Radical Evil: How We Became Mass Murderers (Nazi Documentary) | Real Stories

foreign [Music] actually I have to admit that at the time we did not give it much thought if it weren't for those silly thoughts about our activities in this country I would have a wonderful time on this Mission I've already told you about the shooting of course I did not want to fail at this job either [Music] thank you [Music] history and Law And Justice is being made [Music] [Music] crimes against humanity the killing of defenseless civilians victory persecutions on political racial and religious grounds each truly extermination Miss trudigans and when I got to Nuremberg as a prosecutor by chance but we found the eins group and the aragonists reports from the Eastern front clear case of mass murder unparalleled in human history uh three thousand men the men you're talking about went out and every day every day they murdered large numbers of people including helpless innocent children to Fathom evil a series tests were conducted with the defendants during the Nuremberg trials the Rorschach test a subject has shown cards with ink black patterns and asked to interpret the images the psychiatrist analyzes the subject based on its interpretations the results from Nuremberg are too disturbing to be published the Nazi criminals who were tested are psychologically sound and completely normal men the notion that mass killers are wild beasts which exists among many of the public Kill Them All these are wild animals how could they do such a thing this absolutely false the mass killers are people just like you and me who are doing what they think is necessary for the general welfare to this day I can remember major trap passing back and forth with his hands on his back he somehow seemed depressed actually said hell operations Like These are not my kind of thing but orders are orders he announced we had to carry out an execution in the village ahead and made it very clear that it was juice We Were Meant To Kill [Music] during his speech he reminded us to think of our wives and children at home who were suffering from the Air Raids in particular we should think about all the women and children who had lost their lives during the bombing rates thinking about these fix would make it easier to carry out our orders during the operation ahead [Music] said the operation was not at all to his liking but he had received the order from way up I asked myself how it was possible that civilians were shot today I can't remember detail what was said about that matter no one dared to say anything inwardly I did not agree we stood there as white as snow [Music] at the end of his speech the major asked the older soldiers in the Battalion whether there were any among them who didn't feel after carrying out the mission at first no one had the courage to speak up finally I was the only one who stepped forward thus indicating that I was one of those not being fit for the job after that other comrades came forward as well there were about 10 to 12 of us we were instructed in so far as we could refuse the order to participate in Special Operations without any adverse consequences everyone must have heard that you were allowed to step forward because I heard it too I must admit that I didn't have the guts to refuse the order it is peer pressure through the nth degree yeah you you're separated from home you're separated from everyone else there is nobody but you in your unit you don't they'll go home at the end of the day and go back to your family you don't read the morning newspaper and and take the commute to work this is your life these people are everything and and if you fail them they will die and if they fail you in combat they all die and so here we are bound to degrees that beyond what most people can comprehend the Brotherhood of War we feel we happy few we Panda Brothers there's an unpleasant task that all of them have to do um I can refuse but if I refuse then all my friends and colleagues they have to do more of it uh so I think we can look back and wish that every every man there had said no I'm not going to do it and all had refused and then who knows what what would have happened uh but uh no one wants to step forward and say well I'm too good for this the rest of you better do it one could say I am unable to do this with the implication it's one's own shortcoming and one might be quickly transferred because they didn't want to interfere with the killing machinery one could never say I'm against this it's wrong I condemn you that would be a a a death nail I was worried that it might be bad for me in the future if I appear to be too soft I didn't want others to get the impression I was not as tough as a man is supposed to be I had to worry later with and the others would think I was a wimp I assumed that if I asked him to be Exempted from executions I would have been on his Blacklist and my promotion would have been at risk or totally out of the question a commander who would have presented himself as being too soft for this sort of thing certainly would have disqualified himself for any duties of leadership well I must admit that nobody wanted to be seen as a coward I thought I would be able to cope with the matter and with or without me the Jews would not be able to escape her fate first policeman The Motto was what benefits the state is just what harms the state is unjust what I'm trying to say is that it never crossed my mind that the orders might be wrong I followed those orders because they came from the leaders of our country not because I was scared I know it is the duty of the police to protect innocent people but at the time I was convinced that Jewish people were Not Innocent but guilty today I can no longer say what I thought at the time or if I thought anything at all I can't say if I was influenced by the propaganda to refuse to carry out the order I had received I must say that we didn't think about it at all at the time only years later did you really become aware of what happened back then that means the idea never occurred to me that you should refuse or evade the orders to um to to participate in the extermination of the Jews [Music] I'd never learned anything else but to unconditionally obey orders I was given [Music] God I don't stand it one generation has to Bear the bird so that our children will have a better life the ash Conformity experiment a subject is led into a room where a group of people are already waiting the subject is told that the others are volunteers as well in reality they are actors the group is shown a line on a card with three comparison lines alongside it the task is to estimate which lines are of the same length as arranged the actors unanimously give wrong answers to some of the exercises on the average 37 percent of the subjects agree with the obviously incorrect answer in Psychology we tend to depict Conformity as a bad thing in situations like this where many people are are killed and should have thought for themselves to to act differently but in the bigger picture Conformity is mostly a benefit is mostly a good thing humans we evolved to survive and reproduce by banding together in groups and working together and sharing projects and sharing responsibilities so conforming to the group is a way to be accepted in the group it is vitally important