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What Did the German Public Know About the Holocaust During WWII?
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If you liked this video, you might enjoy a few of our other channels such as our new one, Higher Learning in which we discuss in depth aviation related history while flying around in a little plane: youtube.com/@HigherLearningFlight
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ps...the world is run by nastis... they won ww2
Hello Longman...
It's interesting what Gerhard Kettal wrote. A sort of Jordan Peterson of his days.
I have to add it was the horrors of 1920s Berlin that seeded the Nazis cruelty and most certainly the treaty of Versailles that implications all the way to China.
Banks like JP Morgan and the like didn't really help the matter.
There was also a food crisis in Germany at the time so in some ways I can be justified by the standard of the times (millions had died in a war not too far in the past) certainly not by modern standard (kind of what like the tories of the UK do now)
To be fair to the Nazis (with out the english bias) they did what they thought they had to do. To be scathing well it was not well thought out with how it would play out as the mood at the time manifested into a life of its own and more well placed industrialists took the hold and gripped power from the military much like what happened in the Iraq war as profit, ideological and of course old fashioned greed and contempt moved to the forefront.
Lol Hitler had Udet
Trump had Twitter
In regards to the internet
Was 1m Americans a statistic
It's kind of weird that in retrospect China found a massive oil reserve in the Tarim oil fields a month before Wuhan occurred.
Now that oil there with Belt and Road well it's very cheap to refine, transport and sell. Much cheaper than British petroleum, Chevron or Shell can compete with.
So you can imagine after Iraq
Well..
Perhaps an insinuation or aporia but history has its little points that can not be missed.
And well it fits the M.O.
Considering most people today don't have any idea the atrocities the merican government is committing daily how can you justify holding the German people to a higher standard.
I am Polish, when I was 14 years old I visited Auschwitz during a school trip. One thing in particular stuck with me. I saw a room with a literal mountain of eye glasses. It was the math that shook me. I realized: How many % of people wear glasses? Well, not the majority, right? Well then, if this mountain was just a small percentage of those killed... then the numbers must be so large that the human mind refuses to accept them.
For me it was the gold teeth. Barrels and barrels of gold teeth. How many people had gold fillings? How many gold fillings per person? How many dead and looted human bodies would it take to fill multiple enormous barrels to their brims with nothing but the individual teeth that happened to have gold in them? And then the likelihood that most of those teeth were pulled from living people with as much pain inflicted as possible. And that it happened so recently there are still people living who were there.
I don’t know if I could have handled that at 14. I used to get very disturbed about things, but maybe it’s different from a movie or graphic images. I’m older now and still can’t bring myself to watch Schindler’s List, even though I know the whole story.
I recently watched the Pianist. I was disturbed by a couple of images for a few days but was okay after that. I don’t know if I could handle visiting Auschwitz.
I can handle a lot more than I could at 14, obviously. I would imagine that in Poland, almost everyone has a loose connection to someone who died there through neighbors, friends, and acquaintances.
@@andrewmclaughlin2701 Soviet stage craft was present, yes. But we're Polish and our families went through this. The stories our grandmothers told about r*pes, murders and theft was immense. A lot of my family ended up in the camp. Shut your mouth if you think ALL OF THIS is soviet propaganda. Soviets are as much hated and did as much fucked up shit.
@@andrewmclaughlin2701 What? Please explain what you mean.
@@abbynormal3068 Turns out a lot of what the Soviets reported was false. Imagine being able to believe the Soviets.
My grandfather once said, when I asked him: I was a teenager during the war, and no camp close by, and you better believe me that whoever had eyes to see and ears to hear, knew exactly that something horrible was being done to the Jewish neighbours who disappeared. Everybody kept their mouths shut because they were scared the same would happen to them. And this is how it was possible. Please, never make that mistake. Never shut up. This is how bad things happen.
I'm not sure about the actual quote, but the gist is for bad things to happen good people have to stay silent.
This quote is often misattributed to Einstein, but I don't *think* it was him who said it, and that is, "The only way for evil to triumph is if good people do nothing". Hats off to that badass preacher though, his letter to the Chief Physician was like something outta freakin Pulp Fiction! :P Poor man though, but brave. He essentially gave his life for the Jews, a group he did not even belong to :(
You only have to look at the faces of KFZ employees , it tells you all about Germans
My dad always told me it was a lie that the public didn’t know. They knew very well. To me the German citizens are to blame as well. He’d tell me how soldiers took them to show them as well & made them clean up
That brought tears to my eyes. Not just for what your grandfather had to go through at such a young age, but because we can’t seem to overcome our viciousness; our cruelty.
People keeping saying "never again", but then turn around and support the same policies even today or quietly disagree and are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs or being publicly attacked. It doesn't start with camps. It happens one small step at a time. Any time you see a wide group of people being singled out as the enemy, you're seeing the first step.
Your comment is spot on...
I couldn't believe how the german society supported the seggregation of unvaccinated people (including children and pregnant women) for months during 2021/2022.
It has been the biggest wake up call for me, as a person that is living in the country for 16 years now.
That’s what you always hear holocaust survivors saying. Is before they knew it it had gotten out of control and it all started by small moves and little things being stripes from you
Yes anti white racism is bad these days
‘People keeping’ is so wrong that it hurts my head when I read it …… ‘people keep saying’ is the way you’re supposed to say it. I hope it was just a typo and you don’t really speak like that.
these idiotic SJW's think they want socialism because it's " fair " and " inclusive " . But surely have no idea what it is they're actually asking for
As a taxi driver, one of my favorite regular clients was an old German woman who was finishing HS during the holocaust. The ONE time we spoke about it she cried, and told me that she knew, and everyone knew. They were either scared or in agreement. She married an American soldier and gtfo there lol. When I started driving her, it was to see him in the nursing home.
Her secret to healthy marriage?
“Buy two televisions. I’m being serious.”
I think in some weird way you’ve captured the human experience in your comment. We go through our lives, most of us powerless to the events around us, experience some degree of hardship or horror, and give advice to those that come after us. Thanks for sharing your story :)
That’s funny they have two separate TVs but I’m glad that she got out of germinating and found love in the midst of war
@@montrelouisebohon-harris7023 my last trip with her was to go to the nursing home and collect some of his things after he died. It was years ago. I’ll never forget her.
@@hirograveyard8236make a good movie
Write a book
My grandfather was at Birkenau and he said there was no way the villagers didn't know what was happening because you could smell the camps before you saw them. The effluvia of people living together in extreme conditions with poor sanitation and the rotting of bodies was overwhelming.
They know but they can be next especially in Poland
@@karola_ro5930 Exactly, I am sure back than there must be plenty of jews or other communities like gay people living around in Germany, and suddenly one day, they are gone. Where could they be? That's pretty obvious no?
On top of that people living around the extermination camps, there is no way that they wouldn't know. So many people going in and no one goes out, that's pretty much - you do the maths.
This was my first thoughts when I visited Dachau. The towns people said they had no idea but you have old farm houses within a mile from the crematorium. They knew.
And the smell of burning flesh from the crematorias...
@@styleme3375 as I know situation of "normal" citizens was different in Poland than in Germany during WWII, as well as reaction to cruelty
A German immigrant live a couple doors down from my grandfather. As a child I was obsessed with the European/African part of WW2. How the Nazis were able to turn normal well educated people into mass murderers is fascinating. After a while of getting to know this man I asked what living in Germany during WW2 was like. Among other things he talked about how everyone knew the camps were murder factories, but that if you openly talked about it, the best possible outcome was becoming a soldier and being sent to the Russian front.
Yeah, unlikely story. What was he going to say? Not only that but today Germans aren't taught about the Holocaust at all. Sorry, I don't believe it.
@@salty_ball2565 I gotta ask what does what Germans are being taught today have to do with anything I said in that post?
That's one of the great things that comes with being a "boomer" I couldn't care less about someone who didn't read the post thinks. For the record my mom was a boomer I'm gen X.
@@vegan-cannibal714 making a point that 80 yrs later they know it happened but only in a token way. If you ask a current German to explain what happened they can't tell you. 40 yrs ago you ask a German immigrant what happened they told you what you wanted to hear and spent years under allied policy of group responsibility for what happened. It's perspective and current German's don't really want to know old Germans knew to tell them what they want to hear.
They turned people into murderers by doing what American and UK political media does today: they blamed all the problems of group A on group B, then dehumanized group B so people would feel easier towards expressing the vitriol and hate that was always in them.
"Punch a Nazi" has in the last several years become the rally cry of people who regularly label dissident thinkers as Nazis. You think people are equal regardless of race? Well guess what, Mr Hitler, "black excellence" says otherwise. You agree with the science on binary biology and gender? Sorry Mr Kristallnacht, it's a spectrum. But now that you've been identified as a Nazi, it's okay to exhibit violence and denial of human rights against you.
I knew someone when I was a kid who survived a concentration camp, I called him uncle, he was the loveliest man but would never speak of his past. The most heartbreaking thing was, he unfortunately got dementia and guess where his mind went back to. I was horrible watching him go back there. Rip uncle
That's probably the most heartbreaking thing about dementia and probably the leading cause of it in the first place.
Traumatic events that get bottled up and not accepted as "it happened, time to move on" ends up clouding a person's mind for the remainder of my life.
My grandmother & grandfather went through that where they're just stuck in either 1930s Disenfranchisement of Negros and/or Post- WWII for blacks
So sad. I can only hope he didn't realise what was going on.
My god that sounds horrible
That is so sad !! My Mom got Alzheimer's, and her mind spent a lot of time on the death of her first child (at age 5 he was killed by a street sweeping machine). She would wring her hands, weeping inconsolably. Thankfully she passed this stage within a few weeks. I usually cannot watch anything to do with the nazis. I was not born until many years after the cessation of hostilities, but the wound feels too fresh.
@@leanie5234 i am so sorry your mum went through this horrible illness too. It is horrific to witness, he kept running away from the nursing home he was in, often in his striped pajamas, I was 14 or 15 at the time and a few times found him wandering around, strangely he always seemed to recognise me, so I thankfully could get him to a safe place. The absolute worse time was when he fled after hitting some staff after they tried to forcefully shave him as they thought he looked scruffy, I was so angry, especially after we had already explained what was done to them in the camps, they still thought that shaving him was a good idea. It is because of him, and many others I started volunteering for the British Legion, I think of him often.
I am German and I like to watch these videos so I can educate myself on history to the fullest extent, for if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. I visited Auschwitz on a school field trip when I was 16, and it was one of the most somber places I have ever visited. I found it so hard to believe the atrocities that happened there. This video made me cry, mostly for the Captain and his message of all life being precious. He sounds like he would have been incredible to meet.
If only the people of Japan cared this much.
You don’t have to apologize for being German. 🇩🇪 I agree with you. Be willing to learn from history so you see it repeat itself.
Monster
@@ThatJew305 What?
@@ThatJew305 🇵🇸
i remember riding in the car with my mom a few days after i learned of what happened in the camps and was talking about how I'd stand up against the Nazis if i was alive in Germany then. she told me "you probably wouldn't have, you have blonde hair and blue eyes you'd probably be just as caught up as everyone else." that stuck with me because of course everyone has a bais to a system that benefits them, and that's what's scary.
Your Mom was quite intelligent and sounds very loving. You are ever so lucky to have had her as your Mom. Much respect for the both of you and the words of wisdom she spoke back then to yours now.
Getting the young involved in Hitler youth and the youngest in boyscout type movements instilled nationalism early, and the strong desire to be part of the exciting new leaders activities. Without parents balancing that, it would be hard to see clearly. It's much like the instilliation of having drag Queens reading to small kids, and five yr olds tucking bills In their g-string to much applause, then school teachers pushing the multi gender agenda, and forcing choice as a child, government overrding parents protesting kids taking puberty blockers, next is surgery, and boom adult regret. Parents, church are the only counter balance and teachers of critical thinking back in WW2 Germany, and in many US communities in 2023.
We saw it in 2021 and 2022. How many ppl stood up for the rights of the unvaccinated? To keep jobs. Travel. have basic human rights and access to medical care.
It's ez to see who wld have went along with it...because we just did.
Meanwhile, as much as I'd like to fight in the underground, I'd absolutely have died, given that I'm a disabled Jew.
