Devastated by the loss World War 1 in 1918, Germany fell into a state of unrest and massive unemployment. In this time, the German people turned towards a leader, Adolf Hitler, who embodied strength and promised a more united Germany. This idea of unity and anti-individualistic structure permeated all aspects of a Germany run by the National Socialist Party, including the lives of German citizens, SS Officers, and prisoners. Germans were willing to obey in Nazi Germany because they were acting as members of a group instead of as individuals.
After the end of World War 1, the Allies forced Germany to give up territory, pay exorbitant reparations, and take accept complete blame for the war. In this uncertain time, Adolf Hitler enraptured the …show more content…
The fear of living as an individual is shown in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report of the Banality of Evil when Adolf Eichmann reflects on his life after Germany’s 1945 defeat, noting “’I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued to me… in brief, a life never known before lay before me’” (Arendt, 37). During the Nazi rise to power, the lost, unemployed Eichmann joined the Nazis rather arbitrarily as he chose between two different brotherhoods in an attempt to feel like he belonged to a greater purpose. He quickly bought into the Nazi theme of unity and employment that it offered. This idea of unity is celebrated in Leni Reifenstahl’s propaganda film Triumph of the Will that highlights the camaraderie of the officers, using scenes of officers acting like boys, playing games and laughing together, to entice others to join the SS. The group dynamic also alleviated the personal responsibility that the officers felt. Eichmann, reflecting on a 1942 conference to coordinate the Final Solution, explained “‘at that moment I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of all guilt… [who was I] to have my own thoughts in this matter’” (Arendt, 40). Not many of the soldiers were fanatical anti-Semitists, rather they were normal, average citizens who …show more content…
As Bruno Bettelheim explains in his “Behavior in Extreme Situations: Coercion,” a “major goal [of the Gestapo] was to break the prisoners as individuals and to change them into a docile mass” (Bettelheim, 5). Many aspects of life in the camps was structured around destroying the sense of individual. Prisoners were quick to realize that it was nearly impossible to go against the efforts to turn them into a mass. Bettelheim explains that “to remain independent implied dangers and many hardships; to comply with the SS seemed in the prisoner’s own interest, because it automatically made life easier for him” (Bettelheim ,15). When an individual acted against the wishes of the SS, the group suffered, not just the individual. It was the power and pressure of the group driven by fear that controlled the prisoners even more than the officers. In camps, the internal pain of the degrading culture was more intense than the physical torture. Many individuals were broken by the Gestapo’s
After the end of World War 1, the Allies forced Germany to give up territory, pay exorbitant reparations, and take accept complete blame for the war. In this uncertain time, Adolf Hitler enraptured the …show more content…
The fear of living as an individual is shown in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report of the Banality of Evil when Adolf Eichmann reflects on his life after Germany’s 1945 defeat, noting “’I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued to me… in brief, a life never known before lay before me’” (Arendt, 37). During the Nazi rise to power, the lost, unemployed Eichmann joined the Nazis rather arbitrarily as he chose between two different brotherhoods in an attempt to feel like he belonged to a greater purpose. He quickly bought into the Nazi theme of unity and employment that it offered. This idea of unity is celebrated in Leni Reifenstahl’s propaganda film Triumph of the Will that highlights the camaraderie of the officers, using scenes of officers acting like boys, playing games and laughing together, to entice others to join the SS. The group dynamic also alleviated the personal responsibility that the officers felt. Eichmann, reflecting on a 1942 conference to coordinate the Final Solution, explained “‘at that moment I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of all guilt… [who was I] to have my own thoughts in this matter’” (Arendt, 40). Not many of the soldiers were fanatical anti-Semitists, rather they were normal, average citizens who …show more content…
As Bruno Bettelheim explains in his “Behavior in Extreme Situations: Coercion,” a “major goal [of the Gestapo] was to break the prisoners as individuals and to change them into a docile mass” (Bettelheim, 5). Many aspects of life in the camps was structured around destroying the sense of individual. Prisoners were quick to realize that it was nearly impossible to go against the efforts to turn them into a mass. Bettelheim explains that “to remain independent implied dangers and many hardships; to comply with the SS seemed in the prisoner’s own interest, because it automatically made life easier for him” (Bettelheim ,15). When an individual acted against the wishes of the SS, the group suffered, not just the individual. It was the power and pressure of the group driven by fear that controlled the prisoners even more than the officers. In camps, the internal pain of the degrading culture was more intense than the physical torture. Many individuals were broken by the Gestapo’s