to humans especially back in the evolutionary past to be accepted in the group to be part of it if you're alone you have very little chance of surviving Conformity is a tricky word because it does mean in some degree the necessary structures that one must be part of and adhere to in any society or culture and it also has the implication of of obedience to that which exists [Music] certainly for Eastern Poland and the western parts of the Soviet Union this is the demographic Center of European jewry and many of these towns in the territories that the Germans occupy after June 1941. the towns will be over half Jewish one day I asked somebody in with where we're living to choose and we didn't realize effectively in in Western Ukraine called leadish land Jews were not in a small corner there isn't a street of Jews they were among the people they were factories they were Opera they were spectacles there were restaurants they were people in the people and so for us it's very difficult to imagine because we classified Jews as a minority [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] I think that's an interesting thing this one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription of Fire [Music] ideological training was also carried out I remember that the relationship of jewelry to bolshevism was taught as a subject by the way the movie you Zeus was shown to the Battalion in radham we drove off to take a look at the city of kisnev in daylight now we were able to see the scale of Destruction ruins upon ruins Rubble upon Rubble misery and squalor a once flourishing City had been turned into one gigantic ruin in Kia for example there is one explosion after another caused by mines the city has been burning for eight days the Jews did it all the Jews in the Bolsheviks mainly the Jews had destroyed everything recently one of our comrades was found murdered at night in the forest he was stepped on the back it must have been the Jew the snipers are really dangerous yesterday a commander of an SS regimental shot they say the murderer was a two you can imagine how something like that cries out for Revenge but then again it is also carried out [Music] is it you who's behind all this he wants to destroy us and afterwards Reign Over the ruins of the world it must not happen no matter what it doesn't seem like a fighter instead he stirs a patriot in the background pulls all the strings and that's why he's difficult to fight in the process he exploits all means at all people it doesn't matter if they are Catholics Ultra wakes protests we know that all those crooks are Freemasons and therefore devoted to or to put it in a better way slaves of international jury was shown that I couldn't join this operation against these Scoundrels it would have been a joy to see a machine gun we cannot and must not lose this war because then we Germans would be hopelessly lost the Jews will assail us and eradicate everything that is German there would be a horrific and gruesome Massacre that guilt is overwhelming the suffering they cause is staggering their murders are diabolical it can only be a tone for by their destruction I used to reject this attitude as being immoral but after this presentation of the Soviet Paradise I cannot see any other solution to deal with the situation appropriately one completely eliminates personal feelings of any kind by carrying out the work ruthlessly and without Mercy this struggle must be fought to the utmost and must be fought to The Bitter End then the world will find Eternal peace there's only one thing for the Jews extermination many genocides have long historic conflict behind them the tootsies and the hutus in Burundi had had earlier conflicts and certainly in Rwanda and one can see that there was a inherent conflict between Armenians wanting more and more autonomy and the Turks losing other parts of their empire feeling that they had to draw their line somewhere that is these are not fantasized conflicts they don't justify genocide but they are not fantas in fantasized conflicts the conflict of the Third Reich against the Jew is a totally imaginary conflict this is just made up as a fantasy of Hitler's imagination and of others and as that utter disparity between the Jews for the most part who certainly in Germany were the most loyal of Germans imaginable and the harmlessness of the Jewish population is elsewhere to what was attributed to them and what was done to them seems to me Starker and more disparate than almost any genocide I can think of and I call it a biomedical Vision biomedical Vision on the part of the Nazis and that biomedical Vision said and Hitler wrote this in Mein Kampf and it was picked up in other ways and the Nordic race had been strong and dominant and is the only culture creating race all other races except the quotes Jewish race our culture sustaining races possibly but can't create culture and quotes the Jewish race so-called was a culture destroying race which had infected the Nordic race rendered it weak and therefore had to be destroyed so the whole project was a healing project and in a way even The Invasion by armies and the K the case for living space I think is all secondary to this biological Vision or fantasy and there becomes there takes part A reversal of healing and killing because you are killing to heal you kill the Jews or other inferior races in order to heal the Nordic race [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] triumphant in Poland triumphant in France uh blessed with Victory flushed With Victory it's Madness to think that everything I know and everybody I know is wrong my nation the people who raised Hitler to power that the Nazi party my Armed Forces my leadership all of them are wrong there's a kind of enormous triumphalism and that triumphalism can carry you uh into a realm of transcendence one is omnipotent you know uh and the killing can feed that and also be fed by it there's always an attraction also to killing there's an attraction to war because it removes one from what might be called the banalities of everyday life [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] our Battalion physician had to explain how to fire to induce the immediate deaths of the victim I remember vividly trace the outline of a human body at least from the shoulders up for the demonstration and and then precisely describe the point where the fixed baronet should be placed as a guide [Music] my heart was in my mouth and I was trembling so badly I sounded when the other comrades shot at the Jews lying on the ground I too depending about two meters behind my Victim I aimed at the neck and fired I personally took part in about 10 shootings I had to kill men and women then I just couldn't fire at people anymore my squad leader noticed because at the end I kept missing for that reason he replaced me other comrades were also replaced sooner or later because they just couldn't go on when I had to fire this defensive there were also children among those people that was among the marksmen too but I was only able to fire about five times I began to feel sick it was like in a dream during the shooting I felt so sick I had to throw up afterwards they laughed at me because I wasn't able to shoot anymore what are we doing what are we doing there was no way to avoid some of my comrades noticing