On examination by which the best physicians are recognized

Once the Nazi scientists convinced each other that the results of their racial "investigations" were correct, then both the ability and the need to apply moral, subjective criteria lessened. After all, when one is dealing with sub-humans the ground rules change; no need for compassion, for concern, for human suffering, when the sufferers are not human. Everyone who attempts to understand the butchery of Nazism ultimately locates, somewhere in the flow of time from 1933 to 1945, an explanation or excuse for the Holocaust. No explanation, no excuse, is sufficient, but eventually the mind needs to effect closure on all topics, even this. For me, the operative explanation has been that there were, of course, a few monsters, but for the average German, who probably was no worse a person than you or I, the predicament was stark: follow orders or become, yourself, a victim. If the explicit motto, Sin or Die, fits, it explains a great deal. One of the mental tests one submits oneself to, one of life's countless "what ifs", is, "What if I were faced with a demand either to do an amoral act or to suffer dire consequences?" At 2.00 a.m., in the dark, the honest answer is usually that one doesn't know. But it is not difficult to envisage decent people, including perhaps even oneself, who will fail the test and carry out the amoral act. Now, at least for certain groups of scientists in Nazi Germany, Muller-Hill suggests that the motto was actually, Sin or let someone else do the sinning. The relevant passage states: "As documents and my interviews show, anyone who wanted to do so succeeded in escaping the 'honourable' task of participating in the extermination process. This was possible because there were other experts pushing forward to take their places" (p. 89). This alters completely one's judgement of the sinners. Muller-Hill's book is profoundly distressing and convincing, because it displays believable people behaving in believable though abhorrent ways. It has, however, one serious deficiency. He knows it well and identifies it in his Introduction. The work is not a finished study, but rather a preliminary work. He has made a sound beginning, but either he or some other historian must finish the task so that we will have "the comprehensive book which is still lacking" (p. 4).