Makes current trends in the US all the more terrifying.
@@tammyturowski6703 - absolutely correct. Far too many with a platform made it their own duty to ostracize those who had not joined in among the sheep. It’s like they got off on the power, which had unnerved even me, especially with far too many agreeing with them. Calling the unvaccinated as them wanting to murder their family members let alone strangers. And far too many had cried out that none should receive any medical care whatsoever, especially if they fell ill to the flu they were so terrified of.
And they got put out when they were called nazis.
I still see far too many still wearing those dreadful masks out and about along with any medical facility that takes Medicare.
My doctor’s office works with a number of others and the moment they had been given the choice, they put up a sign big enough for all too see stating, no one would be asked to wear one. However, if one of their patients were uncomfortable with it, they could ask and then the staff would put one on. It was pretty funny to see how quickly they’d all removed it once the patient had exited the office.
To corroborate: In college in the late 70's and early 80's, I had a German language teacher who was a child in NAZI Germany during the war. When asked in class as to what she knew of the Holocaust during the war she said, "As a child, us kids all heard rumors. But our parents and guardians said nothing except to silence any loud talking about it. And, we kids really did not believe our nation could be so evil." She further went on to say, "But as a Christian I know now ALL people harbor some evil in their hearts. And none of us should ever give evil space or time to growth within us."
It certainly fits the history as we know it.
German nation was no evil. Communists just made lies to demonize nationalism
@Trevor Brannon You are ridiculous Dude...
"But as a Christian I now know that all people harbor some evil in their hearts. None of us should give evil space or time to grow within us."
What evil are you talking about? The Old Testament is the most bloody book, commanding crimes equal to, and perhaps even greater than, the crimes of Nazism.
As for the new covenant, we cannot extract from it an objective moral framework that criminalizes the actions of the Nazis.
ty
Sometime in the late 60s, early 70s, my mom ol asked her parents if they had known. "Of course we knew, most of it if not the details," was the answer. "Everyone knew, but there was nothing we could do." Several of my family members of that generation actually got into trouble for not shutting up.
"We didn't know" is a lie.
They knew enough to know they didn't want to know or let anyone know that they knew. Saying anything, even in private, could get you a visit from the Gestapo. People regularly informed on others because they knew they might be informed on for not informing. Don't cause trouble, don't ask questions and keep your opinions to yourself or you might come to the attention of the wrong people.
There where people of all European countries. Everybody knows, that they will not come back
They chose to do nothing. Sophie Schol chose to make a stand. They were moral cowards
@Gann Deber You may be right, but it's so much easier to laud rare heroes from the safety of your armchair and look down on others than to actually *be* one of those rare heroes... I've visited Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, seen lampshades made of human skin carefully tattooed before the owners of said skin were murdered.
Would *I* have been a hero? To be honest, I don't think so. Instead, I would most likely have got into some serious mental health issues due to being such a coward and knowing it. Many, many people would have gone that direction, and it's generally safer to apply the assumption of mediocrity when speculating.
All the more reason to stop fascists *before* they get too powerful.
@@ganndeber1621 you can choose easily about others
Patton was so pissed he matched his men to the nearest town, rounded up the civilians, marched their asses to the camp and made them walk the camp and help with the clean up. He told them he knew they had to have known, and wanted them to see what their complicity had done.
He knew by the end of the war it was fake.
Patton famously stated ”We fought the wrong enemy. We should have fought alongside the fascists against the communists."
Shortly after he was murdered.
Look it up.
muslims say this was fake or exaggerated
@@aSSGoblin1488 kiss your shelf
@@aSSGoblin1488 They can say what they want. There are videos and pictures. Interesting fact, it was a Muslim country that took in Jews.
In their fur coats no less!
Fair play to Germany today for teaching people this, my son who didn’t have a clue, he was was studying German and went on a school trip to Germany at high school, as part of the trip they visited a concentration camp. After seeing the room of the victims clothing, shoes etc he and his friends were all crying! He went there as a cocky 16 y/o tough guy and came back to England with an understanding “dad, how can anyone do that to anyone”?
maybe u should teach ur son about ur own history. the british empire killed way more ppl than the nazis. they murdered, tortured and enslaved everyone in their grasp. nazis were harmless compared to the empire.
Simon how come you never mentioned the Holocaust to your son?
@@barbarafischbach8480 Most would assume the school would educate their kids on this. The Holocaust wouldn't really come up in conversation at home unless it affected your family I assume
They all cried? Lmfao sissy
They only teach communist propaganda to demonize nationalism
I'm German and my sister told me that she cried when she went to Auschwitz because there was a picture of a little girl that reminded her of me that had been killed there. I think that it's really important to learn about this and really see it to fully understand the severity. It makes it real and not just something you learn about almost like a tale.
Don't worry, I'm sure she made it through the war just fine. She may have changed her name, but there are countless instances where the individual is easily tracked after WWII.
Global census numbers reveal that only around 160,000 of them died during the war. From *all* causes.
I would point you to sources, but they are illegal in your country. That alone should make you skeptical.
LOL this is made up. stop lying psycho
I was in a shower building at [Dacau] and they even had a slave show where you could think a water pipe was replaced with a gas one while others were locked inside.
Havent you been in the death camp system since you were created? Its wireless.
You should know how to market it unless…appearing to possible be learning what others are.
I can show you lot‘s of sources that want to make you believe that the Earth is flat.
It is forbidden by law in Germany to deny the Holocaust. And that is a good thing.
You were told many things in school that are simply not true..
My great grandfather was the only one to survive in his family. He lived with his family in Germany and when the war started, he was the only one with a passport. His father told him to go to England and they’ll all follow. They never did. He left for England at age 18 and never saw any of his family again. He later found out they were all killed in concentration camps. He joined the army in Britain and fought. When he had children, he had 5 daughters and although he loved them dearly, he was upset that he didn’t have a son to carry on his family name. His family name died with him.
Your great-grandfather is full of shit for something. It's the family name bullshit. I come from a family like that, and it's harmful. My brother, the only male to the only male to the only male, grew up knowing his wants didn't matter, that he was expected to have a boy. I, the older sister, had less value because of a goddamned name. When my daughter was 10, my brother and his wife had their one and only child--a boy. And it was declared by all but one aunt that my dead father "finally" had a "real" grandchild. The difference in treatment between my daughter and her cousin over a fucking name is atrocious. I have cousins who kept the family name, and whose sons and daughters were given the name, but as they were kids of mothers, their kids don't count as real carriers of the name. Yeah, the name matters so fucking much that I have cousins who ignored their own fathers' names, and the names of their kids' fathers, to try to carry on our own name instead. My daughter of a daughter of a son doesn't even count as a real grandchild of my father.
If what it takes to end this sexist bullshit is a name to die out, then it's best that that name dies out. How horrible for your great-grandfather's daughters to know that he was upset that they had vaginas instead of an almighty penis. They were lucky the didn't have a brother. They were a disappointment enough, but if they had to experience the difference in treatment, they'd have been more hurt.
After losing his parents and siblings, your great-grandfather should have been ashamed that, rather than being fully happy for the daughters he was blessed with, that that wasn't enough for him because of a goddamned name that apparently has to be passed penis to penis.
That male preference bullshit needs to end, and we need to stop feeling sorry for those who were upset over having only daughters. That continues the message that girls are worth less, and it's fucking disgusting. If you want to feel sad, feel sad for the girls who grew up knowing their father wished they had penises so they'd be worthy of keeping a worthless name.
His name, not his legacy.
@@andreasevt1 Spot on! While the family name may be gone, the family and its contributions (be they large or small) to the world continue. A bigger thought might be what never discovered great minds or positive and inspiring influences were silenced when his family and fellow countrymen were senselessly murdered ...
His second, third , fourth and fifth daughters were just byproducts ... .
lol imagine having 4 whole children you disregard as your real family because they don't have a penis.
That statement you made about some of the German citizens feeling like they were Liberated by allied forces is correct. We were stationed in Germany for 6 years. A little German couple down the street who were kids during the war were so sweet. They had great apple & fruit trees in their yard and would let my son pick some on the way to school. They confused the heck out of him one day by saying they loved the American soldiers because we saved them. The gentleman went on to tell him later it was because if they spoke out back then they would be rationed or mysteriously disappear.
100% this is my grandparents story.. the are greatful of the americans
My Nan and my grandfather were both American WW 2 veterans. My grandfather was in the US ground infantry stationed in Italy, France and later in Germany. As far as I can figure out, my grandfather was in the infantry units that liberated the camps that the Nazis abandoned. He would never talk about his experiences. Later on, in the 1970's, we had neighbors, an older married couple, from Poland, and they both had serial number tattoos. Serial number tattoos...... A loving couple who found a life after the war, but never had children of their own. They were my baby sitters growing up and I can still see in my mind their serial number tattoos, the tattooes they were issued upon their arrival to the concentration camp.
I knew a
What were the tattoo numbers?
All concentration camp prisoners were not referred to by name. They had seriel numbers tattooed on their wrist or arm. They were not thought of as people, like branding a cow. There were other symbols used as tattoos or patches on clothes to identify different reasons for being in prison. One was the pink triangle for gay people who were killed regardless of race or religion. @@ifv2089
@@ifv2089Jews were tattooed as part of their processing into the concentration camp as a prisoner.
@@ifv2089 All prisoners in the concentration camps were tattooed with a serial number and a symbol of the so-called reason for their imprisonment, even the small children. Partly it was to dehumanize the prisoners by depriving them of names. Partly it was to be able to decide who to murder on particular days (they would randomly choose numbers and murder those prisoners in order to thin the ranks.)
I'm a Nurse in a german nursing home. I take care of the WW2 Generation. You would be suprised how many still carry a racist mindset. THEY KNEW. Most of them did. Nobody said anything because they were afraid that the gestapo sends them to a camp too, there were instances where neighbors would rat each other out because of jealousy.
Stop spreading unfactual stuff like "they knew", even if they did in your nursing home it wouldn't be representative. My anti-nazi Grandma also stated that "she knew" until I digged deeper and it turned out that she only knew about persecution but not about industrialised mass murder which she only learned about after the war. What and when they "knew" is the question, there's a difference between knowledge and rumours that turn out to be true and which inflict different kinds of behaviour.
I mean to be fair. Lots of people hated the jews all over the world... thats not why people went yo war lol.
Pretty sure other euro countries were deporting jews out and america was still very racist then
if you had an evil tribe of small hatted psychopaths who tried to infiltrate and subvert you would hate them too. They are just in their hatred!
Photos of millions of Germans saluting HItler tell the truth - they knew. They didn't believe it would apply to them. Just like Trump-lovers today. beware.
Of course they knew! And everyone who knows a German for more than 3 days and two beers knows that they haven't changed a bit. German History is not an accident.@@nightwish1000
My parents, born in 1931 and 1938 respectively, grew up during the war in Germany as kids and young teenagers. They only met after the war.
But during the war both of my parents heard, from their parents, that so and so down the street had gone, along with their whole family in the middle of the night. My grandparents never dared to explain what they meant that 'gone' meant "vanished by the Gestapo or SS" because they feared that if the children talked at school about their parents' opinions, they might have to suffer repercussions.
The Gestapo was KNOWN to be brutal and ruthless in apprehending and brutally beating anyone not toeing the party line. So both my grandparents and parents all KNEW, with varying degrees of certainty, that the acts committed against anyone deemed a 'subhuman', an 'Untermensch', must be far, far worse.
No, my grandparents were none of the heroes mentioned in this video. They were part of the silent masses that cowered in fear, silently accepting that fate or cruelty had decided to leave them alone, and others to suffer. Again, no, my grandparents never knew the exact details but suspected what happened in the extermination camps, still hoping against better knowledge, that all claims of such attrocities committed by Germans 'must be propaganda' heavily exaggerated by 'the others'. They didn't dare to believe that these attrocities were real; that Germany was the perpetrator. Because that meant that by their silence they were complicit in these actions.
Not directly, not by pulling the trigger, not by opening the valve on the gas chambers toxin containers. But by not actively opposing these attrocities. Until given certainty they clung to the faint hope, that this had to be lies concocted by others to make them rise up. Or at least the extent of the attrocities committed must be lies. Once you start rationalizing a small bit, you tend to extend that rationalization bit by bit, day by day, in the hope of somehow surviving without tarnishing your soul further.
