On Tyranny - Lesson 7: Be Reflective if you Must Be Armed

 Lesson 7 blew my mind, and to some degree changed how I think about those who carried out the Holocaust. Be reflective if you must be armed.

This lesson centers around those who carry weapons in their jobs. Snyder talks about the usefulness of police during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union and the Holocaust. During the Great Terror, the Soviet killing force, NKVD, required Soviet police forces to make themselves subordinate to NKVD causes. In just a couple of years, the NKVD recorded almost 700,000 executions of so-called enemies of the state. Most of these were just peasants or minorities. While Soviet police did not hold the brunt of the killing force during these efforts, they were instrumental in offering their man-power to aid the NKVD in the massive killing spree. If it weren't for their aid, the NKVD couldn't have performed nearly as many state-sanctioned murders. If they had stood against the horrors they were required to aid in, they potentially could have saved countless lives.

When discussing the Holocaust, Snyder asserts that German police killed more Jews than the specific task forces responsible for carrying out the executions. The crazy part was that German police who refused did NOT face punishment. This threw me for a whole loop; I thought back to every movie I've ever watched about Nazi Germany. I thought "No, that can't be right. They conformed to these horrors because they feared for their lives. Surely there was punishment on the table if they did not follow orders." So I looked it up. I quickly found a German Studies Review which confirmed that "these individuals made the choice to refuse participation in the shooting of unarmed civilians or POWs and none of them paid the ultimate penalty, death! Furthermore, very few suffered any other serious consequence!" So the German police who carried out murder on a seismic scale did so because they either wanted to, didn't want to be the odd-man-out, didn't want to jeopardize their career, or some other social reason along those lines. They performed mass-murder... because they didn't want to be the one who said no. 

Be the one who says no. If you have a job that may require you to do unspeakable things under an authoritarian regime, screw that job. You can find a career elsewhere. Maintain your integrity, and be prepared to say no. Imagine the lives that could have been saved if it were a more widespread phenomenon of resistance among Soviet and German police and soldiers. Reflect on the orders you're given, and act according to your values, always.