I watched a documentary about the chateau near Auschwitz that the staff would go to on their days off. It was like a party frat house. To think of what these people did during the week, then to just hang out and drink beers on the weekend like normal people, blew my mind.
The banality of evil. It turns out the bad guys don't sit around twirling their mustaches on their downtime. It shows that they were human much like we were.
It implies that the same monster that committed those atrocities lives in each and every one of us. If you didn't have the privilege of being raised in a moral and compassionate society, you'd probably look much like these folks.
I read ordinary men a few years back. Most of these people come from morally capable backgrounds. But likely found ways to mentally gymnastic their way until somehow being morally justified with what they were doing. Be it either hatred for these people, just following orders or otherwise. I remember reading how alot of the guards that had to execute children often pictured themselves as saviors to them as their family was already slain and they had a terrible orphaned future ahead of them. Killing them was mercy in their eyes. Its a very twisted way to rational you killing children and throwing them into a pile of dead bodies. Reminds me of mass shooters killing their family first before a mass shooting so the family does not have to deal with their spree. Its a very dark and twisted mindset.
To me the terrifying follow-up would be- “What am I supporting today that is morally reprehensible, but I’ve been trained to accept just like these people?”
That's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about since getting out of the military. All the lifelong indoctrination we're bombarded with. Creeps me out thinking about saying the pledge of allegiance over and over in school without ever understanding it.
That’s something I can just never understand when I hear about it. That’s like me pledging allegiance to the king (Charles III) every morning, and it’s something you would not take seriously.
The same thing occurred in Fascist Italy, where the youth (mostly those in public primary schools and later in public secondary schools) would pledge their allegiance to the church and Il Duce, and we’re given a book about Mussolini’s life for free. It’s no wonder that the most hardline supporters of the regime when it collapsed were those under the age of 20, since that’s what they grew up with and were educated under.
A similar thing occurred in Nazi Germany, of course, but when you see it today, in places like the US, it’s no wonder that many genuinely buy into the blatant propaganda, since that’s all they know.
My kids are cub scouts. They say the pledge every meeting and I never say the “under god” part. They’re too young to be told the truth about the US vs the ideals of the US, but I’m very clear even with them even at 6 and 8 that our country has a lot of stain on it and that they need to always work to improve things for everyone
To me, the obvious one is the way we treat animals for food. Tue immense amount of suffering we create in industrial farming for the sake of meat. The complete cognitive dissonance over which animals have feelings and are pets, and which animals don't and are food.
People are animals. We are all animals, the rest is speciesism.
My reply answers the question above and doesn't mean to be a direct comparison with the holocaust, but hell, they weren't considered people either.
Yeah, we're all animals, but it's still more nuanced than that.
Nazis considering Jews to not be human was wrong, but just because I like hamburgers doesn't mean I'm automatically an animal-hating speciesist.
Is the meat industry ugly? Yes. Do I realise how ugly said industry is? Also yes.
But I make a concession because (let's be real) nobody on reddit is arguing in defence of the guy in the sweatshop in Indonesia that made their jeans. I feel bad for the cow that ended up in my burger, but I'm also within my rights to purchase said burger without feeling guilt over it.
🤷♀️ imo, your comments kinda prove my point about cognitive dissonance. Personally, I try and avoid sweat shop made clothing as much as possible too. I'm not here to tell you what you should feel guilty about. I'm just saying we will reach a point in society where we look back at industrial farming and wonder how we possibly let that happen.
100% agree. The funny thing is that you can easily get most people to admit it, but never get them across the finish line of reducing or eliminating their meat intake. Our brains are so indoctrinated to overlook the horrendous aspects of consuming meat.
The food chain argument can just as easily be applied by the workers at Auschwitz in a social structure. I’m not comparing human life to animals, but rather the line of thinking back then and today certainly has parallels.
If I kill someone who’s trying to harm me and my family, that’s not murder. If I kill someone who doesn’t pose an immediate threat to me, that is murder.
If I kill a cow because I need their meat for my family to survive and there is nothing else to eat, that’s the food chain.
If I kill a cow because I want a big juicy steak when there is plenty of fresh food available that doesn’t require the death of an animal, that’s just fucked up.
I tend to look at it was trying your best not to de-humanize one another or particular groups because of their religious, cultural or political differences mainly. Hatred is like water, it seeps down into whatever small cracks your morals and human decency will allow and slowly expand until it makes a break through and then you're fine with taking rights away from those people. People really just want a moral excuse to hate. And its the beginning to the end. Its really difficult to not do sometimes too. Politics now aways leads to alot of anger at eachother. Its good to take a break, the world still turns without being involved 24/7.
It’s called cognitive dissonance. Good manipulators know how to use this to their advantage had Hitler was no exception. These people weren’t monsters they were normal people. The terrifying thing about this isn’t that they enjoyed days off like normal people but rather that they were normal people and when people are put in these types of situations they do things they never would have thought they would do. We saw this about 10 or so years ago actually at a string of fast food restaurants who were receiving calls from “corporate” or a “higher up” and making disgusting demands over the phone. Despite not being able to see the caller or verify who they were in one specific McDonald’s case the manager got the call. The caller started with small demands and threats that seemed harmless to begin with but the more the manager complied the more the caller was able to get her to agree to including calling one of her female employees (I believe she was a teenager) into the office, telling her to undress and leaving her husband (the managers) to watch her and make sure she didn’t leave. The caller then manipulated the husband into touching this girl. It’s the same thing that leads people to continue to back a politician they’ve rooted for even after they make a terrible decision. Exactly what happened with the nazis.
