ApolloHoax.net
Off Topic => General Discussion => Topic started by: Allan F on November 12, 2015, 04:22:57 PM
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Inspired by a former member on this board, I have read and read and read online about the people who perpetrated the crime. Note that I'm not looking for evidence of any kind. I wish to learn about the mindset of the people. The psychological mechanisms which allowed them to do what they did.
Do you know of any books I should read?
Lunar Orbit: If this is an inappropriate topic, please delete it.
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Do you know of any books I should read?
'Into that Darkness' by Gitta Sereny - about Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka extermination camp.
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Thank you. Ordered from Amazon.
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I keep meaning to read Hitler's Willing Executioners but have not yet gotten around to it.
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It's a fascinating subject - like you I've read many books covering the 'How', not so much on the 'How come?'.
I've been to Auschwitz, and it was a sobering experience, although personally I found the scale of the Birkenau complex far more disturbing, even though much less of it is intact.
Apart from the odd psychopath, I imagine it's like any serious deviation from what we would regard as a moral norm: a series of small incremental steps to the side that in themselves represent a perfectly logical or 'rationalisable' decision that cumulatively end up with the person deviating a long way from the path on which they started.
I'll keep an eye out for those books - sounds interesting.
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Apart from the odd psychopath, I imagine it's like any serious deviation from what we would regard as a moral norm: a series of small incremental steps to the side that in themselves represent a perfectly logical or 'rationalisable' decision that cumulatively end up with the person deviating a long way from the path on which they started.
The memoirs of Rudolf Hoess (camp commandant at Auschwitz-Birkenau) are very revealing in that context. They have been published under the title 'Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz'.
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Gitta Sereny also wrote a book about Albert Speer.
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The subject is disturbing. I have started laying plans for a roadtrip next summer to Poland. I'd like to see the museums myself. It's only a days drive from here.
The books you mention are on my list, thank you.
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I've not been to Auschwitz, but I did visit Dachau (the very first concentration camp) in 1984. It was also a sobering place even though it was not a death camp. My understanding is that the death camps were intentionally established outside Germany in the occupied territories (mainly Poland) to make it harder for ordinary Germans to know what was happening there.
Sort of like, you know, Gitmo. (oops, Godwin...)
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The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution - Chilling in the sense that the fate and suffering of millions was decided in opulent surroundings with such systematic bureaucracy.
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Lipstadt).
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From the perspective of the psychology of why, and how, I would suggest the following:
The Lucifer Effect
by Philip G. Zimbardo
Obedience to Authority: an Experimental View
by Stanley Milgram
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
by Robert B. Cialdini
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The persecution of the Jews was not just based on the contemporaneous idea that they dominated business and financial situations in the Weimar Republic, although that was very much how it was sold to a German public that was only too willing to blame them for their own woes. It was a LOT more deep-seated than that and based in the fanatical obsession that Himmler and other elite Nazis had with German archaeological and cultural history.
To that end, in 1935, Himmler et al founded an institute called the Ahnenerbe (pron: arn-en-erba). He pulled together a large number of scholars from all over Germany, who were given the task of researching to find evidence to prove that the Germans were a master race and descended from Aryans. They even tried to "prove" that Jesus was not a Jew, but an Aryan. Of course, they were trying to prove something that wasn't true, so the scholars working in the Ahnenerbe, in order to keep their cushy jobs and not enrage Himmler, systematically falsified evidence and their conclusions.
It would be a mistake to write their works off has harmless, because it was those very same conclusions that became the basis of Nazi thinking regarding Jews, Gypsies and the handicapped, and its an near direct line from there to Wannesee and the Final Solution.
There is a really good book about the Ahnenerbe....
The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust by Heather Pringle
Its well worth reading if you have any interest in Holocaust history
Review here...
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/heather-pringle/the-master-plan/
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It's not a book but the 2001 TV film Conspiracy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266425/) (Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, ...) is a recreation of the Wannsee Conference. Excellent acting, chilling content.