It takes a far braver mind to face your own inadequacies, and put your own life on the line to stand up against such crimes.
On top of all that came the very real threat of either being forcibly drafted into the army as a male; or being forced to work in the factories as a woman, all the while worrying about being bombed out of your house or apartment, or where to get your next meal from. When woe strikes everyone to some degree or other, it becomes far easier to rationalize the horrors facing others to become somehow 'lesser evils' in the eyes of the common civilian.
Note: all of this does NOT excuse any behavior of Germany during the war. Not in the slightest.
It is just an explanation of how things turned from bad to worse, slowly, bit by bit, normalizing each step of the attrocities along the way.
Until unspeakable acts previously even unmentionable in the public became accepted as a 'solution' among the powerful.
As a modern German I feel nothing but shame about this. Guilt, no; undelible shame, yes.
I can't feel guilty for acts committed long before my birth by people who simply shared my nationality.
But I can and will empathize with all the victims of these war crimes against humanity, as well as feel shame and sadness. This has caused such untold destruction on all involved, simply out of an extremist worldview that believes one human is better than the other due to the chance of birth.
In the same way that many allied civilians couldn't directly influence the way of the war, I am currently relatively helpless when I see attrocities again committed in the Ukraine by a ruthless aggressor invading simply to further their leader's megalomania and self-aggrandizement.
Yet at least I have never quit saying, that "never forget, never again" should be a mantra of all modern humans.
Respect
Coming from a jew
you grand parents didn't have a choice. Same shit happened with my people under stalin. You could end up taken away by Stalins NKVD secret police for saying one slight negative thing about his regime. For instance a video i watched showing one of the only surviving gulags in Perm Russia that is now a museum. One of the artifacts there is a book with stalins picture on it. it had a fist sized punched hole through it from a reader, he was of course taken away by the NKVD. all because he destroyed a picture of Stalin on a Book.
@@pango8143 i support juwesh ppl👀💪✡️
And yet we always do forget, and it always happens again.
First, I don’t think many reading this could overly judge those Germans civilians who knew, but feigned ignorance for fear of disappearing as well…we all hope we would be hereos, but few are, and in some situations…not much a single or few can do.
But, you also noted that people “ didn’t think their government could be that evil,” (paraphrase) - which doesn’t seem historically accurate.
There were certainly prior well known episodes of German atrocities, such as the early 1900 extermination camps for native peoples in German colonies in Namibia, with labor camp death certificates pre-printed with “cause of death: exhaustion,” and letters home from soldiers saying “look, we need more land…we have to clear it of people.” Germany certainly was also responsible for crimes in WW1 (my own great grandparents left Germany for the US as they didn’t like where Germany was heading pre-WW1, as did many other Germans). And then Hitler was pretty clear in his speeches that he was hostile to Jewish people, and when trains of people would always come in full, and leave empty….not that hard to see 2+2=4.
So seems like there was decent evidence for Germans that their government WAS more than capable of atrocities and mass extermination.
Many years ago, I worked with someone had visited Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. He told me that the whole place was enshrouded in silence; no birds sang or flew overhead and you could hear a pin drop. But, unlike some vast natural plain, this silence was ominous, deathly, unnatural...
The devil stays there to protect the bodies of the people who killed Jesus.
While not a potential victim of the Holocaust, the Nazis tried to murder my great grandfather in their "mercy killing" scheme. My great grandmother was tipped off by a nurse and was able to get him out of the mental ward in time. He recovered fully and I just know him as a wonderful person. 😌
Wow. That's crazy... Im glad he survived and recovered...
Like Canada present day..ignoring the health care of seniors..10 minute doctors appointments,and news items about concerns for having enough euthanasia doctors..yes much more concern for those than for geriatric care...
@@heatherwhittaker6169 You forgot the part about Canada imprisoning their citizenry for the thought crime of question the bulls*it holocaust.
@@heatherwhittaker6169 There is NO COMPARISON.
@@heatherwhittaker6169 Interesting and I was thinking Canada seems to be going that way too.
It's fascinating to see similarities in the tactics being played out today and where they might lead to.
My grandfather was part of a unit that liberated concentration camps. He said you could smell one for miles before you saw one. It got to the point where the soldiers would begin crying when they would smell the concentration camps because they had learned what they were about to find. It's also why my family never barbequed pork because the smell triggered my grandpa's PTSD.
Your grandfather was a hero!
The city I live in can be smelt 100 miles out. I have no doubt that you could smell the camps 150 miles away, if not far more. That man did more for the world than he ever knew. Thank God for him and his unit.
@@LegendStormcrow they burned and cremated the bodies, so yeah, it makes sense.
Eh? What does this 'smell from miles away' thing have to do with anything? There is a restaurant near the back of my street and I can smell all kinds of things (some awful) so what about it? I should know they're what.. gassing prisoners?
@@garlandgarrison3739 Even before the US entered the war, the smell of BO and feces would have been unimaginable.
It was sheer madness to think that they could have hid the evidence, and by cremation no less. The fact the US spirited away their scientists sickens me. It's also probably why the CIA ended up such sick freaks.
I had a relative, now passed, who arrived at a concentration camp a day after it was liberated by Patton's 3rd Army. He had passed through a nearby town to get there. He said the smell of death was in the air and got more pronounced the closer he got to the camp. "Everybody knew" he said. "No way they could have ignored the smell".
At that point in the war, the supply lines had broken down and everyone was starving. POWs and political prisoners are the last people to get resources when shit hits the fan.
My mother is 87 from Munich. She left at the age of 10 but her impression was that the Americans were the enemy. Consider that fact that information given to the citizens were extreme propaganda and you can understand her thinking. To this day, it’s still difficult to talk to her about the holocaust because it’s too painful for her to think ‘her people’ were capable of those atrocities.
My family is from Berlin. My grandfather said just the same as HobRe Ra's further down in the comments. Paraphrasing: "What do you think we all thought when the jewish neighbors were taken away? The nazis always kept talking about exterminating them, that was no secret. We had no reason to believe anything other was done to them." He also said "dictatorship is terrible, but you have to fight it before it is established. Once in place, it is impossible to do anything about it."
Your grandfather was just like Hitler and his minions. Germans back then were evil and please spear me the part of mind control cause Hitler was not a mutant who could control minds. Germans hated Jews just like Hitler did and were happy when Hitler was torturing and exterminating them. They knew what was happening and were either happy or just didn't care.
As capitalism fails worldwide and oligarchic governments establish more and more authoritarian controls over the world's alleged "democracies," that last thing you said should be burned into EVERYONE'S brains: "dictatorship is terrible, but you have to fight it before it is established. Once in place, it is impossible to do anything about it." In the United States, the way people here are content to sleepwalk straight into nuclear war with Russia- or climate apocalypse, whichever comes first- is absolutely infuriating. I feel like Pelensky when I look at my fellow citizens. Waiting for your countrymen to revolt against this dying neoliberal dictatorship is excruciating- especially when you know they NEVER will. No matter how bad it gets. If you speak out here, you're instantly labeled a "Trumper" or a "Putin puppet."
Not to mention, and ok this is a bit gruesome, but anyone living anywhere near those camps would have known there was a lot of death and filth. Because they have noses. The smell of death is very distinct and it’s very emotionally troubling. I mean we’re genetically designed to avoid that smell. Near my school, a seagull had died and every day, that smell got worse. Eventually we could smell it in the school yard. We knew immediately that it was the dead bird. And it was cloying.
There is no fucking way anyone proximate to those camps didn’t know something fucked up was going on .
And Anne Frank knew about it, too.
@Gretchen K. What do you mean? That other fascists overthrew him briefly in 1943, because they were afraid of an antifascist mass movement, made conceivable by the disastrous Italian war effort? That was hardly the end of fascism in Italy, obviously.
Or that he was killed at the end of April 1945, when it was all over anyway?
Either way, I'm not convinced. But I'm sure you would have singlehandedly ended the nazi regime if you just had been around!
As a Brit I respect modern day Germans for teaching their children the true horrors of the Holocaust. In British history class I was only taught the "good parts" of my country's history (the school system even fully skipped over the British Empire). We need to take a lesson from Germany's school system and teach history honestly
Same here in America. I'm sure it's why fascism is on the rise again
That's quite strange. I'm wondering when you were educated. I thought that the British educational system has arrived at a point of dealing with the imperial past quite well - or, as well as one can with the limited time you have in secondary school education.
A complete reckoning with the British Empire is something that will always be for those who go on to read history at university. It's a long and complicated history, after all.
But the transatlantic slave trade, the Indian mutiny and the Raj, the history of the English in Irland and the famine, the scramble for Africa and it's racism ... All of these can be taught in secondary school and i thought they were.
@@RobespierreThePoof We learnt about stuff like the Spanish Armada and Sir Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh exploring the American east coast but that's about it. Basically the beginning of what would later be the 13 colonies. We didn't learn about British colonialism in Africa or India though. I assume because we did some messed up stuff there and teaching such a "sensitive" topic might not go down too well
Much better than Japan, which I have read accounts from Japanese people *conveniently* runs out of time to go into detail about WW2 by talking about other, earlier historical events in school (sounds similar to Britain). No hate to Japan, would visit there in a heartbeat, but this *is* on of the areas that twigs me about the country. I live in Australia, which historically brushed over or watered down the 'colonisation' of Australia (I think the word they were looking for was 'invasion'). Luckily for me, I was taught about a lot of the massacres and the overall horrible things that happened to the indigenous population (would have been in 2013/2014). I just wish we were taught more, like who the exact traditional owners of the land we lived on were and stuff.
@@hedera1332 o don't think there are true owners of lands just like how animals has there territory it will change accordingly to supply of food and other animals who also do territories
One of my grandfathers survived a german labour camp, and one of my uncles was tortured to death for information. Over the years I've talked to many old Germans and seen loads of interviews with Germans of that generation, and I have NEVER seen one own up to their collective atrocity. It's always platitutes like "es war krieg". The young generation feels more shame for it than did the old one. In fact people who helped the Jews, like Oskar Schindler were hated post-war, unable to get jobs and treated like traitors until well into the 1970's.
Schindler had to flee because of the allies... Many of the Germans like Schindler and Kurt Gerstein who tried to contact the Swedish, the pope and the British during the war, were all condemned by the allies like they were Himler themselves. It's not as black and white as you try to portray it. Human history is a history of survival. Many people just tried to survive through those dark times. Should a mother with 8 children and no husband take it upon her to orphan her 8 children to do the right thing? I don't blame those people for trying to survive through those horrible difficult times.
That was common in the occupied areas too. The resistance and those who'd helped escaping jews were outcast and often didn't speak about what they'd done. I think it made people feel like cowards by proving that 'I couldn't do anything' was bollox.
It's also worth bearing in mind that in Germany the people in power after the war were the same people who'd been in power during the war. They just took the badges off and spouted platitudes in public.
It's simple... You spoke up, you die. You spoke up, your FAMILY dies.
I would not speak up if it means my child will perish.
To be real many Germans were practically hostage to the Nazi regime, if you spoke against it, you "disappeared" and very many Germans did disappear. Perhaps that experience stuck with them and they learnt to keep their silence for fear of becoming another victim.
First they came for the communists, and i did not speak out because I am not a communist... ... ... ...
Then they came for me, And there was no one left, To speak out for me...
My grandfather was at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. He said they knew, the locals absolutely knew what had happened there. They chose to ignore it.
What could they have done?
I've heard the people in towns near camps fully knew while many people in cities didn't know much. They knew SOMETHING was happening but didn't know or believe what.
So WWII was started due to Germany Invading Poland but no declaration of war was made against the Soviet Union when they invaded a few weeks later. And then at the close of WWII half of Europe was occupied under the Soviet Communists and the Iron Curtain. That doesn't sound like "Liberation" to me. Or maybe the Belin Wall was a commemoration for the Liberation of Europe?
My grandfather was also there. He said that some of them died upon seeing the American flag before they reached the gate. Then when they saw the American soldiers in the gates more died. Then they decided to take the chocolate bars out of their rations and that person died in his arms.
