keehah
30th June 2011, 05:18 PM
Conjecture!
But this time it is more personal. But they are now on 'every street corner'.
And this time, NWOFascism take two, racial homogenaity is not used, its claimed to be economic instead, the Jews are on board, and the Jew's landowners and Christian brother are the new state sponsered Jews. Those of bad freedooms are part of the state, those of the good freedoms are now persecuted. Yet iits really about fiat finance and psychopathic power tripping.
Its from the Shoah Research Center, its pretty Kosher.
The Nazis and the German Population:
A Faustian Deal?
http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205427.pdf
Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror. The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans,
New York: Basic Books, 2000, 636 pp.
Reviewed by David Bankier
Most books, both scholarly and popular, written on relations between the
Gestapo and the German population and published up to the early 1990s,
focused on the leaderships of the organizations that powered the terror and
determined its contours. These books portray the Nazi secret police as
omnipotent and the population as an amorphous society that was liable to
oppression and was unable to respond. This historical portrayal explained the
lack of resistance to the regime. As the Nazi state was a police state, so to
speak, the individual had no opportunity to take issue with its policies, let
alone oppose them.
Studies published in the past decade have begun to demystify the
Gestapo by reexamining this picture. These studies have found that the
German population had volunteered to assist the apparatus of oppression in
its actions, including the persecution of Jews. According to the new approach,
the Gestapo did not resemble the Soviet KGB, or the Romanian Securitate, or
the East German Stasi. The Gestapo was a mechanism that reacted to events
more than it initiated them. Chronically short of manpower, it did not post a
secret agent to every street corner. On the contrary: since it did not have
enough spies to meet its needs, it had to rely on a cooperative population for
information and as a basis for its police actions. The German public did
cooperate, and, for this reason, German society became self-policing.
Eric Johnson’s book is a study in micro-history, a test case of three cities
in the Rhineland - Köln, Krefeld, and Bergheim - that fits into the revisionist
trend in the research on the Gestapo. The book is the product of a six-year
project that looked into 1,100 files from the Gestapo archives in Köln and the
special tribunals that the Nazis established to prosecute suspected enemies
of the regime. Most persons accused of political crimes - and of offenses
related to a breach of state security in wartime - were, of course, referred to
the special tribunals. The best known was the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin, run
by Justice Minister Roland Freisler.
To support his conclusions, Johnson also studied archive material from
the hearings of the de-Nazification committees and, as a complementary
source, interviewed contemporaries - survivors, ordinary Germans, and
Gestapo officials. To set this oral documentation project in motion, he
distributed, in 1993, a questionnaire among 300 men and women inhabitants
of Köln who were born before 1929. About 200 respondents filled in the
questionnaire. Johnson interviewed several of them and also conducted
follow-up interviews.
The author wishes to answer several questions on this empirical basis:
what coercive power did the Gestapo possess? Did the Gestapo terrorize
ordinary civilians in their daily lives and, if it did, did the entire population
suffer or was the terror limited to specific groups?
Johnson indeed shows that the Gestapo had little coercive power over
German society. He does not deny that terror was practiced but claims that it
did not affect the ordinary German. The Gestapo neither imposed nor wished
to impose a climate of terror and did not force Germans to obey orders,
maintain silence, and mindlessly adopt the party line as their neighbors were
arrested, deported, and murdered.
One may, in Johnson’s opinion, gauge the prevalent sociopolitical climate
in the Third Reich by examining denunciations. The number of informers was
relatively small - 1 or 2 percent of the population - and denunciation usually
occurred in the wake of disputes between neighbors; seldom did it have an
ideological or political background. On this issue, then, Johnson’s conclusions
are almost consistent with those of other researchers who studied
denunciations, such as Robert Gellately, Christl Wickert, and Inge Marssolek.
As for the gender and age profile of the typical informer, Johnson found that
most were adult men and Nazi party members; fewer were women and young
people. This conclusion is certainly unexpected in view of the opinion,
commonly held by the public at large, that young fanatics from the
Hitlerjugend were the ones most strongly inclined to denounce. Johnson also
found no cases of denunciation of parents by their children.
The German population, Johnson maintains, perceived Gestapo terror not
as a threat but as an instrument that served the population’s interests,
especially the need for personal security and membership in the racial
community (Volksgemeinschaft). He uses statistical tables to show that the
oppression was selective and overlooked most of German society. This is
because the Gestapo targeted specific enemies for attack: foremost the
political left and the Jews and, to a lesser extent, religious and social groups
such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests, and Protestant ministers, as
well as homosexuals and asocials. In the war years, the roster of victims of
Gestapo actions expanded to include slave laborers who had been brought to
Germany from the occupied countries.