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It's not a book but the 2001 TV film Conspiracy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266425/) (Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, ...) is a recreation of the Wannsee Conference. Excellent acting, chilling content.
I think I saw some of it long ago - didn't have the time then to follow it. It's on the list.
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Not a book, but this interview with Benjamin Ferencz (the last surviving judge who presided at the Nuremberg Trials) gives a chilling insight into the people that committed the Holocaust.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038mc2s
Here's a longer interview with the same gentleman:
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I don't know if I would have the werewithall to visit those places, though I should. I cannot imagine the horror those people lived and died through, and I cannot imagine the mindset of those that did it to them.
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I don't know if I would have the werewithall to visit those places, though I should. I cannot imagine the horror those people lived and died through, and I cannot imagine the mindset of those that did it to them.
I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau back in the Late 1990s; the place made my skin crawl
If you cannot imagine the horror of what happened to them, visiting there might go some way towards explaining it to you,. It will not, however contribute to your understanding of the mentality behind those who perpetrated this unspeakable outrage. If anything, it will leave you even more aghast.
Auschwitz-Birkenau is one of two places I have visited in my time that gave me an overwhelming sense of profound sadness; the other was the Arizona Memorial when I was in Hawaii in 1987. I must have stood staring at that list of names on the wall for 15 minutes before my partner got my attention. Its one thing to hear or read that over 1100 were killed there... it quite another to see all their names.
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Along the same lines, try Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel.
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I'm first-generation American (USA) of German parents. For my entire life, I've never been able to reconcile how an entire nation could go so murderously insane, based on the relatives I've met (to the best of my knowledge, none of them was directly involved, although I don't absolve that generation of what happened).
There was a famous study, probably cited somewhere here, where people would continue to seemingly administer stronger and stronger electrical shocks to someone that provided wrong answers, no matter how much they screamed. The real subject of the test was the person administering the bogus shocks. The reasoning they gave for continuing was because they were supposed to, which sounds a lot like the excuse of "I was just following orders" given by many complicit in the Holocaust.
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I'm first-generation American (USA) of German parents. For my entire life, I've never been able to reconcile how an entire nation could go so murderously insane, based on the relatives I've met (to the best of my knowledge, none of them was directly involved, although I don't absolve that generation of what happened).
There was a famous study, probably cited somewhere here, where people would continue to seemingly administer stronger and stronger electrical shocks to someone that provided wrong answers, no matter how much they screamed. The real subject of the test was the person administering the bogus shocks. The reasoning they gave for continuing was because they were supposed to, which sounds a lot like the excuse of "I was just following orders" given by many complicit in the Holocaust.
That would be the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Milgram Obedience Study, conducted by Stanley Milgram back in the early 1960s at Yale, I think. It is a very good example of regular people, people without agenda, guile, or evil intentions, who can be manipulated by the perception of authority. An even better understanding of how and why this can and does happen is the Stanford Prison Experiment that I cited a few posts farther up.
In fact, it can still happen today. Having the lens of history is no guarantee that the population of a nation can't find themselves in the middle of a similar situation, and be too far gone to know what happened to get them there.
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https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code?language=en
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In fact, it can still happen today. Having the lens of history is no guarantee that the population of a nation can't find themselves in the middle of a similar situation, and be too far gone to know what happened to get them there.
I'm really scared about how much we seem to be going that direction in the US at the moment.
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... The reasoning they gave for continuing was because they were supposed to, which sounds a lot like the excuse of "I was just following orders" given by many complicit in the Holocaust.
William Calley tried the same in his trial. However I graduated from the same company that Calley did, 5 years after. An officer can not obey orders that are against morale laws. Even IF he was ordered, to execute civilians, who may or may not be VC recruits in a ditch is utterly beyond reasonableness. The German officers really had the same morale to follow, although maybe not in the same vein as Americans.
