of Hitler as Vice-Chancellor in 1932 (afer an inconclusive election) General Ludendorf (a World War I hero) wrote to Chancellor Hindenburg. These were his words:-

I promise you solemnly that this accursed man will take our Reich into the abyss.

God, if only someone had acted upon those words, eh?

[paddywak]

As a follow up to count-emmups' post about the French I think it was King Haakon of Norway who when told of the German order that the Jews must wear a yellow star started wearing one himself saying that in Norway there were no Jews only Norwegians.

[JamesEverton]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafle_du_Vel%27d% 27hiv