Well it's certainly one thing to know vs actively participate,help, assist? I would like to think I resisted strongly as a civilian but under theNAZI regime? I may have hoped to escape,survive?
My Mother (Born 1930's) remembered the "KRISTALLNACHT" day & evening. When going to bed the kids where not allowed to look out the windows facing the distant town, she remembers her mother crying watching the Synagoge being burned to the ground,hearing sporadic gun shots, people screaming and people (Jews?) running through the pasture at night TRYING to get away!
Terrible to witness that.
Thanks for that.
Yes. Jews were running away. Who else do you think it was.
🇩🇪MY TESTIMONY AS A GERMAN🇩🇪 My grandfather was the only one who knew PART of what really happened. He was in Russia as a communication officer and came back to Germany for a short trip. In a tavern he told everybody LOUDLY what happened. The Barkeeper came to him quietly and told him he has to disappear NOW before they kill him. He ran, but got caught very soon after. The soldiers had orders to shoot my grandfather. The man who was alone on guard with my grandfather told him. "I will take a piss now... and when my pants are down, I can't run. You understand?" So he ran. Until the War was over he hid. Never went public about anything.
Now we have internet and all means to find the correct information unlike 1940. But 95% of the population STILL believe the propaganda. 🙄
This is fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
Looks like the guard knew what was going on and like your grandfather found it despicable and seen a window of opportunity to save someone's life. My grandfather fought in WW-2 and said most Germans was not NAZI's and most was good people that was misinformed. God bless.
Thanks for sharing that.
Bad propaganda.
its stories like this that lead me to collect antiques, like letters and such, it shows the war from a 1 person's perspective at a time and adds in much needed context. history is complex and very grey, a fairly hardcore nazi, john rabe saved an estimed 200,000 innocent chinese from the japanese during the rape of nanking, schindler and Dr. hans muench were only able to save the lies they did by being in the nazi party. WW2 saw the end of many things, and the people being born now already can't even imagine these things as being real and think they are fictional, meaning history is doomed to repeat at this rate, and thats the greatest tragedy of all this IMO, knowing that someday its growing more and more likely that people will try to commit crimes on this level once again
My grandparents in Bavaria had a little farm in a village (Erpfting ,now incorproated into Landsberg) located several kilometers from Landsberg am Lech. In addition to farming, my grandfather was a carpenter who worked at a small, family business in Landsberg to supplement the family income to make ends meet.
My mother's village school teacher, who had a lot of children to support and was a friend of my grandfather, took a job at Dachau to better support his family. I believe he confided in my grandfather (some of) what was going on in Dachau. He soon quit the job because it weighed heavily on him. Soon after the war, he committed suicide.
An curious side-story to the village school is that my mother remembers one school project where every student was to research their family genealogy wherein it was revealed that only two village families still existed in the village which had survived the Black Plague and were original Bavarians. My grandmother's ancestors had migrated from Bohemia and my grandfather's ancestors had included a migrant from Genova, Italy.
My grandfather was anti-Hitler and wouldn't let his children join the Nazis youth even though that was the only path for my mother to become a nurse as she wanted.
My mother's story was interesting, too. Because she wasn't in the Hitler youth, her career options were limited despite having been an excellent student. She took a job at a pension/boarding house on Lake Starnberg as a maid. The woman, Frau Teem, who owned the boarding home was a stingy, mean woman who didn't feed her maids well and was a harsh taskmaster. She had a Jewsih boarder named Mrs. Rosenthal who was also heir of the Rosenthal china company that had had to sell out because of Nazi laws against Jews owning businesses. My mother used to like talking with Ms. Rosenthal. But when Ms. Rosenthal suddenly disappeared, Mom intuitively knew that Frau Teem had turned her in. In disgust, she left her job without permission so was in danger of being jailed for breaking the law which didn't permit employees to leave a job without the permission of the employer. After she took a job as a waitress in the officer's mess at the Luftwaffa base near Landsberg close to home,. the officers learned that Ms. Teem had filed a complaint against my mother in court. So, because they liked my mom, they had her drafted into the Luftwaffe so that she couldn't be tried.
My grandmother, before marrying my grandfather, had worked as a cook at an hotel in Starnberg so that may explain connections that might have paved the way for my mother to be employed in Starnberg when she left school.
My grandmother was a devote Catholic all her life but accepted when, as members of the small parish began showing up to mass in their Nazi uniforms, my grandfather quit the church because of the political collusion between the Nazis and the Catholic church that had helped Hitler to power by threatening excommunication for any Catholics who wouldn't abandon the only political party with the strength and power to thwart Hitler's efforts to become dictator.
Although the village mayor was not officially in the Nazi party, he was a big Nazi and had my uncle prematureily drafted for not greeting him with "Heil Hitler" but instead with the Bavarian greeting of "Chris Gott." He was killed somewhere in the Caucus mountains when he agreed to take the night watch for a sick fellow soldier.
My grandfather risked death by listening to foreign news broadcasts during the war with a radio that he himself had built. A small number of trusted young village men would come to the home to listen as well as to do so was a life or death activity.
When the owner of the carpentry business died, his widow begged him to manage the business so that it could continue to operate and employ people. In order to hold that managerial position, he was forced to join the Nazi party as it wasn't possible by law otherwise. Ironically, at the end of the war, he served a few weeks/months in an Allied prison while the mayor, who had been a Nazi but not in the party, continued in his powerful role.
How much exactly my grandfather knew about the atrocities of Dachau and the other camp outside the village near to Landsberg I can not know. I only know that my mother stated that she feared for her life every time she threw rolls of bread to the inmates of the camp nearby the village on her way to and from home and Landsberg. She didn't know what my grandfather may have done as well but she said that unknown reasons my grandfather's' home in the village was spared by former inmates when the Americans liberated the concentration camp and permitted them some time to freely loot German homes in the village.
After I read "Hitler's Pope" some of the politics that influences my grandfather choices became clearer to me. He had had some cousins who worked for the German railroad in Munich and who had fled to America when persecutions of the union members began, so I'm sure Opa was politically awake.
He died of leukemia in 1958. Oh how I wish I could converse with my grandfather today about his experiences and feelings.-His name was Franz Bihler- Anita Malchiodi Albedi.
This was really, really interesting to read. Thank you for posting it
I very rarely read long comments but your grandparents stories are fascinating. Thank you for telling it.
thanks very interesting read. may i throw in that the Bavarian greeting is not 'Chris Gott' but instead 'Grüß Gott' (=greet god).
Grüß Gott*, not "Chris Gott"
amazing story of resistance thank you for telling us
Powerful talk. Nice to be reminded of Captain Poletcki. I appreciate that you offered explanations for why many Germans would not believe what was happening. I believe you are being fair and even handed in the presentation.
I’ve never heard of this guy before. Poletcki’s story should be a movie.
That dude's story is wild. That's gotta be one of the most fearless SOBs I've ever heard of.
I can say that my great grandfather seems to have known enough about it. He was ordered to fulfill his duty in a concentration camp but refused. As a consequence he was immediately sent to the front as a punishment and died near Stalingrad two days later, aged 24, leaving behind his wife and two children.
I can understand why many people might have just not said anything. I also don't know how I would have reacted in such a situation, as it's so far removed from any experience I have ever had. Never was there a literal do or die moment for me and I guess for most other westerners it's the same.
Bullshit
As horrible as it was, at least it could be said he died with honor.
I think many Westerners are now having to grapple with such questions, as they see governments and society changing around them.
Some also forget the systematic development of the Hitler Youth from 1926, which was the only youth organization allowed from 1933 (98% of the youth). And 7-10 years of indoctrination of approx. 8.7 + million children and young people already promotes a basic stock of obedient soldiers.
And let's not forget that this form of systematic indoctrination was continued in the former GDR, among other places.
Many citizens suspected and yet "officially" didn't want to know anything, didn't dare to talk about it with family or friends because they were afraid themselves.
The fact you admit that your not sure how you would react shows tremendous self awareness
My grandparents and great grandparents always mentioned that neighbors where vanishing or openly took away from the police. Until my great grandmother gave birth to my grandfather and suffered an aneurysm in the brain from that. Which lead to her getting taken and never been seen again, leading my grandfather as an orphan while his father was in war. So they knew something.
I very good friend of mine is an older German woman who is now an American living in the US. She was a child orphaned during WW2, who was adopted by a German physician and his wife who had lost their own daughter. The psychological scars she and her family sustained from the War and from living under such a repressive regime were severe and long-lasting.
Looking at how things are today.... I can see how this could happen again. So sad.
Oh, how I wish you were wrong.
The sight of that little girl looking seven or eight years old holding her hands up in surrender is heart breaking. I was a child in London in world war 11 and I never forgot what happened to people in occupied Europe.
It’s called war…. there’s many Palestinian children who do the same things on a daily basis.
How old are you now ?
Are you from the future
The first
@@jenniferalexander923 You're quite rude, the person you're talking to is supposedly like 90 years old. Have some respect, spoiled snowflake
My first recollection of the suffering of the Holocaust, was a close friend of my mother's. Anna Moskowitz was a survivor of
Dachau. Her family emigrated to the States, and tried recreate
their lives here.
I noticed her tatoo, and didn't understand it's meaning. She was always so cheerful and lovely. Unfortunately, the past couldn't be unseen, and she was found in her kitchen with her head in the oven.
She just couldn't endure the pain and depression. Many survivors
committed suicide, in the ensuring years.
I'll never forget her.
How did she die from head in the oven?
They didn't tattoo people in Dachau.
That’s bullshit the English had cracked the Enigma code and where intersepeting all codes from Alswitzs to Nazi high command including numbers of deaths daily at the labour camp also they never had the means to cremate the numbers that have been said also your mention of zyckon- B fails to mention it was vital (and used by the US and other allies) to stop the spread of Tyfus which was the major killer in labour camps
Check out the bombing of Dresden an old city built mainly of timber no military significance British and American bombers under the command of war criminals like “ bomber Harris” were gear to try a new method of bombing picking a civilian target and “ napalaming it . The first wave set the city alight every thing burning the second wave waited for the first responders and set them alight over 60,000 people burnt alive fight aircraft strayed people civilians in the parks who tried to escape the heat was so bad people where stuck to roads over 60,000 one night to see how Napalm works
Oh and let’s not forget about the Japanese holocaust
I will say this, a paraphrased except from Patton's book. When the 3rd Army units liberated one particular camp, Patton ordered every prominent citizen brought out to the camp and forced to witness the condition of the inmates. The prevailing winds blew from the camp to the town. Burning human remains make a distinct smell. The mayor and his wife went home and hung themselves. You're damn right they knew.
When Eisenhower went into Dachau, he ordered everything, everything be filmed, because he knew there would be deniers. He demanded permanent records.
My dad was in Pattons 3rd Army. He told me a thing or 2.
I remember that story. The mayor and his wife left a very simple suicide note:
"We didn't know!... But we knew."
A commonly cited story, probably because Patton was treated as a hero after the war in the US (despite his obvious character flaws which we now understand a fair bit better.)
I still think there's a part of Patton's narrative which people have struggled to understand well. I don't think any reasonable person would say that the way they shamed the local German citizens was unfair - not with THAT level of obvious atrocities. However, psychologically speaking, the denialism of everyday Germans makes a lot of sense. The actual horrors of those camps would have been **literally** unimaginable to most people no matter what their political views were. So it's very possible to have "known" that people were being murdered jn the camps but not really ever think about the d exteme brutality or to comvince yourself that it somehow "isn't that bad." especially when you're loving through a war time regime that relied on fear to take total power and control over almost all aspects of life. Everyone would have felt powerless at the time, even if they were comparatively safe. This would mess with your mind in all kinds of ways.
I don't think Patton was capable of understanding this.
@EMS Every German city of even moderate size had a camp near it. These weren't extermination camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Büchenwald, but "work camps." The prisoners were simply worked to death instead of gassed. Quit making excuses. Patton was a hero because of his brilliant generalship. He was also right about the Soviets.
My wife’s German Grandfather was a tank driver in the invasion of the USSR. He somehow lived to tell the tale. He came to America in 1948 and lived until 2003. A really nice guy. Great video by the way.
