Hello there! I do not know how University works on other countries, but here in Brasil I have to do a CCT on my last year in University in order to get my degree.
My plan is to do a paper on the Holocaust, from the German Concentration Camp Soldiers/Guards point of view. What I hope to explain in my paper is how the German military staff felt about the millions of killings and the conditions the POWs where getting.
The main question is knowing if all soldiers, either from SS or Wermach selected to work at the camps knew about what was their porpose was, and if they knew how and why did they comply with it. Was it the brainwashing of the Nazi Propaganda ? Was it sadism ? Was there mutiny among units ? Any cases of guards actively trying to help prisoners ?
Most ex camp guards deny knowledge of any war crimes, the most recent example happened last week. Now, I mostly don't believe them, but in the case they are telling the truth, I would also like to know how did the Nazi regime managed to hide the Holocaust from people literally working on it.
What I need from you redditors is Data, sources, books and anything that I can use to help my research so that I can get my bachelor. Im fluent in English and Spanish and my native language is Portuguese. But I can use Google translator on German texts in case y'all send some.
Thank you.
If you haven’t read it already I’d suggest Commandant of Auschwitz by Rudolf Hoess even though he tries to act innocent a lot of the time and it has a number of lies in he does go into detail about the treatment some of the guards used, fellow commandants of other camps that you might find useful but again don’t believe everything he says about his own beliefs towards the Jews that’s why If you read it to make sure you also read the introduction by Primo Levi as he sets it out straight some of what Hoess says in the book, as for people that assisted the Jewish people you could look at people such as Karl Plague. If your paper can also consist of any wrong doing to do the Jewish people not just in concentration camps but being executed in the home countries you could look at the Einsatzgruppen as well and look at such books as Masters of Death, looking at this and other sources regarding the camp guards and also Einsatzgruppen should give you some insight into it, a lot of the time in places such as Ukraine the people who executed the Jewish people were in fact Ukrainian nationalists this was sometimes down to hatred of the Jewish people which can be seen in the Lviv Pogroms and other cases or also from fear as they feared for there own lives if they didn’t follow Nazi orders. It’s obviously worth remembering not all camp guards knew what they were getting into and did not all volunteer for what they were sent to do and again not all of them were German either and they feared fleeing would mean they would have been killed. I don’t know how insightful you will find it or if you like watching things for sources but there is also a BBC documentary series called Auschwitz which has a lot of guard interviews in and there eye witness accounts and there feelings on what happened.
Hope this helps a bit :)