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I'm really scared about how much we seem to be going that direction in the US at the moment.
Same here. The thought of a President Trump is beyond scary.
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... The reasoning they gave for continuing was because they were supposed to, which sounds a lot like the excuse of "I was just following orders" given by many complicit in the Holocaust.
William Calley tried the same in his trial. However I graduated from the same company that Calley did, 5 years after. An officer can not obey orders that are against morale laws. Even IF he was ordered, to execute civilians, who may or may not be VC recruits in a ditch is utterly beyond reasonableness. The German officers really had the same morale to follow, although maybe not in the same vein as Americans.
I think its called "unlawful orders" and is addressed by Article 33 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The Article, titled "Superior orders and prescription of law" reads;
"1. The fact that a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court has been committed by a person pursuant to an order of a Government or of a superior, whether military or civilian, shall not relieve that person of criminal responsibility unless:
(a) The person was under a legal obligation to obey orders of the Government or the superior in question;
(b) The person did not know that the order was unlawful; and
(c) The order was not manifestly unlawful.
2. For the purposes of this article, orders to commit genocide or crimes against humanity are manifestly unlawful.
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... The reasoning they gave for continuing was because they were supposed to, which sounds a lot like the excuse of "I was just following orders" given by many complicit in the Holocaust.
William Calley tried the same in his trial. However I graduated from the same company that Calley did, 5 years after. An officer can not obey orders that are against morale laws. Even IF he was ordered, to execute civilians, who may or may not be VC recruits in a ditch is utterly beyond reasonableness. The German officers really had the same morale to follow, although maybe not in the same vein as Americans.
I think its called "unlawful orders" and is addressed by Article 33 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The Article, titled "Superior orders and prescription of law" reads;
"1. The fact that a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court has been committed by a person pursuant to an order of a Government or of a superior, whether military or civilian, shall not relieve that person of criminal responsibility unless:
(a) The person was under a legal obligation to obey orders of the Government or the superior in question;
(b) The person did not know that the order was unlawful; and
(c) The order was not manifestly unlawful.
2. For the purposes of this article, orders to commit genocide or crimes against humanity are manifestly unlawful.
Remember this was 1967, we called them immoral orders, and in any case they would be unlawful. The only aspect that would have saved Calley is IF he was attacked by people inside buildings, shooting to kill would have then been justified, whether they were civilians or not, however lining them up in a ditch and executing them is/was not acceptable.
EDIT:
IMO Technically any order from a superior is lawful because that person is granted the authority by the position. Whether or not that order is in conduct of a mission. We had classes that defined what/how to give orders as we would be 2nd Lts. soon. I believe that following all orders was the defense position during the trial. The line officers, many of whom had tours in Viet Nam, did not buy into that line as they had been in similar situations, without executing civilians.
We were expressly forbidden to talk to the media during the trial, or after it. We were kept busy with training and to my knowledge none of us were even approached by the media.
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So how come none of the members of the US military or civilian employees of the DoD have been prosecuted for following clearly unlawful orders to torture detainees? Isn't everyone taught that the US is signatory to the Conventions on Torture, which outlaws it under any circumstance whatsoever?
A few low-level guards at Abu Ghraib were prosecuted, but that seems to be only because they didn't do it under orders. Others did, and apparently much worse.
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The idea that any order could be lawful is a bewildering one to me. There are some things no one has the right to tell you to do, no matter what their authority over you is.
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For most of history, an order was law, and in most cases, it still is. It was glorified.
The samurai serving well under a bad master was a hero, for example.
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So how come none of the members of the US military or civilian employees of the DoD have been prosecuted for following clearly unlawful orders to torture detainees? Isn't everyone taught that the US is signatory to the Conventions on Torture, which outlaws it under any circumstance whatsoever?
A few low-level guards at Abu Ghraib were prosecuted, but that seems to be only because they didn't do it under orders. Others did, and apparently much worse.
