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It is hoped that by examining the axioms of the past that had motivated a large segment of people in Germany, and the people's responses based on these axioms, it might be possible to unmask the infinite distance that separates truth from defective axioms which are so easily embraced as the truth.
The obedience syndrome was not a factor.
It has been said that Hitler's holocaust has been made possible under an obedience syndrome that causes people to murder against their will, when their refusal to murder would seal their own fate. It has also been suggested that some extreme Nazi indoctrination of Hitler's front line troops had created the kind of execution squads that would have no scruples in carrying out genocidal operations. The evidence presented in Goldhagen's book, refutes both arguments.
According to historical evidence about a police operation on June 20, 1942, a small convoy of trucks had made its way along a bumpy road in the early hours after midnight, which carried the men of Police Battalion 101, a rag-tag force of 502 average German men who had managed to escape from being drafted into the regular army, mostly because of their age. They were on their way to carry out their first real mission away from home. The destination was Joezefow, a small polish city. Two hours later the convoy came to a halt near the edge of the sleepy city.
Goldhagen's book doesn't say whether it was still dark when Major Trapp gathered everyone together and gave the orders for the day. All the "Jews" of the city were to be rounded up, without exception, including women, children, elderly, even babies. Whips were handed out. Those "Jews" who would refuse to comply, or would try to escape, or who were too sick or otherwise unable to walk, were to be shot on the spot.
These were the orders. Major Trapp finally explained that of the people rounded up, all able-bodied men would later be separated to be sent to labor camps and the rest would be executed. The orders were gruesome.
Before concluding his address, the major made an offer to his men that remained in force throughout the day, that anyone who did not feel up to the task of killing civilian people would be excused from this particular duty. The killing was to be voluntary. Twelve men stepped forward to be excused, who were assigned to other tasks. With the assignments concluded, an unspeakable catastrophe began to unfold in the life of a Jewish community, a community that would cease to exist by the end of the day. No one of that community might have believed that what was about to happen, could possibly happen. If they had understood the mortal danger they faced they would have taken steps to prevent it. This must be said about the whole of the Jewish community in Europe.
The roundup in Joesefow, according to one of the Battalion members who testified later, was done with great intensity. Not the slightest hint of any normal sense of humanity was expressed that day, much less kindness towards the people whose fate had been irreversibly decided at higher levels. The very opposite to any sense of humanity ruled the day, even at the grass roots level where the brutality had taken on immense dimensions. When the roundup was over, corpses lay strewn throughout the ghetto; in the front yards of where the people had lived, in the doorways where they had stood, in the streets, all the way to the market square.
And even then, after the roundup was concluded, the city was searched house by house for any places people might hide in. The police searched for concealed cellars, for double walls, or hidden rooms where people might in, and did hide in. They probably found every one of those who had hid themselves that day. The police had help in this search from other locals who knew the area.
One would expect that a conscripted compassionate person might have been less thorough in this final task of the roundup. But this was not the case. The ideologically created axioms didn't allow the men to approach their victims with a sense of humanity. The ideology they were taught to believe in had defined the targeted people as being of a lower grade than a human being. The men of the battalion, evidently, believed totally in the 'necessity' of the task they were engaged in.
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