In the minds of most of the POWs, though, National Socialism was something different than the piecemeal, if internally consistent, theory about the “eternal laws of life” one can read out of the writings and speeches of everyone from Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg to Hitler himself. Hoerkens’s analysis concludes, on the basis of conversations between 621 soldiers, that the majority tended to view Nazi racial policies negatively and that only 30 of them could be described as ideological warriors. Junior officers, above all lieutenants, made up the lion’s share of this minority. They were still children in 1933 and thus had been socialized most intensely by the Third Reich.543 It is among them that we can best speak of a Nazi picture of the world.
When the rest of the soldiers talk about politics, race, Jews, and related topics, it is not a coherent worldview but rather a patchwork of diverse and often contradictory fragments. Committed National Socialists were able to tell stories full of empathy about Jews they had known personally and express dismay at the “scandalous treatment” of the minority by a “cultured people.” At the same time, there was a basic level of agreement with Nazi racial policies, as the example of navy W/T operator Hammacher in May 1943 shows:
HAMMACHER: This Jewish question ought to have been treated quite differently. There shouldn’t have been this persecution. Instead we ought to have introduced laws quite calmly and quietly, laying down that only so-and-so many Jews were to be allowed to practise as lawyers and so on. But as things are, all the exiled Jews have quite naturally worked very hard against GERMANY.544
Examples concerning the “Jewish actions” have already revealed that soldiers could be critical of the methods employed for mass executions, while feeling indifferent to or even supportive of the executions themselves. The same applied to ideology and racism in general. Negative opinions predominated on these topics. “I have always been opposed to those SS swine,” a Lieutenant Oehlmann opined. “I was always against the persecution of the Jews, too. One should have been able to exile the Jews but one shouldn’t have treated them like that.”545 This was hardly a fundamental rejection of anti-Semitic policies, although views on the topic grew more and more critical as confidence in victory dissolved. “It will be a disgrace being a German after the war,” one POW complained. “We’ll be as much hated as the Jews were.”546 “The greatest mistake was the expulsion of the Jews,” seconded another. “That and particularly the inhuman treatment,” agreed a third.547
In general, we can assume that such topics were most often broached by those who objected to the persecution and execution of Jews, while those to whom the Final Solution seemed necessary would have spoken up less often. Phrases liked “international” or “world Jewry” or “Jewified” England and America—together with stereotypes such as Jews being “work-shy”—occur with regularity. The reference frame of categorical inequality and the everyday anti-Semitic practice clearly had a deep psychological effect on POWs. Nonetheless, it still remains largely uncertain what that meant for the men’s perception and behavior in concrete situations. The capacity of attitudes and mental dispositions to inspire action is often overrated. They only predispose individuals to anti-Semitic behavior in extreme cases, such as the navy man cited above. It would require intense analysis of concrete situations to determine whether someone killed Jews out of anti-Semitic conviction or as a result of group dynamics. Sometimes, peer pressure made people into mass murderers without any sort of individual motivation on their own part. This conclusion is supported by evidence from the Wehrmacht, including the various positions and situations in which soldiers found themselves. Anti-Semitism may have been one basis for what they did when they battled, retreated, fought against partisans, and spent their free time, but it was not a sole motivation. As exemplified in POWs’ remarks about the Jewish ghettos, many of the men felt some empathy with the victims and were shocked at their living conditions: “These Jews were doing hard labour there at the main airport and were treated badly, like animals.”548 But that sympathy did not have any consequences in terms of the question of whether they would carry out or refuse an order to secure a ghetto.
For instance, a Lieutenant Rottländer told of a friend who had suffered after having participated in a mass execution:
