Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

As one might expect, Trapp reminded the soldiers, only a quarter of whom were members of the Nazi Party, that Jews were the enemies of Germany. Then he announced that if any of the older men did not feel up to participating in the operation, they could refrain. There was a pause, and a soldier stepped forward. About a dozen more followed. It is an arresting moment, a brief but pregnant exchange that upends the notion that the rank-and-file soldiers who took part in the massacre had no alternative but to participate. They did not join the firing squads because they had to. They joined because they chose to, which raises the question of what ultimately drove them to kill.