this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
734 points (96.9% liked)

US Authoritarianism

786 readers
894 users here now

Hello, I am researching American crimes against humanity. . This space so far has been most strongly for memes, and that's fine.

There's other groups and you are welcome to add to them. USAuthoritarianism Linktree

See Also, my website. USAuthoritarianism.com be advised at time of writing it is basically just a donate link

Cool People: !thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world

founded 8 months ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Germans knew there was something extremely shady going on with people being deported to "work camps". But Germans had a weird notion of plausible deniability because they did not know for certain. They did not want to know either of course.

They even had a term for this: wir haben es nicht gewußt

Unadapted borrowing from German wir haben es nicht gewußt (“we did not know (it), we had no knowledge of it”).

It refers to the stereotypical defense said to have been used by Germans attempting to deflect accusations of not having done enough to stop Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War, especially the Holocaust.