So a nazi.....he was a nazi
A former inmate said that you could see a nearby town from the camp. They sometimes took inmates out of the camp to do slave labor in the towns. Some people slipped prisoners food. Girls refused to dance with SS guards. Somebody had to know something.
I live in a condominium. People talk a lot. You hear everything in town
Yes, so if it happened people would have known, but somehow they didn't. Weird, huh?@@roddyboethius1722
Remember, the camps were rarely in Germany, most being in Poland, which was occupied. The neighbors of those camps can be forgiven as there was nothing they could do.
All of the infamous camps were in Poland and were "liberated" by the Soviets who had full control. They could invent any story they wanted to, and as Commies they probably made the most of it..
No scientific investigation was ever done so all we have to go by are witness accounts of people who stood to gain from it.@@karenaubert8852
@@karenaubert8852there were 1600 sub camps in a network of prison labor housing complexes across all of Germany and occupied territory. Surely anyone could see the prisoners walking to and from factories.
Love the longer videos that go into greater depth!
Long form content.
This is the way!
Ya, this was fantastic
Bad propaganda.
@@ramonandrajo6348 MAGAt..shooo
@@mikelouis9389 Whatever, sheeeeep. XD
One of the most interesting assignments I ever had in college was to research when and what we knew about the Nazis here in the US. We used microfilm (remember that, old people like me???) to create a timeline of what the news was reporting. Turns out, we knew exactly what was happening by 1935. And we had a very good idea as early as 1933. We just didn’t care. There’s no other explanation for the way we flat out ignored what was happening. And it didn’t help that antisemitism was RAMPANT in the US. When I ended up teaching Freshman English at UF I assigned a similar, simplified research project for my students about propaganda in the newspapers of the 30s and 40s. Most people have no idea how incredibly transparent Hitler was. There is no excuse. None. And we should bear that guilt and do better. 😢
My dad and grandfather left Germany in 1938. They knew back then what was coming
WW1 had barely ended and then world's economy was just holding on. It's no mystery why everyone was holding their breath and keeping out of it. We aught to be doing that today with regards to Russia and Ukraine.
@@shanephillips4011 my father was a nuclear physicist cal tech educated, and he told me never hashing it out with Russia would backfire on the world at some point. He was absolutely correct & predicted this. You don't ignore a world menace unless you want them showing up on YOUR doorstep!! Not only is it humanly immoral, anti-American but UNWISE. I don't agree with devoting billions & neglecting your people/country, but if you suggest allowing Russia to do its destructive wars and taking over of other nations is something of no concern, you must be one of them or brain dead.
@@shanephillips4011 If everyone held their breath and wanted to keep out of it, you would be speaking German today, or better still, be confined to a concentration camp. You cannot be an isolationist, because if you advocate that, the cancer will come crawling and invade you. Freedom is not free…..
Can you explain to me how I opened a 1968 encyclopedia and their was nothing about the holocaust or auswitz
"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me"
-Martin Niemöller
I was born long after the Nazi era, but my grandfather always said that everybody knew. Soldiers who came back from the front told their families and friends about it and it spread like wildfire.
My mom, from Hamm, Luxembourg, told this story as well…trusted no one. It had lasting effect on her. Her two younger brothers were dragged off by Nazis. They somehow survived the ordeal although both suffered gunshot wounds. She was aware of the baker and butcher families having disappeared in their small village; they were Jewish. Many sad stories. My son saw Auschwitz on a trip he took in college; the pile of little kids’ shoes upset him; he cried. 😢😢
This is why I find this question so absurd. Only one person needs to start talking about this kind of crazy shit and everyone is going to know soon enough. That’s not gossip you keep to yourself.
What's your point in this
The Germans were bombed very severely in the war and it's over now for eighty years
There were many sufferings since. My family did not know. Do you want to now go after the German people still who simply did the mistake if picking the wrong leader. What do you want from the I'm sick of this. This has been done to death.i don't want to hear this anymore. The Germans were innocent pawns in Hitler's evil schemes. I cannot stand holier than thou people who always attack attack attack
No one knew
Apologies if I'm repeating myself. When I was a teenager my mother showed me a newspaper her father had kept from WW2. She had kept it between two x-Ray sheets so it was still in very good shape. It was dated during the time of WW2 and one of the main Newspapers in Britain. The article denied the "rumours" of death camps in Germany. Britain was in serious danger of being invaded, so I think the denial was to keep the population calm.
The Brits, bless 'em, were about as antisemetic as the Germans and the Poles! The government knew, and was in full support of the extermination of the Jewish vermin. Even Churchill wouldn't put a stop to it.
Or protect their 🫏
I'd be interested to know which paper that was. I'd have a guess at it being the Daily Mail.
Tricky issue. It's very true that the wartime government worked hard to avoid public panic. It was quite literally written into the national plan in the case of invasion. "Keep calm and carry on" was just the first of three posters. It was to be replaced with two others in the case of a Nazi invasion. Look them up. The entire point was to keep the population calm and orderly.
However ... There's still some historical debate about how much the allies knew about the Holocaust and when they knew it. It's certainly true that there were people who could not accept the idea that the Germans would go THAT far. How much of a role they had to play in The widespread denialism is less clear
@@nikkisteer6054 lol. You would think so. But actually British newspapers during the war and British newspapers in recent decades are not quite the same beast.
I asked my grandfather, who was 28 in 1945, what was known in Amsterdam about the fate of the Jews that were deported. Amsterdam had a sizable Jewish population.
His answer was that while people in Amsterdam did not know exactly what happened, they knew it had to be absolutely terrible because nobody ever came back and nobody ever wrote a letter back. He also said that some people in Amsterdam speculated that they were all dead.
people knew, my grandparents were in the war also at that age, in the south of Netherlands, 5 mins from the German border. Even the "allies" knew but they never bothered at least bombing the train tracks etc.
Even the dutch railway tycoon NS got sued in 2013 because it was their tracks and trains who deported JEWS, because it was business trust me they knew what was going on.
There are thousands of letters that have survived today from the camps...not sure where you got that info that no one ever wrote but you're completely wrong.
Those who deared to listen to the BBC news knew what was happened to the Jews from 1943 and forward, because the allies had so strong suspicions that they send out messages that the Germans were gassing Jews in Poland.From Anne Franks diary. Also in 1943 prisoners had been able to escape from Auschwitz’s and reach the Western Allies with drawings and stories from their inmates.
We went on a 3 week long central Europe tour some years back. I came to refer to it as "The Hitler Tour" because we visited a lot of the most famous concentration and death camps. Although many were remotely located in small forests, some were in close proximity to towns and villages, especially Auschwitz I (there's an Auschwitz I and an Auschwitz II). Auschwitz I is practically in the middle of town. Auschwitz II is a mile away on the other side of the tracks. The Warsaw Ghetto was right smack in the middle of Warsaw (it's now apartments and condominiums). Dachau was also in the middle of town. Sobibor was I think the worst case, at about 3.4 miles from the closest town. There's no way that everyday Germans (and people in countries around Germany, where a lot of camps were also located) didn't know what was going on, because many lived right next to the camps, and had neighbors who were running them. They would obviously see trains full of people going in, with no one coming out. And for sure they could hear and smell it all. Everyone knew. Even little kids knew.
Exactly so. “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”. Read it for corroboration of the truth your words.
the camps were quite different. Dachau wasn't an extermination camp. It was not really in the town at the time I suppose and much larger than today's remains. Yet, there was enough to witness. Plus there were the "Außenlager" where people were kept to do forced labour, mostly supporting the war industry. Living in the area and just back from Poland - I can relate to what you say: where ever you go, you stumble across not just "Stolpersteine" (memorial stones in pavements with the name of the deported inhabitants) as in many German cities. And still so much is related to those twelve years, much of what people experienced and carried over to the next generation, the whole suffering of Poland being forced to give up Eastern territories and gain Western ones. Communism to follow right on the heel of the German oppressors leaving. Luckily, these days the inhibitions to talk about it amongs Europeans have lessened. Still in the 1980s, you would hang your head low when going abroad and hoped to disguise your nationality. Well, that didn't apply to everyone though. And till today it is necessary to correct some people, if they repeat distorted stories or for instance whitewash the reasons why the Nazis seemingly had a functioning economy. Well, if you raid half a continent, enslave and rob people, I wouldn't call that an economy. It is barbarism, murder and theft.
Yes, but think, if you were living near such a place, would you be proud and tell every one?
You are the first person I've ever heard acknowledge the Romani genocide during WWII. THANK YOU! I remember the scars on backs and legs, numbers on arms, and sorrowful eyes of my oldest family members. We were still marginalized after WWII, but those that immigrated to America worked hard to achieve an American Dream.
I'm not sure, but believe that even Israel's Holocaust Museum has articles about the Genocide of the Romani. I myself had been taught that the Romani were in fact the FIRST sent to the death camps.
People in Easter Europe are taught about porajmos
It’s there at Yad Vashem- the exhibition of the Romani Genocide.
You should read some history. The US Holocaust Museum talks about the Romani Genocide too.
Are you also going to America? So far your group is still unfortunately known for stealing.
My grandfather was a teenager during WW2. He, a German living in Westfalia, collected many news articles about the war and had a "diary" that basically only noted the dates and times when bombs fell on the city. We still have these news articles and even just skimming through them was very eerie. The tonal shift from before it was clear the war was lost to when it was is like a 180 turn-around. Went from all this appraisal and propaganda to this deep resignation and quiet horror.
If I were to scan them, does anybody know a good place, historians or an archive that gathers these kinds of information?
You could ask the archive or museum of the city he took notes about if they would be interested. Such detailed note taking is quite valuable to historians!
Just scan them host em and put the links out, the internet will do the rest
Outstanding content,thank you.
I think you should scanned them anyway and maybe make them public so anyone could use them for some historical research. I was actually going through my great grandfather ww2 stuff yesterday… I need to scan this scan this as well. We are the last generation who actually spoke to the people who lived and survived ww2 .They were our families…. For the next generation that will be just a history.
You did a very special thing by creating this remarkably thoughtful and detailed video. The Nazis killed almost everyone in my family and today we see a new acceptance of present day Nazis which I did not imagine happening in my lifetime. Thank you for pushing back against that development with your powerful look backward.
It's only a matter of time and of choosing the right victims, I'm afraid. No matter how many pictures of pogroms, forced ghettos and camps, and of course registered depositions of victims, the haters will deny it to the end. Still, it's up to us human beings, to never forget. Just like slavery and civil rights in the US, to never forget.
@@imalrockme Yes. Apparently, being open minded can mean entertaining the possibility that every historic site, eye witness account and all the documentation might be faked. Perhaps some people can't be reached.
@@jozsefizsak At 42 I've already realized that some people can't be reached. It's only a matter of not letting them spread lies and reach power.
@imalrockme Do some people deny that Jews have been persecuted, imprisoned and killed or left to die in WWII? Because i have never met or heard of any such person.
@@bluesea2023 The proof that such person exists is that the German Government had to criminalize the denial of the Holocaust. That's what Hitler's little helpers do.
My 16 year old mother at the time living in a small town in Australia heard of these atrocities.
Australia?
They printed stuff about what the Germans were doing in American newspapers before the Berlin Olympics that was why they the American Jews wanted to boycott the Olympics.
Australians and New Zealanders fought in WWII for the allies along with Aborigines and Māoris. We were bombed by the Japanese a few times but they failed miserably at doing any damage. People love to forget Australia went through the war too
@@isabelp187 they killed over 100 people in bombings in Broome western Australia.
As a german thinking of myself as being historically very well informed i must say this is one of the rare very well made and accurately researched and produced document on the topic.
Imho it could and should be used for educational purposes right away.
I'm now a long time follower of your videos and various productions but i want to state this is undoubtedly one of your masterpieces. Thank you!
Thanks! -Daven
@@hkchan1339 I wouldn't want to imagine brain blaze simon reading this script,
allegedly
I recommend the channel "Three Arrows" for more in depth content about Nazi Germany.
@@ryno4ever433 I’d like to know more about the swimming pool in Auschwitz.
