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Mitchell Venator
Professor Thomas
18 March 2015
UWRT 1102-064
The Nazi Conscience
Bigotry, racism, intolerance are moral claims, they indicate mistreatment of someone who
deserves or is entitled to a certain level of respect. For example people should not be treated
differently based on the color of their skin, their gender, their religious beliefs or ethnicity. In her
book The Nazi Conscience, Claudia Koonzs makes a strong argument that Nazi Germany had
what we would consider an acceptable moral code. The problem, as she explains, was the Nazis
convinced the general German public that certain people were not deserving of the benefits of
that code.
The first line of her book, The Nazi conscience is not an oxymoron struck me as odd
because I have grown up knowing that being called a Nazi was probably the worst thing
imaginable. By the end of the book my attitude had not changed, being called a Nazi is one of
the worst things imaginable. But what I had gained was an understanding of how the Nazis
persuaded, a generally moral German public, to allow them to do the things they did.
Koonz claims Germans did not become Nazis because they were anti-Semites, they
became anti-Semites because they were Nazis. She shows that there were basically three
sources that produced the Nazi Conscience; 1. The personal charisma of Adolph Hitler and his

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ability to convince the German public that he and he alone could revive Germany. 2. The
popularity of eugenics, both in Europe and the United States. 3. The legal codes.
She goes into great detail describing the bitter conditions in Germany after World War I,
the failure of a representative government to alleviate Germanys problems and the initial wild
popularity of Adolph Hitler when his programs began to improve conditions. Koonz makes a
strong case that the German academic and legal community were as culpable as Hitler in the
Holocaust. German academics used the latest science of eugenics to convince the German
public that the Aryan race was a superior race and that Germany could become stronger by
strictly controlling who should or should not be allowed to reproduce. Finally she details how
the legal code was used to condition, particularly German youth, with the belief that only certain
people were deserving of moral treatment. In many cases, as with Jews, they were able to
convince the average German that it was actually immoral and harmful to Germany, to treat Jews
humanely.
I had never been able to understand how the Nazis were able to nearly exterminate an
entire race of people in what is considered a modern Western nation. After reading this book it
makes it a little clearer. People tend to trust science and the Nazis were able to use the science
of eugenics to convince the German people that Jews were polluting the German race. We may
find that unbelievable, but in the 20s and 30s eugenics were considered cutting edge even in
the United States. Once that was accomplished is became much easier to pass laws that stripped
certain people of citizenship, deprive them of their property and any ability to make a living and
herd them into concentration camps. The German people accepted the brutal treatment of the
Jews, and other minorities, because they were convinced science showed it was warranted.