Quote:
Originally Posted by clawsondude
This series is just one more example of garbage being put out by the once informative "History" Channel.
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And that's the most accurate post of all in this topic.
No one seems to take psychology into any account whatsoever, it seems, but the entire 3rd Reich was built on psychological factors.
And it fell in large part due to the same factors.
Hitler would have never dishonored his grand creation, his generals, his political followers or his nation by fleeing to a life of anonymity in South America. Feeling from the enemy was despicable and utterly dishonorable.
The Germans, especially in their nobility and their military, had an ancient tradition of death before dishonor that goes all the way back to the earliest Germanic tribes. Defeated Generals and other military commanders chose suicide over surrender because dying by one's own hand was seen as more honorable than capture.
Hitler saw himself as the Ultimate Commander of the German armed forces. The war consumed him far more completely than his politics; they were just a way for him to go to war and fulfill his destiny as the most noble warrior of all time. And he had already proven he was no coward when he was a soldier in WWI by taking chances no one else would take. It earned him the Iron Cross, and he wore that medal until the very end. It was his most treasured possession.
Hitler was not the first, nor the last, who followed this tradition. Goehring killed himself rather than face the ignominy of hanging, a death for deserters, and was denied the more honorable death by firing squad, the only fit means of execution for a soldier. Others who were sentenced at Neurenburg tried to kill themselves, and succeeded, and others desperately sought the means to kill themselves.
Even some of the Generals who tried to assassinate Hitler were allowed the privilege of suicide. Death by one's own hand removed the burden of shame for the person's survivors. Rommel, a favorite of Hitler's, was afforded this privilege and used it.
For all, it was a way of expunging the shame that comes from failure. Shame is very powerful because it rubs off on an entire family and can last forever.
The same tradition prevailed in Japan, where suicide was more honorable than capture. The Japanese took it even further; the tradition of hara-kiri, where death came very slowly and painfully, was a way of giving the enemy the ultimate F*** You. There is nothing you can do that is worse than what I'm willing to do to myself.
Like the Germans, the Japanese had a very strong culture of shame, and still do. That's why some corporate leaders have committed suicide in Japan.
It was a way of showing courage to the end in either culture, and it happened plenty of times. We Americans have a completely different view about it. For us, guilt is more powerful than shame.
Guilt is strictly an internal burden the guilty alone carry. It doesn't rub off onto a family nearly as easily as shame does. We don't often hold the family members accountable for the crimes one member commits. Rather, we tend to have compassion for the family instead.
Many an American soldier saved the last bullet for himself, but only used it as a quick end when all hope was gone and a very painful death clearly lay ahead.
We also look at suicide as a failure, not something honorable. So it holds a horror for us that didn't exist in the Germans. Or the Japanese.
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