German reactions to Nazi atrocities.

Early in the re-education of the German people the military government attempted to develop a sense of collective responsibility for results of National Socialism, especially for atrocities in concentration camps. Detailed interviews indicate that, before the Allied occupation, Germans were aware of the existence and function of concentration camps, although they did not know the details or extent. Almost universally, the individual German projects responsibility upon the Nazi party or the S.S. There is little evidence that exposure to the facts was developing a sense of need for greater personal participation in political life among the traditionally unpolitical. During the first months of the occupation, the Psychological Warfare Branch of the United States Army, being charged with the control of public information in Germany, undertook a campaign through Radio Luxembourg, the controlled Germanlanguage press, and special posters and pamphlets to acquaint the German people with the extent and nature of concentrationcamp atrocities. The development of a sense of collective responsibility was considered a prerequisite to any long-term education of the German people. Later, editorial comment drew a distinction between those legally guilty of having directly committed atrocities and those morally responsible for having allowed National Socialism to come into being and for having tolerated its crimes. Early in June, I945, the author, while serving as an intelligence officer for the Psychological Warfare Branch, attempted to study the effect of one month of this campaign on German civilians residing in the American and British zones of occupation. The following sets forth his analysis and conclusions based on systematic interrogation of about a hundred civilians who represented a rough cross-section of the German population in the Western zone. The representativeness of the results can be demonstrated by the clear-cut findings, which did not alter with the inclusion of additional cases. Trained interrogators followed a standardized procedure in interviews, which were made in Cologne, Kassel, Erfurt, Koblenz, Kaiserslautern, Marburg, Heidelberg, and a number of villages. Atrocity information ceased to be emphasized shortly afterward. Although major political developments have occurred in occupied Germany, the civilian opinion on German atrocities has, in the interim, undergone no significant changes. KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ATROCITIES BEFORE ALLIED OCCUPATION How much the German people knew of the conditions in concentration camps before Allied occupation is difficult to reconstruct. The mass of the German people have no interest in admitting more than a minimum knowledge. One must evaluate civilian claims of the knowledge in their possession in order to explain their reactions to Allied statements about atrocities. Almost all Germans interrogated readily admitted that they at least knew of the existence of concentration camps in Germany before the arrival of Allied troops. Newspaper accounts continually told of the removal of enemies of the Reich to concentration camps. Jingles which spoke of their existence and warned of their significance came into common use as early as I935. For example: Lieber Herr Gott, mach mich stumm Das ich nicht nach Dachau komm. [Dear God, make me dumb That I may not to Dachau come.] Every community, except perhaps the very smallest, had members who were taken off to concentration camps; there is even evidence that it was Nazi policy to take a "sample"