Niklas' blog

To many, the SS seemingly consisted of leaders of men. In fact, a lot of the members merely followed the herd of people who seemed to know what they were doing. It’s easy to spot now, but why should they have been questioned? Pretentiously enough, I say that criticising one’s own actions is obligatory. One can easily understand why some damaged souls joined the SS, just as the victims of bullies often jump at any shot to become a bully themselves, yet despite the clarifying words below it’s interesting to know that most people actually voted for the nazis in the German 1932 elections, which brought Hitler to power; in search for a simple solution¹, it’s often much more interesting, illuminating and intelligent to constantly question not only what you hear, but yourself and your own actions.

From page 34 in Laurence Rees‘ (so far, as I’m reading it) brilliant “Auschwitz“:

The only certainty for members of the SS was the fundamental rightness of the orders they were given. If a superior ordered someone to be imprisoned, someone to be executed, then – even if to the individual ordered to carry out the sentence the judgment appeared incomprehensible – the order must be correct. The only protection against the cancer of self-doubt in the face of orders that were not immediately explicable was hardness, which therefore became a cult throughout the SS. ‘We must be hard as granite, otherwise the work of our Fuhrer will perish’, said Reinhard Heydrich, the most powerful figure in the SS after Himmler.

In the process of learning how to bury emotions like compassion and pity, Hoess absorbed the sense of brotherhood that was also strong in the SS. Precisely because an SS man knew that he would be called upon to do things that ‘weaker’ men could not, a powerful esprit de corps developed in which the loyalty of one’s SS comrades became a vital pillar of support. The crude values of the SS – unquestioning loyalty hardness, protection of the Reich against the enemy within – became almost a substitute religious creed, a distinct and easily absorbed world-view. ‘I was full of gratitude to the SS for the intellectual guidance if gave me,’ said Johannes Hassebroeck, commandant of another SS concentration camp. ‘We were all thankful. Many of us had been so bewildered before we joined the organization. We did not understand what was happening around us – everything was so mixed up. The SS offered us a series of simple ideas that we could understand, and we believed in them.’

1. E.g. blaming the jews for your problems.[back]