A Reinvestigation of the Actions of Nazi Frontline Perpetrators - Are Execution Orders Absolute - Case Study Example

Holocaust Studies 19 July 2007 A Reinvestigation of the Actions of Nazi Frontline Perpetrators: Are Execution Orders Absolute? Adolf Hitler is a name that cannot be forgotten throughout history. Even sixty-two years after his death and notorious leadership and participation in the Second World War, his name still evokes a sense of fear and disgust. Known as the Führer, he commanded Germany with an iron hand. His dictatorship and his dream to conquer all of Europe started the most devastating war of all time, with more than sixty million casualties. The Holocaust is a term that cannot be separated from Hitler for this is his most abhorrent and despicable action. In fact, this is probably the most despicable action attributed to one man in all of history. However, despite this fact, it cannot be denied that Hitler could not have done all the atrocities against the Jews during the Holocaust on his own. In reality, he was not even the one who really did the dirty work—he had a lot of loyal Nazi soldiers and generals who did it for him. Now the question that must be asked is, were these Nazi soldiers, under the command of Hitler, guilty of the crime of genocide? Or were they simply just soldiers following orders? Were the execution orders given by their superiors absolutely unavoidable or was there any room to defy such orders directly or indirectly without facing severe consequences if one really wished to do so acting upon his morality? This paper will tackle these questions in the ensuing discussion about the guilt and morality of the actions of the Nazi Frontline Perpetrators based on the accounts of the trials of Rudolph Höss and Adolf Eichmann following the end of World War II. The Holocaust In order to determine the morality of the actions of the said Nazi Frontline Perpetrators, it is imperative to specify these acts of atrocities labeled as the period of the Holocaust. The holocaust, literally meaning “completely burnt,” is a very apt term for the period as it summed up millions of Jews’ ending. They were piled like wood and burned to ashes. The beginning of the end for six million Jews came as a form of a military order from Adolf Hitler during the summer of the year 1941 (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 27). The order read: The Jews are the eternal enemies of the German people and must be exterminated. All the Jews within our reach must be annihilated during this war. If we do not succeed in destroying the biological foundation of Jewry now, then one day the Jews will destroy the German people (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 28). This was said to be “the final solution of the Jewish question in concentration” (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 27). The generals were the first to learn of this command and they were expected to carry out the order without any questions and with full loyalty to the National Socialist regime headed by Adolf Hitler. Rudolph Höss (27-47) explained in detail the decisions which led to the procedure of what can only be described as genocide—an act of exterminating a whole race—matter-of-factly. They arrested all the Jews that they could find from all over Europe and then they herded them all off into concentration camps (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 29). “Only gas was suitable since killing by shooting the huge numbers expected would be absolutely impossible and would also be a tremendous strain on the SS soldiers who would have to carry out the order as far as the women and children were concerned… The sick who could not be brought to the gassing rooms were simply killed with small-caliber weapons by shooting them in the back of the neck” (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 28 and 32). It is very ironic how the feelings and comfort of the soldiers were considered in killing women and children. When the Jews and prisoners of war from various European countries were dead, they had to take out the golf teeth and cut off the hair of the women before burning them on a pile of wood showered with methanol (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 31-32). After a while, the need for workers in arms factories spared the lives of many Jews—at least some for a short period of time (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 34). Even before and while all of these were currently happening, many Nazi soldiers and the Gestapo (the secret police) have gone on shooting sprees where as many as thirty thousand Jews were murdered at one instance (The Columbia Encyclopedia 22328). Solomon Radasky, a survivor from one of the concentration camps, said that men, women, and even children were thrown into the crematorium alive. No Jew was spared from the extermination. Aside from the Jews, those who were handicapped and the invalids were also killed as they were deemed unworthy of life (Hentoff, et al. 29). The total number of people exterminated by the Nazis went up to twelve million. The Liberation of the Concentration Camps What the Nazis did were certainly crimes against humanity—and they knew it. Upon the Allied Forces’ success in liberating the countries occupied by the Axis Forces, the Nazis started to burn the evidence of their crimes (The Holocaust Encyclopedia). However, they did not completely succeed as the enormity of the genocide made it impossible to destroy all evidences (The Holocaust Encyclopedia). An estimated seven percent of the Jews survived the Holocaust—nine hundred thousand in all—and they were witnesses to the crimes against their race (Nordling). Even if they say that witnesses are unreliable, as the Nazis themselves said that it would be their word against the Jews, the physical evidences were overwhelming. Some of these are fourteen thousand pounds of human hair, eight hundred thousand women’s clothes, and the gas chambers (The Holocaust Encyclopedia). Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment…. Disease remained an ever-present danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery (The Holocaust Encyclopedia). The Nuremburg Trials Most popularly known as the Nuremburg Trials, the top officials of Nazi Germany were prosecuted during the period of 1945 to 1949 by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) for the following crimes: 1. Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace 2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression 3. War-Crimes 4. Crimes against humanity (Higher Superior Court of Nuremberg) Of the twenty-four defendants, only two were acquitted while eleven were sentenced to death (“Defendants in the Major War Figures Trial”). The other half was sentenced to imprisonment with varying length of time, depending on the degree of their crimes. On October 16, 1946, ten of the defendants (the other one committed suicide) were hanged in the Nuremburg Palace of Justice (Linder). Although the IMT decided on the guilt and the appropriate punishment of the defendants, the question of will and morality is one that will always be asked. Did the Nazi soldiers do the acts of killing the Jews and the invalid willingly and consciously? Or were they just forced to do it out of self-preservation and the survival of their families? The Nuremburg Trials proved to be enlightening as to why the Nazi perpetrators acted according to Hitler’s wishes and without any questions. While some stayed true to the principles of Nazism and the ideals laid forth by Hitler of a pure Germany, others quickly admitted their guilt and gave the reason that they were just following orders. Then again some even alluded that they were brainwashed or that they followed Hitler and his generals blindly with a feeling that what they were doing was right—“I have been tricked and trapped by the Himmler murder machine, even when I tried to put a check on it...” (Hans Fritzsche quoted in “Defendants in the Major War Figures Trial”). Among those that stood firm with their beliefs and actions was Julius Streicher (quoted in Linder) who said that “I am the only one in the world who clearly saw the Jewish menace as an historical problem.” Most of them pertained to the fact that they were just soldiers who were following orders and that they just did it for survival. As Herman Goering, Air Force Chief, President of Reichstag, and Director of the Four Year Plan (quoted in Linder) stated, “We had orders to obey the head of state.  We werent a band of criminals meeting in the woods in the dead of night to plan mass murders.” At first they thought it was good and when the evil in Hitler became apparent, they just could not do anything about it anymore. Some even feigned complete innocence in that they did not know about the concentration camps. This was the consensus with Hitler and his three top henchmen as the real criminals and not them. “We all believed so much in him [Hitler]--and we stand to take all the blame--and the shame! He gave us the orders.  He kept saying that it was all his responsibility” (Wilhelm Keitel quoted in Linder). In the end, almost all of them blamed Hitler and the system for their atrocious acts. The fact that each of them had their own minds, with most of them having a high I.Q., and that they could have acted against the violence and massacre occurring around them were not mentioned (Linder). Rudolph Höss and Otto Adolf Eichmann The author of this paper deems it important to dwell on the stories of Rudolph Höss and Otto Adolf Eichmann as they were one of lower-ranking officials (compared to the defendants of the Nuremburg Trials) during the Third Reich—they were the ones who witnessed everything and, one might say, supervised the Holocaust. Höss was the SS Kommandant in charge of Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp, while Eichmann was in charge of the mass deportation of the Jews and other prisoners to the camps. These two men were the ones who are “in the know” of what was exactly going on. They knew the extent of the genocide and yet they did nothing about it. In Höss’ autobiography entitled Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, he admitted that Hitler was wrong in acting upon his ideals but that he still believes in the ideology purported by the National Socialist Regime—the way they went about establishing it was the only thing wrong (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger ). In the following account, Höss was also guilty of blaming the Holocaust and his actions on the system and Hitler: I can now see that the leadership of the Third Reich is guilty of having caused this monstrous war with all its consequences by their politics of tyranny.I can also see that this leadership, by using extremely effective propaganda