Rudolf Hoess

In my law class, I wrote a paper about Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz. Here you go. (Afterwards I’ll include some excerpts from his autobiography, which he wrote while in prison after the war.)

Colvin Walker

Rudolf Hoess Ethics Paper

LEGL 3000

Guilty of a Weak Heart

In war, we generally do not hold soldiers responsible for the lives they take. They act on behalf of their nation, whether for offense or defense. As a ground soldier, your actions are in the name of your higher ups. Militaries would crumble if soldiers disobeyed. Legally, we must accept that soldiers’ actions rest morally on their commanding officers.

That’s the problem with this entire debate. I will confidently say that Rudolph Hoess did not break the law in these matters. That’s the issue with law. It is flawed. It is only as good as the leaders of a nation. In the case of the Third Reich, it was only as good as Hitler. This entire paper must leave the legal realm, as the law is the problem. The accusations leveled at Hoess are based in ethics, higher than any nation’s laws, and the conversation around them must be an ethical one. Military disobedience is illegal. But insurrection can be moral. As such, I will discuss Hoess’ culpability in ethical and human rights violation terms, as he technically did nothing “illegal”.

Hoess’ defense is that 1) he was a soldier whose actions’ morality rested on his commanding officer, and 2) had he disobeyed, he would have been executed, and someone would have carried on an identical work.

As this is a case of ethics, I want to examine his defense through the lens of two opposing philosophers: John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant.

At first glance, Mill’s utilitarianism is consistent with his defense, outlined in question 8. Had Hoess died, someone would have simply replaced him, the same number of atrocities would have been committed, and the same number of people would have died (plus one). In terms of the greatest good for the greatest number, it would appear that Hoess is justified — or at least guiltless — for filling his role and avoiding one more death (his own).

Kant believed in maxims: the idea that you should not do something without simultaneously willing that every other person do it. Hoess’ assertion that “not one of the SS police/military officers … would dare to stand up to Hitler” becomes a self-condemning statement through a Kantian lens; Hoess should have chosen to die rather than carry out the order, because if every person in the SS refused the atrocities would not have happened. Kantianism sees the means to be as — or more important than — the ends. Through a Kantian lens, the answer to question 10’s “Do you think that having to give up your life in order to stand for an ethical principle is reasonable?” is a resounding “yes”.

Between these two philosophies, I agree more with Kant. Better to die fighting for what’s right than to acquiesce and become a part of what is evil. That said, I think that upon closer inspection, Hoess can also be condemned by the utilitarian worldview.

In law we have crimes wrought through actions, but we also have crimes wrought through the omission of action — negligence. It stands to reason that ethics can have crimes of omission as well. That we have an ethical duty — and are culpable for leaving it undone.

While in a utilitarian view, Hoess did not commit any wrongs, he also omitted many actions that could have reduced suffering. Contrary to his frequent assertions, Hoess was not a simple soldier. He was a commandant and his moral responsibility is commensurate with his rank. Utilitarianism would not condemn him for running Auschwitz. It would condemn him for not using his rank and influence to simultaneously fight Hitler. He could have aided insurrection attempts. He could have plotted to assassinate Hitler. He even could have commanded the camp be set free and attempted to get many people to safety before Hitler found out — and of course executed him for disobedience. All of these are preferable in terms of utility to the complete acquiescence and lack of spine he showed while executing the atrocities commanded him. Legally, a soldier is not culpable for following orders. Ethically, a soldier’s moral responsibility grows with his rank and influence. Kant and Mill would both condemn Hoess for his inaction.

I trembled with anger when I read the final line: “they could never understand that he, too had a heart and that he was not evil.”

The problem isn’t only that he was evil. It’s that he wasn’t good. It wasn’t his lack of a heart, it was the lack of strength in his heart.  He omitted action in the face of fear, and as a result, committed atrocities that rest on his shoulders as well as his fuhrer’s.

If your heart is weak, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the right place. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good or bad hearted person if you don’t have the courage to act on it. One’s intentions are just a direction. One’s actions are the distance.

Rudolf Hoess was the commandant of Auschwitz. He oversaw more than 3 million men, women, and children be killed by gas, starvation, and disease. Yet, he has the gall to suggest it’s unfair for people to see him as a monster, because he is a person with a heart?

It doesn’t matter if he has a good heart —he became an extension of Hitler’s stronger, evil heart. He was part of a monster then. In my opinion that precludes him from asking us to remember him kindly.

I generally consider myself a Kantian, and as such, I condemn Hoess for his actions directly. But even by the utilitarian worldview he seeks asylum in, he is condemnable for his inaction. So is every other SS officer that made no moves against the senseless assault on human rights. Hoess and those other men-made-monster bear ethical responsibility for the deaths they caused (and allowed), even if it was simply due to the weakness of their “good” hearts.

……………………………………………..

Notable excerpts from Rudolf Hoess’s autobiography, “The Commandant of Auschwitz”, follow. My understanding is that it was written while he sat in prison through his trial — and subsequent sentence to death — for war crimes. Selected by my law professor, Carolyn Howard.

On his experience as commander of the concentration camp at Auschwitz:

“The smaller children usually cried because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion, but when their mothers or members of the Special Detachment comforted them, they became calm and entered the gas chambers, playing or joking with one another and carrying their toys.

I noticed that women who either guessed or knew what awaited them nevertheless found the courage to joke with the children to encourage them, despite the mortal terror visible in their own eyes.

