Holocaust

Was the nazi soldiers forced to kill the Jews or did they have an option ?

I expect if you refused you would have been shot.
That does not mean many of them did it willingly and with enthusiasm because they believed in it.

Reply 2

Failed at life

Original post by 999tigger

I expect if you refused you would have been shot.
That does not mean many of them did it willingly and with enthusiasm because they believed in it.

So it wasn’t really the nazi solideirs faults

Reply 3

domonict

It was generally the hardline troops involved in the mass murder. Even then, the nazis discovered that the troops effectively got ptsd through killing so many civilians. That's partly why they moved to gas chambers and more industrial methods.
Even so, the camp guards were tried for war crimes

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 4

999tigger

Original post by Failed at life

So it wasn’t really the nazi solideirs faults

I didnt say that.
At the end of the war the Nuremberg trials took place and the just following orders defence was raised.

They went after mostly senior officers and organisers.

The judges at Nuremberg rejected the “following orders” defense. They said that when an individual follows an order that is illegal under international law, he is responsible for that choice, except under certain circumstances. For instance, if the individual could prove that he was ignorant of the fact that the order was illegal, he would not be responsible. But the judges at Nuremberg maintained that it would have been impossible for members of Einsatzgruppen not to know that murdering civilians was both illegal and immoral. Another exception, the judges said, would be if a person obeyed an illegal order to avoid physical harm, torture, or death. In their judgment at the Einsatzgruppen trial, the judges wrote: “No court will punish a man who, with a loaded pistol at his head, is compelled to pull a lethal lever. Nor need the peril be that imminent in order to escape punishment. But were any of the defendants coerced into killing Jews under the threat of being killed themselves if they failed in their homicidal mission?”

While some perpetrators in the Holocaust claimed, and may have believed, that they would be physically harmed if they did not follow orders to participate in mass murder, historian Doris Bergen notes that the Nazis did not harm those who refused

Reply 5

looloo2134

Original post by Failed at life

Was the nazi soldiers forced to kill the Jews or did they have an option ?

The SS soldiers where the ones who killed civilians they were radicalized like IS today. The interesting fact was that the SS were better educated the average soldier and believe in the pseudoscience Eugenics.

The average solder hated the SS.

Reply 6

PTMalewski

Original post by looloo2134

The SS soldiers where the ones who killed civilians they were radicalized like IS today.

Wehrmacht was doing the same thing, only not as often.

Reply 7

jemima0103

They didn't really have a choice. Anti-Semitic views were common at that time, but the average soldier probably didn't have extreme thoughts about killing. Had they refused they probably would have been killed themselves or their family

Reply 8

Napp

Original post by looloo2134

Well put. although in fairness to your comment about eugenics being a pseudo science, it's worth noting that the science is still alive and well today albeit it is no longer called eugenics and has been subsumed into other branches of medicine.