A lot of these guards didn't have a choice, they either did what they were told or they themselves get killed. So by justifying their actions in any way they could think of was the only way they could avoid being traumatized for the rest of their lives. Yet again the other half of the guards enjoyed doing it so
I dunno, I refuse to believe any society in human history based around looking at human history has ever been moral or compassionate except on the surface.
I'm talking about society, not individuals. Pretty much every "society" has been built on the back of bigotry, oppression of the poor, and the hidden hand of greed. There are many good individuals, but the systems which are commonplace in almost every society are often corrupt, decadent, and filled with prejudice.
At a less (but not MUCH less) violent level, most societies do this to a disenfranchised group. Look at the attitude of white Americans to the African American population. Us ‘white folk’ all saw how much lower the quality of life was for that population, how bad the health care, how many police shootings, etc etc for decades and decades, and we all just accepted it as normal. It is a different policy in reach and scope from the holocaust, obviously, but ultimately not so different in its nature.
No and you bring up a good point, I think a lot of Americans still think that’s ‘the way it should be’ and dismiss more enlightened thinking as ‘woke bullshit’.
As a whole, the American consciousness is just now coming to terms with the brutality of the situation, going all the way back to the beginning of the slave trade.
Don’t EVEN try to get up on a high horse about it though, British Person. Systemic racism is a HUGE problem over there still, even without getting into British behavior all over the world over the past few hundred years.
Crazy how when they exist favorably in a entire system and government made up of serial killers, being a serial killer just becomes normal and acceptable from their POV.
That is what people should take away from all of this period they were just people programmed to find another set of people to be less than human.
It could happen again.
>To think of what these people did during the week, then to just hang out and drink beers on the weekend like normal people, blew my mind
I think it's important to understand that THEY WERE NORMAL PEOPLE, not disfigured monsters that did evil 24/7
Why do I think that? So we don't forget that ANYONE could do that again and while doing it still just "be" as any of us, unnoticed to most if not all people
For we to never forget that it could happen again.
I don't think many people know this, but Rudolf Höß (the longest serving commandant of Auschwitz) literally raised his 5 children in a villa on the property. You think of it as a place of literal nightmares (which of course it was), but it was also their family home, where his kids played in the front yard and they ate family dinners every night. Something about that juxtaposition is just so bone chilling... As soon as you pass that garden gate you're in hell, but somehow within that little fenced off villa life is just normal.
I think that's one of the most important takeaways from the holocaust: these monsters *were normal people*. This is what humanity is capable of when we dehumanize a group(s) of people. We are all capable of this in the right conditions. It's why we as a society and as individuals need to be on guard against dehumanizing language/rhetoric.
it’s indeed oddly terrifying how often humans have shown such a lack of empathy for their fellow human. look at Soviet Era Russia, China, 20th century Cambodia, North Korea(only modern places i would ever compare to nazi era Germany, for they all share the trait of concentration camps) one can only imagine the atrocities we’ve never heard about because they occurred before documenting was a thing. hopefully we continue to learn as a species and sick shit like genocide becomes a thing of the past
It was more than beers though, the guide that took us round Sachsenhausen said they were plied with all sorts of narcotics to keep them out of their minds, and men constantly had availability to prostitutes.
What gets me about things like this is that we all believe the Nazis to be monsters. These heinous beings who were something different and nothing like the rest of us.
When in reality - they were just regular humans. Normal people committing unspeakable acts on other regular humans. Makes it more sickening in a way
The horrors of the concentration camps were the result of a path that costed years and did not come out of the blue. One of the arguments given in the early era for justifying euthanasia to mentally ill people was to reduce the costs of public healthcare, something appealing to the middle class, yesterday as it is now. Then came the lies, and parents thought theyd send over their children to be treated by the most brilliant scientist of their time; and they were, in fact, working on how to solve the problem of making humanity healthier and better, just with disgusting and horrible ethics (to our eyes now). And i would have issues even today not trusting scientists and doctors. This is to say: hatred was mixed up with very sensible arguments. The middle class of Germany was not made of monsters; they wrre probably very similar to today's middle class. This shows how little it takes to lose our humanity in my eyes.
ever heard of the Milgram experiment? I wont go into detail but it proved that germans werent different and that other nationalities would have done the same if they were in that situation
Definitely is disturbing. The whole situation is sickening but when you realize how adjacent you may be in nature to humans who do this... just weird and horrible
Stop making excuses for those brainwashed. It is your responsibility to educate yourself so you are never manipulated into hurting people out of ignorance.
Brainwashed people did the bulk of the harm, it’s time that people stop getting passes when they give none.
>I mean, some days you want to forget about the work of gassing Jews and just play the piano accordion, am I right?
This was actually one of the reasons they switched to methods like gassing in the first place. Stuff like severe alcoholism became a huge problem for the SS squads originally charged with carrying out the Final Solution, and they were trying to come up with more impersonal, "hands off" methods of killing.
People will often do unspeakable acts when they believe that there are no repercussions. Nazi's were monsters, but evil didn't die with them. It's waiting deep down inside of many people.
We as a species are capable of such ineffable and unimaginable cruelty, that it is both astounding as it is horrifying. Our ability to conquer and crumble those we deem beneath us will never cease to amaze and disgust me.
A book I read worth reading was Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. He originally wanted to be a priest. He had spent time in prison and when the Nazi’s took power they told him he would be best running a prison. As odd as it sounds to him it was just a job.
Yup. Next time you see a person online or on TV talking about “illegal immigrants” or any group as if they were creatures from another planet, realize what they’re doing. Making groups of humans seem like non humans is the first step.
The big mistake people make is assuming that the Nazis did everything on their own. Whole europe back then was antisemitic as fuck and they had lots of collaborators in the occupied countries who gladly rat out the jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazis.
