Those who do not believe in moral absolutes will encounter difficulties when trying to describe Hitler.
Since I do not harbor any such debilitation, I can with confidence and moral authority denounce Hitler and everything he stood for as being purely evil, which I would do to my dying breath and with a gun pointed to my head.
In order to understand some of the common misperceptions (some of which unfortunately have reared their head on RF and
HERE) I took a year out of my years of academia to take part in an advanced, in-depth study of the Holocaust. One thing I took away with me: it is nothing
less than moral equivalence and indecisiveness of the general populace that allowed him to accomplish so much evil.
What I learned shocked me. I would encourage anyone who has the time or inclination to study the Holocaust in depth and to speak personally with any survivors of the concentration camps about their experiences (so few are left), or to read their books.
Also of interest are the many psychological studies conducted to determine exactly how much coercion is needed to get "the average citizen on the street" to inflict pain or damage on another person.
The unwillingness to stand up against a majority view, the willingness to accept and believe propaganda when everyone else is doing it too, the fear and "respect" of authority in all its forms from the media to the local neighborhood 'brotherhood' ... all these things made it quite easy for Hitler to dream of killing millions of people and brainwash millions more into doing it for him.
The German people weren't robots, and they weren't that different from any other people anywhere.
Make no mistake. It could happen in any country, any time.
The Nazi regime had an obsessive need to document every detail of what they did. Towards the end, in panic, they tried to burn the thousands of miles of film footage and millions of pages of documents they knew would their undoing. But by then it was too late. Much of this material remains intact. I have seen hours and hours of these tapes and they sickened me, as they would any rational, moral human being.
There are exceptions. One incident recorded in the Austrian countryside: the local villagers had enthusiastically rounded up several Jewish families and had them brought to a barn. An SS officer nearby took a unit of men to the place and lined the Jews up against the side of the barn and ordered them to fire when ready. One of the young soldiers calmly asked for a moment to prepare. Then he took off his helmet, ripped off his insignia and removed his dogtags, placing them in the helmet. He handed it and his rifle to the officer. He walked to the line of Jews who were all holding hands awaiting their deaths, and joined hands with them, before the firing squad did what they went there to do.
There was individual resistance. Just not much of it was recorded, as by then Hitler had perfected the fine art of strangling and controlling all communication.
Do many of us today realize the depth of Hitler's sadomasochistic zeal to destroy and engage the German people as active participants in his campaigns of destruction... How many people know what lengths he went to to try to destroy every man, woman and child in Berlin before he killed himself... He ordered them all into the underground shelters and sewer system and then told his officers to flood it all.
Fortunately by then there were enough of them who saw his madness and refused to do it. Some were smart enough to kill themselves in the underground bunker with Hitler and Eva to avoid the trials they knew would come; others escaped to places like Argentina and Bolivia and lived long enough to see their grandchildren. Some were caught by people like
Simon Wiesenthal, whom I had the honor of seeing in person. I would encourage anyone who is interested in the stories from those who were there to read anything by him or
Elie Wiesel who said:
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
