What if the holocoust never happened


  • Ahmadinijad is a civil engineer, and although he is good at using vage and abstract metaphors, at least when speaking to iranians, he is not that “stupid” that he really dont think holocaust never happened. He says what he think iranians/arabians wants him to say. Maybe Ahmadinijad thinks like Goering: “the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country”.

    I think that the “what if holocaust never happened” cannot be removed from WW2 facts purely as a single factor.
    If holocaust never happened, then some other things would be very different, I guess that most historians would also believe that this issue alone would not nearely be enough to make Germany have, what can be assumed, much more than 50% to win the war.

    I actually think that other issues than holocaust, if handled differently, would be more important factors to decide the outcome of WW2.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    AFAIK, the only thing i can see that would be different today if the Holocaust never happened is that 6 million (or whatever the number was) Jews and their descendants who are currently not here would be here.

    There would be no impact on World War II.  The only difference there would be a few more soldiers for Germany on the frontlines and that ratio would not have made drastic differences, I think. (We’re talking what, about 1000 men give or take?)


  • Jen,

    For sake of argument lets say it was only 1,000 men.  Seems a bit low to me but lets go with it.  I think that Germany would have been a stronger power without the concentrations camps because of all the assets they tied up.

    You would now have more trains devoted to moving supplies to the fronts.  Although the prisoners didn’t eat well by any stretch food would still have had to been allotted to these facilities.

    Going back to you number of 1,000 soldiers.  Lets take into account the labor that was needed to build these camps.  Granted a lot of that came from “slave labor” but what about the contractors that would be needed to build the infrastructure of these camps. These men and woman could have been in a factory building more tanks.

    I agree with you that numbers wise it may not have made a big difference.  When a country is in that type of state you will always need a place for political prisoners so you wouldn’t be able to just decommission all the camps.  I’m just saying as the allies got closer in stead of moving prisoners to other camps closer to the German core they could have been moving troops to the fronts instead.  I know this wasn’t always the case but I can’t help but think that could have altered the course of at least a few battles.

    LT

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    The point I was making had nothing to do with 1000 men, give or take, so much as the pitiful amount of resources diverted to genocide compared to the massive amount of resources diverted to fighting France, America, England and Russia.

    Would they have made a real, significant difference?  I doubt it.  They may have caused a delay of a few hours, maybe a few days tops, but in the grand scheme of things, they are but a pebble in the avalanche that was befalling Europe at the time.

    As for actual numbers, I don’t know.  I used 1000 because it seemed reasonable for the amount of guards with fully automatic machine guns and permission to use them for any reason, to keep prisoners five steps away from starving to death in line.


  • Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder. 6 million died. Thats 6 million more people that couldv’e bin torward to the war effort. And if Hitler had the sense to not kill them off, then he also might of had sense to other situations. Like Battle of Britian to keep bombing military and not switch to civilian.

    Lets say it prolonged the war for 3-4 months. Think of the ME 262s and all the other amazing german enginiering that could’ve bin put into service in mass. Trains are sending troops and supllies to the lines instead of inocent to their death, contracters and builders reinforcing fortifications instead of building death camps, women, men, old, young who died, could’ve bin building more tanks. Even if it was only 1000 soilders, which I doubt,  that could’ve won Bastgone The Allies would still win, but they’d be getting a real pounding all the way to the end.


  • @Gewehr:

    Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder. 6 million died. Thats 6 million more people that couldv’e bin torward to the war effort. And if Hitler had the sense to not kill them off, then he also might of had sense to other situations. Like Battle of Britian to keep bombing military and not switch to civilian.

    Lets say it prolonged the war for 3-4 months. Think of the ME 262s and all the other amazing german enginiering that could’ve bin put into service in mass. Trains are sending troops and supllies to the lines instead of inocent to their death, contracters and builders reinforcing fortifications instead of building death camps, women, men, old, young who died, could’ve bin building more tanks. Even if it was only 1000 soilders, which I doubt,  that could’ve won Bastgone The Allies would still win, but they’d be getting a real pounding all the way to the end.

    I will not answer this poll for many reasons which i will not state until i feel comfortable to answer.  I have been saying this a lot if hitler stuck to his plan the brits, would have lasted for 1 more week many historians say. (the brits would not allow jews to live in there land if germany came to powerful 1 more week and the brits would have surrendered!)


  • @Gewehr:

    Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder…

    I was wondering if those few days could have been added to the Normandy invasion.  That could have had a very diffrent outcome with the war.


  • If the Nazis in Germany had not held such strong feelings towards ethic cleaning how would the War in the East been different? The Nazis treatment of “lesser races” cost Germany the War.

    I just ate all my wife’s pie!!!  :|

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    @LT04:

    @Gewehr:

    Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder…

    I was wondering if those few days could have been added to the Normandy invasion.  That could have had a very diffrent outcome with the war.

    On a one to one basis, ok, I’ll give you 1 SS was more scary than 1 Allied Soldier.

