Did ordinary Germans truly know the full extent of the Holocaust, or could they claim ignorance? Dylan Aunger’s article, “To What Extent Was Ordinary German Society Complicit in the Holocaust?”, confronts this harrowing question head-on. He dissects the varying degrees of participation, silence, and social acceptance that enabled the systematic genocide carried out by Nazi Germany. If you want to understand how a horrific state policy became intertwined with the everyday lives of a nation, this unflinching analysis is essential reading.
To What Extent Was Ordinary German Society Complicit in the Holocaust?
The Holocaust, the systematic genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany, depended not only on the ideological fervor and organizational machinery of the Nazi elite but also on the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of ordinary Germans. The extent to which German civilians, collaborators, and bystanders were complicit in this genocide has become a central question in Holocaust historiography. While early postwar narratives emphasized the uniqueness of Nazi leadership and downplayed widespread societal responsibility, later scholarship has unearthed a more complex picture involving varying degrees of active participation, silent complicity, and social acquiescence. This article interrogates these dimensions of complicity, engaging with major historical debates and assessing the moral and structural entanglements of ordinary Germans in the machinery of genocide.
One of the foundational debates centers on the nature of knowledge and awareness. In the immediate postwar years, many Germans claimed ignorance of the Holocaust’s full scope, attributing culpability solely to Hitler and the SS. However, more recent research has challenged this defense. As Peter Longerich and Saul Friedländer argue, the regime’s anti-Jewish policies were carried out in full public view from 1933 onward, progressing from boycotts and exclusion to deportation and murder.[1] For example, the nationwide Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938 involved mass violence, synagogue burnings, and arrests that ordinary Germans witnessed firsthand. This event alone revealed both the regime’s anti-Semitic agenda and the general public’s tolerance—or even approval—of its violent expression.
Public knowledge of deportations also undermines claims of ignorance. Though the Final Solution—the systematic extermination of Jews—was concealed with euphemisms like “resettlement” or “special treatment,” many Germans observed the forced removal of Jews from their communities. Ian Kershaw notes that while the precise mechanisms of extermination were not widely discussed, the essential fact that Jews were being sent to their deaths was commonly understood.[2] In this sense, societal complicity lies not merely in action, but in a willing suspension of moral inquiry.
Christopher Browning’s seminal study, Ordinary Men, provides one of the most compelling examinations of the role of everyday Germans in the perpetration of genocide. Focusing on Reserve Police Battalion 101, composed largely of middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg, Browning shows that these men were not ideological zealots but ordinary citizens who carried out mass shootings and deportations in occupied Poland.[3] While some opted out, the majority participated. Browning attributes their behavior to factors such as conformity, obedience to authority, peer pressure, and gradual moral desensitization. The implication is profound: genocide was facilitated not by monsters, but by socially conditioned individuals.
This interpretation sparked a historiographical debate, particularly with Daniel Goldhagen, who argued in Hitler’s Willing Executioners that a unique strain of “eliminationist anti-Semitism” in German culture primed ordinary Germans to participate willingly in genocide.[4] While Goldhagen’s thesis was widely criticized for its essentialism and lack of nuance, it nevertheless underscored a critical point: anti-Semitic attitudes were not confined to Nazi ideologues but permeated German society, cultivated over generations and intensified by Nazi propaganda.
Indeed, the role of propaganda in shaping public complicity cannot be overstated. Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda saturated the media with anti-Jewish tropes, dehumanizing Jews as enemies of the Volk. Films like Der Ewige Jude and newspapers such as Der Stürmer normalized hatred and justified exclusion and violence.[5] The repeated association of Jews with Bolshevism, disease, and moral decay created a climate in which many Germans accepted—if not actively endorsed—anti-Jewish measures. Though not all Germans were ardent anti-Semites, a significant portion internalized enough of this messaging to tolerate, ignore, or rationalize persecution.
Beyond propaganda, the benefits of Aryanization provided material incentives for complicity. As Jews were stripped of property and employment rights, many Germans directly profited by acquiring Jewish homes, businesses, and belongings. Götz Aly documents how economic gain became a quiet but powerful engine of public compliance.[6] This redistribution of wealth allowed ordinary Germans to see themselves not only as victims of war but as beneficiaries of Nazi racial policy. It tied economic self-interest to the machinery of oppression.