A random sample of Gestapo interrogations in Krefeld, for example,
shows that more than half of those interrogated and punished belonged to
three groups: Jews, left-wing activists, and church officials, and it is totally
clear that these three groups made up a small fraction of the population of the
area.
Another table, summarizing the results of cases presented to the
special tribunals, shows that a large proportion of cases were closed without
criminal proceedings against defendants who belonged to the three
aforementioned groups: Jews, left-wing activists, religious dissidents, and
social deviants.
The situation of the Jews worsened when the war began, but
most Germans, as they admit in their interviews with Johnson, were not afraid
of the Gestapo. Quite the contrary: they danced to the strains of forbidden
jazz, surreptitiously listened to broadcasts of the BBC, and spread jokes about
the regime.
It is true that defendants who were brought before Roland Freisler’s folk
tribunals almost always received the death penalty. From the time it was
established, in July 1934, to the assassination attempt against Hitler in July
1944, this tribunal sentenced more than 5,000 people to death. However, the
situation in the local courts was different. Johnson shows that most cases in
the courts he studied were closed without litigation, or ended with light
penalties for the accused. Johnson’s interviews and questionnaires confirm
that most Germans felt they could complain privately, crack jokes at the Nazis’
expense, listen to BBC radio illegally, and so on, with no fear of severe
punishment. In other words, the Germans’ allegiance and silence did not
originate in fear of denunciation.
If they were not paralyzed by fear, why then did they not marshal the
courage to protest against the assaults on minorities in their own country and
the murder of millions of Jews in occupied Europe?
The answer, in the author’s opinion, has to do with the fact that less than 1
percent of the ordinary German population was persecuted by the Gestapo,
and they, as stated, were Jews, political activists, religious dissidents, and
social deviants. According to Johnson, the Nazis and the German population
concluded a Faustian deal of sorts - the population turned a blind eye to the
Gestapo’s abuse of the persecuted minorities and remained silent when
reports about murders appeared; in return, the Nazis overlooked minor
infractions by ordinary Germans.
[cont'd]
But this time it is more personal. But they are now on 'every street corner'.
And this time, NWOFascism take two, racial homogenaity is not used, its claimed to be economic instead, the Jews are on board, and the Jew's landowners and Christian brother are the new state sponsered Jews. Those of bad freedooms are part of the state, those of the good freedoms are now persecuted. Yet iits really about fiat finance and psychopathic power tripping.
Its from the Shoah Research Center, its pretty Kosher.
The Nazis and the German Population:
A Faustian Deal?
http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205427.pdf
Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror. The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans,
New York: Basic Books, 2000, 636 pp.
Reviewed by David Bankier
Most books, both scholarly and popular, written on relations between the
Gestapo and the German population and published up to the early 1990s,
focused on the leaderships of the organizations that powered the terror and
determined its contours. These books portray the Nazi secret police as
omnipotent and the population as an amorphous society that was liable to
oppression and was unable to respond. This historical portrayal explained the
lack of resistance to the regime. As the Nazi state was a police state, so to
speak, the individual had no opportunity to take issue with its policies, let
alone oppose them.
Studies published in the past decade have begun to demystify the
Gestapo by reexamining this picture. These studies have found that the
German population had volunteered to assist the apparatus of oppression in
its actions, including the persecution of Jews. According to the new approach,
the Gestapo did not resemble the Soviet KGB, or the Romanian Securitate, or
the East German Stasi. The Gestapo was a mechanism that reacted to events
more than it initiated them. Chronically short of manpower, it did not post a
secret agent to every street corner. On the contrary: since it did not have
enough spies to meet its needs, it had to rely on a cooperative population for
information and as a basis for its police actions. The German public did
cooperate, and, for this reason, German society became self-policing.
Eric Johnson’s book is a study in micro-history, a test case of three cities
in the Rhineland - Köln, Krefeld, and Bergheim - that fits into the revisionist
trend in the research on the Gestapo. The book is the product of a six-year
project that looked into 1,100 files from the Gestapo archives in Köln and the
special tribunals that the Nazis established to prosecute suspected enemies
of the regime. Most persons accused of political crimes - and of offenses
related to a breach of state security in wartime - were, of course, referred to
the special tribunals. The best known was the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin, run
by Justice Minister Roland Freisler.
