Has anyone else read Mein Kampf?

There is some evidence that it does take a certain kind of personality to participate directly in these kind of atrocities. Apparently, concentration camp guards had extremely high turnovers because of suicide. Part of the reason they started using the victims themselves to remove the bodies from gas chambers was that the guards couldn't stomach the task. An individual like Mengele was a special kind of sociopath.

It's not that these people were exceptional, but we should understand that it does take a significant amount of conditioning to make human beings participate in that kind of cruelty.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

The moral principles I base my sentiments on when I condemn a man like Eichmann come not from some new perspective of right and wrong that's arisen in the few decades since world war 2. Its old, older even than the sermon on the mount. Some voice inside Eichmann called out to him that it was egregiously and disgustingly wrong for him to commit such horrid deeds. Context can justify behaviors we now deem immoral to a certain extent, but in no historical or situational context is it morally permissible to annihilate in cold blood entire peoples, innocent and unarmed, by the millions.

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We are going to need Nuremberg for Syria. The only motive millions didn't yet die there is that the modern weapons are more accurate under highly improved technology.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

But there is a wrongness in saying "YES HE CAN HELP IT" when I and you would and all of us would have not had the courage to sacrifice ourselves for others.

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How do you know that?

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

There is some evidence that it does take a certain kind of personality to participate directly in these kind of atrocities. Apparently, concentration camp guards had extremely high turnovers because of suicide. Part of the reason they started using the victims themselves to remove the bodies from gas chambers was that the guards couldn't stomach the task. An individual like Mengele was a special kind of sociopath.

It's not that these people were exceptional, but we should understand that it does take a significant amount of conditioning to make human beings participate in that kind of cruelty.

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Exactly. I never said that they were all perfectly fine human beings who did only good.

I merely said that I doubt that any of them would have decided to do the very same thing on their own in a society free of conditioning.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

YES HE CAN HELP IT. He can tell them no, refuse, act on principle and not gruesomely and coldly slaughter innocent Jewish men, women and children. You are regurgitating the Nuremburg defence. It doesn't work. Again, its easy for you now to deny the existence of evil, but put yourself in the shoes of one of those Jews fated to choke to death on gas and I'm sure you'd be singing a different tune. You have too much understanding for the perpetrator and not enough for the victim.

Actually, in all honesty, I would never be an Eichmann. Maybe I could have possibly been a Hitler supporter at that time, but there is no way in hell I myself would have killed innocent Jews. And there were a LOT of Germans who wouldn't have been able to take the path of an Eichmann either, even if they were anti-semitic and brainwashed and wrapped around the fuhrer's finger.

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:lol: Do you believe that yourself! I read yesterday that someone of the SS, responsible for a ghetto in the Baltics somewhere asked a superior of his where these Jews were all going then if his ghetto was cleared or something to that effect. His superior laughted and said, 'Haha, nein, die gehen ins Jenseits.' (they are going to the other side). Tell me, if he did not want to be part of it anymore, what should he have done?
If you are in such a culture where you have been conditioned to hate people and no longer see them as people, I doubt whether you would have actually refused or even objected to the idea.

Eichmann was born in 1906. He would have been 8 when WWI broke out and 12 when it ended and Germany was crumbling on the edge of civil war. He would have been raised with the rumours of the Jews having started the war, certainly as his father was a veteran. Most of his teenage years, he spent as member of a militaristic youth club. You think that does not influence a person?

I have never said that he was not responsible, I have only said that these people had warped vision.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

'One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.' - The Golden Rule.

The Golden Rule is a standard that has been in place for millenia, if not from the dawn of human cognition. It's a fairy obvious moral standard that people can surely see is the 'right thing'. If they don't, if they go against it, then they are evil - now, then, whenever.

Hitler, the slave owners, Robespierre and the large minority of German people who voted Hitler in, consciously went against the Golden Rule. They were 'bad and harmful' people by any standard, historical or present day. And 'bad and harmful' is the dictionary definition of 'evil'.

Saying that Robbespierre was evil contributes to understanding, because we can then ask why he was evil, why didn't he follow the Golden Rule? Same goes for slavery.

Eichmann joined the SS to make a career, at the expense of following the Golden Rule. You can't use the excuse 'I was just following orders'. He was evil. Full stop.

The Jews who had to shove dead people from the gas chambers into the ovens were not evil. Who cares what anyone does with your dead body? You can't feel and suffer after you are dead.

