Why did Hitler's underlings go along with his evil deeds?

Question

I often wondered how a normal person could help commit the acts the n**i's did.

It couldn't have just been out of fear, as there must have been many who didn't agree.

Answer 1

Hitler made many promises of things to get better, they believed him out of hope or greed I am not sure..

Answer 2

Here in the United States there was a group known as the Klan that did some horrendous things to a certain group of people. And enjoyed doing it. They were able to do so as a group and not feel remorse because they all shared the same believe. Just like that group,  Hitler's underlings were not acting out his believes but their believes as a group. The ones that did not agree were sent to the front lines.

Answer 3

peer pressure

everyone else was going along

ther have been a couple of REALLY good experiments showing how people given power treat people who have no power. scary experiments, actually.

i hope someone will give you the names or references to those experiments - because they will answer your question better than anything else.

the short form - if an authority says it, most people do what they are told.  SCARY stuff.

Answer 4

Human nature.

They did a study on this, to test human empathy, trying to understand as you said "How a person could help commit the acts the n**i's did"...

They had a person press a button, and they were told it would electrocute the person wired in, as a study in pain. When the man in the white coat told them to press the button they would. The victim was not actually being electrocuted, he was an actor, but as far as they knew, he was being shocked, and this was a real study. They were told the shock would increase incrementally each time.

Most did not one even question continuing to press the button (in spite of his screams of agony and writhing about in pain) until the actor had appeared to either pass out or was dead. Most continued to press the button as they were told, well after that, offering only minor protests... They just did their job.

Answer 5

Hitler came to power in 1933 after a economical desaster and hopeless economical situation for the most of the Germans.  Other reasons for coming into power of Hitler was the desire of a majority of the population for a change of the political relationships after making disappointing experiences with the democratic goverments, which seemed to be not able to face the challenges after World War 1 as well as the world wide recession at this time and therefore were considered as a not adequate replacement of the monarchy.

Although generally the democratic goverments between 1918 and 1933 did a lot to improve situation for a later future by accepting very hard conditiones of living now, unfortunately Hitler reaped the benefits and all the fears and warnings of his opponents seemed to be rebut. As much as economical life went better as more Hitlers reputation increased. For a better living a lot of people accepted a slowly starting corruption of civilisation. Also the establishment of his dicatatorship startet already one month after coming into power with pursuance of opposing people and making every critics mute.

Cummulating factors, like better conditiones for live, success in economical matters, well organised propaganda, penetration of n**i-symbols in public live and corresponding praise of his "efforts", made Hitler more strong and out of every critics. So more and more people became follower of his so called "movement" and confessed to be a "Nationalsozialist" (= national socialist; in Europe a Socialist is of good reputation) or in a shortform "n**i" .His followers claimed to be strong as well and identified themselfes with Germany, what helped to overcame the feeling of dishonor of the surrender Germany`s at World War One.

Hitlers success, which means his continues presence in the medias, his symbols in the streets and domination of all areas of live made him impressive at this time and because of this all was "new"  it seemed to be  the begin of the modernity and attractive for a majority.



More and more Hitler itself as well as his followers made this person to a tin god, creating a fetish about Hitler with effect of loosing humaneness, good values and  religious roods. In other words the n***s were secterian.

This was the soil for the regime, which was considered as an authority,  to change slowly standards of humanity and to corrupt German culture and even became accepted by normal persons.

Do not have tin gods!

Answer 6

the economic and social situation in germany was really bad...

i think its the combination of a really charismatic person

with a period of crisis

and as the masses followed him, it was even more easy to do so, since the society around you puts social pressure on you.

as for the coming generations, they simply educated them to do this in schools...

all of these can sadly make people do thing they wouldn't do, as if they are in this mad trance of a whole society,

the things we take to be normal and good or bad are simply things we are used to or exposed to around us as taboo.

if your family, and your country and your friends, and gov, and schools, all have this opinion that these horrible acts are normal,

you would either join this opinion (which is the bigger change), or you will still resist, and you'll get people like oscar schindler etc....