that I didn't go along the execution and five shots at the victims as a result they made comments about me like bastard gutless and so on killing the man was so abhorrent to me that it did not hit the fourth man it was simply no longer possible for me to aim accurately I was suddenly filled with nausea and ran away from the execution side I then ran into the forest I had to throw up and set against the tree I think I spent about two to three hours alone in the forest what we had to experience was much too much for a human being when the layers grew higher we had to walk on the Corpses matched with blood it was Cruiser to feel the dead bodies and their goods we are expected to deal with this awful mess We Are Soldiers and want to fight in battle but not carry out this it was horrible after that execution I had time after three to four hours during that period alcohol was served around I believe each Marksman received roughly quarter liter of alcohol alcohol was just enough to overcome a certain feeling of Upon Our return I still remember that none of my comrades enjoyed our meal but instead we consume plenty of alcohol which we received in special rations it seemed like the men were totally exhausted that evening I went through the barracks again and talked to individual members of the company some people were no longer approachable especially those who had been deployed as marksmen in the fourth platoon I thought about it and came to the conclusion that the whole thing was a real disgrace I felt bitter about the fact that we have become cakes and murderers especially since we had been trained to be decent human beings in the barracks we had to do the Dirty Work deep in my heart I had been an officer namely an officer who upheld the ideas of the old Prussian tradition my world fell apart and from that point on they're trapped because the more horrific acts they commit the more they are invested in believing that their leaders are right and their nation is right you have to believe what I did was right what I did was proper and you wait for punishment I mean over your shoulder your sin there must be punishment coming I've committed this evil act there must be punishment from somewhere the punishment Never Comes and everybody says what you did was wrong [Music] when I learned of incidents such as the massacre of millions of men women and children perpetrated by the Nazis in World War II I don't think of these as impersonal historical happenings rather I see them as real events mediated by human beings just like you and me how is it possible I ask myself that ordinary people were courteous and decent in everyday life you can act callously inhumanely without any limitations of conscience the Milgram experiment a subject is asked to give electric shocks to punish another participant in reality an actor for false answers the intensity of the electric shock is meant to be increased after each mistake an experimenter gives orders at a certain point the supposed victim screams in pain and begs to stop the experiment if the subject has any doubts about what he is doing the experimenter initially says please continue then the experiment requires that you continue then it is absolutely essential that you continue then you have no choice you must go on all subjects go beyond the point where they hear loud screams when the victim starts begging when the victim suddenly no longer responds 67 of the participants give the supposed learner electric shocks of maximum strength which they know could be deadly it's an incremental process by which perpetrators do more and more step by step there's a shocking beginning that's like an introduction to the whole process an initiation and then incrementally one takes one step after another so that one couldn't have taken a full plunge into the extremity once they had crossed the threshold then the emotional reaction to what they're doing becomes increasingly less traumatic increasingly more routine and that while they could describe their feelings and their reaction to the first massacre as one goes further into the killing they remember fewer and fewer details they can't keep the different massacres apart human beings really are designed psychologically to adapt to things so extreme experiences uh we we grow accustomed to them and they be they become more routine it is surprising how how far it went with you'd think that killing someone would always continue to be troubling and upsetting that in a sense to me is one of the scariest things I found in my research was how quickly people became used to what they were doing how quickly it became normal foreign [Music] they asked who wants to shoot we need some guys usually a few members of the second company volunteered by stepping forward or raising their hand and saying someone has to do it later on after the man had gotten used to the bloodbath there were always enough volunteers not being able to see dead people is a weakness that is best to overcome by going there more often it then becomes a habit the last day of September gave us sunny weather again we marched in a long line into a beautiful wallet framed on both sides by colorful Autumn forests the light brown Meadows lay along the broad stream flowing over large stones and Lotus I would say the fact that I am a good person I am a normal person these make it possible for me to do these bad things uh it is not that you split your personality I'm just another person who's leading a normal life doing a dirty job and these normal things Empower me and they are symbols that my society says what I'm doing is right they are indicators of tokens manifestations of the support of my civilization for what I do uh this is not this is not a dichotomy in which you split your life in two parts it is the yin and the Yang it is it is the one supporting the other and making the other possible usually marched out as a platoon combed The Village by going from door to door brought out the entire population and drove them to the main square with the support of a local it was determined who was a Jew then the non-jewish inhabitants were sent back we look for the right location for execution in burial after a few minutes we have found something The Condemned line up with space to dig their own graphs two of them are crying the others definitely show incredible courage what must be going on in their minds at this very moment I believe each of them has a little hope that they will not be shot we drove to the execution side around four o'clock in the morning The Killing took about three hours of course we also had to fill the ditch that was right along I think we were finished with everything at around eight o'clock most of the time is taken up by digging the ditches whereas the shooting itself happens quickly 100 men 40 minutes strange I don't feel anything at all no mercy nothing that's the way it is and that's that the moon came up single stars were shining a bright fog hung in The Meadows the trees stood dark and gloomy sleeping very deeply I was suddenly woken up at six o'clock in the morning line up for an execution okay then let's be executioner and Gravedigger again strange he loved fighting but then you have to shoot down defenseless people company party to celebrate the battalion's second anniversary nice afternoon but then unfortunately unpleasant