Would you have taken a different path? A new documentary features interviews with Germans who participated in Nazi atrocities. Most of them say they were just doing their job.
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Elderly Nazis open up for the first time
Would you have taken a different path? A new documentary features interviews with Germans who participated in Nazi atrocities. Most of them say they were just doing their job.
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Asked why they went along with the massacres, some claim not to have known. Others admit that the atrocities were no secret, but insist that they were powerless. Only a few confront their responsibility.
Hans Werk was taught Nazi doctrine at school. At ten years old, he joined the Hitler Youth, and later the SS.
Karl-Heinz Lipok did not leave school intending to participate in genocide: he simply wanted to avoid compulsory labour service. But when his parents took him to see a careers adviser, he set out on a path that would make him complicit in some of the worst crimes in history. He ended up working for the SS. And throughout the war, he was a guard at Dachau, where he watched prisoners be tortured and killed.
These are some of the stories traced by a new documentary. The Final Account contains interviews with elderly Germans about their memories of Nazi rule.
None of the interviewees was involved in planning. Yet each was close to the horror in one way or another.
The Holocaust is often described as history's greatest sin. Yet, as this documentary shows, it was carried out and supported by ordinary people.
This ordinariness has haunted writers and researchers ever since. The philosopher Hannah Arendt came up with the phrase "the banality of evil". It described how unremarkable people can be responsible for horrific acts.
Whatever the reason people had for complying, the number of people in Nazi Germany who resisted was very small. "These heroes you expect to find," as one interviewee says - "there aren't many of them".
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Would you have taken a different path?
Yes: There can be no excuses for participating in evil, no matter what the dangers of speaking out are. You cannot claim to be a decent person unless you pass this test.
No: We are no different from these Germans: when evil comes and those in power preach hate, it is infinitely easier to submit to it than resist. It's deluded to insist you are any more morally pure.
Or... You don't need to engage in hypotheticals to know whether you would turn a blind eye to evil: the Holocaust was unique, but cruelty and injustice is alive and well. If you consider yourself a resistance hero then walk the talk.
Keywords
Hitler Youth - A Nazi organisation for Germans from the ages of 10 to 18, which promoted the Nazis racist and violent ideology alongside athletics competitions and social gatherings. Membership was made compulsory in 1936.
Genocide - The annihilation of a people, either through killing of its members, or through the suppression of its culture.
SS - Short for the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary organisation in Nazi Germany that directly served Hitler and his party.
Dachau - Opened in 1933, this concentration camp operated for longer than any other in Nazi Germany. It was not specifically designed to carry out massacres, like Auschwitz, but tens of thousands died there nonetheless.
Hannah Arendt - A Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism.
Elderly Nazis open up for the first time
Glossary
Hitler Youth - A Nazi organisation for Germans from the ages of 10 to 18, which promoted the Nazis racist and violent ideology alongside athletics competitions and social gatherings. Membership was made compulsory in 1936.
Genocide - The annihilation of a people, either through killing of its members, or through the suppression of its culture.
SS - Short for the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary organisation in Nazi Germany that directly served Hitler and his party.
Dachau - Opened in 1933, this concentration camp operated for longer than any other in Nazi Germany. It was not specifically designed to carry out massacres, like Auschwitz, but tens of thousands died there nonetheless.
Hannah Arendt - A Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism.