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How could the Nazis have been so evil?
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amother
Babypink


 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 11:56 am
The Holocaust, and other current unfathomable evils are decrees from Hashem. There is no other explanation. Somehow, it is for the ultimate good, even though we can never understand it. The question, "how could they have been so evil" is valid because it seriously makes no sense. The only way to explain it, then, is that this was Hashem's will.
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leah233




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 11:59 am
dancingqueen wrote:
I think a lot of frum people don't realize that there are unfortunately many genocides going on around the world to this very day. The Nazis were not a lone group to commit atrocities against another group. Other examples today: Syria, ISIS, the Congo in Africa etc.


None of those examples are comparable to the Nazis because the Nazis were educated upper middle class individuals. The people in the examples you give did not have the educated cultured background the Nazis did. Therefore it is far easier to understand their behavior and motivations.
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treestump




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 12:03 pm
leah233 wrote:
You are going with the assumption that once you get people to go join a movement you can gradually get them to do anything. I don't see the evidence for that assumption.

Also it's also a lot easier to start some snobby teenage group than a real societal movement. And it is a lot easier to get teenagers to act like snobs than to get intelligent educated adults to do something obviously evil when membership in the social movement they belong to doesn't require it.


You can, because you systematically normalize it. It takes time - this movement started years before WW2 officially started.

Hitler tapped into the widespread foremost sentiments felt in Germany at the time, and slowly built a movement reaching the angriest people first. Once the movement reached critical mass and became the new norm, people were afraid to speak out against it. People in Germany who opposed it were threatened and were starting to disappear. There were people who spoke out, but they were silenced. The media was controlled, jobs were lost, and people's lives were endangered by speaking out.

Also, the movement was not started aiming primarily at killing Jews. It was aimed at making Germany great again. People were longing for the old glory and strength of Germany, and were angry at a lot of external factors. Hitler spoke to this anger, spoke to their longing. And once he had them sold and got their loyalty, he started seeding a multi-faceted plan. One part of it involved getting rid of the Jews - they were one group of people Hitler blamed for Germany's problems, and the people bought it.

Every person has evil within them, and given the political, economical and social climate, a lot of people's evil parts were influenced and bought out. And what many Germans were guilty of was not active involvement and murder, but silent complicity.

And it was inexcusable, it is unforgivable, it was 100% cruelly wrong. But it is important to attempt to understand what factors can cause such atrocities to happen, if only to make sure we are never silently complicit.
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treestump




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 12:17 pm
amother wrote:
The Holocaust, and other current unfathomable evils are decrees from Hashem. There is no other explanation. Somehow, it is for the ultimate good, even though we can never understand it. The question, "how could they have been so evil" is valid because it seriously makes no sense. The only way to explain it, then, is that this was Hashem's will.


I think it is important to recognize just how evil human beings can be. We have an enormous capacity for evil. There have been millions of people killed throughout history in evil, evil genocides. The Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genodice, and even today, the genocide of Yazidis by ISIS...

And majority of the citizens in nations committing the genocides weren't the ones actively murdering - they were enabling these genocides through either frightened or indifferent silence.
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treestump




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 12:38 pm
amother wrote:
It didn't start out with Hitler and the Nazis killing Jews or anyone else. Hitler was actually sent to prison after a failed uprising attempt against the govt and it was there that he wrote the book Mein Kampf. He said that Jews were to blame for the problems in Germany and that they had too much privilege which gave them too much power over the Germans. Hitler believed that the "Jewish Privilege" needed to be lessened or removed altogether so that the Germans can have what is rightfully theirs. It is a complex history that needs to be studied because it seems like history is repeating itself, this time in America and with what is being called "white privilege" and the attempts to remove this "white privilege" from American society. Its scary because Jews are now considered to be white and I am concerned that if liberals get their way then we could end up in the same place as the Jews in Germany/Europe did once their so called "Jew Privileges" were removed.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar.....itler

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar.....iting


No one is attempting to take away rights from white people (besides for some crazy fringe groups which don't represent any mainstream opinions). However people are trying to fight discrimination experienced by people of color.

Jews are not considered to be white actually.

