Well, I split the topic because this is turning into a proper discussion and taking over the other thread. Let's keep it on here - assuming we keep it civilised
@TMF: oh, there are countless such stories, I have no difficulty accepting this specific one as I've read about so many of them. On the other hand, there are countless other documented stories of dissent - and how those who expressed their dissent got away with it. And, actually, even though many people *did* disappear behind barbed wire for their jokes, an examination of the Gestapo archives shows that the state was quite lenient against the "perpetrators". They considered humor to be a safety valve of sorts.
Also, I'm sorry, but people always have a choice. And the choice fo the majority, for some reason, was to go along with a regime that slaughtered and plundered countrless millions of innocent people, sometimes actively, sometimes passively. A prime example of concerted reaction to the doings of the regime, for instance, was the public outrage against the program of euthanasia performed on "spezial" segments of the population. Noone got punished.
About the European spirit, it's one thing tolerating and accepting other peoples; it's another thing declaring oneself as "European" before "German" or "Greek" or whatever, which is the spirit they have been trying to impose.
@Mav: of course you're right about historians. But I've been reading about WWII Germany for almost twenty years now and I've read pretty much anything worthy that's out there (actually when we moved my girlfriend made me move all the WWII books to the upper shelves because she was fed up with the swastikas adorning our living room
). And they all tend to agree. I have not read a single book belonging to the modern WWII bibliography (post-80s) that attributes the collective tolerance and violence to fear of reprisals.
What's more you're quite wrong (sorry!) on the Nazi-ward apparatus; as a matter of fact, after a while authorities realised that most of the denunciations were based on personal motivation and started ignoring most of them. Not that there wasn't fear. Of course there was. But what I was saying was that those that chose to not act according to orders were not summarily shot as is widely assumed.
And you're right in questioning our own personal possible standing; who knows if you or I would have acted differently; but that's another issue.
As for the specific book: you haven't read it I take it?
The author chose specifically that unit because it was comprised of a cross-section of the German society. Those were not careerist policement but mere reservists, coming from all the strata of the German world - a shepperd here, a butcher there, a teacher, a postman... And it's exactly the fact that those ordinary people turned into cold-blood murderers overnight that has been puzzling historians ever since. What's more, it has been proven (in this book, among others) that those that could not accept those assignments (like concentration camp guards or executioners) met no punishment and were actually merely transferred to other units. And, to answer your question, the problem precisely is that all the units that were assigned similar duties did just that - their "duty".
...of course the winner writes history. There's a lovely sci-fi book (forget the name... darn) that argues that Satan was the good guy, but lost. But this doesn't mean that what is written about the German people pre- and during-WWII is wrong.
As a matter of fact, some of the conditions prevalent in Nazi Germany were not specific to that country; a Jewish historian had once written, "if, before WWII, you came and told me that there would be a nation that would torture and slaughter millions of Jews within a few short years I'd have no trouble believing that indeed the French would be capable of that". But it was the Germans who did that, and it takes a whole lot more than fear to do it.
On the other hand, it's the same thing with the US, the nukes and the moral burden they have to bear even though they don't accept it: others had it too and could have used it but they're the only ones who fucking did it. But, to come back to the historians issue, there are strong and articulate voices exposing the barbarity of the winners, whereas the revisionist voices who try to apologise for the Nazis are just plain ridiculous, so it's not really an issue of the winners writing history.
Sure, we could argue many things: the Americans had started the war against Japan long before Pearl Harbor with their oil blockade, the British (especially, since they didn't dare do day raids) razed cities to the ground, the Russians - well, let's not even touch this, etc etc, but this doesn't change an iota in the story of how Germany begun the most brutal and efficient terror of all times. This is *their* moral burden.
@Robcfg: Nor can I put the allied PoW camps at the same level as the Nazi ones; for one, you're talking about PoW camps; however, when we're talking about German camps we generally talk about slavery or extermination camps. Also, a Russian would have to be unbefuckinlievable lucky to survive two years in a Nazi PoW camp.
I don't believe there's "no good and bad people". For sure, there are good people and bad people in all sides. Naturally. But that's entirely different from the generalisation. Or you mean to say that if Hitler had won the Nazis would be automagically the "good guys"? Come on... Here you have one people who terrorized half the world hell-bent on its enslavement; on the other hand, you have - let's say average nations, with good or bad people and sometimes with *very* bad people at their top (Stalin, Churchill) who did nothing but fight back and exact some measure of revenge. How can you put these two together?
@Mav (you posted as I was typing...
). No, Battalion 101 is not about the deportation but about the extermination of said Jews. As for the rest on this book I gave my points above...
