Soldiers

July 16, 2012
From 1940 to 1945, as German soldiers idled in POW camps, their captors surreptitiously recorded their conversations. Declassified in 1996, the massive transcripts reveal an uncensored, often disturbing picture of how the average Nazi soldier thought, acted, and justified himself to his comrades. According to Glasgow University professor of history Neitzel and German psychologist Welzer, the results contradict the belief that exposure to war brutalizes normal men. While the authors don’t skirt the issue of individual Wehrmacht soldiers’ knowledge of and participation in the Holocaust, they argue that most simply accepted that soldiering was a necessary job; they tried to do it properly to preserve their own self-respect and support their comrades. Ideological concepts like the threats of Jewry or Bolshevism “played only an ancillary role.” Ordinary soldiers who committed mass murders of Jews, prisoners, or civilians didn’t think, “What terrible things I am doing,” but “What a lousy job this is...!” Readers may prefer to skim because the text consists of lengthy analyses of snippets of chatter. While insightful, the authors provide more than most readers will want to know about frames of reference, ideological influences, value systems, and social environment. The chatter itself is often horrific. Agent: