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Racism in nazi germany
Racism in nazi germany
Racism in nazi germany
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Society's Influence on Morals
The atrocities of the Holocaust have prompted much inquiry by researchers to understand how humans can behave so cruelly toward their fellow man. Theories have been formed that cite the men of Battalion 101 as “ exceptions” or men with “faulty personalities,” when, in fact, they were ordinary men. The people who attempted to perform a genocide were the same people as you and me with the only difference being the environment in which they worked. The behavior of the men in Battalion 101 was not abnormal human behavior, rather, their actions are testament to the premise that when humans are exposed to certain environmental and psychological conditions, extreme brutality is highly apt to occur.
The members of the Police Battalion 101 had the same ideas and influences as the rest of the German citizens. Because of the racist teachings produced by the German government, the entire German society was uniform under the belief that they were the master race. The German were taught that anyone different from their own kind (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) needed to be removed from their society in order for it to prosper. The Police Battalion men shared the same beliefs as everyone else, but they had to perform the dirty work of killing approximately 83,000 Jews. Christopher Browning states in his book,
Ordinary Men, that, “...the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, like most of the German society, was immersed in a deluge of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda” (Browning 184). Unless placed in the Battalion men's situation, one can not fathom how a population of people can so evilly turn against another.
People in every culture are susceptible to the ideas and beliefs brought upon them by propaganda. Whenever an idea is accepted as the ‘norm', people will find a way to justify it and follow it despite the evil implications it might entail. Humans have faced these situations throughout the last two centuries numerous times. For example, the American slave trading was totally acceptable to the southerners because the blacks were perceived to be lesser human beings. The slave owners did not mind controlling and abusing a slave like it was an animal since in their mind the slave was comparable to an animal.
This was true in Germany with the only diffe...
... middle of paper ...
...g's book, Ervin Staub made the assertion that “'cruelty is social in its origin much more than it is characterological'...most people ‘ slip' into the roles society provides them...” (167). Evil ideas and beliefs are molded onto a person by their surroundings rather than inherent in their personalities. With such a strong influence on our behavior, propaganda can lead a society to think and belief the unimaginable. The men of Police
Battalion 101 are a testament to the idea that people are capable of not only thinking the unimaginable, but they can act upon it.
Works Cited
Bortnick, Rachel Amado. “Dallas Honors a Righteous Nation.” Dallas Jewish Life
Nov. 1993.
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men. New York: Aaron Asher
Books/HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1993.
Fogelman, Eva. Conscience and Courage. New York: Anchor Books Doubleday,
1994.
Jacobs, Mike. Speech to Class. Dallas, 31 Mar. 1997.
Reich, Walter. “The Men Who Pulled the Triggers.” The New York Times 12 Apr.
1992.
Weapons of the Spirit. Writ./Dir. Pierre Sauvage. The Friends of Le Chambon.
1988.
...e men are not as intimately involved with their victims. This allows the men of Battalion 101 to be more efficient killers because the more removed a man was from the killing, the more methodical that man can become when committing murder.
The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men, from a variety of backgrounds, education, and age. It would appear that they were not selected by any force other than random chance. Their backgrounds and upbringing, however, did little to prepare these men for the horrors they were to witness and participate in.
Slaves were treated like animals and in some cases worse than animals. Slaves were bought and sold at auctions and considered "property". They were examined along with the horses and pigs "holding the same rank in the scale of being" (Douglass 2002, 373). Many were not even given the luxury of a bed. A coarse bla...
An individual’s role in society can vary with the number themes the characters exhibit. When there are signs of fate, cruelties, weaknesses, and desires for justice and catharsis the role of an individual becomes more complicated. In Antigone, most of those themes are shown thus a single person’s influence or role on society is very small and complicated to attain. However in The Lottery the society has most of the control and there is not many signs of those characteristics so the role of a person is simplified because they are nothing compared to the society combined. Finally, in The Penalty of Death, there are signs of many of the themes but since it is the societies influence against that of an individuals, it is simplified because they have to work together.
Everyone believes something different. Many people believe society has a large impact on today’s world. Many people believe you should read a book by its cover and not allow any underclassmen into your life due to their class in the world. While today many people are not punished for what they have done, in the olden day in age, everyone of everyone was punished for every crime that wasn’t allowed. Society has changed so much through the years, it has helped and also harmed our small and very large communities greatly. The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, and Of Mice and Men are great ways to show how society has affected today’s day in age.