@@ryno4ever433 i’d recommend world war two by Indy and Spartacus
I‘m German and can say one thing about this before I’m going to watch the video. The German public knew a lot. They may have not known exactly what happened to the people that were deported but they did know and notice that their neighbours were disappearing or even being deported on public. There are still a lot of people in Germany denying that they or their parents or grandparents had known anything and many even claim that they helped. That’s factually not true. Under one percent of the German population at the time has engaged in activities opposing nazi rule or just helping people that were particularly affected (like Jews, poles, other minority groups or just groups deemed lower or unworthy by the nazis). The people that lived at the time knew that those people that were deported, harassed and in speeches declared enemies or lower “races“ were killed or enslaved. And after all there were still a lot of people living nearby concentration camps and those are - considering their size - hard to hide. So over all it is very certain that the German public knew a lot about what was going on and were at least able to speculate that those who were deported or just disappeared over night, were probably send to camps to be executed or enslaved.
I recall a German reporting 'I asked my father where the Jews were going, and he said "Nowhere good." and left it at that .'
Germany, even before the Nazis, wasn't a place where a child would ask their father to elaborate where or to explain why. Not to excuse anybody, but modern people can not easily understand how dictatorial and often violent _fathers_ were back then…which is one way you get Nazis.
Germany is tiny logistically there’s no way to hide that they saw the thick clouds of black smoke and they certainly saw the Jews being loaded on the trains at the train stations. They certainly knew about the ghetto as it was right in front or their face and the Jews / other victims were being used as slave labor so even rural Germans knew because the Jews were out in their fields being beat and whipped.
You can’t discreetly kill 8 million people you just can’t
Thank you for further insight. I’m so worried about the echoes that are happening now in the U.S
@@ginadoyle4089I read a true story about a Jewish woman who was something called a “sub “ or something similar. Many could pass as German.
This woman moved around after her mother and members of her family were, as far as she knew, taken to a work camp.
She ended up marrying a German low level soldier who knew she was Jewish but did not care. She became a mother.
She lived in a city that was in eastern Germany. It was after she heard on British news, which was not allowed for anyone, near the end of the war, that she began to figure out something.
When she started to hear rumours about concentration camps, she was shocked.
She truly believed that her mother was in a labor camp and that she would see her after the war.
As far as her neighbors, they also had the same idea.
I truly believe that if you did not live near the Camps, you may not have known.
There is a memorable collective statement in the museum at Buchenwald by the survivors shortly after the camp was liberated. The general theme was "you all knew, don't tell us you didn't know" and mentions in particular that many of the prisoners were sent on forced-labour work gangs into local towns and cities such as Weimar and Jena, where they would have been witnessed by and even worked alongside ordinary Germans.
My dad was there a Navy medic attached with the Marines that marched into the concentration camps he told me before he died that there is no way in hell they didn't know those places were there because the stink from the dead bodies traveled for miles and miles. My dad went into World War II a Mormon returned missionary, and when he returned home he was a full-blown alcoholic for the next 60 years. He died in 2008 of cirrhosis of the liver.
So? Even if the few people living directly next to the camps knew there was some nasty stuff going on, what would they do about it? Not like they had smartphones to sneak around and take pic to share on whatsapp or talk about it on twitter. The best they could have done was maybe talk about it in the next pub, literally risking their life. Also keep in mind that all the death camps were actually outside of Germany, so the ones getting what was going on could do even less than maybe some German citizen.
There was the smell of death in Okinawa
kinda applicable today, a scary proposition; history does not repeat, it rhymes
"the Nazis tried to convince everyone that the german brass was all about peace and had a responsibility to protect the germans and take up arms to protect the peace."
"They further pushed hard for the fact that they needed to defend against supposedly agressive poland"
"They stated that Poland was extremely agressive against germany iself by flagrantly attacking "
"Once germany invaded poland the press was instructed to not reference this as a War nor Invasion but simply Germany repelling polish attacks"
This SEEMS VERY VERY familiar ...
Literally every modern war. The Russians do it, The U.S. does it too, North Korea wants to do it.
What?
'Special military operation'?
@@rewdwarf123 exchange poland with ukraine and germany with russia ... its the EXACT same situation
100%... you should go at them hard, when they flex their mind reading tech it is disturbing to say the least.
I am from germany:
The people knew something horrible was going on and most didnt care. There are letters of ordinary people to the SS asking: "My neighbor is a Jew and has a bigger apartment then me, when is he getting deported?" There is also the fact that the "de-nazification" only went so far. You need judges, architects ect to run a country and germany was devastated from the war... Lastly there is the point that the younger generation was indoctrinated and many people held onto those believes for life (my grandfather held people with disabilities in contempt for his whole life...) I think the greatest gift the post war generation got was that they were NOT raised on those believes, newer generations were raised with knowledge of the nazi atrocities and germans later confronted the nazi heritage...
Germany is a fine example to us all. I just hope the Russians take note.
"most didn't care" ... Was it this or their fear of getting swept up into either side? I am 1/2 of german descent, emigrated to the US in the mid 1800s.
@@jenniferg2771See the literal letters op referred to asking for their Jewish neighbors to be deported. I'm so tired of this bs propaganda promoted by operation paperclip, that the Germans by and large had any legitimate reason to fear for their safety through most of the war. The fact is they were eager to steal their neighbor's possessions and property and atrocities were perpetuated from bottom up, by the common people inspired to action by hateful rhetoric. There is abundant scholarship on this. Stop making excuses for it
@@jenniferg2771you are in a country that hosts neo-nazis. How many people care about it?
@@jenniferg2771well some were participants especially early on before Germany industrialized human slaughter.
My grandmother in law was born in Austria in 1928. She said that they knew about “work camps” but didn’t know the details. One neighbor refused to fight in the war and was sent to a camp. When the war was over he was returned but was completely broken and committed _______ a few years later. Her brother on the other hand knew he couldn’t refuse and died on the front lines shortly after being drafted.
They were just work camps. You don't give swimming pools, theaters, commisaries, and arts & crafts to death camp inmates.
I hope you’re joking @@gratefulguy4130
@@gratefulguy4130 the best part of you became a brown stain on the sheets
@@gratefulguy4130 You do if you're building propaganda campaigns to convince people that the death camps weren't death camps. You've been taken in by the same propaganda.
@@gratefulguy4130 What a stupid comment.
🙄
And now Israel does this to another Semitic group.
Thanks you for this Simon. It was well written and informative. As a Jew who still faces antisemitism even in the present day, it’s incredibly meaningful to see someone speak about what really happened, and just how many people knew.
The saddest part of all is that Palestine, the ONE nation that took in Jewish refugees when no one else in the international community would, has now suffered decades of apartheid and ethnic cleansing at the hands of an illegal occupier in their land called Israel. And if you call that "anti-semitism," you've subscribed to the propaganda. I have no quarrel with the Jewish faith, but the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians proves that the victims became the perpetrators.
I am not a Jew. But I’m a huge fan of saying when I encounter someone who is, something similar to this “Well, you’d better never use a doctor or medical invention as many of them are done by Jews. Don’t use a computer either, as many Jews work in that field. Oh yes, don’t make use of most of the Nobel Prize winning inventions as many of them were done by Jews. Now are you someone who likes being an idiot or what?” Honestly I don’t understand insanity.
@@nathanjustus6659 Did you mean to say "...when I encounter someone who is anti-semetic..."?
@@Factchekka Yes indeed, bad phrasing on my part.
עם ישראל חי,
Look where we are today, look where the Nazis are now.
This TIFO episode is a masterpiece...one of the best you have ever done in my opinion (and I've seen most of your videos, if not all). You still have the best channel on YT and I love your dedication to the details, the nuance of the events dicussed and the broader view of the times in which they happened. Thank you for the continued awesomeness of my education.
Thanks! :-) -Daven
Couldn’t agree more
Agreed, well research and presented.
Nobody comes close to WWII history like Mark Felton does.
I am born 1962 and my father was 8 years old when WWII ended. He lived in a small village under very poor circumstances. Nobody had the money go pay for newspaper or had Acces to international radio and so on. But he told me, that people did know. They did not talk about it, but evrybody knew. So he told me, they had a soap, and the soap used to swim in the water. And the people said, it is swimming on the water, because it is made out of Jews. As a child he could not understand it. But later he remembered. Actually I think this rumor was proven false, but it shows, that people had been well aware, that terrible things happend in the KZ, even in the remotest areas.
Hey, amazing video. Little critic point, might you slow down your talking a bit. The information is dense and very interesting and, thus, it makes it hard to follow when you are talking very fast
I remember hearing a review of a book about jokes told by everyday people during WW2, the German populace had jokes about trying to cover up the holocaust, so I don't doubt that most knew, even if they would not admit it outside of a joke, which is a way people deal with realities that are uncomfortable. One of the best things the Western Allies did in Europe was forcing local germans to tour the liberated camps, so they could not deny it happened, or that they were aware of it.
I only knew 1 german family . My sister married the son ,never brought up there . But his mother ,thought Goering was a looker ,the family got a shop in Hamburg from Jews , which took a direct hit in bombing . Her father was killed and she lay in the cellar for 3 days . Not much to make my mind up on ,but nothing to defend Germans either.
It wasn't labeled misinformation?
I wonder if they did the same thing for the black soldiers they hung after they returned back to the US
This should be done with russians after their defeat in Ukraine. They have to start taking responsibility for their actions.
@@i.b.640 yes, they've known about the Hard labour camps, which where already really bad. But they didn't know about the "death" camps, which run under the same name. Overall, it wasn't a nice time to live in. A fearful time when you could trust no one and had to be careful what you said. There were attacks on Hitler by Germans. Stauffenberg is probably one of the best known. But they all failed. Some hide there neighbours or jews in there houses, but that was no life for them either, only a survival.
There's a story about the great filmmaker Billy Wilder, who was Austrian, but had gone to America and then was director of a US Army film crew that made a film about the liberation of the camps. The film was shown in towns and villages across the country, but no one stayed, everyone kept walking out early. So they took their food vouchers on going into the cinema and only gave them back when the film was finished. It was the only way they could make German citizens sit through the entire film.
Any chance you know the source for that interesting story. It has a slight whiff of being a little "too perfect."
Every single camp labelled as "for extermination" was liberated by the soviets, guy's full of it.
@Trevor Brannon Mate, you are the same as letter-droppers delivering junk mail to every house. No-one reads your s***, it just goes straight in the bin. Try and be relevant.
@Trevor Brannon You can't film something "20 years later".
Billy Wilder was himself a survivor. He found out the Gestapo was looking for him and fled to France.
His family was killed. He had a hard time getting us residency and was in fear of being deported.
I once asked my grandparents for stories of the time. My oldest grandpa was born in 1924 and the youngest one, my grandma in 1936. So while my grandpa on my mothers side remembers the war very well and even fought in it as a young adult, my grandma on my dads side was too young to remember anything but a few bombs and the post-war state of her city. I couldnt ask all of them since some died but here is what I found out:
My mothers side:
Grandpa: He was a socialist and hated the NSDAP and Nazis. He was an athlete (running, sprint) and about to apply to go to the olympics but then got drafted to fight in the army. He kept his political views hidden to protect his family (wife and 7 kids) and as a pacifist somehow managed to get a job as a driver in italy for some higher official so he didnt have to fight. Except he did have to go to russia in the end. With a few of his comrades he was taken prisoner after some russians killed his guard dog. He stayed prisoner for a while and got released after the war was over. Until his death, he didnt talk about the war. All I know is pieced together from stories told by other family members. But I remember him as very carefree and openminded to other religions and even members of the LGBTQ community.
Grandma: She fas a firm believer in the Nazi ideology. Being part of the "Bund deutscher Mädels" and head of the house with her own farm, she said that of couse she knew people vanished. But BDM girls had all the necessities for clothes and cooking, her kids were safe as long as nobody acted out and with her husband being out in the army, she rather chose to submit to the regime and its ideals than bring danger to her family. Until she died she hated jews. Also, while she loved having grandchildren, she always saw boys as being worth more than girls. Always saw her catholic raised grandkids as more valuable than the protestant ones. It was very obvious when looking at who got what for chrismas from her. Living in the part controlled by the french after the war also gave her an intense hatred for them, as they didnt particularily care about treating even regular civiliant with dignity a lot of times.