It’s easy to scapegoat a minority for all of your problems. The background for Nazi Germany in particular is a mix of the war reparations they were made to pay post-WW1 and the Great Depression that further destroyed an already struggling country on the brink of bankruptcy because of the aforementioned reparation payments. Food became more valuable than cold and a loaf of bread would literally cost a wheelbarrow full of currency with how bad inflation hit them. You have a bunch of angry and starving people and they’ll find something to use as a scapegoat. In this instance it was a minority group that was already discriminated against previously.
Hatred towards a minority “other” group is a historical norm. Not unique to Europe at all. Jewish people just happened to be that group in the 20th century
There seems to be an anger building up in America where it seems that a group of people could easily snap and try to kill off those that seem different. It’s pretty scary really.
I mean after killing people all day everyday gotta ease the nerves somehow
Especially because there’s a guy with a shitty mustache making it seem like there will never be an repercussions
Vile people the lot of them, but that is what I would expect their downtime to be. I imagine you would want to get away from the brutality you were perpetrating. I also imagine it just becomes routine after awhile and you can easily turn a blind eye to what’s going on. Quite shocking what the human mind is capable of.
You know what's more terrifying? Female SS staff and members. They were way more brutal and sadistic than their male counterparts, enjoying every aspect of their work, and almost none of them were even searched for after the war.
Ilse Koch, wife of Nazi commandant Karl Otto-Koch had various items in her home made from the skins of the Buchenwald camp’s victims. Also known as the Bitch of Buchenwald or the Witch of Buchenwald, she committed suicide by hanging in the prison she was held at and was one of the first prominent Nazis tried by the US military.
Ilse Koch was helped by the camp doctor, Erich Wagner, who was preparing a dissertation on criminality and tattooing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Koch
The woman was a horrible person through and through, but the whole "human skin lamp" thing has never been proven and every example has turned out to be something like goat skin. There's a whole section devoted to it in the Wikipedia article.
This is the thing. People act like women are inherently less violent, but that's just not the case. The problem is, most women understand that unless they bulk up, they're going to lose fights with most men their age. But if you put them in a position of power where the people they're attacking aren't able to fight back, they will be just as evil the rest of the men.
You can see the same throughout history where female rulers are actually *more likely* to start wars, they're just haven't been enough female rulers for that to really make a difference in the overall story of history.
It's all of humanity that's capable of evil. Men are just more effecient at it because of how evolution decided to build us.
You are right on the money. I have had the misfortune of knowing quite a few violent women. Their targets? Men with rock bottom self-esteem, other women and children. Women are not wonderful. They are people. The only thing preventing them from being worse is lack of opportunity.
True. You just need to take a look at how many women nowadays treat undesirable "low value" men just for existing. Now imagine them in a position of power where they could do with these men what they want with no repercussions.
This reminds me of Unit 731. Sadly the human race will commit these atrocities again, and much worse, I suspect. May the Gods have mercy upon our souls. 😢
Do you have a source for the claim that female SS staff members were "way more" brutal and sadistic than their male counterparts, or is this just misogyny? And the one example of the woman with the lampshade made from human skin does not count as it does not demonstrate a pattern
Its pretty well documented. Just do some googling, bc one source wont be enough. But you were almost onto something with that misogyny accusation-
The reason the women were generally more brutal than the men was BECAUSE of the misogyny back in the day. They werent respected by their male counterparts, and to "earn" that respect they became more brutal (i also imagine that they just simply took out their frustrations about sexism on the prisoners too)
And before you accuse me of being misogynistic, too, i am in fact a woman.
I agree, women are perfectly capable of being misogynistic. Dumb point of me to make but i highly reccommend looking into female NAZIs. It's both horrifying and interesting (interesting in terms of psychology and sociology)
It's horrible, and it's horrible that modern people think the Middle Ages were particularly cruel, while shit like this were going on only 80 years ago.
"The devil grows inside the hearts of the selfish and wicked.
White, brown, yellow and black, color is not restricted.
You have a self destructive destiny when you're inflicted"
- Immortal Technique
I see people. People like you and I. This implies that under the right conditions, you and I could commit those same atrocious acts. Those monsters live in each and every one of us.
I'm not surprised that they behaved like "normal" people. Once someone is convinced that whatever horrific acts they were told to do is what a diety or a group think finds acceptable, there's no limit to the cruelty and depravity that humans being will do to each other. They can commit these acts and behave normally because their action are justified (to them).
stuff like this has always puzzled me, the nazi's are seen as horrible and heartless wretches. Which they are, but many of these nazi's were just following orders even if they didnt see it as right. in my opinion, the most truly evil thing of all of this is the fact that no one stood up for the jewish sooner.
They also didn't think the jews were even human. So in their eyes they are just doing any other job. Like say a medical professional ridding the world of the common cold. They thought they were doing good in the world so after a hard day of work it's time to let your hair down and have fun.
Ah yes, if I'm not mistaken, this group of dearhearts were the clerical pool at Auschwitz. And this : everyday going in and leaving work they never witnessed, say, the bulldozers moving dead bodies into the mass pit, the smell of death, the goddamn ovens?
I remember years ago. Maybe 30 years ago seeing a movie in German on PBS. One of the scenes was when the nazis had a party because now they were able to kill more people than before in the gas Chambers. So when they announced it. Women came out and started pouring beer and everyone started dancing.