building on the whole I was shooting for roughly one or two hours when asked how many Jews I killed I I cannot be exact perhaps 50 or 100. can't remember men women children all wiped out the Jews will be totally exterminated dear Heidi don't start worrying about it it has to be done that day the executions must have lasted until roughly five or six in the evening there were snaps later we were young soldiers at the time we didn't think about why the Jews were being shot in fact we complained for the simple reason alone that we had to clean our weapons afterwards what is hard to grasp and hard to picture is that the killing went on day after day Village by village town by town in which units went from one place to another and this was their day-to-day job but what was difficult to understand is how these people could we were young we have pictures of killers who are very young and they succeeded to stand during sometime two three years shooting everyday peoples so that's really surprising this morning I learned we can write there's a good chance mail will actually be delivered while listening to some amazingly sensual music I'm now writing the first letter to my Twitter as I write this letter it's how to get our things together firing squad with steel helmet and Rifle 30 rounds of ammunition we just came back 500 years stood in line for execution beforehand we went to see the murder German Airmen about five weeks ago I put the first of 600 up against the wall since then we've wiped out another 200 or so in a mopping up operation then in another mission about a thousand more and in between in in the last eight days I've had 2 000 Jews and 200 gypsies shot in accordance with the 1 to 100 ratio for brutishly murdered German soldiers another 2200 almost exclusively Jews will be executed during the next eight days well that's everything but a nice job waited all morning for our dentist only got treated in the afternoon had to have the filling replaced the dentist works with the most primitive equipment but it helps we sought to clear the prison by the end of each month enabling us to report greater numbers to the command of operations I don't care much for killing defenseless people even if they are only Jews I prefer honest open combat well then good night my dearest bunny most of the murders are committed in the summer because Mass Graves cannot be dug in Frozen Earth for example biblica is h m foreign OBU am result [Music] [Laughter] thank you foreign foreign [Music] with me foreign [Music] thank you foreign over the loudspeaker the announcement was made in German and Russian that at the specific time that they Jews were to be shot on the market square something like that since I had the day off I went to the market square the appropriate time and I got there I saw 50 60 Jews guarded by the SS then it was announced over the loudspeakers that people should follow to the executions after a while we saw numerous soldiers and civilians heading for rail embankment ahead of us Beyond we were told executions were taking place continuously once we climbed up the embankment we were confronted with a site of gruesome atrocity which shocked and horrified and unprepared onlooker there were countless soldiers of units stationed in the area lounging Around The Spectators some in swimming trunks as well as numerous civilians with women and children access to the execution side was restricted by a wall the entrance was a high iron board gate which was locked as a result I couldn't get inside anymore Island stood in front of the gate with other soldiers and civilians looking through the bars to the execution side it was about 80 meters away I could see about nine girls for women kneeling in front of a deep ditch some of the marksmen were splitted with blood at the time and was not curiosity that drove me to watch it was actually a disbelief that something like that could happen in one interview somebody she was in a class in a small village of Belarus I think and the director of the school gathered all the children and said tomorrow there is no class because we kill our enemies and so he said you can go to Sea and you will say what you saw the day after in the school and she said we gathered all the children together and we went near the Musgrave so we knew the place and she said it was too early the Germans were not here and the Jews were not here so she said we were waiting sitting under a tree until it began and so all the school was watching and we came back at night and the day after it was the course of the day the Genovese syndrome or bystander effect in 1964 29 year old Kitty Genovese is assaulted and raped in the courtyard of an apartment house the perpetrator leaves the scene after 20 minutes he returns abuses his victim again and then kills her evidently 38 inhibitants of the surrounding houses observe the entire incident nobody calls the police nobody helps the more bystanders observing an incident the lower the probability that someone will intervene in the same way bystanders who stand there and watch amass mass murder without saying anything uh could be giving a lot giving off the impression that the even unconsciously that the perpetrators will see and say to themselves unconsciously that I guess there's nothing wrong when they did have bystanders there certainly that was an effort to normalize it and routinize it as something that is done must be done and has its good reasons and the more it's surrounded by a an atmosphere of normality uh the more uh it would prevent you from questioning it and saying wait wait this is wrong I should not be taking part in this uh someone should be objecting I should be objecting I should screen that this is wrong The Killers made it public to give a justification like you make a public death condemnation in America or another country it's public because it was legal so the factory effectively what will become a reinforce the legality of the crime back in bibrika yasep witnessed one of the many smaller executions give it mirror picture is foreign equipment foreign foreign Mr there's a German arrived very early in morning normally because before the righteous sun and already everything is prepared over already the ghetto is surrounded already the courts are waiting to take the suits or the Jews already the police are here and so and when we leave at winning all the Jews are dead so what was very organized is to succeed to introduce a Tempo in a village was no Temple but in one days the world Community was shot in a few cases they could not do it in big cities of course so they send people back to the ghetto in some cities and to come back to the day after but normally in one day we shoot a village I drove out each time to see for myself if everything was done properly for example it happened that the SD fired into the lines with machine guns thus not killing people immediately I made sure that the execution were conducted according to specifications with a shot in the neck I personally checked the procedure of the operation about one hour after it began to make certain that no atrocities took place I am certain I aim properly and hit accordingly as instructed at first the German machine gun was used in later the Russian machine gun the German guns had failed of course single shots were possible with the German machine