Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly normal"?

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Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly normal"?

#1

Post by Erik1 » 19 Mar 2023, 19:46

Apparently many/most of these people were diagnosed as perfectly normal, sane, healthy people, with loving relationships with their families and so on - not sociopaths or any other horrible disorder.

I heard this recently in a Youtube video and wanted to know more about it, if anyone here knows anything or got some sources of information.

If it's true, I can't help but wonder if this doesn't say a lot about human nature and how the holocaust might've been just normal human behavior due to us being such a violent, brutal primate inherently.

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#2

Post by wm » 19 Mar 2023, 21:08

Psychology isn't an exact science, and some say it isn't science at all. So such a question isn't scientific, and the answers are mere judgments.

Considering the poverty and hard work the majority of people at that time had to endure, I have doubts about that "loving relationships" - that looks like presentism at its worst.
According to contemporary writings (contemporary because later it was easily "forgotten"), a part of the population easily became violent, stole, looted.


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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#3

Post by Obi44 » 22 Mar 2023, 15:08

Erik1 wrote:
19 Mar 2023, 19:46
Apparently many/most of these people were diagnosed as perfectly normal, sane, healthy people, with loving relationships with their families and so on - not sociopaths or any other horrible disorder.

I heard this recently in a Youtube video and wanted to know more about it, if anyone here knows anything or got some sources of information.

If it's true, I can't help but wonder if this doesn't say a lot about human nature and how the holocaust might've been just normal human behavior due to us being such a violent, brutal primate inherently.
I suggest you read Christopher Browning's book "Ordinary Men" for further information regarding the psychological and sociological details of the Holocaust and other brutal oppressive measures utilized by the Nazis. In his analysis of the 101. Reserve Polizeibataillon, he concludes that the majority were normal men and most could probably not be described as especially ardent National-Socialists. They were not pre-selected for their ability to carry out the shooting of Jews and Poles in massive amounts; they were simply middle-aged policemen, those too old to be of any use to the Wehrmacht but whose skills with rifles could be used for activities of a "special" nature.

He describes that, over time, these policemen grew more calloused as they murdered people. They began their shooting duties as largely disgusted with what was needed of them, and many either ducked out of sight and wandered off or outright asked to be excused from the killings, upon which they were assigned to other duties. However, the majority stuck with it, and saved their complaints for afterwards. This changed as more and more Jewish actions were carried out, and by the end of it all, most could easily joke about it despite their prior complaints and distaste for their murderous duties. It became routine, and, dare I say, "normal." The Jews were "them," and it's much easier to shoot "them."
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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#4

Post by Ponury » 22 Mar 2023, 19:25

SS Captain Franz Stangl, commandant of the death camp in Sobibór and then Treblinka, in an interview with him in 1970 (the book "Towards Darkness"), said that the propaganda system itself constantly described Jews as subhuman, garbage to be cleaned up. His boss from Operation Reinhard, Major SS Wirth, behaved and spoke in the same way. He also adopted such a narrative in his actions. He was also diagnosed as mentally healthy during the trial.

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#5

Post by LineDoggie » 22 Mar 2023, 19:48

Anti Semitism was almost Mainstream in Europe and the USA in the 30's. So if your nation constantly makes Jews as less than humans in the media and laws , and as a threat and you have no other POV you believe it. You begin to blame the Jews for every ill. Suddenly you are handed over the power of life or death to a group you have been bombarded for years is a threat to you, your kin, your nation.

In the US we were bombarded after Pearl Harbor that ALL Japanese were not humans and needed to be exterminated. We even rounded up Americans of Japanese Descent who were totally loyal to the USA and threw them into Concentration camps, such was the hatred. We even demanded Central and South American nations hand over their Japanese Immigrants to the USA
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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#6

Post by Ponury » 22 Mar 2023, 21:30

Well, yes, but you did not murder them on an industrial scale like the Germans murdered Jews in Treblinka or other extermination camps. No comparison.

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#7

Post by Obi44 » 22 Mar 2023, 21:37

LineDoggie wrote:
22 Mar 2023, 19:48
Anti Semitism was almost Mainstream in Europe and the USA in the 30's. So if your nation constantly makes Jews as less than humans in the media and laws , and as a threat and you have no other POV you believe it. You begin to blame the Jews for every ill. Suddenly you are handed over the power of life or death to a group you have been bombarded for years is a threat to you, your kin, your nation.

