Les Bienveillants - What would you have done?

Post Reply New Topic

I am currently reading 'Les Bienveillants' in the original french ('The Kindly Ones' in english - it won the Prix Goncourt in 2006). It basically describes one german officer's experience of the second world war, and although I have only read about a fifth of it so far, it already raises many questions for me about what I would have done given the same situations.

So far in this book, he has witnessed and even taken part himself in mass slaughtering of Jews as part of his 'job'. And as it describes, noone (apart from a select few psychopaths) enjoyed this job - particularly when it came to killing women and children. But for the most part they got on with it and dealt with it as they could. In fact, it was even perfectly acceptable to demand a transfer for those that couldn't stomach the job.

It may seem to us, used to growing up in a free individualistic society, that this type of behaviour is unforgivable - that in the same situation we would die rather than have to murder innocent people. But what if we had grown up in a society that valued things that overall benefited the society itself and where individuals were only tools. During wartime, things are different, death is closer to everyone, people are more prepared to kill for the perceived safety of society.

So I am interested to hear what people think they might have done in the same situation. Would you have carried out your job - with distaste almost certainly, but efficiently and well and perhaps even with curiosity to see how killing would affect you (as for the character in the book)? Would you have requested a transfer (with probably no harm to your career) on the basis of not being able to handle the job (However, morally speaking is this really any better - just leaving it to others to kill, others who may be less kindly towards the victims and make them suffer longer before death)? Would you have spoken up and tried to do something about it - although this would almost certainly have resulted in your useless ineffectual death.

The only thing that might have helped would be to outwardly carry on doing your job, but when any opportunity arose, to help prisoners escape or thwart army plans. But this requires a confident duplicity that I at least could not do (and I am not sure many Aspie's could easily be duplicious, even in a good sense). I think that personally I would probably have either killed myself or gone insane from being forced to do that (and many did), but on the other hand, perhaps I would have got used to the job as most did, and would have just tried to carry it out effectively and with the least suffering possible.

Its worth thinking about, as statistically at least, the majority of people would have gone along with it and probably fewer would have openly opposed it than gratuitously enjoyed it. Thinking that we are inherently different from those who carried out orders in Nazi Germany is a fallacy.

Assuming I was even a part of the holocaust effort, I would have been quite high ranking, of course conspiring to undermine the operation entirely.

I couldn't have done it. I couldn't even dissect a dead animal in science class without getting worked up, let alone a person who I didn't know who probably didn't want to die, who did nothing wrong but be themselves. This is assuming that someone like me would even be alive back then, either for lack of medical technology or because of the social climate at the time in regards to people with medical and physical conditions. I'd probably end up getting killed myself as a result, by trying to help them or some such, but it's not like I could feasibly carry out the alternative.

I could have done it, at the cost of whatever remains of my soul. The idealist in me would try to desert, but the callous part would just try to advance in power.