Knowledge of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe

The question of how much Germans and other Europeans knew about the Holocaust while it was ongoing continues to be debated by historians.[4][5][6] Peter Longerich argues that the Holocaust was an “open secret” by early 1943, but some authors place it even earlier.[7] Sönke Neitzel wrote in his book Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying that transcripts of conversations between German POWs prove that "practically all German soldiers knew or suspected that Jews were being murdered en masse".[8]

Jews are deported from Würzburg, 25 April 1942. Deportation occurred in public and was witnessed by many Germans.[1][2]
Mass shooting of Soviet civilians in 1941. By 1942 knowledge of the shootings was widespread in Germany.[3]

After the war, many Germans claimed that they were ignorant of the crimes perpetrated by the Nazi regime, often using the stereotypical phrase "davon haben wir nichts gewusst" ("we knew nothing about that").[4][9]

See also

References
  1. Confino 2014, pp. 214–215.
  2. Herf 2006, p. 122.
  3. Kershaw 2008, p. 147.
  4. Wiesen, S. J. (1 January 2007). "The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, Jeffrey Herf (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), cloth $29.95". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 21 (2): 303–305. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcm024.
  5. van der Boom, Bart (2017). ""The Auschwitz reservation": Dutch Victims and Bystanders and Their Knowledge of the Holocaust". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 31 (3): 385–407. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcx042.
  6. Fritzsche, Peter (September 2008). "The Holocaust and the Knowledge of Murder". The Journal of Modern History. 80 (3): 594–613. doi:10.1086/589592.
  7. Lange, Carolin Dorothée (2020). "After They Left: Looted Jewish Apartments and the Private Perception of the Holocaust". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 34 (3): 431–449. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcaa042.
  8. "German army was a 'criminal organization'". The Canadian Jewish News. 6 November 2012. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  9. "Review: Peter Longerich's Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!". Dialog International. Retrieved 20 July 2020.

Further reading
  • Bankier, David (1996). The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-631-20100-7.
  • Bauer, Yehuda (1994). Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06852-8.
  • Confino, Alon (2014). A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-19046-5.
  • Gellately, Robert (2002). Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-160452-2.
  • Gordon, Sarah Ann (1984). Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question". Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-10162-0.
  • Herf, Jeffrey (2006). The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during the World War II and the Holocaust. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674038-59-2.
  • Jersak, Tobias (2008) [2004]. "Decisions to Murder and to Lie: German War Society and the Holocaust". German Wartime Society 1939-1945: Politicization, Disintegration, and the Struggle for Survival. Germany and the Second World War. IX/I. Clarendon Press. pp. 287–370. ISBN 978-0-19-160860-5.
  • Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-14823-7.
  • Koonz, Claudia (2003). The Nazi Conscience. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01172-4.
  • Longerich, Peter (2009). "Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!": Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945 ["We didn't know about that!": The Germans and the persecution of the Jews 1933–1945] (in German). Siedler Verlag. ISBN 978-3-641-02398-0.
  • Neitzel, Sonke; Welzer, Harald (2012). Soldiers: German POWs on Fighting, Killing, and Dying. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-95815-0.
  • Bajohr, Frank; Pohl, Dieter (2006). Der Holocaust als offenes Geheimnis: die Deutschen, die NS-Führung und die Alliierten [The Holocaust as an open secret : the Germans, the Nazi leadership and the Allies] (in German). Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-54978-6.


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