bergen belsen accused mug shots

[EKman]

Guilty of crimes for sure, but these people don't look like monsters, just "1940's German" to me. Anyone know how much of a choice you had back then about working at a KZ?..Were they all volunteers? It seems like the SS had a rotation system where some soldiers served at KZ's if they were no longer fit for frontline duty (age, severe wounds etc, etc)
Were KZ personnel viewed as the dregs of society? or the opposite: Good citizens doing an unpleasant but nescessary job?..

I think you will get any number of different answers to your questions depending on whose perspective you use. C. Browning has shown in Orginary Men that participation was NOT mandatory and that those who chose to excuse themselves were NOT punished. However, documentation also demonstrates that the SS desired to keep the inner-workings of their camps a secret, so they tended to recycle men and women in an effort to keep those "in the know" to as few as possible. For instance, those who had been initated into the program during T-4 were pulled in to administer some of the camps because they already knew the scope and purpose of what was going on--Franz Stangl is an example of such a person. I knew an elderly SS officer who, in his extreme old age, acknowledged that he had bounced around the camps for a time. He claimed--I STRESS "claimed"--that he never approved of what went on and tried to get ouf of camp duty...eventually bribing a doctor to declare him fit from font line service. Of course, soldiers entering Germany in 1945 were surprised to find that you could walk from one end of the country to the other and talk to everyone along the way yet not meet a SINGLE Nazi.

[J. Wraith]

I think you will get any number of different answers to your questions depending on whose perspective you use. C. Browning has shown in Orginary Men that participation was NOT mandatory and that those who chose to excuse themselves were NOT punished. However, documentation also demonstrates that the SS desired to keep the inner-workings of their camps a secret, so they tended to recycle men and women in an effort to keep those "in the know" to as few as possible. For instance, those who had been initated into the program during T-4 were pulled in to administer some of the camps because they already knew the scope and purpose of what was going on--Franz Stangl is an example of such a person. I knew an elderly SS officer who, in his extreme old age, acknowledged that he had bounced around the camps for a time. He claimed--I STRESS "claimed"--that he never approved of what went on and tried to get ouf of camp duty...eventually bribing a doctor to declare him fit from font line service. Of course, soldiers entering Germany in 1945 were surprised to find that you could walk from one end of the country to the other and talk to everyone along the way yet not meet a SINGLE Nazi.

This looks entirely accurate and they did not just drop these camps in the middle of Berlin and take applications.

I am not sure how " Perspective " comes into play when you have so much fact to work with however. There is no perspective and you were dealing with an extreme ideology and to try and excuse that as some kind of excuse or turn a camp guard into a victim makes me wonder really, there is a basic human aspect of right and wrong and these folks deserved to be hung on the end of a rope. They all deny anything to do with it after the fact and that is a clear indication they knew the difference between wrong and right, should have no problem shooting one of these people or hanging one rather than trying to excuse one.

[Eric JB]

i find threads like this very bad,becose this faces are not born for kill,the are victim
of 3 reich......

I have never read such a nonsense here before on WAF, well excuse me, I only saw them when reading the Goosestepper's posts here on WAF.

Victim of the Third Reich, that were the people inside the camps, not those animals who were guarding them and committed those crimes.
Excuse me for using the word animals as that can be seen as an insult to the animal world.

Influence because of a young age ?

1906 for the KL Kommandant.
1893, 1904, 1906 for others.
They were clearly adults before uncle Adolf came to power !

yours friendly

Eric-Jan

[VtwinVince]

In any population you will find certain people who are sadists, just have a look at Abu Ghraib. My grandfather was sent to the death camp at Stablack by the Russians, who took great glee in tormenting and killing Germans. Or how about the KZ's set up by the Czechs in the Sudetenland after the war, in which a quarter million died? It goes on and on, not to mention the Japanese.

[Eric JB]

Guilty of crimes for sure, but these people don't look like monsters, just "1940's German" to me. Anyone know how much of a choice you had back then about working at a KZ?..Were they all volunteers? It seems like the SS had a rotation system where some soldiers served at KZ's if they were no longer fit for frontline duty (age, severe wounds etc, etc)
Were KZ personnel viewed as the dregs of society? or the opposite: Good citizens doing an unpleasant but nescessary job?..

Sure there must be a difference between being a KL guard and torture, manhandle, or killing other humans for your own private pleasure while being a KL guard !

yours friendly

Eric-Jan

[chrischa]

I am not buying this programmed behavior and camp guards as victims, I see the argument that can be made but its just not for me really. I think their criminals and when they are standing there on a pile of bodies when you show up I do not think compassion or traffic tickets would be appropriate. So yes my humor may not be the best here but I was not really kidding. No offense taken. ;o)

I agree that they should have hanged.

Just interesting understanding why they were what they were. Old discussion I suppose.

[J. Wraith]

I agree that they should have hanged.

