Norman Ohler: evaluation

Transcript context

…But it’s hard to be the person… It’s very hard, yeah. And most people are part of it because it’s much more safe, or at least it seems more safe. I mean, it has its own perils, you know, because you might become a genocidal murderer, you know. That might happen. And are you responsible? I would say you are responsible, but that’s just my personal gut feeling. I always thought my grandfather was responsible for the genocide because he was working for the German railway system, and he once saw a train car full of Jews in a cattle wagon, and he only said to me, “Yeah, this was against German railway regulations.” And I said, “So what did you do?” And he said, “Well, there were SS at the station when I was working, and I was too scared. I didn’t do anything.” So I thought that he was… he made himself guilty, I thought. And my father, for example, reacted very strongly because of that. He never called him by his first name, the father of his wife, because he still had that, you know, he was a Nazi because he was working for the railway. So I wouldn’t excuse… I wouldn’t excuse people actually, and I certainly would not excuse high-ranking politicians that make policies because the genocidal policies that the Nazis developed and the war policies that they developed had nothing to do with drugs. And I never write that, you know, because there are no documents. If I would find documents that say, “Yeah, when we…” you know, but the Nazi ideology has nothing to do with drugs. Maybe with alcohol, you know, but it’s… And I spoke with my father, who had been a high judge in Germany. What does the law actually say? And the law says if you plan a crime and then maybe when you commit it, you are under the influence, it does not diminish your responsibility. Your responsibilities are only diminished… Let’s say you’re a totally normal person, never done any harm to anybody, and suddenly you take a drug that… or you’re totally drunk, and you don’t know what you’re doing and you kill someone. Then a judge could say maybe you have a lesser responsibility. But this is not the case with the crimes of National Socialism, and I never even hint at that in my book. So I think that criticism by Evans was short-sighted. I wouldn’t… I think he’s not right about that. Yeah, I, I think I agree with you totally. I didn’t get that sense.…

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