Two recent master’s theses that have analyzed the statements of POWs of all ranks interned at Fort Hunt in the United States have come to another conclusion.⁵²⁵ Faith in the Führer tended to recede drastically among the lower ranks after Normandy while generally being maintained further up the hierarchy. This is another indication that the personal identification and emotional investment stabilized people’s trust in Hitler. But these indices need to be pursued. The reverse and difficult-to-grasp side of faith in the Führer is what does not occur in the POWs’ conversations: political reflection about what went wrong. In fact, the depoliticization of German soldiers would seem to be one of National Socialism’s most lasting achievements.

Soldiers tended to see what was happening as not their affair, but the business of their omnipotent Führer and his circle of helpers, whom the soldiers saw alternately as philistine, corrupt, incompetent, or criminal. They did not, in the main, have a political opinion on the National Socialist state, the dictatorship, or the persecution of Jews. The criticism they put forth was aimed at the personal traits of Nazi bigwigs and occasionally at individual policies. But it was very rare for the POWs to engage in political debates about decisions or perspectives. Clear differences in position or opinion seldom emerge. This is one of the central results of totalitarian rule. It creates a mental lack of alternatives and makes people fully dependent on the charismatic leader, to whom they stay true even when their mutual downfall is inevitable. As the protocols reveal especially with respect to higher-ranking officers, politics is replaced by faith. And since faith in the Führer was simultaneously a faith of Germans in themselves, every threat to positive images of Hitler was also a threat to the project in which people had invested so much energy and emotion. The fear was that this project would turn out to be utterly worthless.⁵²⁶

Ideology

V. BASSUS: Were the ones in RUSSIA considered more dangerous?

THÖNE: More hatred—they were not dangerous. I am not letting any cat out of the bag by telling you this. I think I can safely say that all Jews in RUSSIA, including women and children, were shot without exception.

V. BASSUS: Wasn’t there some compelling motive for it?

THÖNE: Hatred was the compelling motive.

V. BASSUS: Hatred by the Jews—or?

THÖNE: By us. It isn’t a reason, but it is actual fact.