gun but usually they got hot because they were fired so often that they gave sustained fire even when set to single shots that's why we felt back on Russian guns hiring Squad was at the trench perhaps about 10 men who took turns shooting so half the group fired while the other half stepped back and got the 08 pistols they were using ready for the next round not far away from the trench there were perhaps five policemen who were busy reloading empty magazines the cope with tools were lined up at the edge of the trench there must have been about 10 to 12. they still twist their faces toward the Marksman there was one marks meant for each shoe then the platoon leader from the wafemesis gave the order to file the victims fell backwards into the trench when it was noticed that many of the victims didn't die straight away the execution method was changed a meeting was held at the meeting it was discussed that this method of execution was unbearable for victim and marksmen the reason was when shot in the heart about 25 percent were not hit properly in my opinion when shot in the head not only did the victims have to face the marksmen but also roughly five percent were not fairly wounded I cannot remember during the conversation the legitimacy of killing Jews in general was discussed Inside the Mind of most healthy members of most species is a powerful resistance against killing your own kind animals with antlers and horns they fight each other head to head in the most harmless fashion uh against any other species that go to the side they cut they go and they go for the kill studies show that only 15 to 20 of all soldiers can overcome their reluctance to kill enemy soldiers military leaders have always tried to reduce this inhibition most of us have been read with rage at one time another most of us at one time in our life have been completely out of control with anger but at the moment of truth we didn't kill we didn't go for the throat we didn't go for the eyes we didn't grab that that knife off the table and stab why because when we become frightened when we become angry the forebrain shuts down the midbrain takes over and we slam head on into that resistance and in World War II we discovered the existence of that resistance and we learned that the way to overcome it was through training the behavior of the individual Soldier is determined by his character military training most recent combat experience and propaganda and you become trapped in this process in which you must believe the propaganda otherwise these these horror blacks that you're committing either these people are truly inhuman and deserving of their fate or I am an evil person doing evil things Absolution and legitimization by the group the soldier identifies with uh the military is very powerful taking away any individuality stripping away the sense of the individual and creating the sense of the group uniforms every Warrior Society had distinctive haircuts uh that the Spartans had the dreadlocks the Romans were into high and tight the Mongols had the forelock that Samurai had the top knot you know during the Civil War in America we were the Taliban it was all about the beard you know now we're back to high and tight it doesn't matter what your hair looks like what matters is submission to Authority and so in uniform in Hair We Stand Out we're different we're distinctive and that creates this this pseudospeciation in which we become a subspecies all of our own and we bond with our pack a legitimate promoter clear-cut authoritarian structures you know the firing squad is the ultimate example of diffusion of responsibility you know the orders come from on high and it's their fault and the commander says I have to do it in his fault and the sergeant is making me do it and it's his fault and all you have to do is just press the trigger that's that's the only thing you have to do everything else has been done for you all the thinking has been done all that rationalization has been done and of course that doesn't exist by itself it comes from a lifetime of obedience physical and emotional distance for example through dehumanization squads kill at close range there is no great physical distance there's very close range so what you got to do is create psychological distance one of the things we do is is undress them so they're not wearing clothing they're they're like animals and we turn them around so you don't have to look in their face you don't have to look in their eyes uh it's so much easier to kill people when you don't have to see their faces that's the pursuit mode you know throughout history we believe that most of the killing in the battlefield didn't happen in the battle the historical battles were just great shoving matches but when one side turned and fled thin The Killing takes place so they're all turned around you don't have to look in their face you don't have to look in their eyes we've done everything humanly possible to enable a close range kill it is so cunning and ingenious and frightening in in the whole mechanism that was used to put in place I must say that Canada did give me the impression he found the operation truly enjoyable through that single members of the company were seized by some kind of bloodlust again he knocked down two or three prisoners people who normally have little to say and discover their talent of playing the ruthless Master how is all this going to end there's a Payday for everything that evening an entertainment unit of Berlin policeman visited us as so-called front support the unit included musicians and Vaudeville artists its members had gotten wind of the forthcoming shooting of the Jews so they offered their services and even explicitly wished to participate in the execution of the Jews often soldiers of the wehrmart were passing by stopped and participated in the shooting for a bit regarding this execution I can still remember that the SD people were drunk afterwards so they must have received a special ration of schnapps we policemen won't give it anything and I know we were quite upset I know that some people counted accurately how many people they shot they boasted among themselves with the numbers the totals of some comrades went into the hundreds one of these policemen once showed me a cigarette case that was full of wedding rings where he got them from he wouldn't say I can well imagine when the Jews had currency on them the money was kept in the platoon cash box and used to buy us beer there was an immense hatred towards Jews it was Revenge we were after money and gold no need to hush it up the operation against Jews were profitable afterwards we spent several days flattening banknotes we had confiscated from executed Jews I don't know what happened to the money it was packed into sex and dispatched at launched some comrades joked about what they had experienced during the operation the stories told me that they had just completed a mass shooting I must admit that it gave us a certain amount of pleasure when we got hold of the Jew that we could finish we did not recognize that you as a human being we were also aware the Jews had to be annihilated anyway [Music] we shall rid ourselves of the last traces of any sentimental feelings for Humanity when I opened the door to the room I saw that nssman was lying on the bed and that he had a