In the main, soldiers saw the persecution and even annihilation of Jews as sensible while criticizing the means of carrying it out, and that sort of logic also extended to people like Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss216 and Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann.217 The participation of people in a variety of functions and at a variety of hierarchical levels was key to the Holocaust—as was the willingness of myriads of others to tolerate what they had witnessed. Marksmen at the shooting grounds where mass executions were carried out218 or concentration camp doctors219 charged with selecting who would be killed immediately and who was deemed fit for work were concerned with methods of killing, not with justifying its necessity. The same applies to countless others who were directly or peripherally involved in the Holocaust.
The eradication of European Jews was simply not part of German soldiers’ emotional world, even though they sometimes used expressions of horror and even regret when talking about it:
PRIEBE: At CHELM (?)—my father told me about it too, he is in EAST GALICIA, on excavation work. They also employed Jews to begin with. I don’t believe anyone could hate or oppose Jews more than my father did, but he also said that the methods they used were horrible. Above all, the works at GALICIA employed Jewish labour only, Jewish engineers and everything imaginable. He says that the people of German blood (Volksdeutsche) in the UKRAINE are completely useless. The Jewish engineers were really damned clever. Then there were various types too. There was a Jewish council in the town which supervised the Jews. My father once spoke to one of his engineers, who said: “Yes, sir, when I look at the Jews en masse, then I can understand why there are anti-Jewish people.”
Then came that period of mass arrests and the S.S. commandant simply sent my father a chit saying: “By midday to-day so-and-so many Jews must be named.” My father said that it was dreadful for him. They were simply shot. The order came: “So-and-so many shootings are to be reported by such-and-such a date.” The S.S. leader, a Sturmbannführer, rounded up the Jews, when there were no more, he sent the Jewish council a… “By 1430 hours to-day so-and-so many pounds of meat, fats, spices, etc. must be produced.” If it wasn’t there by then, one them was shot. But many of the Jews poisoned themselves.
My God, if we ever have those people on top of us again!220
Lieutenant Priebe may have feared that Jews would avenge themselves someday, but that wasn’t the core of his argument. He objected to the treatment of Jews because even a self-proclaimed Jew hater like his father was upset about how he was ordered to deal with them and suffered under what he was allegedly forced to do.
