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They aren't ideologically-motivated,

willing executioners.

They're not trained killers.

They're people with civilian jobs,
like taxi drivers or plumbers.

In every respect
they were completely ordinary men.

They ranged from bakers and craftsmen

to carpenters and tradesmen
with office jobs.

That police battalion basically reflected

the average working population of Hamburg.

They were given a fairly abstract
description of their mission,

which consisted of securing
the German-occupied areas.

Major Trapp, who delivers the order,
is an older man

who is very popular with his men

because he's
not the typical authoritarian commander.

The men call him "Papa" Trapp.

That indicates
what kind of relationship they have.

Major Trapp stands in front
of the battalion and says,

"I have a terrible order
to give you today."

Telling people to step out
if they don't want to participate

requires them to take action.

But when we are faced with a decision

and we don't know exactly
what the right thing is to do,

we usually do nothing.

Attention! Dismiss!

From a historical perspective,
it's an incredibly interesting situation

because the orders are documented

and it's clear from the way they were
issued that the men did not have to kill.

Part of the post-war narrative
was that you had to take part,

otherwise you would
have been shot yourself.

Here we can clearly show that no,
that was not the case.

They could decide.

160,000 men applied to volunteer
for the police,

and only 26,000 to 30,000
could be accepted.

They were then trained for six months

and, most crucially,
received ideological training

which made it fairly clear to them
what would be expected of them.

They were told that, as the master race,

they should ensure
that National Socialist policies

were established and executed
in the occupied territories.

As early as October or November 1939,

those units began shooting civilians:

Polish resistance fighters, clergy,
intellectuals, even Jews,

driving people out, deporting them.

All in all, you could say that those units

put the National Socialist
extermination policy into practice.

They don't fit with Hollywood's image
of a Nazi perpetrator.

That image is a henchman
who is not particularly intelligent

and who only cares
about killing as many people as possible.

But the historical reality
is that they were nothing like that.

Some of the Einsatzgruppen leaders
had double doctorate degrees.

They're mostly middle-class, educated,
really sophisticated people

who could definitely hold a conversation
about Mozart or Beethoven.

They were taken to a forest.

Then the policemen led them
into the forest one by one,

some of them women, some of them children.

The victims feared for their lives

and knew death was moments away.

And the policemen were experiencing
an emotional crisis

because they knew they were about to
have to kill someone at point-blank range.

Otto Ohlendorf said,

"My men suffered more than the victims."

Looking at that from today's perspective,

that's an absurd reinterpretation.

It's the perpetrators looking
for psychological mechanisms

that they can use
to cast themselves as victims

because of the fact they had to do things
that made them suffer.

The order to liquidate

came from the Führer of the Reich.

So, in that sense,
it's a policy determined by the Führer.

They lined us up at the edge of the pit,
squeezed together.

Then they started shooting.

I closed my eyes, clenched my fists,

tensed all my muscles and jumped.

The fall seemed to take forever.

Finally, I landed on the bodies.

I hadn't been hit.

After a while, the shooting stopped.

I heard the Germans coming down
into the pit...

to finish off those
who were still moaning.

Some were still twitching and convulsing
in their death throes.

They shot everyone who was still alive.

I played dead, scared of being discovered.

I can still see the image in my mind.

I remember thinking back then

that we didn't have enough earth
to cover so many bodies.

I was angry
that we had become animals, murderers.

We didn't see Jews as human beings.

He was a popular, respected superior,
and he said,

"If I had a choice,
I wouldn't give you the order. But..."

He was calling on them for solidarity,
to support him with this task,

which didn't come from him,

and asking them not to abandon him.

It was a combination of coercion
and free will.

They were told
that they could refuse to do it,

but that they would have to accept
their comrades having to do it instead.

That combination of,

"It has to be done,
the police battalion has to do the job"

and, "If you're weak, you can refuse,
but it's at the expense of your comrades."

That combination creates the pressure

which led to most of them taking part
in the shootings.

No! We were already hoping it was over.

More potatoes?

Objectively speaking,

nothing bad happened to the objectors.

They were assigned work cleaning latrines
and that kind of thing.

They were called names:
bastard, dirty rat, sissy and so on.

Those men were not at home,

they didn't go back to their families
at the end of the day.

Instead, they were in a group of men
for an unforeseeable amount of time,

always with the same people,
who could torment them,

insult them and exclude them.

You need to be very self-assured
to be able to endure that.

It might be only a social punishment
and not a physical one,

but for human beings, a social punishment
is one of the hardest things to bear.

The first step towards mass murder

is a categorical distinction between "us"
and "them."

Everyone noticed people losing their jobs,

being forced to leave their homes,

having their belongings auctioned off,
businesses being "Aryanized."

All of that was a public process.

It wasn't a secret.

And that process reinforces the division.

They are "them,"
while "we" are the others.

If I define someone as different in theory

and also treat them differently
in practice,

the willingness to use violence
against that person

will naturally grow.

Our leader told our group of 12 men
about our future tasks.

We would have to gather up
and shoot the Jewish population.

The convoy stopped about 70 to 90 meters
from the pit.

The Gruppenführer divided up
his men as follows:

Six men to guard and six men to shoot.

I was tasked with shooting.

The shooting then proceeded as follows:

About 45 to 50 people
were separated and led to the pit.

They had to line up facing us.

And that's how they were shot.

Each of the perpetrators
developed their own way

of justifying what they were doing.

"Someone has to do the dirty work."

Or maybe,
"We have a historical duty to fulfill."

Another factor might have been,
"I'm better at this than other people."

They all had justifications

that allowed them to find meaning
in the murders.

Ultimately, this shows that mass murder

is committed by thinking people
who do not execute orders like a machine,

but who think and comprehend
what they are doing.

I tried, and was able,
to shoot only children.

The man next to me would shoot the mother,
and I would shoot her child.

I told myself that the child, after all,

would not be able to live
without its mother.

He translates his truly appalling act

into something morally good
in a sense of "redemption."

That's the key to understand
why the men did this.

It is not blind obedience.

Instead, they interpret the commands
in a way that is acceptable for them

and allows them to see themselves
as morally righteous.

Only afterwards did it occur to me
that it wasn't right.

You started to flounder,

the clear ideas you used to have
were gone.

Stop arguing!

- Stop it!
- He started after all!

For God's sake!

- What do you want?
- I want to go home!

They always found ways to do it

that would keep the machine running.

Someone would say they were indisposed
or they felt too weak that day.

But it wasn't an act of resistance,

it was just an attempt
to extract the individual

without questioning the legitimacy
of the police battalion as a whole.

We will not let life make us bitter

Don't be afraid
Don't be afraid, Rosemary!

Not even when the whole earth shakes

And the world is lifted off its hinges

The terrifying and central issue

in the case of Police Battalion 101

is that you don't need to act
out of conviction,

to be motivated by ideology,

to carry out a mass killing.

The prosecution was a disaster.

Lots of material and documents
had been collected,

there was really good evidence,

but there was a lack of will to punish
those who had been involved in the crimes.

There have been several genocides
since the Holocaust.

There have been massacres
and mass murders.

There are other contexts

where we find those mechanisms

that lead people to kill others
without any personal

or psychological motives.

Wherever people can say to themselves,

"I am only a cog in the wheel,
I am not responsible."

With that attitude,
almost anything is possible.

Come on, attention. For home.

Yeah, a little cuddling.

Good.