Personally, I'd be much more concerned about white nationalists (most of them identifying as far right Republicans afaik) who want to get rid of non-white people. (And no, they don't consider Jews to be white and most are downright anti-semitic.) Though of course extremism on both ends of the spectrum can be a threat.
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Chocomama




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 1:23 pm
I think the element of fear needs to be added to this mix as well in addition to the brainwashing, the state of the economy, the gradual onset of things. If you helped jews, your family, your neighbors would all be murdered. The stakes were really high if you wanted to be protective of jews. I think some were evil, but even among those who weren't, they were terrified to oppose. Which makes those who were kind to Jews an example of how amazing human beings can be.

I just read the book the survivor's club about a 4 year old Auschwitz survivor. I think there was a line that was really illuminating. How some people are evil, some are conflicted, and some are really decent.

It was a horrible tragedy and I still ache from hearing my grandparents comments about it. In the end, though, I think some things just defy comprehension.
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amother
Blonde


 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 1:53 pm
I didn't read every reply, so sorry if mentioned already. But to answer this you have to go back to WW1 - the aftermath in Europe. Simply stated: Germany lost. The economy collapsed. Life was bad.

Along comes somebody who tells them it's not their fault. Who tells them how they can get back on top again, who makes them feel proud... So you have a big core of people who respond to this. Little by little all media controlled by Hitler. There is no opposition opinion because it's not allowed.

Hitler didn't start out saying he's going to round up and kill all the Jews. Rights eroded slowly, they they were rounded up for work camps, then came the death camps. By that time pretty much all able bodied men were entrenched in the Nazi party. They see what Hitler is capable of so even if you are the sort who isn't so enthused with killing Jews, you'll kill them anyway because it's them or you (and your family).

So much psychology involved. People are capable of horrific things.
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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 2:07 pm
Also, I think it's fair to say that anti-Semitism is a illness embedded more deeply in the human psyche than any other.
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marina




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 8:11 pm
In the 1960s Stanley Milgram was also bothered by this question. He conducted an experiment which basically showed that people generally obey orders even when those orders are wrong. This psychological tendency together with anti-Semitism and the collapse of the German economy probably answers most of it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.....iment
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marina




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 8:19 pm
The question, though, is not how the Nazis could have been so evil. To understand why someone obeys authority and hates others and wants to blame them for everything wrong and murders and maims innocents- this is not a difficult task.

The question is how could other people have been so good? How do you decide to risk your children's very lives to save a Jewish family? What possesses you to do that? Not just speak out or support financially, but to actually risk your children's lives? Day after day? Year after year, hide a family in your cellar, knowing you could be shot tomorrow?

No experiment will ever be able to explain that.
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Orchid




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 8:41 pm
I have recently read an account of the nazis ripping a baby out of a Jewish mother's arms and murdering him so horrendously that I cannot type the words to explain the method of torture/murder. I literally could not sleep last night just thinking about this particular murder. They might have received orders to "kill all Jewish babies" but no one specifically commanded them to perform this specific type of torture. THEY CHOSE TO DO SO.

So I don't buy the whole "they were just following orders" bit and "studies show that we, too, would be just as evil under the same situation with orders to be followed."
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 9:06 pm
marina wrote:
In the 1960s Stanley Milgram was also bothered by this question. He conducted an experiment which basically showed that people generally obey orders even when those orders are wrong. This psychological tendency together with anti-Semitism and the collapse of the German economy probably answers most of it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.....iment

It really doesn't.

The Milgram experiment showed that most people would give others what they thought were painful electric shocks - if they had a "doctor" standing right next to them, urging them on, and had been told that it was medically safe.

His findings were disturbing. They also weren't all that relevant to a situation where people know full well that they're committing murder.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 9:08 pm
leah233 wrote:
The Nazis were unique evil doers because they were mostly an intelligent educated group who went on after the war to live quiet lives as upper middle class citizens. Therefore their behavior is even harder to understand. The psychological studies of getting people to commit something evil under command of authority aren't really analogous because (1)The Nazis had time to think things over (2)The Nazis weren't nearly as micromanaged as the people in those studies (3) Many of the people in those studies showed signs of distress and reluctance at what they were doing. The Nazis didn't. Etc.

Yes, exactly this.