    Then, of course, I could say that 1 US Delta Force Member is more scary than 1 Terrorist.  However, there are like thousands of terrorists for every delta force member in America, so I don’t think adding a few dozen more delta force members are going to make a SIGNIFICANT (notice the emphasis here) impact on the over all course of World History.

    It might have impacts on getting XYZ objectives done a few hours faster, maybe a day or two (in a 6 year war) but that’s not SIGNIFICANT. (Emphasis.)

    By significant I mean to say that if all those guards were added to the front lines, would Russia have been defeated in 1942 instead of Russia defeating Germany in 1945?

    By significant I mean to say that if all those guards were added to the front lines, would England have fallen before America joined the war? Or would France have never been liberated and all the allies slaughtered on the beaches of Normandy.

    The answer to all of the above, IN MY OPINION, is no.  The few thousand soldiers used to guard political and war prisoners in National Socialist Germany just would not have any significant impact on the over all course of the war.

    Just my opinion.  I’m not saying, btw, that it would have NO impact.  I am saying the impact would not be SIGNIFICANT.


  • Jen,

    I am just making the point that in the right place with an event as pivotal as D-Day having 1,000 extra SS troops manning the beach heads would have been at a minimum a lot more costly to the Allies.

    Had the Allies known they were there they may have even waited, postponed or decided to go a diffrent route into Europe.  That would have also been a very diffrent out come.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Yes, but if we want to get down into the absolute minutia, then we could say if Captain Smith - Army Air Corps - had not gotten ill then the 101st Airborne may have been dropped on the correct target, and thus not been in position to resist the Germans during the battle of the bulge resulting in the loss of World War II.

    We commonly refer to a poem written a while ago:

    For want of a nail, a shoe was lost
    For want of a shoe, a horse was lost
    For want of a horse, a message was lost
    For want of a message, a battle was lost
    For want of a battle, a war was lost
    For want of a war, a kingdom was lost.

    But how often does the war hinge on a mere nail?  Now, consider if it was one battalion of soldiers (and I think I am being generous with that number of soldiers).  In a war that huge, do you think one battalion is going to be the lynch pin that saves your side?  Possibly.  But how likely is it they are the nail that stops your horse from losing a shoe and saves the kingdom?


  • Jen,

    The whole point of this topic is “what if.”  The holocoust did happen so to discuss a “what if” is all purely speculation.

    Some would say it isn’t the best idea to dwell on “what if’s” because your right it will only lead to a nail losing a kingdom and when the smoke clears all you have left is a lost kingdom.

    I don’t think we are going to get to that extreme (well at lest I’m not.  I’d stop posting in this topic before it came to that).

    Jen I do enjoy you playing devil’s advocate in these topics.  If nothing else you do bring up points I would not have considered.

    LT

    LT

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    I was thinking more along the lines of the battalion being equivalent in scope to the nail in the horse’s shoe.  Perhaps that nail would have kept that shoe on and resulted in that specific horse getting the message needed to the right person at the right time to save the front from being defeated and thus save the country from falling.  But that’s a lot of ifs.

    Even if all of them had a 90% chance of happening

    90% those soldiers would have been at the right place
    90% those soldiers would have been at the right time
    90% those soldiers would have been the decisive factor of that battle
    90% that battle was the turning point of the front
    90% that front was the turning point of the campaign
    90% that campaign was the turning point of the war

    We’re talking 0.90.90.90.90.9*0.9 or 53% they would have been the key to Germany’s victory over the allies.  Bear in mind, that’s assuming 90% for all of them.  I’d wager that percentage is much lower.  I’d even suggest that the correct percentage would have been much closer to 5% for each aspect, in which case the chance that those specific soldiers would have effected anything at all of significance to winning the war in Europe is (1.6 * 10^8)% or 0.000000016%

    That’s an infinitesimally small number, but much more realistic when comparing just how capable those men would have been and the odds they were assigned to the right places at the right times with the right equipment and that the allies would have neglected to consider the increased threat levels with those extra assets in place.  Actually, thinking more about it, I think that number is incredibly inflated compared to the actual affect those assets would have been to the war if they had been used by the army and not the German political machine.


  • i said peace treaty almost happened in ww2 seriously


  • I doubt it would have had that much difference at all. Most of the camps were more or less self sustaining and war materials were produced by slave labor at some. Remember Germany never did mobilize its economy to full war production until almost the very end so having more factory workers would have mattered little anyway. And as far as freeing up more SS troops the camp guards were a different branch of the SS (Allgemeine) than the ones the Allies faced on battlefields (Waffen).


  • More men ='s longer war (except now with nukes blowing them all up countless of more men there)

    Also the u.s.a has found ways to defend form nukes example they have solidified some important parts of the state 
    And now working on europe if this happens then russia and u.s.a will soon have nukes as useless weapons


  • @Gewehr:

    Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder. 6 million died. Thats 6 million more people that couldv’e bin torward to the war effort. And if Hitler had the sense to not kill them off, then he also might of had sense to other situations. Like Battle of Britian to keep bombing military and not switch to civilian.

