Nazi Germany: the myth of the innocent bystander

HistoryExtra podcast

HistoryExtra

History

4.3 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1945, after defeat in the Second World War, many Germans claimed to have known nothing about what had happened to their fellow Jewish citizens – and with that, the idea of the ‘innocent bystander’ was born. But just how true was this claim? Delving into a rich archive of personal accounts of life in the Nazi era, Mary Fulbrook has unearthed a far more complex story, as she tells Rebecca Franks. (Ad) Mary Fulbrook is the author of Bystander Society: Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2023). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bystander-Society-Conformity-Complicity-Holocaust/dp/0197691714/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Just Between Us, the podcast with all of the answers, some of the time.
0:05.0	A bit of a different thing going on this week.
0:07.3	You've been immature and you've lied.
0:10.3	And now you're trying to turn it on me and manipulate me and gaslight me.
0:13.9	I was trying to manipulate you.
0:15.7	Diana, you would be chucking their clothes out of the window.
0:18.1	I know, I'd be like, are you joking?
0:20.6	I don't know. I guess you'd have to ask.
0:23.5	Someone that has sex.
0:24.2	Someone that has sex.
0:26.2	And remember, it's just between us.
0:32.3	Welcome to the History Extra podcast.
0:35.7	Fascinating historical conversations from BBC History Magazine and BBC
0:40.6	History Review.
0:49.9	What did ordinary Germans know about Nazi crimes?
0:57.2	It's a question that has been posed many times,
1:01.6	as the world has reckoned with the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
1:05.6	But Mary Fulbrook wonders if it's the right one to ask.
1:09.3	Instead, what if we turn that question on its head and examined how people reacted to the evidence
1:12.2	they did have of what was going on? Rebecca Frank spoke to Mary to discover why the idea of the
1:18.6	innocent bystander is a myth. Well thank you very much for joining me on the podcast today.
1:24.9	Your new book is titled Bystander Society, Conformity and
	...

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