One woman approached me as she walked past and, pointing to her four children who were manfully helping the smallest ones over the rough ground whispered: “How can you bring yourself to kill such beautiful, darling children? Have you no heart at all?” (pg. 149)

One old man, as he passed by me, hissed: “Germany will pay a heavy penance for this mass murder of the Jews.” His eyes glowed with hatred as he said this. Nevertheless he walked calmly into the gas-chamber, without worrying about the others.

From time to time women would suddenly give the most terrible shrieks while undressing, or tear their hair, or scream like maniacs. These were immediately led away behind the building and shot in the back of the neck with a small-caliber weapon.

During the spring of 1942, hundreds of vigorous men and women walked all unsuspecting to their death in the gas-chambers, under the blossom-laden fruit trees of the “Cottage” orchard. This picture of death in the midst of life remains with me to this day. (pg. 150)

Many of the (SS) men involved approached me as I went my rounds through the extermination buildings, and poured out their anxieties and impressions to me, in the hope that I could allay them.

Again and again during these confidential conversations, I was asked: It is necessary that we do all this? Is it necessary that hundreds of thousands of women and children be destroyed? And I, who in my innermost being had on countless occasions asked myself exactly this question, could only tell them off and attempt to console them by repeating that it was done on Hitler’s order.

I had to tell them that this extermination of Jewry had to be, so that Germany and our posterity might be freed forever from their relentless adversaries.

There was no doubt in my mind that Hitler’s Orders had to be obeyed regardless, and that it was the duty of the SS to carry it out.

Nevertheless, we were all tormented by secret doubts.

I myself dared not admit to such doubts. In order to make my subordinates carry on with their task, it was psychologically essential that I myself appear convinced of the necessity for this gruesomely harsh order. (Pg. 153)

I had to appear cold and indifferent to events that must have wrung the heart of anyone possessed of human feelings. I might not even look away when afraid lest my natural emotions got the upper hand. I had to watch coldly, while the mothers with laughing or crying children went into the gas-chambers. (pg. 154)

I had to see everything. I had to watch hour after hour, by day and by night, the removal and burning of the bodies, the extraction of the teeth, the cutting of the hair, the whole grisly, interminable business. I had to stand for hours on end in the ghastly stench, while the mass graves were being opened and the bodies dragged out and burned. (pg. 154)

I had to look through the peep-hole of the gas chambers and watch the process of death itself, because the doctors wanted me to see it.

I was repeatedly asked how I and my men could go on watching these operations, and how we were able to stand it? (pg. 154)

My invariable answer was that the iron determination with which we must carry out Hitler’s orders could only be obtained by a stifling of all human emotions. Each of these, gentlemen declared that he was glad the job had not been given to him. (pg. 155)

There was no escape for me from this dilemma. I had to go on with this process of extermination.

I had to continue this mass murder and coldly to watch it, without regard for the doubts that were seething deep inside me. (pg. 155)

I was a soldier and an officer, just as was that group-captain.

Some say that the Waffen-SS was not a military organization, but a kind of party militia.

However, we were just as much soldiers as were the members of the other three armed services.  (pg. 166)

Would the concentration camps have been organized differently under another Inspector? I think probably not.

For nobody, however energetic and strong-willed, could have dealt with the conditions created by the war, and none could have successfully opposed the inflexible will of the Reichsfuhrer SS. (Hitler)

No SS officer would have dared to act against, or to circumvent, the intentions of the Reichsfuhrer SS (Hitler).

Even when the concentration camps were being created and set up by a man as strong-willed as Eicke, the voice of the Reichsfuhrer SS  (Hitler) was always the real and decisive power behind him. (pg. 166)

For my part, I had grave doubts whether we could win the war. I had seen and heard too much. Certainly, we could not win this way. But I dared not doubt our final victory. I must believe in it. Even though sturdy commonsense told me plainly and unambiguously that we must lose. My heart clung to the Fuhrer and his ideals, for those must not perish.” (pg. 168)

During trial, he somewhat shifted his story, conflicting with his earlier accounts of his proximity to the death and atrocities committed at Auschwitz:

I, myself never maltreated a prisoner, far less killed one. Nor have I ever tolerated maltreatment by my subordinates.

When during the course of this investigation, I have had to listen to descriptions of the fearful tortures that were enacted in Auschwitz and also in other camps, my blood runs cold. I knew very well that prisoners in Auschwitz were ill-treated by the SS, by their civilian employers, and not least of all by their fellow-prisoners. I used every means at my disposal to stop this. But I could not. The commandants of other camps, who had a similar outlook to myself, but whose camps were far smaller and far easier to supervise, found themselves equally impotent in this respect. (pg. 178)

I may have spoken many hard words that I should have kept to myself. But I was never cruel, and I have never maltreated anyone, even in a fit of temper. A great deal happened in Auschwitz which was done ostensibly in my name, under my authority and on my orders, which I neither knew about nor sanctioned. But all these things happened in Auschwitz and so I am responsible. For the camp regulations say: the camp commandant is fully responsible for everything that happens in his sphere. (pg. 179)

After Hoess was sentenced to death, he wrote:

On every occasion fate has intervened to save my life, so that at last I might be put to death in this shameful manner.

How greatly I envy those of my comrades who died a soldier’s death.

Unknowingly, I was a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich. The machine that has been smashed to pieces, the engine is broken and I, too, must be destroyed.

The world demands it. (pg. 181)

Let the public continue to regard me as the blood-thirsty beast, the cruel sadist and the mass murderer; for the masses could never imagine the commandant of Auschwitz in any other light.

They could never understand that he, too (Hoess referring to himself) had a heart and that he was NOT evil. (pg. 181)