and through its use of limitless terror had made a whole nation submissive to such an extent that, with a few exceptions, the people followed in every way, wherever they were led, without criticism and without a will of their own (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 182). Furthermore, he explained that the soldiers really did not have any choice in the matter as “Every German had to submit unconditionally and without criticism to the government since it alone was able to represent the true concerns of the people and to lead the people along the right path” (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 182-183). He and everyone had to place their complete trust on the rule of the regime, the one that ought to have protected and guided them correctly. Aside from this blind trust, Höss also gave another reason and that is fear. Although he did not expound on this and even named it, the fact that he stated that “Everyone who did not subject himself to this principle had to be removed from public life” is a proof of this (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 183). Because of the fear of disgrace, imprisonment, and most of all, execution, German soldiers were bound to follow orders at whatever cost. However, before his execution in Poland, Höss proclaimed the admittance of his guilt and by asking for forgiveness through his last words: “I am very sorry for what I have done to the Polish people. I ask that they forgive me” (Höss, Paskuly, and Pollinger 197). During the Eichmann Trial, the defendant was cross-examined more than a dozen times where he said that he did everything by the book and that he did not personally handle the evacuations of the Jews who were maltreated (The Nizkor project, Volume 4). He not only blamed his superiors, but he also blamed the local authorities who he said personally supervised the transports (The Nizkor project, Volume 4, Session 98). He also denied the use of trucks as gas chambers wherein the Jews were murdered through carbon-monoxide poisoning (The Nizkor project, Volume 3). When questioned about his rejection of humanitarian acts like permitting the Jews who were still alive to be sent parcels, he replied that “It was not up to me to refuse or to allow something. I had to convey what I myself received as an instruction” (The Nizkor project, Volume 4, Session 98, p. 2). When asked why he did nothing, he simply stated that “[I] obeyed and carried out what I was ordered to do… as I was required by my...by the oath of allegiance” (The Nizkor project, Volume 4, Session 98, p. 3). Although Eichmann tried to be evasive and maintain the secrecy of what the Reich had ordered to be done and maybe to also save himself from the guillotine, there were written documents that he had, in fact, tried to save some Jews from the gas chamber. He “decided that this transport should go to Litzmannstadt, because if it were to be sent to Minsk or Riga, death would be in store for them” (The Nizkor project, Volume 4, Session 98, p. 4). In contrast toe Höss who only asserted that he treated the Jews right, Eichmann had proof that he saved some of the Jews by not directing the transport to places where he knew concentration camps were located. However, the evidence of this action only served to prove his guilt more as he knew that those transports that he sent to the East were destined for extermination camps (The Nizkor project, Volume 4, Session 98, p. 5). In answer to this, he again used the excuse that he was just following orders: “And even if I had known that they were to be killed on the same day, I could not have done anything about it, because the orders I received laid down the destinations. I had no possibility of doing anything else” (The Nizkor project, Volume 4, Session 98, p. 5). Although Höss and Eichmann both had firsthand experiences of the atrocities going on during the Holocaust, they still did not do anything to stop them. They knew what was going on and yet they consciously decided to just follow orders. They completely disregarded the morality of their actions by hiding under the cloak of following the orders from their superiors. They did not even question what they were doing when the acts of genocide were staring them in the face. Was there any room to defy such orders directly or indirectly without facing severe consequences if one really wished to do so acting upon his morality? Were their actions forgivable or were they justified with the simple excuse that they were just following orders? These questions will be answered in the next sections through an expository of those who knew what was going on and decided to help and/or resist the regime. The White Rose Resistance The White Rose Resistance was composed of the siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, their friends Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, Alex Schmorell, and their Professor, Kurt Huber (Henderson 42). In 1942, during the months of June to July, the group has decided that they cannot stand by and watch idly as the carnage continues to escalate by releasing “Leaflets of the White Rose,” a document meant to open the minds of the people to what was happening and a call to action to stop the regime (Henderson 42). On February 18, 1943, the siblings decided to face their enemies and threw leaflets stating “Our people stand ready to rebel against the National Socialist