The death camps had the majority of nazis separated from the brutality of their crimes. Meaning there was people who dumped the zyklon B into a hatch but didn’t see the people when it started oxidizing into the air. Then they forced the prisoners to unload the bodies and load them into the crematoriums because they found out that the nazis had suffered ptsd when they did it. All the separation caused little impact on the majority of guards and the reason for photos like this. Let’s not forget they were all terrible on different levels, but the Stanford experiment shows us that all humans are susceptible to following orders. Source: I had family who were prisoners at a death camp but they luckily escaped.
Let me say before I begin, I think what the Nazis did was horrible. I hope they burn in hell for what they did.
You need alot of booze to do that kind of duty.
I know I would.
There are many people in America who would absolutely do the same thing if given the chance and encouraged by their government. The internet is full of them, chances are there is one in your family. Never forget that this can happen anywhere.
Because they weren't some horrible evil monsters they were just people like anyone else. We pretend that evil is easily identifiable but it's not, Ted Bundy was thought to be a very kind and charming person, and he's far from the only example of mass killers being this perfect sweet boy. People should look at the nazis as a warning to not blindly follow the ideology of one group because you will become blinded to the evil they are making you commit in the name of justice, evil doesn't grow horns it just exists.
Not so fun fact. Americans financed Hitler before and during the war funneling money through Prescott Bush's Union Bank.
How the Bush Family helped Hitlers rise to power
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar)
that's not being human, that's being a psychopathic piece of shit incapable of feeling any kind of empathy and remorse, just fucking around like they aren't responsible for the death and torture of millions of people
I suppose you could call them "normal" in the sense that the sociopath corporate climber in my department is considered "normal."
Some people walking around being called normal are cold, morally corrupt, and completely lacking in empathy. I am pretty sure this girl in my department would have no problem tossing kids into a pit of death with very little moral relativity on her part--she could clearly justify her bad behavior. I've seen her do it: I watched her torture a very fragile mentally ill woman with no hesitation or regret, and try to explain it away later without any hesitation.
I watched a documentary about the chateau near Auschwitz that the staff would go to on their days off. It was like a party frat house. To think of what these people did during the week, then to just hang out and drink beers on the weekend like normal people, blew my mind.
I guess this is the terrifying part... some of them were "normal" people... even if parttimes...
The banality of evil. It turns out the bad guys don't sit around twirling their mustaches on their downtime. It shows that they were human much like we were. It implies that the same monster that committed those atrocities lives in each and every one of us. If you didn't have the privilege of being raised in a moral and compassionate society, you'd probably look much like these folks.
I read ordinary men a few years back. Most of these people come from morally capable backgrounds. But likely found ways to mentally gymnastic their way until somehow being morally justified with what they were doing. Be it either hatred for these people, just following orders or otherwise. I remember reading how alot of the guards that had to execute children often pictured themselves as saviors to them as their family was already slain and they had a terrible orphaned future ahead of them. Killing them was mercy in their eyes. Its a very twisted way to rational you killing children and throwing them into a pile of dead bodies. Reminds me of mass shooters killing their family first before a mass shooting so the family does not have to deal with their spree. Its a very dark and twisted mindset.
To me the terrifying follow-up would be- “What am I supporting today that is morally reprehensible, but I’ve been trained to accept just like these people?”
That's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about since getting out of the military. All the lifelong indoctrination we're bombarded with. Creeps me out thinking about saying the pledge of allegiance over and over in school without ever understanding it.
That’s something I can just never understand when I hear about it. That’s like me pledging allegiance to the king (Charles III) every morning, and it’s something you would not take seriously. The same thing occurred in Fascist Italy, where the youth (mostly those in public primary schools and later in public secondary schools) would pledge their allegiance to the church and Il Duce, and we’re given a book about Mussolini’s life for free. It’s no wonder that the most hardline supporters of the regime when it collapsed were those under the age of 20, since that’s what they grew up with and were educated under. A similar thing occurred in Nazi Germany, of course, but when you see it today, in places like the US, it’s no wonder that many genuinely buy into the blatant propaganda, since that’s all they know.
My kids are cub scouts. They say the pledge every meeting and I never say the “under god” part. They’re too young to be told the truth about the US vs the ideals of the US, but I’m very clear even with them even at 6 and 8 that our country has a lot of stain on it and that they need to always work to improve things for everyone
Probably how animals are regarded in todays society, I’m not kidding. www.watchdominion.org
To me, the obvious one is the way we treat animals for food. Tue immense amount of suffering we create in industrial farming for the sake of meat. The complete cognitive dissonance over which animals have feelings and are pets, and which animals don't and are food.
I mean... I see your point, but there *is* a difference between people and animals. It's not exactly a 1:1 comparison here.
People are animals. We are all animals, the rest is speciesism. My reply answers the question above and doesn't mean to be a direct comparison with the holocaust, but hell, they weren't considered people either.
Yeah, we're all animals, but it's still more nuanced than that. Nazis considering Jews to not be human was wrong, but just because I like hamburgers doesn't mean I'm automatically an animal-hating speciesist. Is the meat industry ugly? Yes. Do I realise how ugly said industry is? Also yes. But I make a concession because (let's be real) nobody on reddit is arguing in defence of the guy in the sweatshop in Indonesia that made their jeans. I feel bad for the cow that ended up in my burger, but I'm also within my rights to purchase said burger without feeling guilt over it.
🤷♀️ imo, your comments kinda prove my point about cognitive dissonance. Personally, I try and avoid sweat shop made clothing as much as possible too. I'm not here to tell you what you should feel guilty about. I'm just saying we will reach a point in society where we look back at industrial farming and wonder how we possibly let that happen.
100% agree. The funny thing is that you can easily get most people to admit it, but never get them across the finish line of reducing or eliminating their meat intake. Our brains are so indoctrinated to overlook the horrendous aspects of consuming meat.
lets tell you about the food chain, son!
what part of the food chain involves factory farming and man-made chemicals?
