Believe me, these were not being herded to save them from th Russians. You might actually read the guy’s book before dismissing it. He has extensive evidence and is taken pretty seriously even by scholars ho don’t agree with his ultimate interpretation.
I’ve seen documentaries on the military channel which contained interviews with Jews who were in the camps and were put to the task of doing the hands-on carrying out of the order of the camp command - and these men said that this was, unfortunately, the way things worked. These men carry the burden of what they themselves saw and were forced to do. Though we can’t find righteousness in what they chose, and though authority and hence responsibility flows uphill from them, we understand that we are all mere men.
Just as in no way can we paint the Jews forced to carry out orders as bearing responsibility for the orders being given, we can not impute the orders given from the top on cowering civilians either. Should they have fought against a killing machine that would mean certain death for them and their loved ones - of course. But that’s easy for us to say, worlds removed from the confrontation.
There is the persistent historical rewrite, one book at a time, which little by little attempts to brand every German citizen as bearing the full guilt for the death camps.
This is simply not the case, and it changes the focus from a) ideology to b) ethnicity, nationality and race.
Some people today ceaselessly try to blame those darned German factory workers, farmers and housewives, delving into history to prove that “they all knew”. They point to the German businessman who “enabled” the NAZI regime to develop it’s powerful military.
IMHO, everyone is aware of what happened in WWII to the extent that, if they’re honest with themselves, they understand enough to learn from it the lessons they should.
IMHO, people of today should wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and ask themselves if they can live with what they’re doing and not doing for the cause of covenanting with God by their own nation.
Without God, the nation will succumb to yet another human-devised ideology that promises justice only to yield corruption and evil. To me, that would mean despite all our detailed research dedicated to assigning blame, we failed to learn the lesson we should have from the tragedy which resulted in millions dying in death camps: the tragedy of too many thought leaders in society abandoning God’s Law Word.
If the nation continues to place it’s faith in secular humanism and moral relativity, we may well all get a chance to see whether we have the courage to make the ultimate sacrifice, knowing that it will not stop the killing machine anyway.