Originally posted by: MisterPicture
For the record, I could never imagine poor old DonDieto as an SS guard! He is more of the "Good German" type.
The "Good Germans" who stood by and watched all the horror unfold around them were as culpable as those who actively and eagerly participated in the atrocities. Being even a passive deplorable confers the same burden of guilt today.
To answer DonDiego's question, the SS was always paid more than the regular army for equivalent ranks. Death camp guards were initially paid the same as other SS soldiers, on the assumption that those who performed such duties would actually enjoy them and see it as a privilege. While this was undoubtedly true for many, as the killing machine grew, it became more and more difficult to find competent personnel to work in the camps, and the government had to dangle incentives such as frequent leave and access to better food to get soldiers to serve there willingly. Of course, the incentive of not getting killed fighting the Russians was always present--one accurate aspect of "Hogan's Heroes" was that any German soldier or officer who stepped out of line could be immediately cowed by the threat of being sent to the Russian front.
The active Nazis were always irredeemably evil psychopaths. They would have caused significant harm no matter what, but they couldn't have done it without the passive assent (or active support) of Germany's deplorables in 1933.
2016 in America was our 1933 in Germany. We have one last chance to fix what went wrong in a few months.
Assuming we can get the proud deplorables out of the way, that is.