young beautiful girl with him since this is s-man couldn't tell me what helps don't feel I think I was I went into a second room there too I encountered a young girl with an SS man since I didn't get a proper answer from him either I entered a third room in this third room there was an assessment lying on the bed without a uniform jacket but with his trousers on next to him on the edge of the bed said a young very beautiful girl and I saw her stroking his chin I also heard the girl say right France you wouldn't shoot me would you I asked the assessment if this girl who I assumed was a Jewish really had to be killed the assessment told me all the juice would be killed there wouldn't be any exceptions then I asked him about the girls I had seen in those rooms and what would happen to them that's asman said essentially that it was tough sometimes they had the chance to hand these girls over to another firing squad but usually there was not enough time for that and they had to do it themselves the Stanford experiment by a toss of the coin 24 participants are divided into two groups guards and prisoners the guards are equipped with uniforms and trenchians the prisoners wear frocks with numbers and are locked into cells the guards soon begin to show sadistic Behavior they develop inhumane punishment for the prisoners several times the experimenters have to intervene to prevent mistreatment four prisoners suffer emotional breakdowns the experiment has to be interrupted prematurely so I think this cluster of experiments on the power of Conformity the powerful adaptation the power of deference to Authority together give us a sense of the group dynamic that is one key factor in explaining why people in these units became killers I think it's important that we do the scientific work and then take a moment to step back and and reassert the the moral judgment and say no these things are wrong no matter if we can understand them no matter if they were inevitable no matter if we say that most of us would have done the same thing under those circumstances the actions are still wrong and we must still object when I began my studies some of my friends said don't do it you'll explain psychologically what they did and therefore divest them of the evil of the moral responsibility that they should have I went into the study and I believe that we have to try to grasp what the motivations were for people who kill in order to take steps to prevent that in our own imperfect ways at the same time we have to keep in mind that people are responsible for what they did and in that sense true psychological work is a moral Enterprise you don't leave morality at the door when you probe psychological psychologically for reasons of their behavior I think we have to distinguish between an historical explanation of why people behave the way they did and a moral framework in which people are responsible for their individual actions the fact that not everybody killed and we know that historically from the Battalion and in these experiments there's always a group of people that don't put the electric shock or don't go all the way we know it is possible for people to say no but the first track my hand shook is I fired but you get used to that for the 10th truck I aimed calmly and should confidently at all the women children and babies thinking of the two infants I have at home and that these Hearts could treat them in exactly the same way if not 10 times worse live my dearest kindness mom 's Pizza Daddy has now been waiting for a letter since September 22nd but unfortunately and Global gave me the order to operate the shooting of the children I asked him who's supposed to carry out the shooting he answered the references so I objected I told him they're all young men how are we supposed to justify to them that they have to kill little children yesterday then he said once again I repeated how could they do it they have little children themselves this target of War went on for about 10 minutes then I suggested that the FED commandant's Ukrainian militia executed no objections to this proposal were raised on either side Gathering berries how perfect for them what a treat incidentally yesterday was Thanksgiving I didn't feel entitled in regard to Jewish women and children to let these children grow up to become Avengers who would kill our sons and grandsons the only thing missing was the sauce but otherwise delicious even I spoke to one of the policemen and asked if it was difficult for him to carry out such an order he said he had two children of his own but he had gotten used to this kind of work well then my dearest beloved mom with kindest greetings and many thousand kisses to all my darlings you're good daddy [Music] I myself was in a very pleasant position since I didn't have to kill babies with their mothers the children I had to shoot were already big enough for their mothers to lead them by the hand particularly remember an incident with a little blonde girl who took me by the hand she also was shot later my goal was and I succeeded killed children only it worked as follows the mothers let the children by the hand the soldier next to me would shoot the mother and I would shoot the child because for certain reasons I told myself that the child would not be able to live without its mother in a way redeeming these children who wouldn't be able to live without their mothers was a way of easing my conscience do the children always behave as mukala been studying hard as must stop wetting his bed Dougie must also learn to sit up straight at the table without leaning on her elbows as a German girl she'll travel the wide world once she's grown up all the people will watch her and learn from her after all according to the will of Fate we Germans are the people of the future from from Hitler gaining power to the leader commanding him to make this to them learning to divide it up into little pieces to the to the the overall Triumph of Nazi Germany as they swept through the Europe uh all these pieces come together to to dismantle one by one all of the rules that we've lived with as a civilization and to say what is considered the ultimate bad to murder a child becomes the ultimate good and this this is this is the the ultimate uh achievement of evil often the religious use of the word evil tries to instill in it some Supernatural Force Beyond human control but I don't see it that way I see evil as a purely human expression a human potential and it's the expression of evil that we create as human beings and in human settings that is our problem unfortunately genocide is part of humanity deeply human I don't like when people say it's a new man they were like animal no no no I would I would dream but I would dream that [Music] I was always a person with a higher sense of Duty I can say with pride that however disagreeable their duties might be my men have displayed a decent and upright attitude it can look everyone straight in the eye and be fathers to their families back at home not only did the men discharge the difficult Duty they were given faithfully and meticulously in every respect but in terms of their conduct they also represented the best in soldiering for example during a social evening to which I invited them they presented me with a donation of fifteen thousand one hundred fifty rice marks and