[Foreignborn]

I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color.

For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written.

Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war.

Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise.

—

not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book.

i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.

[lukan]

Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly.

There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open.

His views towards jews likewise.

So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening and it was more and more clear that the war will be lost.

[FrustratedMonky]

Yes.

Also, Project 2025 was openly published. Anybody could read it. They aren't hiding the goals.

People just don't want to bother with it.

[tobias3]

You had to take him seriously but not literally.

[BDPW]

What I took away from the book was that all these people were very eager to say variants of 'das haben wir nicht gewusst' when at the same time they also describe how the jews were systematically removed from their society and every part of civil society was taken over by the nazi's.

I would add to your statement that almost everyone should read it. It's unnerving to read how 'normal' all these people were in some way and how 'easily' it all happened because the population generally disliked jews.

[watwut]

Based on history books I read (mostly from Richard Evans), they knew. Nazi violence and concentration camps were public knowledge, because the regime needed to generate the fear. Germans prior war were in fact scared a lot.

This particular book is a out what nazi sympatizants and nazi themselves were saying after the war. It is what it is, but there was real motivation to not have own culpability in destruction of Germany in the open. (Which is what they have seen as tradegy, not the holocaust itself all that much)

[arp242]

It's a contentious issue and many historians disagree. However, even many Jews at the time didn't really know what was going on, as evidenced from letters and diaries of the time. Many Jews genuinely thoughts they were Ghettos or concentration camps, which were surely horrible and surely people needless died there, but are far removed from outright extermination camps. So based on that I'm somewhat inclined to believe many didn't really "know" about the extent of the Holocaust.

Of course it's easy to say in hindsight they "knew" or "could have known", but in hindsight everything is easy, right? There were rumours about Jimmy Saville going back to the 70s, but did the British public really "know" what he was up to? Evne Mark Lawson, one of the few people who actually did stop and report a sexual assault (in 2006, see [1]) didn't really know the full extent of things, not really. He may have suspected, but that's not the same.

Another thing is that during the first world war there was a lot of (mostly British) propaganda about atrocities Germans were supposed to have committed, from raped and crucified nuns to Germans killing children for sport to the infamous "German Corpse Factory". This was widely reported and believed during the war, but after the war this all turned out to be a huge load of bollocks. It severely undermined the trust in the media.

There was 21 years between the wars – that's less time than the start of the Iraq war and today. Imagine what your response would be if the US government would say "we found weapons of mass destruction in $country, here as some vague satellite photos as evidence, we have no choice but to invade".

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/01/the-day...

[victorbjorklund]

No shit they claim to not have known. No one would say "oh yea I knew they were killing children but i didnt care"?