(7) Perhaps among those arrested might be informants who would be questioned and released, and
so again none of those being arrested should be impulsively killed.
(8) An impulsive execution would create the problem of what to do with the body of someone
impulsively executed in the street - to leave the body in the street would be unacceptable, and
yet to send a truck to pick it up would consume scarce resources.
(9) An impulsive execution might lead to blood being splattered over the participants, or might
lead to a bullet passing through the intended victim and hitting an unintended target.
(10) Anyone so trigger-happy as to shoot a woman for walking too slowly posed a danger to
everyone, even to his German superiors, and so would not be tolerated within the German forces.
(11) The Germans viewed the optimal executioner as one who found killing distasteful, but killed
dutifully upon command. Anyone who enjoyed killing, within which category must fall anyone who
killed on impulse, was a degenerate and had a corrupting influence on those around him, most
importantly on Germans who after the war would be expected to return to Germany and resume
civilian life. With respect to German personnel, at least, the attitude was as follows:
The Germans sought to avoid damage to "the soul" ... in the prohibition of
unauthorized killings. A sharp line was drawn between killings pursuant to
order and killings induced by desire. In the former case a man was thought to
have overcome the "weakness" of "Christian morality"; in the latter case he was
overcome by his own baseness. That was why in the occupied USSR both the army
and the civil administration sought to restrain their personnel from joining
the shooting parties at the killing sites. [In the case of the SS,] if
selfish, sadistic, or sexual motives [for an unauthorized killing] were found,
punishment was to be imposed for murder or for manslaughter, in accordance with
the facts. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, pp.
1009-1010)
The killing of the Jews was regarded as historical necessity. The soldier had
to "understand" this. If for any reason he was instructed to help the SS and
Police in their task, he was expected to obey orders. However, if he killed a
Jew spontaneously, voluntarily, or without instruction, merely because he
wanted to kill, then he committed an abnormal act, worthy perhaps of an
"Eastern European" (such as a Romanian) but dangerous to the discipline and
prestige of the German army. Herein lay the crucial difference between the man
who "overcame" himself to kill and one who wantonly committed atrocities. The
former was regarded as a good soldier and a true Nazi; the latter was a person
without self-control, who would be a danger to his community after his return
home. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 326)
Every unauthorized shooting of local inhabitants, including Jews, by individual
soldiers ... is disobedience and therefore to be punished by disciplinary
means, or - if necessary - by court martial. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of
the European Jews, 1985, p. 327)
Although avoiding damage to the Slavic soul would not have had the same high priority to the
Nazis as avoiding damage to the German soul, nevertheless, it would have been more difficult to
keep Germans from wanton killing if that same wanton killing had been permitted to their Slavic
auxiliaries.
For these many reasons, then, and in view of Mr. Wiesenthal's overall lack of credibility, one
may well wonder whether his mother-in-law really met her end in the manner indicated.
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Galicia Division