My dads side:
Grandpa: Having 5 older brothers and being barely 15 he managed to evade getting drafted. And living in a city that was relatively unaffected by the war, he was impacted more by the post war time than the actual ww2- Most of his stories surround the occupational forces. His home city was part of the american occupied territory but right on the border to the french one. He also didnt lose any immediate family members to the war or in the aftermath. To his death, he never really talked about the time either but it was obvious that he never adopted any of the ideologies the nazi regime taught. While conservative, he was never hateful or bigoted on the outside. He said the concept of the concentration camps was known, but being a teenage he only realized the severity of what happened after the war when he was older. But he never felt guilty about it or like he had a part in it.
Grandma: Being barely a teen by the end of the war, she only remembers bomb sounds and alarm sirens but not much else. The aftermath of the war was obviously hard on her as she came from a heavily bombed city and suffered through a time of too little food, water and necessities. Her coping mechanism seems to be denial. It became clearer, the more I talked to her, that she doesnt just not want to remember the time but is actively denying, supressing and changing her own memories and versions of events. It's to a point that she denies the concentration camps existed for as long as they did and to the scale they did. She scknowledges their existence but puts the blame to anyone but germany or people related to her or the family. I'm pretty sure at this point she doesnt even realize it anymore. Being in the early stages of Alzheimers its hard enough for her to remember and tell a coherent version of certain events already. If any subject related to the war, Nazis, camps, etc comes up, she actively changes the subject and ignores any inquiries or comments about the time, even if they have nothing to do with her.
do you think they deserved dignity?
@@jessc5112 Everybody does. I do agree with the first article or the german constitution.
(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
And while I cannot in good faith defend their actions or approve of them in any way, I still believe every human deserves to be met with a base level of respect. Because I know if I treat them without it, they will treat me the same way.
In my opinion my grandparents should have been confronted more with the reality of their actions, but since 3 of them are dead and the last one alive has Alzheimers that is sadly impossible. And since I havent been in the situation they've been in its hard for me to fully judge it you know? Because if I had a family and 7 kids.. who knows how I would behave in their situation. I cant say with confidence that I'd stand up to an oppressive regime and risk getting killed. Or maybe I'd flee the country? I'm not sure
Interesting, the different responses.
@@Jays-Dream i think you should get what you earn.
@@jessc5112 I dont quite understand what you mean by that. For one, again, my grandparents are mostly dead so nothing can be done there. And second, some were kids and teens during the regime; some had a family to protect and were scared. Wothout knowing their full circumstances I would never dare to judge them just on the basis of "they existed during the Nazi era and were part of the system, because well, they were born and raised there". I can condemn their actions and criticize their beliefs after the war; but they are still people. I'm firmly against the "an eye for an eye" approach
I think of the average German citizen in the 1930s as the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. Even German Jews did not see the writing on the wall until it was too late. I blame those in power, and the citizens who enthusiastically supported them even after the horrors were well under way. The average person may have a hero inside him but few can actually overcome their fear enough to become a hero. That's why we applaud them and tell their stories.
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained
~ Aleksandir Solzhenitsyn
My mother in law was a survivor she told me that even if you wanted to leave you ccould not because the Nazis took all your money and the other countries didn’t let you in unless you had a certain amount. So they were trapped until a cousin in UK sponsored her.
Yeah, the so-called "Reichsfluchtsteuer". I once researched archive documents on Jews emigrating to Paraná, in South America, as "farmers". And I remember this one very wealthy Jew from Berlin, a shop owner, who had over a million Reichsmark to her name. She managed to escape, but they took 96% of her money. 😳
@@Petra44YT Whenever a pogrom occurs, there is an exit tax. Egypt did it when they deported their Jews in the 50s
The Jew says completely oblivious to the fact that IT WASN'T THEIR MONEY. You STOLE it from the good noble Germanic people and patriot of humanity Hitler GAVE IT BACK TO THEM. Tough.
Short answer. Yes they did.
Over 700,000 Germans were killed by the 3rd Reich. My grandmother was threatened with the camps for questioning the Reich and the war. She was saved by the mayor of her village. They knew what was going on. They stayed quiet to avoid the others fate
☕
True, a guide in Auschwitz told us a good example to cleear this out. There were actual internships at concentration camps. There were young German women who would travel to Auschwitz for a summer internship, overlook female inmates (inclouding shooting them for fun if they were on guard duty) and go back home when summer was over. Pilecki's reports are still considered exaggerated though, since he only had second-hand information about the crematories and based on his statistics they would have been more efficient than a modern foundry furnance.
I believe the Nazis were holding Germany hostage by the ever threat of death for speaking against the Reich
Even with the internet, people didn't want to believe that the last three years were a lie.
Back then, the propaganda was thick.
Also, if you DARED to talk about the deaths in the camps?
You then ended up in a camp. Or worse.
@@theultimatesuhaksource?
I was stationed in Germany during the 70s. Most of the Germans i met denied aving any knowledge of what was going on. I can believe that for towns that had no camps nearby. I found it hard to believe for towns that had a camp nearby. The smell of burning bodies didn't stop at the fence.
I am from a Yiddish family. One of my forebears, who was alive at the time, once said to me, about the German nation: "They were all Nazis as long as they were winning".
Yea they seem quite adept at lying to themselves and everyone else, dont see any freedom of speech or to bear arms there tho
There were over 100,000 camps for jews and other peoples in germany for various reasons. The germans knew about it all right and what was going on and CANNOT deny it.
@@sirmalus5153 at this point most of the ones to blame have passed but they raised the ones still around and just looking at their personal rights loopholes proves they learned very little. Prisons seem half decent but may be the exception to the rule. Free speech is basically free to speak what we apporve in retrospect. Gun rights are more like never be able to learn til the payments start or from elders less they go to jail, spend a year paying fees, jumping through hoops, taking classes, registering on 3 lists thatll be used to harass and justify spying on you, never being able to have any sort of weapon outside the home after all that (must have a lot of deer overpopulation), really have nowhere to practice and if so its the most generic, restricted, scrutinized, paper target bs a child could do. Then after all that harassed by police and if someone breaks in youre still expected to just flee your own house because if you do shoot them for any reason youll be in jail too. When you let cowards and corrupt fks and weak frightful easily bought people do your thinking for you they will vote for self imprisonment and short sighted self defeating bs every time.. then blame others for the problems that result.
@@ThirtytwoJ 😂😂😂
Happening again too. Only this time the target fought back and theyve already shut down the camps.
We will have justice. And this time it will be permanent.
I attended a largely Jewish and Christian public high school in the US. I specifically remember in my sophomore year, some exchange students from Germany coming and staying with us for a few weeks. One of the first things most of them said an apology for WW2 and the holocaust. My gf, who is a descendant of holocaust survivors has also known many Germans who apologize for their country’s past. The people of Germany now are not to blame for the actions of the past.
Indeed. Why apologise for something you're not personally responsible for?
@@rewdwarf123 they were definitely partially responsible. None of them want to admit they let it happen, but they did. It's why you should be very weary of the presence of any "out" group that people want gone, but they can't or won't say how. I'm thinking trans people and the homeless, two groups the Nazis went after early.
@@bradbradford8576 partially respondsable for what they where not even born
You miss the point that these exchange students understood. They don’t have to hold themselves personally responsible but their apology shows that they understand and acknowledge past wrongs. That’s something a lot of Americans can’t bring themselves to do, and it will inevitably result in more tragedy. Understanding and acknowledging the past is so critically important to preventing similar crimes in the future. That’s something the Germans sadly understand.
@@mr.joeyfreshwater7231 So Christians are really cycling buts. They think people are guilty for two naive people who are some fruit thousands of years ago.
My grandfather born in 1924 was a French resistant. He never uttered a word of the war, the memory was too much and he decided to lock that part of his life away. I hope that now he is finally free from this trauma and rests peacefully.
How can you not know in such situation ? nonsense!
everybody knew everything.
when your neighbours vanish, your co workers, your friends, just ordinary people you see everyday, businesses closed and so on.... how can one not know?
nobody's buying that. everybody knew everything.
And the majority probably bought the propaganda and was happy with what germany was doing, kind of like what it happening in israel right now...many people knew what was going on, they just didn't care
There were a good number who knew, and who did little things to fight against it. That is how my father escaped from landing up in a concentration camp, the nurses at the hospital he was recovering at helped him to escape, a few weeks before he was due to be transported to a camp.
Nice, there are a lot of these small stories all over Europe, which need to be remembered, but at the same time we need to remember the bad stories too.
@@noth606 history is made of all the stories!
Even doing those little things were massive risks to them and their families.
Fighting against it could have resulted in Germany losing the war. That's the problem and something that people in this comment section seem to forget. GErmany was locked in an all-or-nothing war and if they lost, germany would have been erased. So revolting against the government wasn't necessarily an option worth considering.
@@penelopedrakos7825 "Germany would have been erased". Given they were hell-bent on destroying the Jews of Europe and other "undesirables", the RISK of destruction of Germany as a sovereign nation should have been acceptable to moral people. No owe would have thought that Germans civilians would have been slaughtered en masse. When your state is lead by a madman and has become an evil in the world, it is time to overthrow the madman and let the chips fall where they may. You are arguing for German patriotism when the state had become an evil empire.
They may not have known full details but they knew enough to suspect something was not right. People disappearing to be never seen again, the smell from the furnaces, forced evictions and much more
The US didn't know it was happening until after the war. So you can create a false narrative all you want and interject your opinion.
There was a place in Germany where the people did suspect and they rebelled against the authorities and because of that the town remained untouched by the regime.
I know what you're trying to do.
You're trying to dehumanise the Germans from the period to justify what you think and say/said.
The German civilians were still victims of horrible war crimes just like the Ukrainians.
What you see happening in Ukraine isn't even half of what happened in Germany.
And what could the civilians do?
The regime ruthlessly disposed of any opposition.
Also the Russians kept those same camps working after capturing them and no one did anything about them either.
And yet these same signs are happening in China right now and the world sits and does nothing again.
@@andregon4366 No, what he is saying is that they might well not have known exactly what was happening but they knew SOMETHING was happening beyond the official line. I lived in Germany and have heard exactly what he has said from veterans who survived the Eastern front. One went as far as to tell his daughter she was "decieving herself " when she tried to protest that people didn´t know anything. The "Your´re trying to dehumanize the Germans" is simply trying to silence the OP. They didn´t imply what you claim, and their point is valid. And Ukraine now has nothing to do with the Nazis then.
@@andregon4366 The difference is that the Ukrainians have the guts to stand up to the occupiers. They are acting and are willing to sacrifice their lives to defend their country. Many of the German civilians were perfectly content with the Nazis and did nothing to stop them.
Extraordinarily brave Polish soldier !!
most important thing: he did things no soldier can be ordered to do. he did things you should do as a man.
Complete badassery there. Mad props to the man.
Read about Pilecki in a book about WW2 spies and double agents.
Indeed, thats why sabaton wrote a song about him: inmate 4859
@@robinderoos1166 just came to the comments to say this
Just "defending themselves". That sounds familiar in this modern era
I was thinking the same thing. Also sad that Palestinians were one of the only ones to take them in and now look how they’re being treated. Horrible.
Palestiniasn never took them, where the Zionist Who emmigrated to the mandate in the 1900s.
My late grandparents told me that even in their tiny rural German village, people heard rumors about prison camps no one returned from. But talking about it was too dangerous, even the preschool teachers implored their students to tell on their parents. Everyone could be a Gestapo spy.
There was no free media and no independent source of information though so very few people really knew facts, much less the magnitude of the horrors.
But yes, people knew something was going on and that it was bad.
"Unthinkable"... but it is currently happening in many countries
what exacly?
@@marvin2678 ,
Acts of Genocide and the general publics lack of acknowledgement till long afterwards.
We, humans, are very good at turning a blind eye to horrors around us because... we don't want it to happen to us!
@@marvin2678 Uighurs in China
@@marvin2678 russia to Ukraine
@@TheUnsubScribe does that technically count as a genocide? Totally serious question, because I'm not sure.
I took a class last semester literally called “The Nazis”, learned everything to do with the party. We often talked about how much the public knew. Like really deep discussions and debates. I think they knew more than we give them credit for but fear was at an all time high and speaking out against the Nazis could lead to worse results. Really we all think we are going to be the person that says no when in reality if we were to put on their shoes we would’ve done the same.