cash I sent the money to the fund for children of murdered ethnic Germans we had the moral right and the duty to our people to kill this people that wanted to kill us however we did not have the right to enrich ourselves with just a single fur a watch one rice smuggle one cigarette or anything else even allow a small rotten spot to grow or take root all in all we can say that we fulfilled this most difficult task out of love for our people and we have suffered no damage to our innermost self to our soul to our character [Music] as far as I remember the gist of what he said was that the maltreatment of Jews he had witnessed was not to his liking it was our duty to shoot the Jews not to torture and beat them the defendant should not be punished because of the acts against Jews as such the Jews must be exterminated none of the guild should be put it in Alexandria however he let himself get carried away and committed atrocities that are Unworthy of the German men and SS leader these assaults cannot be justified the way the defendant claims as a rightful retribution for the suffering the Jews have brought upon the German people according to paragraph 147 of the military Penal Code the defendant is liable for punishment most of you will know what it means when a hundred corpses aligned next to each other 500 or 1000 live there having had to cope with that and on top of it with the exception of human weaknesses having remained respectable has made us tough you can have faith in your dad he always thinks of you and will not overshoot [Music] you do need a fanatical core of those leaders who create genocidal institutions like Auschwitz and Treblinka or the Einstein's group and and then you get what I call an atrocity-producing situation where the situation is so structured that Ordinary People can enter it can enter that environment and be capable of committing atrocities because they internalize quickly the values and actions that are the norm in that environment yeah I think we have to get away from a notion that guilt is a zero-sum game and so the more we blame Hitler the less anyone else is responsible uh that I think one has to look at the responsibility of each of these groups clearly the primary responsibility is on the people with the greatest power and the people that make policy and the people that create these institutions and this would be Hitler and the Nazi leadership uh nonetheless that does not mean that people who are at the bottom who are being drafted into service who are being sent out there don't have responsibility for what they themselves do at the end you can say that this man or this woman who is shooting a small child in front of everybody she or he takes a responsibility and I cannot accuse him his mother his father and his nephew okay but at the end he kills if we suspend that responsibility to catastrophe by the way I I did not enjoy killing Jews this is a physician by profession and he dealt with the assignments of psychological impedance man it turned out that the men especially the leaders were frequently not up to the demands of the most primitive sadistic Drive unbridled alcohol consumption some had nervous breakdowns were assigned to execution squads had crying suicides for example and others eventually lost control and began firing shots rampantly in all directions and squats was temporary sexual impotence only a dream he is true and expressive as well I've tried to suppress the images of the past my mood is very gloomy I have to pull myself together the sight of the Dead Global is lying on his bed and floating women and children is not very in life suffering from a nervous breakdown I'm an emotional wreck again I want to see him probably was there he was talking gibberish he said it was impossible to shoot that many Jews the day's impression should be blurred by organizing social evenings he suffers in particular from delusions relating to the killings of Jews that he commanded himself and relating to other traumatizing events in the East I feel I'll never be able to achieve anything anymore I wish I could ignore it and forget what I had to live through the overwhelming attitude is self-pity it was my bad luck to be assigned to a unit that had to do this Dirty Work poor me how I suffered day by day doing these terrible hard things almost no thought about what this meant for the victims the guilt and the evil are so extreme so grotesque that you must block them out sometimes we we find the paradoxical state in which the Survivor may feel guilt-like emotions at least self-condemnation it has nothing to do with well it isn't the same at all as legal or moral guilt it's the feeling of guilt because he or she survived and others didn't or because one didn't do more to stop the evil force and the survivors may feel more of that than the perpetrators because the perpetrators are in the process trying to avoid feeling what they were doing avoid emotional involvement in what they were doing I'm aware that men from these units ended up in asylums we therefore had to find a new and better way of killing I can say whether I had misgivings about the use of gas and Vans at the time my primary concern then was that the killings represented a considerable burden on the men who were involved now we have discovered the gas and the procedure I always dreaded the shootings when I thought of the masses the women and the children I was relieved that we would be spared all these bloodbath that also the victims would not have to suffer until the very last moment yeah during dinner the Jewish question was discussed both within the general government and around the world it's very interesting for me to hear conversations like these to my surprise essentially everyone agreed that the Jews had to be wiped off the Earth entirely in his degrees has pointed out that Asia is located to the east of the German age that Poland is also part of it and that the poles are subhuman I can remember Squadron instructions that took place in East Prussia in which he told us that the Russians lives and Jews are inferior people could kill these people without Scruples and without any qualms of conscience [Music] genocide it is usually targeted in such a way that most people don't feel threatened it's not at everybody one of the key things the Nazi regime of course is how the bulk of the people are in the folks command shaft and it is Jews and Gypsies and Communists and disabled people on the fringes of society that are the people that will be targeted then you can organize people to break earlier rules because they will still consider themselves law-abiding citizens they wouldn't think of going over and rotting from their neighbor they wouldn't think of knocking down an old lady in the street so she can get run over by a bus but they can shoot hundreds of people in the Target group when you begin to classify people a little bit under you in the beginning of your channel aside from you it's the first step it's Why We Fight also so much Against Racism because the key without racism ether couldn't do it even with the economical cries because who took it never will stand up for our German Fatherland we are proud to be able to help the theorem the enormous significance of this time will only be understood by Future Generations but we all want to withstand the test of History