Now, I'll nitpick a bit, but the site's name is "less wrong", so I'll give it a go:
I do not think the scenarios proposed in this post are realistic, and I think it shows that a lot of the commenters are Americans, who seem to not know a lot about how things worked in Europe during the War.
I'm a Dane, not a German, but my great grandparents did hide a member of the Danish resistance - my grandfathers brother - for the Germans during the war. If they had not helped him hide in the barn one night where four members of the SS came looking for him at their house, he would have been caught and sent to the Danish koncentration camp in Frøslev. They all knew that their own lives were at stake as well - hiding jews or members of the resistance was often enough to make you a member of the resistance in the eyes of the Nazis, and everybody knew this.
In short, if you were living in Nazi Germany during WW2 and you hid jews for the Nazis, you would share the fate of the jews you were hiding if they were ever found, no matter what you told the search party. Telling the truth would not only condemn the jews to death - it could also quite easily become the same as signing your own death sentence.
Now, I'll nitpick a bit, but the site's name is "less wrong", so I'll give it a go:
I do not think the scenarios proposed in this post are realistic, and I think it shows that a lot of the commenters are Americans, who seem to not know a lot about how things worked in Europe during the War.
I'm a Dane, not a German, but my great grandparents did hide a member of the Danish resistance - my grandfathers brother - for the Germans during the war. If they had not helped him hide in the barn one night where four members of the SS came looking for him at their house, he would have been caught and sent to the Danish koncentration camp in Frøslev. They all knew that their own lives were at stake as well - hiding jews or members of the resistance was often enough to make you a member of the resistance in the eyes of the Nazis, and everybody knew this.
In short, if you were living in Nazi Germany during WW2 and you hid jews for the Nazis, you would share the fate of the jews you were hiding if they were ever found, no matter what you told the search party. Telling the truth would not only condemn the jews to death - it could also quite easily become the same as signing your own death sentence.