No one can boast of understanding the Germans.
[With the Russians 50 miles away, the Germans at Auschwitz set a date for the beginning of the production of synthetic rubber-- 1st February, 1945:]
What else could they do? They are Germans. This way of behavior is not meditated and deliberate, but follows from their nature and from the destiny they have chosen. They could not act differently....
--Primo Levi (1919-1987), Survival in Auschwitz (tr. Raymond Rosenthal)
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