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Ah, but that is the catch. What if one thinks that a Jew is not another? There was no problem for Robbespierre to murder aristocrats, nor was it a problem for slave traders to sometimes lose half of their cargo... You could even insure it!
I agree that it needs an awful lot of conditioning to consider killing people on a grand scale like that, but even a case like Mengele... Consider the idea that you think a fellow human being is not a human being but rather like an ape. They used to do experiments on apes, they still do, so why not on those people then, taking that logic? Would Mengele have done the same if he had not been long part of that system? And would he have done it if he had not been taught by someone who did exactly the same experiments and was also so much obsessed by race 30-odd years earlier? Indeed the academic world in Germany was already obsessed with race in 1906!

A person would be evil if he were to do such things if he was not conditioned to do them.

Following orders is of a totally different nature, though. That is admitting that you are guilty (which Eichmann could hardly deny), but that you were forced to do it. It is clear that he was not really forced per se and that he organised the genocide pretty zealously and voluntarily (if you could do so in the SS to a great extent), however, what is never considered in court is the question if a person inherently wanted to do it or that that will was forced on him. Between being guilty/responsible and being the inventor of the whole thing there is a vast difference. As such his defence could be refuted on the grounds that he was not merely taking orders, but it could be argued that he was conditioned to think what he thought. Something which of course does not do away with any of his responsibility.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

The moral principles I base my sentiments on when I condemn a man like Eichmann come not from some new perspective of right and wrong that's arisen in the few decades since world war 2. Its old, older even than the sermon on the mount. Some voice inside Eichmann called out to him that it was egregiously and disgustingly wrong for him to commit such horrid deeds. Context can justify behaviors we now deem immoral to a certain extent, but in no historical or situational context is it morally permissible to annihilate in cold blood entire peoples, innocent and unarmed, by the millions.

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Oh, no, it has never been OK to do that! The whole of history is full of it, my friend. It started with the Christians being murdered by Nero because they were Christian, Jesus being killed (why? it's difficult to say), then the Christians killing the Muslims because they were Muslims, the Russians wanting to murder the Tatars, the Turkish wanting to wipe out the Armenians, the Chinese at this point in time wanting to get rid and trying very hard to get rid of a Western looking tribe (forgot their name), the Japanese setting out to kill as many of the Chinese they despised as possible in WWII, the Tutsies wanting to wipe out the Htutus and vice versa as recently as the 1990s, the Inuit were also once under threat I seem to recall, the Laps, and I could still go on for a while if I wanted to. Maybe not all of these had millions in their populations, but at least someone wished them gone from the face of the earth.

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Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

How do you know that?

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He doesn't, and some things are worth dying for.

[originally posted by kiki1982]"With your morality, I would like to see you try and do something else in such a climate. Remember, you have been in such a climate of hatred for at least 20 years, you have been bombarded with propaganda for the last 15 years and you are only moving in circles which endorse this kind of thing. And you possibly fear to end up the same as your prinsoners if you dare to put a foot crooked. At least Eva Braun said once to her sister (who was married to an SS official) when she asked questions about the poor lot of those prisoners that 'if [she wasn't] careful, [she] might end up there as well and then [she could] do nothing for [her] anymore."

The above is a scary post. There were people who sacrificed themselves, there were people who did something else in such a climate. Most people, unless insane, know right from wrong- this is innate. But, there are enough bad people who commit atrocities such as this. Luckily, they are not the majority. This is not behavior where one can say, "oh, what he did was bad, but he wasn't completely bad/evil."
We CAN say that these people were all bad/evil, whichever word you prefer to use. With my morality, I would prefer to be shot rather than partake. That happened too. You can believe me if you want, or not, but I think in that situation, given the choice of partaking in atrocities or being shot to death, death would be a far easier choice.
Makes sense to me.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

Oh, no, it has never been OK to do that! The whole of history is full of it, my friend. It started with the Christians being murdered by Nero because they were Christian, Jesus being killed (why? it's difficult to say), then the Christians killing the Muslims because they were Muslims, the Russians wanting to murder the Tatars, the Turkish wanting to wipe out the Armenians, the Chinese at this point in time wanting to get rid and trying very hard to get rid of a Western looking tribe (forgot their name), the Japanese setting out to kill as many of the Chinese they despised as possible in WWII, the Tutsies wanting to wipe out the Htutus and vice versa as recently as the 1990s, the Inuit were also once under threat I seem to recall, the Laps, and I could still go on for a while if I wanted to. Maybe not all of these had millions in their populations, but at least someone wished them gone from the face of the earth.