full of Pride having We the man here at the front will certainly take the right path our faith in the future fulfills us and gives us strength for our difficult and thankless duties it has gotten late I'll finish now I'll I'll send you all my regards and all my love you're steady genocide is basically a political action that is the organizing of people to carry out a policy in that sense then I don't think we change human nature but I do think we can change political culture could this happen in the United States these days well Milgram showed that people will go along with commands to carry out orders so in that situation Americans would probably react not that differently from the Germans however would that situation really arise in the same respect that I'm more optimistic that it could not and that's why our ideologies and the political and Military structures that we build become so important because whatever we think of as human nature or as the human potential we see that it has the possibility of going in either direction sometimes comrades refuse to take part in the killings including myself a few times nothing happened to me not to the others who refused the order there were no repercussions from our commanders we were simply assigned other duties there were no threats of any disciplinary measures definitely not of executions the ash Conformity experiment variation only one other participant gives a correct answer to the exercise the subject then almost always insists on the right solution I was not approached about these operations the leaders took men with them on these assignments and in their eyes I was not a man other comrades who shared my attitude and acted as I did were also spared these assignments yelled at me and insulted me I can still remember the expression Austrian swine that he used for me to my knowledge he also used the term coward in other curse words among other things Athens called me a cowardly and the leg he accused me of unsoldierly conduct Etc but to hurt me up he ordered me to stand guard right at the edge of the pit the mass grave I suppose Athens wanted to show me that his Soldier must do everything he's ordered to do in the end he said derogatory he's not even worth to be put at that post Milgram experiment variation if the subject observes a stage procedure when the experiment is prematurely interrupted the ratio of obedience is reduced by half if two experimenters express different opinions about how to proceed the level of obedience among participants is reduced to zero it wasn't like when someone refused to carry out an order he was immediately put up against the ball that required much more serious demeanors we would have been able to cope with difficulties but difficulties I mean that we were expecting to be reprimanded however I had the impression that I was overlooked in subsequent promotions the only disadvantage I had as a result of my conduct was I had to serve more frequently as a guard than the others and in addition I was given much less free time and as we sit in the Nuremberg trials it became enmeshed into our culture just saying I was just obeying orders is never acceptable suddenly across the NATO alliance across NATO troops in the very beginning beginning with the Nuremberg trials we began the process of of of saying we have to raise soldiers who will not just obey orders and and this is a big deal I see the difficulties not only philosophically to change the way a nation thinks but practically how do you build a court which is going to hold people accountable and show them in their true light as murderers not Heroes this was a tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance vengeance is not our goal nor do we seek merely a just retribution we asked this court to affirm by International penal action man's right to live in peace and dignity regardless of his race or Creed the case we present is a plea of humanity to love why why only 24 for the ridiculous reason only 24 seats this theater is sold out it's a ridiculous reason uh but let's take the Other Extreme you want to try all the murderers I got 3 000 defendants how long would it take to have a trial everyone is entitled to be Presumed Innocent including all adults and going uh until proven guilty in a court of law and this is a principle but I adhere to as a Harvard lawyer this is to me axiomatic so I have to choose the highest ranking people and the other three thousand what happens to them is that just of course it's not just are you going to have perfect justice of course you're not going to have perfect Justice some of them came up for the notification proceedings some of them will never tried anywhere they have disappeared in Argentina or someplace else and even those against whom we prove Beyond doubt the table later Keating position four were executed and the rest of them put in a few years will turn loose is that just of course not it's unjust so you don't have perfect Justice you have symbolic Justice because you're aiming for the mind of the people is it important to have those Trials of course it is if you don't have the trials you have no way of establishing the truth and showing the victims that you really care in West Ukraine the 200 year old synagogue is burned down in a forest outside Town 3500 people are shot [Music] [Music] [Music] the largest single Mass execution takes place in babaya near Kiev 33 771 people are murdered within 36 hours foreign [Music] is convicted of murder in 90 000 cases [Music] defends himself by saying it was only 60 to 70 000 cases [Music] [Music] Mass executions in Eastern Europe about 2 million people are murdered one-third of all Holocaust victims [Music] what I'm describing is a human failing which has happened again and again and is happening as we speak it is happening cruelties innocent people are being killed all around the world because we have failed failed as it is to build the institutions that we need which are necessary to maintain a more peaceful order because for me the challenge is for tomorrow we must be in time I wouldn't like that in 50 years the movie is done about Darfur and said how could because nobody moves it isn't done only by teaching by detached teaching although we need some of that it's also done by one's own ethical passions and contesting these destructive movements perhaps one day you will be policeman or military or scientific or journalists in a place of killing this day you will have to do something and I say at least take a picture and send to CNN don't wait the policies the politician to move because politic machines are too slow the time by United Nation and UNESCO and whatever all natto decided to Johnson is finished for the victims foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music]

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 654,526

Keywords: Nazi atrocities, Nazi propaganda, World War II history, academic documentaries, controversial documentaries, crimes against humanity, education, genocide studies, historical documentary, historical events, international history, mass violence, psychological effects of war, real life events, war crimes, war memory, war violence, warfare research, wartime mentality, wartime strategies

Id: 0UL9_dIJXVo

Length: 90min 49sec (5449 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2023