In the US we were bombarded after Pearl Harbor that ALL Japanese were not humans and needed to be exterminated. We even rounded up Americans of Japanese Descent who were totally loyal to the USA and threw them into Concentration camps, such was the hatred. We even demanded Central and South American nations hand over their Japanese Immigrants to the USA
I've never heard of the United States making any demands to other American nations to hand over their ethnic Japanese during the war. Can you provide a source, please?
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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#8

Post by Obi44 » 22 Mar 2023, 21:40

Ponury wrote:
22 Mar 2023, 21:30
Well, yes, but you did not murder them on an industrial scale like the Germans murdered Jews in Treblinka or other extermination camps. No comparison.
Indeed. Internment camps were an injustice to the Japanese people as a whole, especially those loyal Japanese-Americans who would have been overjoyed to pick up a rifle and take the fight to Tojo's armies. However, it must be remembered that, unlike Axis atrocities (especially that of the Japanese), they were extremely limited in scope (primarily on the west coast) and said internment camps couldn't hope to rival even the best Nazi KL.
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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#9

Post by LineDoggie » 23 Mar 2023, 01:51

Obi44 wrote:
22 Mar 2023, 21:37


I've never heard of the United States making any demands to other American nations to hand over their ethnic Japanese during the war. Can you provide a source, please?
During World War II, 2,264 members of the Japanese community in Latin America (issei, nisei, and some Latin American women married to Japanese) were deported to and interned in the United States.

Many of the Japanese Latin Americans (1,799 of the total) were from Peru. The
U.S. government forced their migration over international borders and their internment in U.S. Department of Justice internment camps. Most of the Japanese Latin Americans were interned in a former migrant labor camp at Crystal City, Texas. They were interned for several reasons:
their race;
their influential roles as community leaders, farmers, or businesspeople;
anti-immigrant sentiments;
and their perceived threat to Allied interests.
This was all done without indictments or hearings.

More than 800 Japanese Latin Americans were included in prisoner-of-war exchanges with Japan that took place in 1942 and 1943. The remaining Japanese Latin Americans were interned until the end of the war.

Because their passports were confiscated en route to the United States, these internees were declared "illegal aliens," and during the war they were told that they would be deported to Japan or to Japan-occupied territories. More than 350 Japanese Peruvians remained in the United States and fought deportation in the courts with hopes of returning to their homes in Peru.

At first, the Peruvian government refused to re-admit any Japanese Peruvians, even those who were Peruvian citizens or married to Peruvian citizens. As a result, between November 1945 and June 1946, more than 900 Japanese Peruvians were deported to war-devastated Japan. Eventually, about 100 Japanese Peruvians were able to return to Peru.

It was not until June 1952 that the Japanese Peruvians who stayed in the United States were allowed to begin the process of becoming permanent residents. Later, many became U.S. citizens.


Sources include-
http://www.densho.org/learning/spice/le ... ndouts.pdf

https://archive.org/details/americasjapanese00conn

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/ ... -u-s-camps
"There are two kinds of people who are staying on this beach: those who are dead and those who are going to die. Now let’s get the hell out of here".
Col. George Taylor, 16th Infantry Regiment, Omaha Beach

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#10

Post by Obi44 » 23 Mar 2023, 01:54

LineDoggie wrote:
23 Mar 2023, 01:51
Obi44 wrote:
22 Mar 2023, 21:37


I've never heard of the United States making any demands to other American nations to hand over their ethnic Japanese during the war. Can you provide a source, please?
During World War II, 2,264 members of the Japanese community in Latin America (issei, nisei, and some Latin American women married to Japanese) were deported to and interned in the United States.

Many of the Japanese Latin Americans (1,799 of the total) were from Peru. The
U.S. government forced their migration over international borders and their internment in U.S. Department of Justice internment camps. Most of the Japanese Latin Americans were interned in a former migrant labor camp at Crystal City, Texas. They were interned for several reasons:
their race;
their influential roles as community leaders, farmers, or businesspeople;
anti-immigrant sentiments;
and their perceived threat to Allied interests.
This was all done without indictments or hearings.

More than 800 Japanese Latin Americans were included in prisoner-of-war exchanges with Japan that took place in 1942 and 1943. The remaining Japanese Latin Americans were interned until the end of the war.

Because their passports were confiscated en route to the United States, these internees were declared "illegal aliens," and during the war they were told that they would be deported to Japan or to Japan-occupied territories. More than 350 Japanese Peruvians remained in the United States and fought deportation in the courts with hopes of returning to their homes in Peru.

At first, the Peruvian government refused to re-admit any Japanese Peruvians, even those who were Peruvian citizens or married to Peruvian citizens. As a result, between November 1945 and June 1946, more than 900 Japanese Peruvians were deported to war-devastated Japan. Eventually, about 100 Japanese Peruvians were able to return to Peru.

It was not until June 1952 that the Japanese Peruvians who stayed in the United States were allowed to begin the process of becoming permanent residents. Later, many became U.S. citizens.


Sources include-
http://www.densho.org/learning/spice/le ... ndouts.pdf

https://archive.org/details/americasjapanese00conn

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/ ... -u-s-camps
Thank you.
Obi

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#11

Post by Erik1 » 23 Mar 2023, 12:53

The reason I speculated that the holocaust was an amalgation of human nature is because of 2 reasons:

1. Steven Pinker, in his book "The Better Angels Of Our Nature", claims that, after research into paleolithic remains and the currently existing hunter-gatherer peoples, that for most of human existance the average rates of violence was higher than the peak rates of WW2. Many anthropologists agree with the book's conclusions, though it should be said that some criticizes it aswell. But if it's true, it means that with all the combat, civilian and holocaust causalties at the time, it was still just an average monday for your average caveman/woman for most of human evolution, and the reason people think WW2 and the holocaust was so unspeakably horrendous is only because we're sort of "spoiled".