Yet complicity extended beyond profit and propaganda. Germans participated in the Holocaust in various professional and administrative roles. Railway workers scheduled and conducted deportation transports to ghettos and camps; clerks and bureaucrats compiled census data and processed documentation essential for identifying Jews; teachers reinforced anti-Semitic ideology in classrooms; and medical professionals aided in forced sterilizations and euthanasia programs targeting disabled individuals in policies that prefigured mass murder.[7] The Holocaust required an entire society to become implicated, either directly or indirectly, through structures of labor, surveillance, and obedience.
Nevertheless, complicity was not uniform. Historical records reveal pockets of dissent, moral hesitation, and passive resistance. The White Rose movement, led by university students like Hans and Sophie Scholl, produced anti-Nazi leaflets condemning the regime’s crimes, including the Holocaust.[8] Some clergy, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spoke against the persecution of Jews, though most remained silent. A few Germans sheltered Jews at great personal risk, and others—especially in rural areas—expressed discomfort with mass shootings or deportations. These instances demonstrate that awareness of moral wrongdoing existed, even if resistance remained limited and rare.
The concept of the bystander, popularized by Raul Hilberg and later explored by scholars like Michael Marrus, complicates the binary of perpetrator and victim.[9] Bystanders were those who saw, knew, or suspected but chose not to act. Their complicity lay in inaction, rationalization, or fear. While some Germans feared reprisal, especially as the Gestapo’s power grew, many simply adapted to the moral climate or prioritized personal well-being. In this sense, complicity involved a social normalization of atrocity, in which silence became a form of consent.
Importantly, complicity also extended to German-occupied territories, where local collaborators often exceeded German expectations in identifying, segregating, and murdering Jews. While this article focuses on German society, the comparative example is illuminating: societies under similar occupation regimes responded differently, suggesting that national context and historical attitudes shaped the degree of collaboration. In Germany, decades of cultural anti-Semitism, post-WWI humiliation, and economic anxiety created fertile ground for genocidal policies to take root with relatively little resistance.
The wartime environment further radicalized public attitudes, especially after 1941, when the war against the Soviet Union became framed as an existential and racial struggle. The Einsatzgruppen massacres, beginning in Eastern Europe and carried out in broad daylight, were known to soldiers and sometimes reported in letters home. Ulrich Herbert has argued that while the knowledge of gas chambers was not universal, the ongoing extermination campaign was an open secret.[10] Germans may not have known every detail, but they knew enough to recognize that Jews were being annihilated.
Despite this, the postwar myth of “clean hands” took root in West Germany, where ordinary citizens often portrayed themselves as victims of Hitler’s dictatorship. The Nuremberg Trials emphasized high-level responsibility, reinforcing the narrative that the Holocaust was the work of a small group of fanatics. It was not until the 1960s, particularly during the Eichmann trial and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, that public reckoning with broader societal complicity began. These events prompted new generations of Germans to ask difficult questions about their parents’ and grandparents’ roles, reshaping collective memory.
In recent decades, Germany has become a model of historical responsibility, with Holocaust education, memorials, and public discourse focused on remembrance and guilt. Yet the process of coming to terms with complicity remains incomplete. As scholars like Jeffrey Herf argue, the willingness to acknowledge complicity often depends on generational distance and political climate.[11] Understanding how ordinary Germans enabled the Holocaust—through action, inaction, and acceptance—is not merely a historical question, but a moral imperative with enduring relevance.
In conclusion, ordinary German society was complicit in the Holocaust to a significant extent, though complicity varied in form, degree, and motivation. While a minority actively participated in killing, a much larger segment facilitated genocide through silence, indifference, or indirect support. The structural embedding of anti-Semitic ideology, economic incentives, propaganda, and social conformity created a context in which mass murder became not only possible but normalized. Historical debates continue over whether ideology or opportunism predominated, but what remains clear is that the Holocaust was not executed by a handful of fanatics alone—it was made possible by an entire society that looked away, adapted, or participated.
References:
[1] Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 95–101
[2] Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 129–33
[3] Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 54–76
[4] Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996), pp. 44–47
[5] David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 86–91
[6] Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), pp. 121–134
[7] Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany c. 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 191–198
[8] Inge Scholl, The White Rose: Munich, 1942–1943 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), pp. 58–64
[9] Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 1–7
[10] Ulrich Herbert, National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), pp. 59–65
[11] Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 212–219
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