How do individuals talk about their involvement in state-sponsored violence, at the time and later, and how do historians and creative writers represent them? How far do people’s behaviours and attitudes compromise who they are? And what compromises do states and societies make during and after such violence?
Compromised identities?
Although the reasons for joining a Nazi organisation varied, after 1945 people found that they were tainted by their past, which compromised their future prospects.
On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor. Democracy was rapidly destroyed, and people who did not fit the Nazi vision of the ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft) were excluded and persecuted.
During the war (1939-45), Germans and their collaborators killed around six million Jews and around 16 million other non-combatants, including members of the Polish elites (political leaders, members of the clergy, intelligentsia, and others), Soviet prisoners of war, people with mental and physical disabilities, ‘Gypsies’ (Sinti and Roma), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and those opposed to Nazism on political, religious and moral grounds.
Who was responsible for violence on this scale, beyond key individuals in positions of power? We often picture perpetration as directly physical: pulling the trigger and shooting innocent victims. We should also think of those who made killings possible: transporting victims to killing sites; ‘securing’ the area; or sorting the possessions of the murdered.
But far wider numbers were complicit or involved in other ways. Millions sustained the wider Nazi system, whether in their formal roles or informally in everyday life. Despite widespread moral condemnation, few individuals or professional and social groups felt their behaviour undermined their own identity as decent people.
Exciting times
Margarethe S. recounts her employment and leisure in and around a concentration camp, the murder of escaped POWs, and the end of the war.
Denunciation: Personal interests and political gains
Once the Nazis were in power, they demanded conformity from citizens. Followers wanted to show loyalty and former critics felt the need to demonstrate consent; they started to report others to the authorities.
Initially, people mostly denounced real and alleged political opponents. Some people also tried to benefit personally, or held a grudge against somebody and used politics to make their accusations sound justified.
Fear of denunciation meant that many people dared not speak openly; even children could betray their parents.
When the war started, people often denounced others for contact with prisoners of war or forced labourers. The consequences could now be severe, even fatal.
The government reminded people that denunciation was considered immoral if it was done for personal gain. However, it was an effective means of suppressing dissent. In 1944, a factory supervisor in Apolda (Germany) was denounced for ‘communist agitation’, sentenced to death and executed. After the war, his wife reported a colleague, a superior and some other workers to the police because they had contributed to her husband’s fate or had justified it publicly. In post-war East and West Germany, denouncers were portrayed as the embodiment of Nazism and condemned for their actions.
Office worker Helene Schwärzel in the dock in the Berlin-Moabit Criminal Court. Schwärzel was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in Berlin in 1947 for denouncing a prominent member of the resistance, Carl Goerdeler, in 1944. Goerdeler was executed in February 1945. Denunciation is often seen as a ‘female crime’, but actually fewer than 20 per cent of denouncers in Nazi Germany were women.
© Ullsteinbild/TopFoto, Ulls290129. Photographer: unknown. November 1947.
Denunciation
Denunciations were extremely common, although it was often difficult to draw a direct line from a specific denunciation to an individual’s persecution.
Bruno Bruckner: Photographer, Accomplice, Eye-Witness
Bruno Bruckner photographed victims of the T4 ‘euthanasia’ project. He was never convicted of Nazi crimes, even presenting himself as a victim.
Directly involved
An estimated one million or more people
3,000 – 4,000
Einsatzgruppen (killing squads)
50,000 +
Police battalions
720,000 +
Members of the Army involved in killing civilians
Staff in extermination camps, concentration camps, and ghettos
SS (including SD), Security Police (Gestapo, Kripo), SA and other forces.
Doctors and staff in ‘euthanasia’ institutes
Auxiliaries and collaborators across Europe
Propelling and enabling violence
It is impossible to estimate this number securely. People changed their behaviour over time and depending on context.
NSDAP and Party organizations
Government ministries
Civilian administrators
Judges, experts, professionals
Employers of forced and slave labour
People who were complicit by denouncing others, humiliating and excluding Jews, seeking to benefit materially and professionally from their plight