Just interesting understanding why they were what they were. Old discussion I suppose.

Chrischa,

I think its interesting as well trying to get some kind of understanding of these people. What I see on occasion and its not just this topic but others is the slippery slope of the history and collecting Third Reich.

These people are of their own time and place and that part does need some perspective, but not so much in the way of the crimes as they are pretty much self explanatory. I think I was just surprised at some of the initial comments that tend to put these people off as a product of their environment which is true to a degree but that does not diminish the crimes themselves.

I have seen many of these debates over the years and while they can be lively, it is easy for some to fall into a trap where somehow an excuse or sympathy for some of these people is developed and I just do not see that as an argument. Who knows, but when you consider the liberating parties walking into these camps and bearing witness I can certainly understand their desire to kill some guards and have no real sympathy for them nor a desire to excuse them. But that is me and the question is a moral question more than an ideological question the way I see it. Personally I cannot imagine walking into one of those camps at the end of the war, but people should be angry and not looking at programming and propaganda as an explanation to let murderers off the hook.

[Br. James]

I have to agree with the early comments by J. Wraith and Stickgrenade -- these gals were certainly no bathing beauties! No wonder the Lebensborn Program was a failure, if these types were part of it -- I guess we can give thanks for that, at least!

But seriously speaking, there is no excusing these people for their crimes. It was common knowledge among the KZ staffmembers that if the war went badly for their side, they would most assuredly have to stand trial for their actions...and yet some of them continued anyway. So much for commitment. Many others tried to fade away into the crowds of refugees once the camp inmates were set free to fend for themselves, and many of them apparently got away with it. Even Himmler went that route, and one can only guess where he would have ended up if he had managed to bamboozle that British inspection doctor...! Perhaps enjoying his pension in a retirement villa somewhere in Paraguay or the Argentine?

Br. James

[12thPanzer]

I am not buying this programmed behavior and camp guards as victims, I see the argument that can be made but its just not for me really. I think their criminals and when they are standing there on a pile of bodies when you show up I do not think compassion or traffic tickets would be appropriate. So yes my humor may not be the best here but I was not really kidding. No offense taken. ;o)

I agree. Im not buying it either. It takes a "Special" scum of a person to commit atrocities such as these. No doubt that they were given the right environment in order to "let the evil out", but I believe these people had physcological issues even before the "brainwashing" of the TR.
And I also agree with J. Wraith......those women are Brute and most definitely got SMACKED by the fugly stick !!

[chrischa]

My initial point stands and the two comments above make me feel the need to state it again perhaps more clearly.

The emphasis on these women being described as ugly and so should have hanged because of it make me wonder how seriously their crimes are considered by yourselves.

I agree it takes a certain person to act in certain ways. I find it interesting to understand how certain people can go from mild mannered office clerk to battlefield hero or indeed schoolgirl to KZ monster.

Because I enjoy theorising doesn't mean I condone war criminals (although I strongly believe the term War Criminal for these people is incorrect, social criminal is more apt) nor do I think people need to jump on J.Wraiths bandwaggon.

I think perhaps I'm looking deeper than is necessary and detracting from the theme of the thread.

Again, no hard feelings.

Chris.

[J. Wraith]

I think perhaps I'm looking deeper than is necessary and detracting from the theme of the thread.

Again, no hard feelings.

Chris.

Yes you are, they are ugly and that is plain as day; inside and out really. They are also war criminals and represent an arm of the state and that meets the definition of a war criminal.

[johnny_ola2000]

Interesting thread. I'll take a look at "Ordinary men" by C. Browning, thanks for the tip, EKman.
I remember an artist some years ago, can't remember her name, but she exibited a number of black and white photos showing WWII war criminals and some of their victims. The point was that the photos didn't say which showed a criminal and which showed a victim. The criminals and the victims didn't wear uniforms of any kind so in many cases you just saw a man in a suit or shirt with a 1940's hairstyle, nothing more. And yes, the point was of course that you couldn't really tell them apart.

[chrischa]

Yes you are, they are ugly and that is plain as day; inside and out really. They are also war criminals and represent an arm of the state and that meets the definition of a war criminal.

No it doesn't but I'm not arguing with the definition of War Criminal.

I believe they are criminals who would have commited the crime in peacetime or wartime as many did.

[J. Wraith]

No it doesn't but I'm not arguing with the definition of War Criminal.

I believe they are criminals who would have commited the crime in peacetime or wartime as many did.

I do not understand where your going? what crime? the same crime or type of crime?.

[chrischa]

I really am leading the discussion away from the first post.

Sorry chaps!

An instance. A guard is brutal to the inmates, such as at Dachau from 1938. He is not a war criminal, but in our eyes (and rightly so) a criminal non the less.
He continues in his job as a guard during the war and is tried post war as a war criminal.

I think his description as a war criminal in wrong and also slightly excuses his actions.