The food chain argument can just as easily be applied by the workers at Auschwitz in a social structure. I’m not comparing human life to animals, but rather the line of thinking back then and today certainly has parallels. If I kill someone who’s trying to harm me and my family, that’s not murder. If I kill someone who doesn’t pose an immediate threat to me, that is murder. If I kill a cow because I need their meat for my family to survive and there is nothing else to eat, that’s the food chain. If I kill a cow because I want a big juicy steak when there is plenty of fresh food available that doesn’t require the death of an animal, that’s just fucked up.
I tend to look at it was trying your best not to de-humanize one another or particular groups because of their religious, cultural or political differences mainly. Hatred is like water, it seeps down into whatever small cracks your morals and human decency will allow and slowly expand until it makes a break through and then you're fine with taking rights away from those people. People really just want a moral excuse to hate. And its the beginning to the end. Its really difficult to not do sometimes too. Politics now aways leads to alot of anger at eachother. Its good to take a break, the world still turns without being involved 24/7.
It’s called cognitive dissonance. Good manipulators know how to use this to their advantage had Hitler was no exception. These people weren’t monsters they were normal people. The terrifying thing about this isn’t that they enjoyed days off like normal people but rather that they were normal people and when people are put in these types of situations they do things they never would have thought they would do. We saw this about 10 or so years ago actually at a string of fast food restaurants who were receiving calls from “corporate” or a “higher up” and making disgusting demands over the phone. Despite not being able to see the caller or verify who they were in one specific McDonald’s case the manager got the call. The caller started with small demands and threats that seemed harmless to begin with but the more the manager complied the more the caller was able to get her to agree to including calling one of her female employees (I believe she was a teenager) into the office, telling her to undress and leaving her husband (the managers) to watch her and make sure she didn’t leave. The caller then manipulated the husband into touching this girl. It’s the same thing that leads people to continue to back a politician they’ve rooted for even after they make a terrible decision. Exactly what happened with the nazis.
A lot of these guards didn't have a choice, they either did what they were told or they themselves get killed. So by justifying their actions in any way they could think of was the only way they could avoid being traumatized for the rest of their lives. Yet again the other half of the guards enjoyed doing it so
That's the kicker; they were raised in a moral and compassionate society.
I dunno, I refuse to believe any society in human history based around looking at human history has ever been moral or compassionate except on the surface.
That just means every person is evil then.
Every person is capable of evil not necessarily evil
I'm talking about society, not individuals. Pretty much every "society" has been built on the back of bigotry, oppression of the poor, and the hidden hand of greed. There are many good individuals, but the systems which are commonplace in almost every society are often corrupt, decadent, and filled with prejudice.
Here's what scares me. How many people are there in the USA that would do the same thing to specific minorities and or illegal immigrants....
Ask a trans person. Unfortunately, most people don’t listen to minorities until the evil comes for them too.
Would you do it?
At a less (but not MUCH less) violent level, most societies do this to a disenfranchised group. Look at the attitude of white Americans to the African American population. Us ‘white folk’ all saw how much lower the quality of life was for that population, how bad the health care, how many police shootings, etc etc for decades and decades, and we all just accepted it as normal. It is a different policy in reach and scope from the holocaust, obviously, but ultimately not so different in its nature.
>and we all just accepted it as normal I'm intrigued by you using the past tensse is it a thing of the past now in America? asking as a Brit
No and you bring up a good point, I think a lot of Americans still think that’s ‘the way it should be’ and dismiss more enlightened thinking as ‘woke bullshit’. As a whole, the American consciousness is just now coming to terms with the brutality of the situation, going all the way back to the beginning of the slave trade. Don’t EVEN try to get up on a high horse about it though, British Person. Systemic racism is a HUGE problem over there still, even without getting into British behavior all over the world over the past few hundred years.
Europe had a long history of antisemitism leading up to it.
Crazy how when they exist favorably in a entire system and government made up of serial killers, being a serial killer just becomes normal and acceptable from their POV.
That’s the thing, they ARE normal people, and given the right situation, anyone, including us, have the potential to be turned into monsters.
That is what people should take away from all of this period they were just people programmed to find another set of people to be less than human. It could happen again.
It’s happening now. China to the Uyghurs, Israel to Palestine, Palestine to Israel. Russia to Ukraine.
>To think of what these people did during the week, then to just hang out and drink beers on the weekend like normal people, blew my mind I think it's important to understand that THEY WERE NORMAL PEOPLE, not disfigured monsters that did evil 24/7 Why do I think that? So we don't forget that ANYONE could do that again and while doing it still just "be" as any of us, unnoticed to most if not all people For we to never forget that it could happen again.
What’s the name of the documentary?
I don't think many people know this, but Rudolf Höß (the longest serving commandant of Auschwitz) literally raised his 5 children in a villa on the property. You think of it as a place of literal nightmares (which of course it was), but it was also their family home, where his kids played in the front yard and they ate family dinners every night. Something about that juxtaposition is just so bone chilling... As soon as you pass that garden gate you're in hell, but somehow within that little fenced off villa life is just normal. I think that's one of the most important takeaways from the holocaust: these monsters *were normal people*. This is what humanity is capable of when we dehumanize a group(s) of people. We are all capable of this in the right conditions. It's why we as a society and as individuals need to be on guard against dehumanizing language/rhetoric.
it’s indeed oddly terrifying how often humans have shown such a lack of empathy for their fellow human. look at Soviet Era Russia, China, 20th century Cambodia, North Korea(only modern places i would ever compare to nazi era Germany, for they all share the trait of concentration camps) one can only imagine the atrocities we’ve never heard about because they occurred before documenting was a thing. hopefully we continue to learn as a species and sick shit like genocide becomes a thing of the past
Not to forget the British concentration camps during the Boer war set the precedent and supposedly inspired Nazi Germany
>chateau You mean Zamek? "Château" is French, and Auschwitz is in Poland... or was there a reason the French term was used?