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Nero was regarded negatively in his own time for his apparent lack of humanity. The Roman dictator Sulla was hated by many for all the murders he ordered, while Caesar was beloved because of the clemency he showed his enemies. It has always been considered wrong to gratuitously kill. Thucydides related with a tone of revulsion and horror the bloody excesses of the Corcyran civil war. Alexander is said to have deeply regretted his lack of mercy in deciding to raze Thebes to the ground. These are examples going back millenia. Its in our genetic make-up. If we were an indiscriminately violent and murderous species we never would have evolved.

Your cataloging of all these crimes against humanity undermines the very point you're trying to make in doing so. You realize they were immoral, every person on here who sees them listed thinks of them as immoral, and so here you lay out proof that immorality objectively exists.

A person would be evil if he were to do such things if he was not conditioned to do them.

I'm sorry, but no one is "conditioned" to such an extent that they cannot recognize that the slaughter of innocent human beings is wrong... is "evil". The camp commanders and the Nazi high command knew perfectly well that what they was doing amounted to a crime against humanity and a great many made every attempt to avoid being captured by the allies because they knew that retribution would be at hand. If they honestly thought that what they were doing was all right and good why even flee? Surely the invading Russians and Americans would be fully understanding of what they were doing.

Your arguments are based in ideals taken to the point of absurdity. There is no apology... no excuse that can be made that justifies genocide and wholesale murder. It has always been those individuals who place abstract ideals above human reality that see nothing wrong with rape, pillage, destruction, and whole-sale murder to achieve their end. In their warped minds, the end justifies the means. In the eyes of history and humanity they are what we know as "evil".

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

A person would be evil if he were to do such things if he was not conditioned to do them.

I'm sorry, but no one is "conditioned" to such an extent that they cannot recognize that the slaughter of innocent human beings is wrong... is "evil". The camp commanders and the Nazi high command knew perfectly well that what they was doing amounted to a crime against humanity and a great many made every attempt to avoid being captured by the allies because they knew that retribution would be at hand. If they honestly thought that what they were doing was all right and good why even flee? Surely the invading Russians and Americans would be fully understanding of what they were doing.

Your arguments are based in ideals taken to the point of absurdity. There is no apology... no excuse that can be made that justifies genocide and wholesale murder. It has always been those individuals who place abstract ideals above human reality that see nothing wrong with rape, pillage, destruction, and whole-sale murder to achieve their end. In their warped minds, the end justifies the means. In the eyes of history and humanity they are what we know as "evil".

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I agree on your conclusion that there is no excuse for evil, but I don't know if we're on the same page regarding evil itself. I believe a person is made evil by conditioning. Perhaps there is a genetic component as well, but its no coincidence that a lot of the violent people I know were abused when they were younger. I think evil is like a mental illness, partly attributable to genetics, partly to environment. I don't think a mentally healthy person is going to one day say **** it, I'm gonna go kill some people.

I still think evil should be punished, for reasons of deterrence, education, and simple satisfaction for victims and society.

Never mind. I re-read your post and saw that I interpreted it wrong. You're not saying that people are not conditioned to be evil, you are saying they can't be conditioned to think there is nothing wrong with large scale senseless murdering. I agree. Sociopaths I think know what they do is wrong, they just happen not to care.

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Originally Posted by cafolini

We are going to need Nuremberg for Syria. The only motive millions didn't yet die there is that the modern weapons are more accurate under highly improved technology.

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I wouldn't really compare what's happening in Syria to the holocaust. In Syria we see a dictator using force to hold onto power. In Nazi Germany we had a psychotic individual using all means available to achieve the total obliteration of an entire people. For Assad death is a means, for Hitler it was itself an end.

I agree on your conclusion that there is no excuse for evil, but I don't know if we're on the same page regarding evil itself. I believe a person is made evil by conditioning. Perhaps there is a genetic component as well, but its no coincidence that a lot of the violent people I know were abused when they were younger. I think evil is like a mental illness, partly attributable to genetics, partly to environment. I don't think a mentally healthy person is going to one day say **** it, I'm gonna go kill some people.

I still think evil should be punished, for reasons of deterrence, education, and simple satisfaction for victims and society.

