Eisenhower, Germany, & cognitive dissonance

Dwight Eisenhower's son was an aide during World War II, and in his notes he recounted the sobering events of April 13, 1945.

"...the thing that was most on his mind was the horror camp near Gotha that he had gone through only the day before. The scene of atrocities had left him visibly shaken and he had not yet adjusted the entire episode in his mind. With him on the visit was the rough-and-tough George Patton, who had become physically ill...."

Eisenhower had trouble understanding how humans could allow -- much less perpetrate -- such cruelty.

"'Well, the only speck of optimism I can see,' Dad said that evening, 'is that I really don't think the bulk of Germans knew what was going on. When I saw that camp yesterday, I ordered the mayor of Gotha to turn out the townspeople and make them clean up the mess. Last night he and his wife went home and hanged themselves. Maybe there's hope after all.'"
-from "Going Home to Glory" p177-178

This explanation may have made sense to Eisenhower, but it is incorrect. His view doesn't take into account 1) the reality of the situation, and 2) the power of cognitive dissonance.

Eisenhower's cognitive dissonance problems came from his disbelief that otherwise civilized human beings could actually perpetrate such barbaric acts on other human beings. The only way things made sense to him was to believe "ordinary" Germans didn't know.

But the reality is that any German citizen who was paying attention knew very well what was going on. "They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatized as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand." [Source]

So why did the mayor and his wife kill themselves after seeing the concentration camp? Because once they came face to face with the evil they had tried to ignore for so long, there was no escape. There was no more minimizing, no more "explaining away," no more looking the other way. No more fooling themselves about "being a good person." They were part of the Holocaust. And they simply couldn't live with the guilt of what they had done.

January 27th is Holocaust Remembrance Day.