The power of the human mind, these people were controlled by fear and to prevent extreme psychological damage they either forced themselves to believe it was morally okay to do or just shut off and stopped from thinking about it. It's amazing to think stuff like this is still happening today in some places
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· 7 years ago
It's also easier to justify when the other side has been dehumanized.
It was easier for them to "exterminate the enemy" instead of "slaughter mothers and their children".
I still don't get it. I understand how someone can be indoctrinated into believing am entire people are the enemy, but why the cruelty? How do you justify starving and torturing women and children who never even took up arms against you?
It's the normalization of the process that made the holocaust so insidious. It was a paper pushing beauracracy, the victims were numbers, and everything was professional. The guards and commandants were pushed to up their numbers and be more efficient. Higher ups in the party masterminded the holocaust, but it was the middle management that made it happen.
It wasn't that the soldiers were inhumane in mindset, but that they had been almost brainwashed to believe that these people were less than human. If anyone had done the same to the soldiers' loved ones, they would've stopped them immediately, but because the Jews and other groups were seen as only lowlife creatures instead of humans, it made the atrocities easier to handle on the mind of a soldier.
everyone can believe what they are doing is right. Hitler took things out people couldnt read but what he taught them they didnt feel but what he let them feel he was a master speaker and a smart man he convinced a nation to become a machine that was the greatest war machine the world had ever seen. He gave them hope and they gave him anything in return. When people are lost it is easy to lead them into anything and everything. Same thing we see today people thinking their race is superior and the rest must die or bow to them.
The SS originally (and at the end of the war, too) had roving bands of death squads that would go town to town and do just that, famousone. Many collaborating nations did that too, to prove their bona fides to their new Nazi masters.
It's something called Mob Mentality and Deindividualisation. When in a group the brain experiences anonymity so when a large group does something wrong they feel less accountable as they were just 'a part of the crowd'. It's a phenomenon that's been studied countless times and it's extremely intriguing. When people have power and lack of consequence there are NO boundaries, it becomes even worse when there are no 'moral' boundaries. I suggest reading or watching the Standford Prison Experiment, it's a study from way back about the effects of power and human instinct. Pretty much in this context the Nazi's deindividualised themselves and dehumanised the jews so they felt like what they were doing was valid.
I read a book in middle school called The Wave by Todd Strasser. It was about a high school history class who couldn't understand why people would follow Hitler so the teacher created an experiment to show them and it goes wrong. It's not a true story and it does have some issues but it really got through to me as a kid
We're living in times where the debate about pictures like this is essential. We're living in times where history forcefully tries to repeat itself. We need to educate ourselves and remember that the german people didn't wake up one morning saying "hey, let's raid some countries and slaughter the jews". It was a long handed process. It touched all areas of social life and today we mainly focus on the result, not what has happened before.
We're living in times where we are able to find out what we would have done in the place of our grandparents.
How can people get that deluded that they think whatever theyre doing is right, even tho it causes people to look like this
It was easier for them to "exterminate the enemy" instead of "slaughter mothers and their children".
We're living in times where we are able to find out what we would have done in the place of our grandparents.