The irony is that the the Holocaust was actually hidden to much of the German populace and most of the heinous war crimes were only uncovered after the Genocide was over.
At least we now know that even with full knowledge of what happened in Germany most people would still have supported their “lesser evil” Fuhrer.
Please don’t use the passive voice when you’re talking about knowledge and accountability. Millions of people knew what was happening around the time it was happening.
Of course many other people didn’t know, or didn’t believe what they heard, if they heard anything. But you don’t get to put everyone in the latter group.
Germans knew there was something extremely shady going on with people being deported to “work camps”. But Germans had a weird notion of plausible deniability because they did not know for certain. They did not want to know either of course.
Unadapted borrowing from German wir haben es nicht gewußt (“we did not know (it), we had no knowledge of it”).
It refers to the stereotypical defense said to have been used by Germans attempting to deflect accusations of not having done enough to stop Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War, especially the Holocaust.
US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in April 1945. Here, US soldiers escort German civilians from the nearby town of Weimar through the Buchenwald camp. The American liberating troops had a policy of forcing German civilians to view the atrocities committed in the camps.
The irony is that the the Holocaust was actually hidden to much of the German populace and most of the heinous war crimes were only uncovered after the Genocide was over.
At least we now know that even with full knowledge of what happened in Germany most people would still have supported their “lesser evil” Fuhrer.
Please don’t use the passive voice when you’re talking about knowledge and accountability. Millions of people knew what was happening around the time it was happening.
Of course many other people didn’t know, or didn’t believe what they heard, if they heard anything. But you don’t get to put everyone in the latter group.
Germans knew there was something extremely shady going on with people being deported to “work camps”. But Germans had a weird notion of plausible deniability because they did not know for certain. They did not want to know either of course.
They even had a term for this: wir haben es nicht gewußt
they were forced to confront the reality though https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/german-civilians-forced-to-view-atrocities-committed-in-buchenwald
Indeed but it was after the Nazis already lost.
At least we know you who you want in the Whitehouse