Very true.
This has been proven in studies.
It's not just we would put our head down and ignore it. It is far more likely that we would blame the Jews for the chaos and destruction in our country. If we allowed ourselves to truly realize the Injustice that was going on we couldn't stand ourselves we would either become suicidal or homicidal.
@@FlyOverZone Homicidal is what happened.
@@HAIRHOLIC_1 Germany had one of the most educated populations in history.
Hey Simon, I don't know if it's you or your microphone's sensitivity settings/audio mixing, but sometimes I find myself having to rewind a couple times because I didn't catch some words.
It's good work otherwise, but that can be frustrating and it's not the only channel I've encountered this odd problem with.
Yeah, me too. The s sounds are quite harsh but as I am not native I cannot tell whether it comes from the accent or it is the microphone
My grandfather had a friend he met while designing a factory in the Deep South. His friend was German, born in Dresden, ( I'll call him Franz) When Franz was seventeen, his father, who was a physician, sent his mother, sister, and him, to England. This was in 1936, and his father could see which way the wind was blowing. His father helped numerous Jews to escape to England and the U. S. The friend was attending Oxford University in England when the British had him act as an interpreter for German P.O.W.'s. Later he was sent to a German P.O.W camp in the U.S to be an interpreter. When I met him....I was nineteen years old, so understood very well what that whole period in history was about. Franz said that when he interrogated P.O.W.'s in the U. S. the prisoners would say exactly what year the Germans would invade the U. S. They said the date set for invasion was 1946. He said the prisoners believed this so firmly that any evidence to the contrary was just American propaganda. Franz's father was caught and was shot to death. The only reason they new it was that a neighbor in Dresden, saw him being dragged out of his clinic and was shot right there in the street. They left his body in the street, and it was the neighbors who buried him. For those interested in an entirely different problem during that history, watch HITLER'S CHILDREN. What the children of war criminals had to deal with is difficult, and include two having themselves sterilized due to the fear of being just like their fathers or mothers. A mind-bending documentary. It's clear that no one was left untouched by the holocaust.
Part of my family comes from Mauthausen where they had one concentration camp. Never spoke to the relatives from back then directly but their children told us that everybody knew exactly what was going on, even the young children knew. According to them everybody just tried to ignore it since talking about it or saying anything against it even was dangerous.
yes exactly. Cognitive dissonance.
@@samaraisnt the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, could not be easily forgotten until their dying days.
@@samaraisnt Not really. Survival. Its bad enough to be brave to speak out or even act out, when its ur own life on the line. When its the lives of ur entire family? Children, siblings, parents, grandparents, the lot?
When u can trust noone, and even the slightest criticism can get u and ur family sent to the camps urselves or worse, not speaking isnt cognitive dissonance. Its pure survival.
Cowards.
I’m glad you put the time article into context because I have always just heard he was man of the year and like most assumed they were just praising him. It’s my fault as I never looked into it (lesson learned) but because you put it into context and explained it I have a much better understanding of it. Thank you!
You wrote, referring to "time-article," and using only pronouns, "he," "him" and "it." To which Time-article, about what, to whom and to what did you refer?
Time Magazine doesnt name their Man of the Year, now Person of the Year, for doing something good. They name that person for making a big impact, whether good, bad or both. Not at all the same criteria as the Nobel Peace Prize, which Hitler was also nominated for 3 times, and obviously never received.
@@ericgrosch8073 The Time Magazine Man of the Year article of 1938; Hitler was given the title.
Mia culpa too. I should have dug deeper into the time article to get to the truth, but the whole subject was soooo tacky, that I did not want to get my hands dirty.
I have no way of knowing your age. But it took me a long time to understand that “The Man of the Year” cut both ways. Plus, Time isn’t as important as it use to be.
My mother's family, totaling 14, experienced WWII firsthand and immigrated to the US in '57. They knew, and is was a great source of shame for them. They NEVER talked about it and if asked about the camps or what they knew, their answers (if any) were short with no details.
I did a study abroad program this past summer in Austria, the class was on the rise of the Nazis, I have always loved history, but I was never able to grasp history quite like I did during that program. It was powerful and very sobering / sad at times. I could go on and on about what I learned, but we did read a lot of journals and learned about those who did not approve of the Nazis but could not speak out against them. Although it cant be ignored that there are also a lot of people who also bought into the ideology and threw flowers or celebrated the Anschluss. (Austrians made up 8% of the Reich's population but yet 75% of concentration camp commanders were Austrian.)
As far as the people knowing what was happening to those in camps ill share this. I have traveled before to Dachau but this time around I saw Mauthausen, It was a labor camp where the prisoners were forced to quarry stone and were often worked to death or kicked into quarry pits for "fun". Anyways this quarry resided on a large hill right next some small towns at the bottom of the hill. When the Nazis burned bodies from the prisoners, black smoke and ash exited the smoke stack, the people in the town could see the smoke and smell the stench of death / burned bodies. They absolutely knew what was happening, they had a constant reminder from the smells that emitted from that place.
I feel like I had never heard of Mauthausen before I visited but it is probably one of the best preserved camps because it was entirely made of quarried stone, so the SS weren't able to burn it down as they left. But really take any chance you get to see one of these camps at least once, its important that we don't forget, and it will certainly be an unforgettable and bone chilling experience if you know what happened there.
You missed so much about Pilecki. I really encourage anyone who likes history, WW2 history, cool people or really cares about anything to read The Volunteer. It's such a good book. One amazing thing he did was figure out how to assassinate ss guards by putting typhoid infected lice in their coat collars. This would sicken and sometimes kill the guards but there weren't any repercussions.
i read that book from my school library and its incredible to see the lengths that he went to in order to tell the truth. i will never forget it.
This guy reminds me of the main character in the Wolfenstein video game series ^^
Just downloaded The Volunteer, thanks for the Reco. One you might like is It Never Snows In September, by Robert Kershaw. It covers the Market Garden campaign from the German perspective. Full of interviews and testimonials from surviving Germans in the campaign. Really interesting.
Thanks for the Recommendation!!
He did a whole video on Pilecki already
The stories I have from my grandparents are wild. Both are from Germany and because my grandmother was a farm girl and my grandfather was a city boy they both have totally different points of view of what was going on at the time. Both were far enough away from the concentration camps that they really didn’t know what was happening. My grandmother’s farm was confiscated and as they were driven out. She had to hide her brothers every night so they were not taken as soldiers despite them being 13 and 14.
My grandfather made a comment the other day about how he was involved in the hitler youth camps ( we were talking about Boy Scouts both my cousins are Eagle Scouts). He was trying to make the point that he was taught wilderness survival. My grandmother who is still comes out with shock and horrify me ( there is an age where you just have to let things go ( they are 92) pointedly told my grandfather that they were teaching him to be a soldier.
Irony though, he moved to America and was almost immediately snapped up into the us army, it wasn’t until his superior wanted to move him up a rank that anyone in the armed forces realized that he didn’t even have a green card yet
Soldiers who liberated the camps said they could smell the stench of death from miles away. The smell is what led them to the camps. So…either the German civilians had no sense of smell - or they 100% knew.
Well the only deaths in camps liberated by western Allies were from Typhus as all of the alleged extermination camps happened to be liberated by the soviets
Exactly my answer to this
There is no way in hell
They definitely knew, what they didn’t know was how, they were treated or how they were killed.
I visited Bergen Belsen for the first time in May of 2019. I grew up and lived about an hours drive from there. Nobody talked about the Holocaust much. One of my teachers in Highshool decided to change that. We researched my Hometown and the concentration camps. The location of Belsen is somewhat secluded. And when you see the size of this camp in particular you understand how overcrowded it was. But the smell and sounds of it could not have been completely hidden. Plus these poor prisoners where marched through town upon arrival. On top of that plenty of people informed on their neighbors. I don't believe anybody that denies this horrible tragedy.
Definitely happened 6 million is a stretch though
@@ItsJustCastro i don't think that there will ever be an exact number on this.
I'm not German but I live in Germany. There's a podcast here in Germany called Mordlust, and in one of their episodes they talk about what was done to handicapped people during WWII. It's made very clear Germans knew what was going on. They knew what it meant when the buses came to take their disabled relatives to the "hospital" and eventually started fighting back. I don't think anyone in Germany except the far right pretends as though the general public was innocent/unaware. Especially now that so much time has passed, because no one feels directly responsible. Pretending not to have known was a coping mechanism for during and after the war.
Dude maybe 1%, probably even less, were living near a Vernichtungslager. When I ask my grandpa he says my family did not know and my grandpa is definitely not on the far right. Stop the bs. If you live here you should you can gladly come to my place and talk to him.
so basically you say: there were people who knew what those buses meant and started fighting back but they were also not innocent. Great logic. Can it be that you just hate Germans for being Germans? Doesnt this make you a racist and therefor far right?
What does the Israeli public know about the atrocities commuted against unarmed civilians including children and babies in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the name of humanity, don’t disgrace the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust.
My one grandfather was in his early 20’s when he went to Europe for ww2 and he stayed some years after to help rebuild. His time in the war aged him he had gray hair and looked like he aged 20 years. Can’t imagine what everyone went through and it’s crazy after ww2 any nation ever wanted to go to war again.
To be fair, this is what has kept Europe at peace and largely demilitarized since WW2. The exception being Russia which never turned off the propaganda machine in their determination *not* to let people remember.
@@vanyadolly What held Europe together was its inability to wage war. European countries stopped waging war because they no longer had the strength to do so. France lost the war for its colonies in 1954 etc. It is also a myth that we have learned something. We are bloodthirsty, selfish creatures who start wars whenever possible.
@@vanyadolly If we got away with it and it was profitable, we would continue to conquer other countries and murder. Today we would probably do it even more productively than the Germans during WWII
@@vanyadolly no comment on US cover operations and overt warefar? Wow
@@vanyadolly What about Bosnia? There was ethnic cleansing and mass executions there. Human nature doesn't change.
I am a German, and I talked to my grandpa about this. He was only a child in that time, and he really did not want to talk about it at first. When he was young, he really enjoyed the regime, because there where good youth groups, camps etc., that was all he knew about, he just went camping and having fun with friends. but he only learned after that this whole part of his childhood was part of a horrible situation. I think that must have been hard, because he was just a kid then but later he felt so guilty for enjoying. Basically, his childhood was a lie built around supporting the Nazis even as just a kid without even understanding anything. Of course that does not at all compare to the harm and pain my ancestors caused the jewish People. It just fits the topic about people knowing. Some didn't, and when they later learned, they hated themselves.
No reason for your Grandfather to feel guilty if he didn't commit any crimes himself. I hope he is still alive and doing well!
Same with my dad, he told me he was excited to join the hitler youth as a kid, because they all got cool knives and learned a lot about being outdoors. He compared it to the boyscouts. He was never able to join because thankfully the war ended before he was old enough to participate.
It wasn't his childhood that was the lie.
Global census numbers give a clear indication of who lied. Your people were the victims, not the perpetrators.
People never want to talk about the mental and emotional damage oppression and atrocities do to the entire society.
The GOP indoctrination group Turning Point is not much different from Nazi Youth camps. Our way or the highway. Berate "others". Distrust Democrats.
Quote: '' We heard stories but we never could believe that humans could be so evil..''
History is repeating itself as we speak.
Quote: "If we don't learn from History, we are doomed to repeat it. "
We're doomed to repeat it even when we *do* learn, because humans as a species love nothing more than trying to "justify" the fucked up shit we do. In fact, we're the only species on planet Earth to use "morals" to justify the messed up kinda stuff that we do and declare any attempt by others to change us for the better as an attack on our very lives.
This time it's Trans people, Mexicans, and pretty much any minority, group or individual the GOP demonizes.
Which is why Putin is trying to rewrite Russia's history with Stalins atrocities
ruSSia today
"We in Poland know all too well that first it's Georgia, then Ukraine, then Baltic States, and then maybe the time will come for my country, Poland!"
Lech Kaczyński, President of Poland, 2008
Nobody listened to him back then, sadly. And now we see with our own eyes that he was right.
Thank you for mentioning the few but significant people who fought back in various ways. It shows that it is possible and was done indeed.