Quote:
I would say similar to what chayamiriam is saying with something I always have in the back of my mind to make a post about: When people are convinced they are out to save the world and since they acting for the greater good the ends justify the means, there are no limits to the amount of evil the Yetzer Hora can convince them to do.

And this.

As a psychological phenomenon I think it's similar to competitive victimhood. As a general rule people are willing to do much more horrible things to someone they perceive as a threat, than someone they perceive as a helpless victim.
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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 9:13 pm
Why are we stunned by Nazis and less so by local populations who were collaborators? Vel d'Hiv, Babiy Yar, Drobnitskiy Yar - that was all with the active participstion of locals. That will never make sense to me.
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 9:15 pm
leah233 wrote:
None of those examples are comparable to the Nazis because the Nazis were educated upper middle class individuals. The people in the examples you give did not have the educated cultured background the Nazis did. Therefore it is far easier to understand their behavior and motivations.

Frankly, I don't think education has anything to do with this.

The Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison study were both conducted with college students.

Pol Pot was well-educated in France.

Bin Laden attended elite schools.

Many of the 9-11 terrorists were well-educated.

Many well-educated people nowadays are being inculcated with violent "Antifas" philosophy. One of the charming fellow caught on video bludgeoning someone with a bicycle u-lock at a Berkeley riot was found to be a professor (of ethics!).
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mommy3b2c




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 9:55 pm
ora_43 wrote:
And this.

As a psychological phenomenon I think it's similar to competitive victimhood. As a general rule people are willing to do much more horrible things to someone they perceive as a threat, than someone they perceive as a helpless victim.


Can you explain to me how you perceive a baby as a threat and then cut off its head in front of its mother? Please explain it to me.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Apr 25 2017, 10:44 pm
mommy3b2c wrote:
Can you explain to me how you perceive a baby as a threat and then cut off its head in front of its mother? Please explain it to me.

Viewing people as a threat isn't the only psychological issue at play.

But it's more like - someone has been told over and over from childhood that the Jews are a threat, that the Jews have been oppressing their noble nation and taking what is rightfully theirs, etc... And everything they say or do against Jews no matter how terrible is accepted. They see that insulting Jews or doing violence against them or even murdering them is seen as perfectly legitimate, even by otherwise "normal" people, even by people held up by society as heroes.

Basically it's all about legitimizing violence, and portraying the victims as the oppressors is one of the most powerful tools in legitimizing violence. Any time someone starts to feel a little bad about the murders they see, they can tell themselves "but they left us no choice, they oppressed us, we have to do this to defend our homeland." They can do terrible things, and still feel like the good guy.

Once violence is seen as legitimate, then you get bloodthirsty people who take it to extremes and do the sickest things they can imagine.

It's an extreme example of "aveira goreret aveira" - once a person starts doing terrible things, that becomes their new normal, and then they're tempted to do even more terrible things. A normal person struggles with things like "should I keep the extra money the cashier gave me, or return it," a murderer struggles with things like, "should I murder these next people quickly, or make them suffer extra because my friends will think it's funny."
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treestump




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Apr 26 2017, 3:28 am
mommy3b2c wrote:
Can you explain to me how you perceive a baby as a threat and then cut off its head in front of its mother? Please explain it to me.


There have been women on this very site who said they would be perfectly comfortable doing the same thing.

People can be convinced to kill for ideological reasons. Case in point - the posters who wrote they would be comfortable killing Amaleiki babies. (I'm trying to find the thread - I remember how shaken I was by it.) This is part of their morals. And they perceive those little babies as threats who need to be vanquished.
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mommy3b2c




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Apr 26 2017, 4:54 am
treestump wrote:
There have been women on this very site who said they would be perfectly comfortable doing the same thing.

People can be convinced to kill for ideological reasons. Case in point - the posters who wrote they would be comfortable killing Amaleiki babies. (I'm trying to find the thread - I remember how shaken I was by it.) This is part of their morals. And they perceive those little babies as threats who need to be vanquished.


Those women are lying. They may talk like idiots, but none of them would kill babies. I promise.
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chayamiriam




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Apr 26 2017, 5:01 am
Europe was extremely anti-semetic at that time even before the Holocaust. So if your taught that Jews were sub normal like rats and they only cause trouble and they even killed your G-d. You are told that your doing the world a great favor by killing Jews and ridding the world of garbage.....
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