re: #192 Fat Bastard Vegetarian

In his monumental study on German occupation policy in Belorussia, Christian Gerlach presents a most disturbing account of the mind-set of a seemingly committed lower-ranking perpetrator, based on letters from police secretary Walter Mattner from Vienna to his wife written on the occassion of the mass murder in Mogilev in early October 1941. On his direct involvement in the shooting, Mattner wrote:

When the first truckload [of victims] arrived my hand was slightly trembling when shooting, but one gets used to this. When the tenth load arrived I was already aiming more calmly and shot securely at the many women, children, and infants. Considering that I too have two infants at home, with whom these hordes would do the same, if not ten times worse. The death we gave to them was a nice, quick death compared with the hellish torture of thousands upon thousands in the dungeons of the GPU. Infants were flying in a wide circle through the air and we shot them down still in flight, before they fell into the pit and into the water. Let’s get rid of this scum that tossed all of Europe into the war and is still agitating in America. … I am actually already looking forward, and many say here that after our return home, then it will be the turn of our own Jews. Well, I’m not allowed to tell you enough.

Juergen Matthaeus in Browning, “The Origins of the Final Solution”, p. 298. (In the endnote Matthaeus writes that in “1947 and 1964 Mattner’s case was investigated by Viennese courts, but it did not end in a conviction…”)

And yes, they were ordinary, sane men.