The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | June 2017
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but where there is now a plaque in the ground ). Viktor Brack , an SS Oberfuerher , a civil servant within the Chancellory , made the decision as to who would be killed in the programme , as he had been given the permission to develop the programme wider , for the mentally disabled people of Germany only at this time . The SS used the programme to identify different ways of killing people , using the idea of carbon monoxide gas in vehicles , trucks specifically , in which the pipe carried the fumes to the back of the truck . The poor people in the trucks were removed from hospitals , the German ' s called them the ' useless eaters ', imagine that ! After being driven around for a short time , they would be emptied from the trucks , all actions carried out within the laws of the land .
We now know that 70,000 at first elderly people and then children that were disabled , were killed in this way in 1939 / 40 .
But , it ' s the only time that we know of someone who was in a position of responsibility spoke out ! The Bishop of Munster , within the religious community , spoke out , to his congregation , and this was something that had not normally been tolerated in Germany . Hilter backed off somewhat , and the T4 programme is squashed in Germany , but not in the occupied territories until the war neared its end . Historians believe the T4 programme was the precursor for gas technology throughout the death camps . But what lesson is there here ? Well , this is on the syllabus of all high schools across the State of NJ , and this episode reminds us that it is not simply the perpetrators that are criminals here . Daniel Goldhagen ' s book , ' Hitler ' s Willing Executioners ' reminds us that everyone is culpable .. its not just those that worked in the death camps , not just those found guilty at the end of the war and executed , but it was everyone else , the train drivers , the engineers , the technicians , those fitting out the vehicles , everyone knew what it was for .
The question as to how such a great nation could allow this to happen is well documented in yesterday ' s overview referencing the Allport scale ( Part One ).
But the Germans try to hide the death camps as the Russians press on at the end of the war , but too many people knew about them . So with these reflections at the forefront of our minds , we moved onto Arnhem from the same direction as the allied forces took for Operation Market Garden in 1944 ( Market referred to the Airborne troops and Garden referred to the ground troops !).
For leadership lessons here we specifically are focusing on the mindset of leaders , the dangers of over-reach of resources , and failure to use intelligence correctly in times of crisis .
To set the scene , the town of Arnhem sits at the head of the Siegfried line , which stretches some 390 miles south to north ( The German ' s called it the Western Wall ). Around the line were a number of SS Panzer divisions , the German army in some 18,000 bunkers , mortar posts , minefields , V2 rocket deployment sites , and a series of antitank devices , such as dragon ' s teeth , to name but a few . Operation Market Garden was the largest airborne operation ever planned in history , and took place between 17 September and 25th September 1944 , almost 10 full days of fighting involving over 35,000 allied paratroopers being dropped into Holland .
As our facilitator Dean Hollands explained , The Battle for Arnhem is a particularly important battle for the British , the 1st Airborne Division , who up until that time had not seen any ' action ', having been held in reserve ( albeit they were nearly deployed on two earlier occasions , this did not transpire .). Unlike the American ' s 101st Airborne
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