This is the logic that supported the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. Those who designed and orchestrated the Holocaust at a high level bear a greater share of responsibility than those Germans who served the Third Reich at a grunt level. Among other things, German soldiers could have been severely punished or killed for disobeying orders.
Average German soldiers weren’t prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials and that was a correct decision. For them, the best option was truth, reconciliation, and re-education away from Hitler’s propaganda. Because the day after Hitler was defeated, there was a smoldering mess left behind for Germans to rebuild. Throwing everyone in society in jail is not a real option.
Those Germans who stood by and allowed all this to happen in their country are also morally responsible, but at a lower level. Hitler did not come to power promising to kill all the Jews. He promised a stronger economy, to avenge past wrongs, and to make Germany “respected” again. Hitler did viciously attack the Jews and other minority groups in his rise to power, but he did not swear to exterminate them, not initially. Germans who overlooked Hitler’s racist, anti-Semitic diatribes and excused them as just part of the bargain made a grievous error in judgment, but can be forgiven up to a point, particularly since the world up until that point has never seen anything like the Holocaust and it was impossible for average citizens to even imagine it.
But now, the Holocaust having entered our history books, we have no excuses. We all need to study the political breakdown in Germany (one of the world’s leading nations at the time) to ensure it never, ever happens to us.
Caption this Meme