To support his conclusions, Johnson also studied archive material from
the hearings of the de-Nazification committees and, as a complementary
source, interviewed contemporaries - survivors, ordinary Germans, and
Gestapo officials. To set this oral documentation project in motion, he
distributed, in 1993, a questionnaire among 300 men and women inhabitants
of Köln who were born before 1929. About 200 respondents filled in the
questionnaire. Johnson interviewed several of them and also conducted
follow-up interviews.
The author wishes to answer several questions on this empirical basis:
what coercive power did the Gestapo possess? Did the Gestapo terrorize
ordinary civilians in their daily lives and, if it did, did the entire population
suffer or was the terror limited to specific groups?
Johnson indeed shows that the Gestapo had little coercive power over
German society. He does not deny that terror was practiced but claims that it
did not affect the ordinary German. The Gestapo neither imposed nor wished
to impose a climate of terror and did not force Germans to obey orders,
maintain silence, and mindlessly adopt the party line as their neighbors were
arrested, deported, and murdered.
One may, in Johnson’s opinion, gauge the prevalent sociopolitical climate
in the Third Reich by examining denunciations. The number of informers was
relatively small - 1 or 2 percent of the population - and denunciation usually
occurred in the wake of disputes between neighbors; seldom did it have an
ideological or political background. On this issue, then, Johnson’s conclusions
are almost consistent with those of other researchers who studied
denunciations, such as Robert Gellately, Christl Wickert, and Inge Marssolek.
As for the gender and age profile of the typical informer, Johnson found that
most were adult men and Nazi party members; fewer were women and young
people. This conclusion is certainly unexpected in view of the opinion,
commonly held by the public at large, that young fanatics from the
Hitlerjugend were the ones most strongly inclined to denounce. Johnson also
found no cases of denunciation of parents by their children.
The German population, Johnson maintains, perceived Gestapo terror not
as a threat but as an instrument that served the population’s interests,
especially the need for personal security and membership in the racial
community (Volksgemeinschaft). He uses statistical tables to show that the
oppression was selective and overlooked most of German society. This is
because the Gestapo targeted specific enemies for attack: foremost the
political left and the Jews and, to a lesser extent, religious and social groups
such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests, and Protestant ministers, as
well as homosexuals and asocials. In the war years, the roster of victims of
Gestapo actions expanded to include slave laborers who had been brought to
Germany from the occupied countries.
A random sample of Gestapo interrogations in Krefeld, for example,
shows that more than half of those interrogated and punished belonged to
three groups: Jews, left-wing activists, and church officials, and it is totally
clear that these three groups made up a small fraction of the population of the
area.
Another table, summarizing the results of cases presented to the
special tribunals, shows that a large proportion of cases were closed without
criminal proceedings against defendants who belonged to the three
aforementioned groups: Jews, left-wing activists, religious dissidents, and
social deviants.
The situation of the Jews worsened when the war began, but
most Germans, as they admit in their interviews with Johnson, were not afraid
of the Gestapo. Quite the contrary: they danced to the strains of forbidden
jazz, surreptitiously listened to broadcasts of the BBC, and spread jokes about
the regime.
It is true that defendants who were brought before Roland Freisler’s folk
tribunals almost always received the death penalty. From the time it was
established, in July 1934, to the assassination attempt against Hitler in July
1944, this tribunal sentenced more than 5,000 people to death. However, the
situation in the local courts was different. Johnson shows that most cases in
the courts he studied were closed without litigation, or ended with light
penalties for the accused. Johnson’s interviews and questionnaires confirm
that most Germans felt they could complain privately, crack jokes at the Nazis’
expense, listen to BBC radio illegally, and so on, with no fear of severe
punishment. In other words, the Germans’ allegiance and silence did not
originate in fear of denunciation.
If they were not paralyzed by fear, why then did they not marshal the
courage to protest against the assaults on minorities in their own country and
the murder of millions of Jews in occupied Europe?
The answer, in the author’s opinion, has to do with the fact that less than 1
percent of the ordinary German population was persecuted by the Gestapo,
and they, as stated, were Jews, political activists, religious dissidents, and
social deviants. According to Johnson, the Nazis and the German population
concluded a Faustian deal of sorts - the population turned a blind eye to the
Gestapo’s abuse of the persecuted minorities and remained silent when
reports about murders appeared; in return, the Nazis overlooked minor
infractions by ordinary Germans.
[cont'd]