    Lets say it prolonged the war for 3-4 months. Think of the ME 262s and all the other amazing german enginiering that could’ve bin put into service in mass. Trains are sending troops and supllies to the lines instead of inocent to their death, contracters and builders reinforcing fortifications instead of building death camps, women, men, old, young who died, could’ve bin building more tanks. Even if it was only 1000 soilders, which I doubt,  that could’ve won Bastgone The Allies would still win, but they’d be getting a real pounding all the way to the end.

    That’s a really good point. Hitlers bad decisions, pride, and lack of a cognitive central leadership within his armies would have lost him the war regardless. Oh – and people that deny it ever happened are just ingnorant. What pisses me off even more is how much greater the atrocities were in Russia with at least 21 million murdered and we’ll never really know the whole story. The NKVD units were never brought to justice. All that ever gets talked about is the holocaust. That’s good because we should NEVER forget it but Russias own mass murders and death camps are all under the rug. I know, I know, …they were our allies. But seriously, where’s the memorial for those poor 21 million???


  • They say if geramyn kept bombing britian in military parts for 1 more week germany would have succeeded and great britian would have surrendered the next week!


  • @Gewehr:

    As we all know, Hitler ordered in the"final solution" and began to discriminate certain ethnicitys. Millions were killed, I say what if it didn’t happen. What if Hitler had never ordered a “Final Solution” of any kind.

    What you think would’ve happened?

    Hitler killed 6 million jews, but only very few of this was german jews, most of the jews come from eastern Europe, France and Russia. When Hitler come to power in 1933, he stole the money from rich jews like Rotschild, and some say this money was used to build up his military forces. So if Hitler was not purging and looting the german jews, he would not got all this money at this early time, and the war would be delayed some years.
    Lets say 1 million of this jews was german, that would give him 100 000 more soldiers. Not a decesive factor. The rest 5 million jews was foreigners, and would not contribute to the german war effort what so ever.

    Hitlers war goal was Lebensraum. He wanted to kill all the slaves in eastern Europe, and make a Reich from France to Ural Mountains. If he did not discriminate other ethnic people, this war would never happen. Why would he attack Russia ? Would the common German soldier volunteer to die just to free the russians from Stalin ?

    Because of the Versailles Treaty that left 20 % of the german population under foreign rule, and the financial depression with hyper-inflation and large scale un-employment and starvation, some kind of war was expected. Even the Weimar Republic prepared for a war. But without the ethnic factor, the war would likely be limited to just conquer the territories that was lost because of the Versailles Treaty. The Germans, with a soft Hitler or without Hitler, would just conquer Sudetenland and Schlesien, and then want peace. And since this would happen before Churchill come to power, the war would likely stop there.


  • @Adlertag:

    @Gewehr:

    As we all know, Hitler ordered in the"final solution" and began to discriminate certain ethnicitys. Millions were killed, I say what if it didn’t happen. What if Hitler had never ordered a “Final Solution” of any kind.

    What you think would’ve happened?

    Hitler killed 6 million jews, but only very few of this was german jews, most of the jews come from eastern Europe, France and Russia. When Hitler come to power in 1933, he stole the money from rich jews like Rotschild, and some say this money was used to build up his military forces. So if Hitler was not purging and looting the german jews, he would not got all this money at this early time, and the war would be delayed some years.
    Lets say 1 million of this jews was german, that would give him 100 000 more soldiers. Not a decesive factor. The rest 5 million jews was foreigners, and would not contribute to the german war effort what so ever.

    Hitlers war goal was Lebensraum. He wanted to kill all the slaves in eastern Europe, and make a Reich from France to Ural Mountains. If he did not discriminate other ethnic people, this war would never happen. Why would he attack Russia ? Would the common German soldier volunteer to die just to free the russians from Stalin ?

    Because of the Versailles Treaty that left 20 % of the german population under foreign rule, and the financial depression with hyper-inflation and large scale un-employment and starvation, some kind of war was expected. Even the Weimar Republic prepared for a war. But without the ethnic factor, the war would likely be limited to just conquer the territories that was lost because of the Versailles Treaty. The Germans, with a soft Hitler or without Hitler, would just conquer Sudetenland and Schlesien, and then want peace. And since this would happen before Churchill come to power, the war would likely stop there.

    I agree with some points here. Hitlers wants were far beyond German means under his time frame. Even if the Jews, Slavs, or other “undesirables” were simply deported or used in combat, this would have NO real effect on the war. Germanys failure to take on the long range bomber program of Walter Weaver before his untimely death and Goerrings demmand for MORE aircraft instead of BETTER aircraft left the Allies with air superiority.

    In my personal opinion,
    1. NO. The Brits would NEVER have surrendered and fought building to building just as the Nazis did.
    2. If peace was negotiated with England after territories were taken to satisfy Germany, this would have closed down the wester front. I believe England would have negotiated peace. This would have still led to the war with Russia which had been brewing since the Spanish Civil War. Germany may have had an excellent chance to take Russia if you take all those resources from the western front and put them against the communists.

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