Counter point, were any of those people tried and convicted for refusing to obey those orders?
EDIT:
I'm not justifying actions taken or not taken in reference to torture. It seems like there were executive interpretations on the use of torture, whether following the general rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
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The idea that any order could be lawful is a bewildering one to me. There are some things no one has the right to tell you to do, no matter what their authority over you is.
For example if you are ordered to take a heavily defended position and likely will result in your subordinates deaths is a lawful order, even though in the eyes of the subordinates it is amoral (i.e. their own survival)
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So how come none of the members of the US military or civilian employees of the DoD have been prosecuted for following clearly unlawful orders to torture detainees? Isn't everyone taught that the US is signatory to the Conventions on Torture, which outlaws it under any circumstance whatsoever?
A few low-level guards at Abu Ghraib were prosecuted, but that seems to be only because they didn't do it under orders. Others did, and apparently much worse.
Counter point, were any of those people tried and convicted for refusing to obey those orders?
EDIT:
I'm not justifying actions taken or not taken in reference to torture. It seems like there were executive interpretations on the use of torture, whether following the general rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding)
Not to get too far off from the original intent of the thread, but your statement above is the very reason why there is a growing movement to charge and try Rove, Cheney, Rice, and possibly W with war crimes. The primary reason why it has not already happened is that "Executive Authority" (the same claim Nixon used) grants them immunity, since their decisions were made while acting under the War Powers Act.
I will say at this juncture that I am not a lawyer, I do not play one on TV, there is no Holiday In Express within 50 miles of me. It most assuredly is not my intention to express any opinion, political or otherwise. :-X
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It seems like there were executive interpretations on the use of torture, whether following the general rules.
Of course there were executive interpretations that justified it. There always are. Even the Nazis rationalized the Holocaust as an act of self defense.
Seriously.
You'll find any number of speeches (e.g., by Himmler at Posen) explaining the necessity of killing not only the adult male Jews but also the women and children, or else they'd grow up hating the Nazis, launching counterattacks on them, and having even more Jewish children who would do the same.
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The idea that any order could be lawful is a bewildering one to me. There are some things no one has the right to tell you to do, no matter what their authority over you is.
For example if you are ordered to take a heavily defended position and likely will result in your subordinates deaths is a lawful order, even though in the eyes of the subordinates it is amoral (i.e. their own survival)
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about ordering someone to rape and/or murder civilians, for example. Yes, I know that I'm coming at this from a modern perspective, but we've had rules about how you treat civilians for some time now.
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The idea that any order could be lawful is a bewildering one to me. There are some things no one has the right to tell you to do, no matter what their authority over you is.
For example if you are ordered to take a heavily defended position and likely will result in your subordinates deaths is a lawful order, even though in the eyes of the subordinates it is amoral (i.e. their own survival)
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about ordering someone to rape and/or murder civilians, for example. Yes, I know that I'm coming at this from a modern perspective, but we've had rules about how you treat civilians for some time now.
Yes, I would agree with your assessment in the case of unarmed civilians.
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It seems like there were executive interpretations on the use of torture, whether following the general rules.
Of course there were executive interpretations that justified it. There always are. Even the Nazis rationalized the Holocaust as an act of self defense.
Seriously.
You'll find any number of speeches (e.g., by Himmler at Posen) explaining the necessity of killing not only the adult male Jews but also the women and children, or else they'd grow up hating the Nazis, launching counterattacks on them, and having even more Jewish children who would do the same.
From my post, I am not justifying any actions taken against prisoners.
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From my post, I am not justifying any actions taken against prisoners.
I didn't mean to imply that you were. It's just that those who order war crimes and crimes against humanity always seem to have an excuse or a rationalization. Long before 9/11, one of the most common justifications we'd get from various banana republic dictators we'd accuse of human rights violations was that they were necessary to combat "terrorists". Sound familiar?