Ordinary Germans approved state exclusion while avoiding personal persecution

Evidence

Examining neutral and critical sources in addition to official reports, Gordon has documented a widespread and growing approval of ‘ordinary Germans’ for the exclusion of Jews from positions of power, wealth and influence. The gradual disappearance of Jews from public life was either applauded or studiously overlooked. Unwillingness of the public to partake personally of the persecution of the Jews was, in short, combined with the readiness to go along with, or at least not to interfere with, the action of the State. ‘If most Germans were not fanatical or “paranoid” anti-Semites, they were “mild”, “latent”, or passive anti-Semites, for whom the Jews had become a “depersonalized”, abstract, and alien entity beyond human empathy and the “Jewish Question” a legitimate subject of state policy deserving solution.’ — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 221

Categorization

• SHARE: Good empirical datum for someone working on bystander complicity and state-administered exclusion.
• XREF: connects to: The Volksgemeinschaft meant equality of nature, not of rights, for Germans; Nazi ideology encompassed antisemitic views that blamed Germans rather than Jews; Hitler’s rhetoric worked by dividing Germans into the worthy and the worthless (+4 more)

Related

• Nazi ideology encompassed antisemitic views that blamed Germans rather than Jews (similarity 0.84)
• Germans approved administrative segregation while rejecting visible violence against Jews (similarity 0.84)
• Germans rejected violent assaults yet approved legal exclusion of Jews. (similarity 0.83)
• Hitler’s rhetoric worked by dividing Germans into the worthy and the worthless (similarity 0.82)
• The Volksgemeinschaft meant equality of nature, not of rights, for Germans (similarity 0.81)
• Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Germans rejected violent assaults yet approved legal exclusion of Jews. #corroborates (1.00) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 523
• Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 682
• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 522