There are many things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are implicit or explicit rules that govern how we behave in society (Maluso, class notes). Social norms influence our behavior more than any of us realize but we all notice when a norm has been broken. Breaking a social norm is not an easy task and often leads us feeling uncomfortable whether we broke the norm ourselves or witnessed someone else breaking it. Sometimes however, you just have to break a norm to see what happens.
...ple is affected by the laws and lifestyles that they follow. Many dislike the idea of change, and reject any new ideas that could alter their societies norm. Civil rights, homosexual relationships, and religious beliefs are three prime examples of how society has been changed over the course of time. Rousseau contradicted himself, stating that religion keeps the peace, however the most bloody battles in history have been over religious beliefs. Change will be adapted to one way or another, even if the morality of the people is set on two different sides. Time, politics, and war will depict the present and the future of society as a whole.
Since the beginning of time, social class and race have been paramount in society. Back in the time of caveman, roles and traditions were passed down based on gender. The man was responsible for protection and collecting food while women were responsible for cooking and keeping house. That belief has traversed time and slowly changes with each era. But throughout history, men and women have lived with preconceived notions of their duties to their families. These notions have been passed down generations and have affected how people live within their society. In the novel “Like Water for Chocolate”, social class is revered in the story of the De la Garza family. As we see through the personal journey of Tita, the main character, these distinctions are evident.
Society is ever changing and the people are just the same. Throughout history, it is shown that people change and mold to their surroundings. But when a deeper look is taken it is revealed that there is a minority that is unwilling or unable to fit these standards as most people do. These people tend to be forced into seclusion or made to fend for themselves. This is shown through the colonization of America and up into more recent times. The Native Americans are the first to make a life on this land, and when the English set up a new society, the Natives are forced onto smaller and smaller plots of land until forced to conform or to live on a reservation. The idea of this societal conformity is shown in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie, a short story author. Society's pressure to improve an individual living differently is hurting more than it is helping.
Many soldiers can testify to the fact that it is not just training, situations, or regulations that sets us apart from the average person.
Most of the slaves were forced to sleep in barns, the owners made the slave depend on them and the slaves had a system of “restrictive codes” and “they were prohibited from learning to read and write…their behavior and movement was restricted”(History.com). The slaves and the creature are similar in so many ways because they were restricted with their actions and behavior. They both could not read and write and they were not accepted by the society. Prejudice was fairly common throughout slavery in the early 19th century.
Back in my high school days, a friend of mine asked me a simple question which shut down my thought process completely. The question was, ‘What is stopping us from punching the next person that says something?’ Paused for a while looking around the class for a logical answer. After several blinks off to space I responded values. The answer of values literally came out of the blue. For a well educated guess I was not too far off. Politically speaking norms are the reason we chose whether to do something or not, with a combination of values of course. Norms are defined as shared rules of conduct that specify what people ought or ought not do in specific settings. Everyday people violate many norms both knowingly and unknowingly. For example:
Slaves were forced to work long hours in the heat, were malnourished, beaten, and underwent many more difficulties. Some worked on vast plantations, toiling in the fields, picking cotton and more, while others worked on plantations that were not as big. Some slaves had harsh and brutal masters, while others had kind and gentle ones. But regardless of whichever master the slave had, the slave was still considered a slave, though those with masters that were not so harsh received better treatment than those who did not. Slaves had no rights or say so in American politics nor any other area in the decision making of America or their masters. Slaves were not even considered as people, but as property. The writers of the Constitution even considered them as three-fifths of a person, thus they were seen and treated as inferior to the Whites.
...to the point that society doesn’t even recognize them as the human beings they are. Slaves are people with beating hearts and emotions like everyone else, not just property on legs, but societal norms disagree with that.
Mankind’s foremost fallacy lies in its misconception of society. Mankind consistently treats “society” as an undeniable truth—a fixture of the species—and upholds the status quo. However, as Berger and Luckmann would agree, society has never been anything more than a man-made invention—a valiant attempt to establish stability within a chaotic world. Despite man’s initial beneficent intentions, society as an ideal has been tremendously bastardized due to humanity’s divisive socio-cultural influences—i.e., the B&L-ian notion of socio-cultural variability. In fact, some followers of Jung contend that the sociology of culture acts as any given individual’s first confrontation in the world. Additionally, such divisiveness propagates arbitrary projections resulting from the isolation of socio-cultural groups. Arguably, at least initially, man somewhat succeeded in creating stability in the face of chaos, only to continue on such a trajectory as to create a new form of chaos as a result of man’s self-interest and stupidity. As mankind sought to organize society in order to combat anarchic chaos, the decay of entropy crept in, dragging society back into the abyss. Hypothetically, society can transform and once again be made anew if the individuals within it collectively accept the chaos of reality and,