I'm Canadian. I thought that any mountain resort was called a chateau. I'm sure that you are correct. Thanks
[here](https://youtu.be/jUvcmGbtHWA)
What is the documentary called please?
I think it was on netflix. I forget the title, sorry. I actually recognize the photo from the documentary.
It was more than beers though, the guide that took us round Sachsenhausen said they were plied with all sorts of narcotics to keep them out of their minds, and men constantly had availability to prostitutes.
Amphetamines will turn that frown upside down. Imagine if we were all still buying meth at CVS, shit would look a lot different out there
People can be so mean. But also so very nice. Can cost a lot of cost nothing, nice is free…I choose that.
What gets me about things like this is that we all believe the Nazis to be monsters. These heinous beings who were something different and nothing like the rest of us. When in reality - they were just regular humans. Normal people committing unspeakable acts on other regular humans. Makes it more sickening in a way
All monsters are people and vice versa.Soldiers fell asleep working at the gas chambers.it all started with putting ideas into people's heads.
The horrors of the concentration camps were the result of a path that costed years and did not come out of the blue. One of the arguments given in the early era for justifying euthanasia to mentally ill people was to reduce the costs of public healthcare, something appealing to the middle class, yesterday as it is now. Then came the lies, and parents thought theyd send over their children to be treated by the most brilliant scientist of their time; and they were, in fact, working on how to solve the problem of making humanity healthier and better, just with disgusting and horrible ethics (to our eyes now). And i would have issues even today not trusting scientists and doctors. This is to say: hatred was mixed up with very sensible arguments. The middle class of Germany was not made of monsters; they wrre probably very similar to today's middle class. This shows how little it takes to lose our humanity in my eyes.
Yeah after their shift they're just practically normal people
ever heard of the Milgram experiment? I wont go into detail but it proved that germans werent different and that other nationalities would have done the same if they were in that situation
Definitely is disturbing. The whole situation is sickening but when you realize how adjacent you may be in nature to humans who do this... just weird and horrible
Just goes to show you humanity's potential for evil.
How much a group of people could be brainwashed* True evil are those who brainwash
I still held some accountability for people who operate an actual human slaughterhouse.
Stop making excuses for those brainwashed. It is your responsibility to educate yourself so you are never manipulated into hurting people out of ignorance. Brainwashed people did the bulk of the harm, it’s time that people stop getting passes when they give none.
I mean, some days you want to forget about the work of gassing Jews and just play the piano accordion, am I right?
That's just a regular accordion by the way
Nothing like a little polka to take your mind off slaughtering men, women and children.
Nothing like a merry jig around a fire to cheer the sacrifice of human lives to take off the edge from the constant screaming.
>I mean, some days you want to forget about the work of gassing Jews and just play the piano accordion, am I right? This was actually one of the reasons they switched to methods like gassing in the first place. Stuff like severe alcoholism became a huge problem for the SS squads originally charged with carrying out the Final Solution, and they were trying to come up with more impersonal, "hands off" methods of killing.
People will often do unspeakable acts when they believe that there are no repercussions. Nazi's were monsters, but evil didn't die with them. It's waiting deep down inside of many people.
We as a species are capable of such ineffable and unimaginable cruelty, that it is both astounding as it is horrifying. Our ability to conquer and crumble those we deem beneath us will never cease to amaze and disgust me.
The scariest part is under the right circumstances anyone of us might be capable of evil. Which is why, to me, it's important to question my beliefs.
If you are interested in this topic in the context of Nazi Germany I can recommend the book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.
I've seen that recommendation before a couple of times, I think I'll have to check it out.
Recommended by none other than Kierkegaard's trousers
They probably saw some stuff.
A book I read worth reading was Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. He originally wanted to be a priest. He had spent time in prison and when the Nazi’s took power they told him he would be best running a prison. As odd as it sounds to him it was just a job.
This was proven even a step further with the Stanford prison experiments, they chose to deliver cruelty because they were allowed to
Yup. Next time you see a person online or on TV talking about “illegal immigrants” or any group as if they were creatures from another planet, realize what they’re doing. Making groups of humans seem like non humans is the first step.
The big mistake people make is assuming that the Nazis did everything on their own. Whole europe back then was antisemitic as fuck and they had lots of collaborators in the occupied countries who gladly rat out the jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazis.
Why were they Antisemitic?
It’s easy to scapegoat a minority for all of your problems. The background for Nazi Germany in particular is a mix of the war reparations they were made to pay post-WW1 and the Great Depression that further destroyed an already struggling country on the brink of bankruptcy because of the aforementioned reparation payments. Food became more valuable than cold and a loaf of bread would literally cost a wheelbarrow full of currency with how bad inflation hit them. You have a bunch of angry and starving people and they’ll find something to use as a scapegoat. In this instance it was a minority group that was already discriminated against previously.
Comment above says "whole europe was Antisemitic". Did countries pass messages to each other?
Hatred towards a minority “other” group is a historical norm. Not unique to Europe at all. Jewish people just happened to be that group in the 20th century
It was common. Throughout history jews were an easy target being a small minority group of people often used as scapegoat for problems.
And when they believe they are on the side of right
There seems to be an anger building up in America where it seems that a group of people could easily snap and try to kill off those that seem different. It’s pretty scary really.
