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[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So you're telling me that the 30k Eisnatzgruppen that allegedly shot 1.3 Million Jews in 1 year were sooo traumatized that they had to stop

The Einsatzgruppen operated for six years, not one.

And yes, they frequently complained about battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children. The majority of them weren't monsters or psychopaths they still had human feelings. Even the most enthusiastic soldiers can suffer from mental distress from killing, especially when they are murdering helpless people in cold blood, and even more so when they are women and children.

A significant minority of SS troops refused to take part in the killings at all. In August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution and concluded that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men. By November he made arrangements that all SS men suffering ill health from having participated in the executions were to be provided with rest and mental health care, and ordered to a transition to gassing, especially the women and children. He also ordered the SS to recruit expendable auxiliaries who could assist with the murders. But even the gas vans didn't help -- SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf complained to Himmler that his men found cleaning out the gas vans horrible, and besides they were far too inefficient, only killing about a dozen people at a time.

Plus:

  • The SS soldiers were needed for the war.
  • Mobile killing squads were needed for the Soviet Union, where the Nazis had not taken control yet, but would be wasteful for the rest of Europe. Why send mobile squads to search for victims, when you could use civilian police in the occupied territories to detain undesirables, and ship them to concentration camps for mass industrial murder?
  • Gassing victims fit right in with the world-view of the leading Nazis, especially Hitler and Himmler who considered Jews and Slavs "vermin". Hitler himself had a special horror of gassing due to his experiences in WW1 and would have thought it especially apt to murder Jews and Slavs by a means too horrible to use against people.