Certainly we are all impacted by the classic duo of nature and nurture... we cannot, however, eliminate individual choice and responsibility. That is where I see kiki's defense of the Nazi's as akin to their own self defense at Nuremberg as well as some of the worst thinking of Liberal politicians in attempting to lay the blame for a person's action upon society: "It's not the individual's fault he raped and killed that old lady for a few dollars. It's society's fault. He was raised by a abusive father and an alcoholic mother. He attended one of the worst schools in the inner city. He was taken in by a gang at age 12. No one saw his pain..." Pure BS. There are endless individuals who have been raised under what we might think of as horrifying circumstances, suffering untold abuse. The vast majority of these individuals do not resort to abuse, murder, and genocide... nor do they lose the ability to recognize that certain behaviors are simply wrong regardless of the social context. The creep who rapes and kills some old lady for a few dollars recognizes that his actions are wrong... are abhorrent... are "evil"... and certainly Hitler, Himmler, Mengele, and the untold commandants of the concentration camps knew that their actions amounted to "evil".

In other words, social conditioning may help to explain part of how an individual came to act in a given sociopathic manner... but it is not an excuse or a defense... it doesn't eliminate individual responsibility... and the fact that certain behaviors are inherently "evil".

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I agree on your conclusion that there is no excuse for evil, but I don't know if we're on the same page regarding evil itself. I believe a person is made evil by conditioning. Perhaps there is a genetic component as well, but its no coincidence that a lot of the violent people I know were abused when they were younger. I think evil is like a mental illness, partly attributable to genetics, partly to environment. I don't think a mentally healthy person is going to one day say **** it, I'm gonna go kill some people.

I still think evil should be punished, for reasons of deterrence, education, and simple satisfaction for victims and society.

Certainly we are all impacted by the classic duo of nature and nurture... we cannot, however, eliminate individual choice and responsibility. That is where I see kiki's defense of the Nazi's as akin to their own self defense at Nuremberg as well as some of the worst thinking of Liberal politicians in attempting to lie the blame for a person's action upon society. There are endless individuals who have been raised under what we might think of as horrifying circumstances, suffering untold abuse. The vast majority of these individuals do not resort to abuse, murder, and genocide. The vast majority recognize that certain behaviors are simply wrong regardless of the social context. In other words, social conditioning may help to explain part of how an individual came to act in a given sociopathic manner... but it is not an excuse or a defense... it doesn't eliminate individual responsibility... and the fact that certain behaviors are inherently "evil".

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I agree. I misinterpreted your post. I edited my response while you were writing this. lol. I don't understand what Kiki wants. For the Nazi's tried at Nuremburg to have been "understood" and perhaps even set free? Millions of Germans lived in the same anti-semitic jingoistic atmosphere as Eichmann, but I really doubt they would have allowed the holocaust to transpire were it not for their blind allegiance to a fuhrer with a vast network of secret police and propaganda, not to mention the fact that they were beset on all sides by the armies of their enemies who had been made their enemies by the madly aggressive steps taken by that same fuhrer. I don't think the average German was as bloodthirsty and homicidal as Eichmann, despite a shared culture.

I think those who are horrible people because they came from a terrible background are probaly weak minded. If your common psychopath is that way because they had a terrible life, then they must be very feeble.

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Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

How do you know that?

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Because lets say you are born into a poor familly, but you are bright. And the SS which was quite a meritocratic group offers you a chance in life - if you dont take i you will just work in the factory all your life and your childrend shall work in factories. As you entere deeper and deeper into the organization you realize more and more about what is truley going on. But you live in a world were there is only one voice and that voice is telling you that what you do is right. Furthermore at the begining the war is going splendidlt for you and it seemes that Nazism will move from Germany to to europe.

What do you do? Declare the atrocities going on, thereby ensuring that you and your wife and kids will be sent to concentration camps? Do you try to help the people in the camps ilicitly, and know that if they catch you you and your familly will end very badly. Do you quit? Your father was a factory worker and here you are on a one way road to enrue that you join the elite of a nation, welath and privellege for you and your familly which once is tasted is very difficult to sacrifice. What do you do wuit and go back to the factory?

What would you have done Mutis?


I am not saying the SS were not evil, tough that word does feel somewhat cartooniish, yes they were moraly corrupt, but then again under those conditions most men become morally corrupt. Lets face it Humans are very prone to evil. And this whole viewing Hitler as the most evil man will fade with time. Just look at how time ****s with our perception. Disney makes movies about all those lovable pirates. We all knew what pirates did, maybe disney will make movies about the lovable ss men in a couple hundred years. What about Gengis Kahn, and the vikings? I mean in nordic countries they are proud of coming from vikings. But anyone who knows about viking history can attest that these people made the SS look like pansies. "this whole evil thing is just time relative. The more time passes from the event the more acceptable it will become.. Otherwise human history would be morally unbearable.

Why even ask what I'd do? You said you already knew what everyone here would do. I was curious as to how you knew this.