Did the German public know about the holocaust during world war 2?

by eger_macaroni

I’ve been getting more and more into the history around the Second World War recently and on a lot of documentaries they usually have an episode or so about the holocaust, but a question that’s plagued me from the beginning is if the German public knew about the systematic killing of the Jews? I mean there’s no way people didn’t notice the Jews and other minorities start to disappear and citizens of like Munich where there was a death camp practically in their back yard.

Gankom

There's always more that can be said, but you might be interested in this part of the FAQ. It has a good number of threads dedicated to this very question.

In particularly I would suggest How did it become common knowledge that nazi germany was killing it's jewish population? by /u/estherke.

Did the Germans who lived near concentration camps really not know that they were there? By /u/kieslowskifan.

and To what extent was the German population aware of the atrocities of the Holocaust? from /u/commiespaceinvader.

Sergey_Romanov

There was no extermination camp near Munich, people being deported didn't have to equate to extermination in the minds of their neighbors. All in all, only a minority can be shown to have known in some sense or another.

This is addressed here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/crqqjv/comment/ex8llip

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cs9aor/comment/execicl