2. I saw a lecture on Youtube by an anthropologist, who specialized in researching violence, who lived with a hunter-gatherer tribe as part of her research while a "war" broke out between them and another tribe. What caused it was that the tribe heard that the other tribe had said something insulting about their own tribe, that they aren't respectable and tough people, so it was decided to kill everyone in the other tribe (including the children). The fight led to a few peoples deaths before it was called off and they decided to stop it.

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#12

Post by Ponury » 23 Mar 2023, 22:14

But to kill millions of people on an industrial scale? For no reason at all. Because the Jews were blamed for all the failures of the world. From their hair - socks for submarine crews, from gold teeth pulled out after death - gold bars. Some children who did not have Semitic features - for Germanization. Assets - to be taken over. Personal belongings - the camp in Lublin and data to be released. German families wore Jewish watches etc. Jewish shoes, coats brrr... except for the SS, they didn't even guess where they came from. Officially from gifts :)

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#13

Post by David Thompson » 24 Mar 2023, 02:21

Ponury -- Welcome to the 20th century.

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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#14

Post by Obi44 » 24 Mar 2023, 15:07

Ponury wrote:
23 Mar 2023, 22:14
But to kill millions of people on an industrial scale? For no reason at all. Because the Jews were blamed for all the failures of the world. From their hair - socks for submarine crews, from gold teeth pulled out after death - gold bars. Some children who did not have Semitic features - for Germanization. Assets - to be taken over. Personal belongings - the camp in Lublin and data to be released. German families wore Jewish watches etc. Jewish shoes, coats brrr... except for the SS, they didn't even guess where they came from. Officially from gifts :)
I don't believe Jewish children were Germanized, regardless of their physical features. Germanization efforts were generally limited to Poles, Yugoslavians and citizens of the Soviet Union, and even then, only if they had specific, "desirable" traits. These people were thought to be ethnic Germans who had become separated from core German society and needed to be "re-Germanized." If they resisted, they were murdered.
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Re: Is it true that many of the captured organizers of the holocaust were diagnosed by psychiatrists as "perfectly norma

#15

Post by wm » 25 Mar 2023, 00:59

I disagree that "anti-Semitism was almost Mainstream in Europe and the USA." Not because it was false but because it's a judgment usually made for political reasons, i.e., to support Israeli chauvinism.

It equates with Hitler, an illiterate Polish peasant who used black Jews (or chimney sweepers) as a bogeyman to discipline his children, a Hungarian nationalist offended by the dominance of Jews in the Hungarian economy, an East European enraged by enthusiastic Jewish collaboration in the Soviet conquest of his country, and a Parisian who in good faith bought a former Jewish apartment and was forced to return it for free in 1945.

Such a judgment invariably hides the motives. Although the motives could be good or bad, they still existed; it wasn't like they acted like that because they all were mentally ill (a theory actually advanced in Israel that anti-semites are all mentally ill).

Even more, it usually is supported by fake history, like the story that Roosevelt sent that ship to Auschwitz.

I was actually mighty surprised when Israel Hayom wrote recently about some post-Ottoman-Empire conflict in Greece - that it was fueled by Jewish support for the Empire and later for the Young Turks in a country that Türkiye occupied for so long.

There was a single reason that (some) German/Austrian Jews weren't able to find a safe haven in 1938, and Edwin Black explains it best in his "The Transfer Agreement."
Focusing on Palestine as the only legitimate destination for large-scale emigration, the Zionist Organization rejected opportunities to resettle German Jews in havens or homes other than Eretz Yisrael.

For example, in mid-July, Australia announced a willingness to accept thousands of German Jewish families for settlement in the northern region around Darwin.
Longtime Jewish colonization organizations had successfully settled a thousand Jewish families in the Crimea and another thousand in the Ukraine during the first half of 1933 and a proposal for an actual Jewish homeland in Manchuria had come from Japan.

For years, thousands of Russian Jews and British Jews had been living in Shanghai and other Asian cities. Most had arrived after the Russian Revolution; others represented British commercial interests. Japanese leaders controlling Manchuria well remembered the help of Jewish financier Jacob Schiff in defeating the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
SO they responded favorably to ideas advanced by Shanghai Zionists to convert part of Manchuria into a Jewish homeland.

But the Australian, Russian, and Manchurian settlement opportunities were rejected by the Zionist Organization. Resettlement meant further dispersion and little more than another scenario for persecution, as Jews would again become guests of a host nation. A return to their own land in Palestine constituted the only end to centuries of catastrophic nomadism.

The Zionist stance made it clear: Palestine or nothing. Now or never.

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