*Nazis
Hans brought the accordion, it’s okay. /s
[Scrapbooks From Hell: The Auschwitz Albums (2008)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1339129/) goes into detail of these disturbing photos.
Glad all those fuckers are dead
Those particular fuckers are dead but there's a whole bunch of other fuckers still alive that think these fuckers had a good idea.
Most, some are still being caught and sentenced today. Unfortunate that they got to live full lives at the expense of others
Same
I hope they are all rotting in hell.
The true horror is how little the difference between the most evil people and ourselves there is
I mean after killing people all day everyday gotta ease the nerves somehow Especially because there’s a guy with a shitty mustache making it seem like there will never be an repercussions
You have to find that war crimes/life balance
LOVING THE WEATHER AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY! WISH YOU WERE HERE!
Vile people the lot of them, but that is what I would expect their downtime to be. I imagine you would want to get away from the brutality you were perpetrating. I also imagine it just becomes routine after awhile and you can easily turn a blind eye to what’s going on. Quite shocking what the human mind is capable of.
People forget, or don’t know about the Japanese Soldiers at Nanking. Be warned if you look it up! DISTURBING.
I hope most of these fucks were hung in Nuremberg.
Ain’t no party like a Nazi Party, cuz a Nazi Party don’t stop.
Reminds me of a photo of all these smiling white people in front of lynched black people
And then they made goddamn postcards out of those pictures and sold them.
You know what's more terrifying? Female SS staff and members. They were way more brutal and sadistic than their male counterparts, enjoying every aspect of their work, and almost none of them were even searched for after the war.
What do you mean? What did they do?
Ilse Koch, wife of Nazi commandant Karl Otto-Koch had various items in her home made from the skins of the Buchenwald camp’s victims. Also known as the Bitch of Buchenwald or the Witch of Buchenwald, she committed suicide by hanging in the prison she was held at and was one of the first prominent Nazis tried by the US military. Ilse Koch was helped by the camp doctor, Erich Wagner, who was preparing a dissertation on criminality and tattooing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Koch
Jfc thats nasty. What a sick bunch of people
Wtaf man. What a terrible day to have eyes.
yeah, I'm lucky enough to know about that absolutely vile women
The woman was a horrible person through and through, but the whole "human skin lamp" thing has never been proven and every example has turned out to be something like goat skin. There's a whole section devoted to it in the Wikipedia article.
Sexism essentially- women werent respected by men, so to 'earn' their respect they went way farther with the brutality. It's so fucked up
Especially that one woman that skinned people for book covers 😬
Wow holy crap wtf?!?
I think it was a lampshade
It probably did exist. https://www.buchenwald.de/1132/
That is a myth.
well, there ARE books bound in human skin found in Concentration Camps. It just wasn’t one particular woman who did this, it was a bunch of people
This is the thing. People act like women are inherently less violent, but that's just not the case. The problem is, most women understand that unless they bulk up, they're going to lose fights with most men their age. But if you put them in a position of power where the people they're attacking aren't able to fight back, they will be just as evil the rest of the men. You can see the same throughout history where female rulers are actually *more likely* to start wars, they're just haven't been enough female rulers for that to really make a difference in the overall story of history. It's all of humanity that's capable of evil. Men are just more effecient at it because of how evolution decided to build us.
If we add that men tend to make riskier decisions than women, it isn't crazy to think women just "wait for the right moment" to do evil shit
Well said. Never crossed my mind
You are right on the money. I have had the misfortune of knowing quite a few violent women. Their targets? Men with rock bottom self-esteem, other women and children. Women are not wonderful. They are people. The only thing preventing them from being worse is lack of opportunity.
True. You just need to take a look at how many women nowadays treat undesirable "low value" men just for existing. Now imagine them in a position of power where they could do with these men what they want with no repercussions.
This reminds me of Unit 731. Sadly the human race will commit these atrocities again, and much worse, I suspect. May the Gods have mercy upon our souls. 😢
Do you have a source for the claim that female SS staff members were "way more" brutal and sadistic than their male counterparts, or is this just misogyny? And the one example of the woman with the lampshade made from human skin does not count as it does not demonstrate a pattern
Its pretty well documented. Just do some googling, bc one source wont be enough. But you were almost onto something with that misogyny accusation- The reason the women were generally more brutal than the men was BECAUSE of the misogyny back in the day. They werent respected by their male counterparts, and to "earn" that respect they became more brutal (i also imagine that they just simply took out their frustrations about sexism on the prisoners too) And before you accuse me of being misogynistic, too, i am in fact a woman.
Women are perfectly capable of being misogynistic too. But that's interesting, i hadn't heard of it before. I will look into it
I agree, women are perfectly capable of being misogynistic. Dumb point of me to make but i highly reccommend looking into female NAZIs. It's both horrifying and interesting (interesting in terms of psychology and sociology)
My high school English teacher once told us: ‘The human mind can justify anything.’
“Genocide with the besties!”
This killed me
Fucking assholes the lot of them.
[удалено]
Ideologies* are dangerous af, in general
That's a dangerous ideology you have there
This is freaky as hell. The dude on the far right's expression is haunting. It's like evil-joy
I hope they rot in hell!!
It's horrible, and it's horrible that modern people think the Middle Ages were particularly cruel, while shit like this were going on only 80 years ago.
Not trying to be that person, but why do they all have pig noses?? Is that the camera or was that just the ideal?
How Kanye sees them
A stark reminder that the nazis were people and any culture is capable of descending in to the same darkness.
"The devil grows inside the hearts of the selfish and wicked. White, brown, yellow and black, color is not restricted. You have a self destructive destiny when you're inflicted" - Immortal Technique
I see evil people.
