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Venator 1 Mitchell Venator Professor Thomas 18 March 2015 UWRT 1102-064 The Nazi Conscience Bigotry, racism, intolerance are moral claims, they indicate mistreatment of someone who deserves or is entitled to a certain level of respect. For example people should not be treated differently based on the color of their skin, their gender, their religious beliefs or ethnicity. In her book The Nazi Conscience, Claudia Koonz’s makes a strong argument that Nazi Germany had what we would consider an acceptable moral code. The problem, as she explains, was the Nazi’s convinced the general German public that certain people were not deserving of the benefits of that code. The first line of her book, “’The Nazi conscience’ is not an oxymoron” struck me as odd because I have grown up “knowing” that being called a Nazi was probably the worst thing imaginable. By the end of the book my attitude had not changed, being called a Nazi is one of the worst things imaginable. But what I had gained was an understanding of how the Nazi’s persuaded, a generally moral German public, to allow them to do the things they did. Koonz claims “Germans did not become Nazis because they were anti-Semites, they became anti-Semites because they were Nazis.” She shows that there were basically three sources that produced the Nazi Conscience; 1. The personal charisma of Adolph Hitler and his

Venator 2 ability to convince the German public that he and he alone could revive Germany. 2. The popularity of eugenics, both in Europe and the United States. 3. The legal codes. She goes into great detail describing the bitter conditions in Germany after World War I, the failure of a representative government to alleviate Germany’s problems and the initial wild popularity of Adolph Hitler when his programs began to improve conditions. Koonz makes a strong case that the German academic and legal community were as culpable as Hitler in the Holocaust. German academics used the latest “science” of eugenics to convince the German public that the Aryan race was a superior race and that Germany could become stronger by strictly controlling who should or should not be allowed to reproduce. Finally she details how the legal code was used to condition, particularly German youth, with the belief that only certain people were deserving of moral treatment. In many cases, as with Jews, they were able to convince the average German that it was actually immoral and harmful to Germany, to treat Jews humanely. I had never been able to understand how the Nazi’s were able to nearly exterminate an entire race of people in what is considered a modern Western nation. After reading this book it makes it a little clearer. People tend to trust science and the Nazi’s were able to use the science of eugenics to convince the German people that Jews were polluting the German race. We may find that unbelievable, but in the 20’s and 30’s eugenics were considered “cutting edge” even in the United States. Once that was accomplished is became much easier to pass laws that stripped certain people of citizenship, deprive them of their property and any ability to make a living and herd them into concentration camps. The German people accepted the brutal treatment of the Jews, and other minorities, because they were convinced “science” showed it was warranted.