enslavement of Europe in a fervent breakthrough of freedom and honour” from the third floor of the University of Munich (Henderson 42). Their bravery and courage were rewarded with execution order for high treason (Henderson 42). The Scholls and Probst were executed within the week of the protest, while the other three were put to death before the year was through. Oskar and Emilie Schindler The film, Schindler’s List, honoring his courageous and selfless acts during the Holocaust was released in 1993 and has now become a classic. Oskar, together with his wife Emilie, used his status as a war profiteer in order to save the Jews from the gas chambers (Bülow). They were able to save more than 1, 200 Jews through the guise of his factory and bribery (Bülow). Emilie had to sell her jewelry in order to care for the Jews and keep them safe while Oskar never left the office so that he can defend “his children” from the “nocturnal visits of the Gestapo” (Bülow). The couple risked their lives, spent all of their money (an estimated four million francs), and became fugitives after the war. At what cost, the Schindlers saved more Jews than anyone else. They stood by their principles and helped the Jews as a form of resistance and rebellion. Conclusion When the question of the morality of the acts of the Nazi perpetrators during the Holocaust is raised, there simply can be no other answer than they committed crimes against humanity and they did so with the full knowledge of the immorality of their actions. Following the orders of the superiors is not a valid excuse as there are many ways to resist and rebel against the heinousness of the acts committed against the Jews and the invalid. Although it cannot be denied that the burden of responsibility lies more heavily on the upper echelons of the Third Reich in that they were the ones who had the authority to issue the orders, it cannot be said that those following orders are not liable for their actions. They knew what they were doing. they were intelligent and sharp. If they can carry out the orders as swiftly and efficiently as they did, then they also had the capacity to defy those orders. With a little creativity, as what the Schindlers had done, they could have found ways to save some Jews at the least, if not stop the whole genocide. The White Rose Resistance was composed of just college students but they were able to stand up for what they believed was right. If they could do it, then soldiers can do it even better—that is, without getting caught and executed. These young people died fighting for their freedom and honor, is this not what soldiers are trained to do, aside from following orders? If they really wanted to do something, they would have found a way, even at the event that they had to risk their lives. The fact of the matter is that they believed in the idea of a Pure Germany. They were drunk with power, the power to end lives in an instant. They thought they were better and this is why Hitler did not have any difficulty in convincing them of his ideology. All of them were guilty of not only committing crimes against humanity, but worse, of thinking they were right to do it. They were fully aware of the immorality of their actions and yet, they still chose to do them. The author of this paper, based on the discussion of the facts provided, maintains that there were many indirect ways of defying the orders to kill millions of people, but the Nazi perpetrators consciously decided against defiance and rebellion. If death was to be the price of deliverance, then they should not have been afraid. The Scholls were not afraid for they know that what they were doing was right and moral. Ironically, the Scholls were similar to the Nazis in that they also believed strongly in exterminating the Jews. They believed it was right. They treated their race in such high regard that they were willing to kill in order to “protect and preserve” it. This is what makes their actions completely immoral and unforgivable. Works Cited Bülow, Louis. Oscar Schindler: His List of Life. 2007. 19 July 2007 . Linder, Douglas O. Defendants in the Major War Figures Trials. Universality of Missouri- Kansas City. 19 July 2007 . Henderson, Simon. “The White Rose and the Definition of Resistance: Simon Henderson Explains the Significance of Hans and Sophie Scholl in the History of Nazi Germany.” History Review. 53 (2005): 42+. Hentoff, Nat, Callahan, Daniel, Cohen, Cynthia B., and Crum, Gary E. “The Nazi Analogy on Bioethics.” The Hastings Center Report. 18.4 (1988): 29+. Higher Supreme Court of Nuremburg. International Military Tribunal: The Nuremburg War- Crimes Trial. 19 July 2007 . Höss, Rudolph, Paskuly, Steven and Pollinger, Andrew. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992. Nordling, Carl O. “How many Holocaust survivors were there in May 1945?” 1 September 1997. The Holocaust Historiography Project. 19 July 2007 . Radisky, Simon. “The Children.” 1999. Holocaust Survivors. 19 July 2007 . The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. “Liberation of Nazi Camps. 25 June 2007.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 19 July 2007 . The Nizkor Project. The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Volume IV. 1991-2005. 19 July 2007 . The Nizkor Project. The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Volume IV, Session 98, pages 1-5. 1991- 2005. 19 July 2007 . Read More