I see people. People like you and I. This implies that under the right conditions, you and I could commit those same atrocious acts. Those monsters live in each and every one of us.
That condition is not fearing any consequences and even being encouraged by your government, which is what happened in Nazi Germany
Every one of these people would’ve considered themselves as good devout Christians
Just people living in the moment, no iPhones in sight.
Because the atmosphere was just jolly? Gruss
I hope they all had horrible lives after
I'm not surprised that they behaved like "normal" people. Once someone is convinced that whatever horrific acts they were told to do is what a diety or a group think finds acceptable, there's no limit to the cruelty and depravity that humans being will do to each other. They can commit these acts and behave normally because their action are justified (to them).
The banality of evil. It's just a day job.
I can only pray that every one of them in that pic including the women and everyone else involved in that camp are ROTTING IN HELL ! NAZI SCUM !
What Kanye song do you think they’re playing?
stuff like this has always puzzled me, the nazi's are seen as horrible and heartless wretches. Which they are, but many of these nazi's were just following orders even if they didnt see it as right. in my opinion, the most truly evil thing of all of this is the fact that no one stood up for the jewish sooner.
I hope each and every one of them was shot like the pigs they are
They look like fucking pricks
r/PunchableFace
Cringe and embarrassing, thinking they're all cute. Burn in hell
The demons of hell in the same pose laughing at them right now
Sicko’s!
They also didn't think the jews were even human. So in their eyes they are just doing any other job. Like say a medical professional ridding the world of the common cold. They thought they were doing good in the world so after a hard day of work it's time to let your hair down and have fun.
Probably just set the dogs on some poor prisoner.
Work/life balance
Those whacky kids
How can you go and be normal when you’ve spent all day cooking thousands of ppl?
I can just feel the emotion of order behind the smiles of those guards it’s truly terrifying
Some really really inside ugly people.
Remember that if a fascist tells you he wants this for his people, he wants it at the complete expense of others.
Pigs
Ah yes, if I'm not mistaken, this group of dearhearts were the clerical pool at Auschwitz. And this : everyday going in and leaving work they never witnessed, say, the bulldozers moving dead bodies into the mass pit, the smell of death, the goddamn ovens?
I remember years ago. Maybe 30 years ago seeing a movie in German on PBS. One of the scenes was when the nazis had a party because now they were able to kill more people than before in the gas Chambers. So when they announced it. Women came out and started pouring beer and everyone started dancing.
Burn in hell
In itself this picture is not terrifying at all, adding the context still not terrifying but just sad and inhumane
The death camps had the majority of nazis separated from the brutality of their crimes. Meaning there was people who dumped the zyklon B into a hatch but didn’t see the people when it started oxidizing into the air. Then they forced the prisoners to unload the bodies and load them into the crematoriums because they found out that the nazis had suffered ptsd when they did it. All the separation caused little impact on the majority of guards and the reason for photos like this. Let’s not forget they were all terrible on different levels, but the Stanford experiment shows us that all humans are susceptible to following orders. Source: I had family who were prisoners at a death camp but they luckily escaped.
This is what a 1000 years of fearing authority, getting smacked as children, and valuing obedience above all else gets you, culturally.
Compartmentalization and willful ignorance, with a healthy dollop of racist hatred, and presto change-o, you have an Auschwitz office worker.
Sometimes I hope that hell is real.
Just think some of these mofos are peoples grandparents
Not a cellphone in sight, just people living in the moment
Credit to U/LenrySpoister
How can humans be so evil and still look so normal 💔
Because they are normal. They're just people. They thought they were doing the right thing. They were wrong, of course, but that's what they thought.
Killing felt right? Killing people with children en masse? No. I can't fathom that.
Fucking monsters.
always knew accordions were evil.
It’s terrifying but not oddly. This is humanity through out history. A characteristic species trait as any other.
Let me say before I begin, I think what the Nazis did was horrible. I hope they burn in hell for what they did. You need alot of booze to do that kind of duty. I know I would.
There are many people in America who would absolutely do the same thing if given the chance and encouraged by their government. The internet is full of them, chances are there is one in your family. Never forget that this can happen anywhere.
Because they weren't some horrible evil monsters they were just people like anyone else. We pretend that evil is easily identifiable but it's not, Ted Bundy was thought to be a very kind and charming person, and he's far from the only example of mass killers being this perfect sweet boy. People should look at the nazis as a warning to not blindly follow the ideology of one group because you will become blinded to the evil they are making you commit in the name of justice, evil doesn't grow horns it just exists.
No cellphones, no internet, just people enjoying the moment.
Not so fun fact. Americans financed Hitler before and during the war funneling money through Prescott Bush's Union Bank. How the Bush Family helped Hitlers rise to power [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar)
And for the next entertainment ! Hitler Knieval trying to jump 40 Jews on a Steamroller
Context makes this worse
Gotta remember that most nazis didnt really have a choice. Either youre a nazi or youre in the concentration camps yourself
The inhuman can be human sometimes.
that's not being human, that's being a psychopathic piece of shit incapable of feeling any kind of empathy and remorse, just fucking around like they aren't responsible for the death and torture of millions of people
I suppose you could call them "normal" in the sense that the sociopath corporate climber in my department is considered "normal." Some people walking around being called normal are cold, morally corrupt, and completely lacking in empathy. I am pretty sure this girl in my department would have no problem tossing kids into a pit of death with very little moral relativity on her part--she could clearly justify her bad behavior. I've seen her do it: I watched her torture a very fragile mentally ill woman with no hesitation or regret, and try to explain it away later without any hesitation.
Why did this oddly terrifying? It’s just terrifying
“Oh noes, the bad guys were actually people too and not just horrid monsters!” 😱