What if instead of creating tank (or panzer) formations, Germany concentrated on building more trucks (and some half-tracks although not enough can probably built for the whole army) to fully motorise their army? How would their performance during the war have changed?
Why the Germans did not build four engined bombers…
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The primary reason that the Germans did not engage in terror bombing to the “tremendous scale and commitment of the Allies” was because they simply could not
The above definitely proved true.
So you are telling me that the Germans, who built the two biggest battleships in the European theater:
Who built the biggest artillery:
And the biggest tanks:
You’re telling me that Germany could not have built big four engined carpet bombers if they had wanted to? Sorry, I’m not buying that…
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@Lieutenant:
But there were no plans to engage in widespread killings of Poles unless the Allied food blockade was still in place.
This is from Wikipedia, and I’m posting from work so I don’t have time for further research ATM, but I feel this link renders your “no plan for genocide of Poles” point moot.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Respect for all involved in this important discussion.
Thanks for the link. The Wikipedia article you cited seems reasonably well-sourced. It’s certainly not something I’m prepared to dismiss out of hand.
However, my prior statement about Germany’s postwar plans was based on The Wages of Destruction, which is one of the two best history books I’ve read. (On any subject, not just WWII.) I’m not prepared to retract that statement without first doing considerable digging.
As the Wikipedia article noted, there are no extant copies of Generalplan Ost. There are two possible reasons for this:
- The plans were destroyed by the Germans, to hide incriminating evidence.
- The plans were destroyed by the Allies, so that they could make Generalplan Ost seem worse than it was.
In the absence of a physical copy of Generalplan Ost itself, we also have the testimony of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski; who testified for the prosecution during the Nuremberg Trials. However, Nuremberg testimonies are potentially suspect. Several years ago, one of Britain’s most prestigious newspapers–The Guardian printed an article about Bad Nenndorf, a British concentration camp used in 1946.
Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi party members or former members of the SS . . .
Threats to execute prisoners, or to arrest, torture and murder their wives and children were considered “perfectly proper”, on the grounds that such threats were never carried out. . . .
Naked prisoners were handcuffed back-to-back and forced to stand before open windows in midwinter. Frostbite became common. One victim of the cold cell punishment was Buttlar, who swallowed the spoon handle to escape. An anti-Nazi, he had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. “I never in all those two years had undergone such treatments,” he said.
Testimony obtained through torture or threats to a victim’s family is unreliable. Anti-Nazi testimony used in the Nuremberg trials is not reliable evidence.
The Wikipedia article you cited stated that while there was no copy of Generalplan Ost, copies were found of related memos and abstracts. I have seen it alleged that in 1945 and '46, the British and American governments created “German” government documents in English, then had them translated into German to incriminate the Nazis. I have not tracked down this allegation to determine its validity. But I have to assume that a government willing to use the tactics of Bad Nenndorf would also be would also be willing to create fake documents.
When I read Wages of Destruction, I got the sense that Tooze would accuse the Nazis of everything of which they were legitimately guilty, but would not naively swallow made-up Allied propaganda. For example, he stated that the Nazis had planned to murder 11 million Jews, because the measure was seen necessary to solve their food problems. On the other hand, the fact that he mentioned those food problems in the first place (as opposed to making it appear as though the Nazis could have fed everyone in their borders) means he’s far more accurate and reliable than the typical, heavily pro-Allied historian. The fact that Tooze’s book does not support the description of Generalplan Ost found in the Wikipedia article leads me to believe that the evidence for the existence of such a plan is less than conclusive.
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Well I recognize that Germany could have built such aircraft, but that doesn’t mean that they could have deployed them effectively or fast enough.
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How much time would design/development and construction require?
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How many such bombers (and support aircraft) would be required to overcome British air defense systems?
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If answers to the above are not impractical, then did Germany make a strategic blunder in not switching gears after 1940? Or would the expense have made it been a poor choice anyways (morality aside)?
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Kurt:
If the Allies were creating false documents, why not forge the original copy? I find it difficult to swallow that the Allies forged documents that refer to the plan in passing, and not simply the plan itself. Also, wouldn’t the Holocaust be sufficient evidence to turn public opinion and history in general against the Third Reich? Why invent a planned genocide against Slavs, especially when sympathy for eastern Europeans would harm public support for the Cold War?
On a side note, thanks for the information on Nuremberg interrogation and mistreatment of prisoners. Not surprised that the western allies mistreated some prisoners, but that’s certainly a part of history that gets little attention. -
@Lieutenant:
Kurt:
If the Allies were creating false documents, why not forge the original copy? I find it difficult to swallow that the Allies forged documents that refer to the plan in passing, and not simply the plan itself. Also, wouldn’t the Holocaust be sufficient evidence to turn public opinion and history in general against the Third Reich? Why invent a planned genocide against Slavs, especially when sympathy for eastern Europeans would harm public support for the Cold War?
On a side note, thanks for the information on Nuremberg interrogation and mistreatment of prisoners. Not surprised that the western allies mistreated some prisoners, but that’s certainly a part of history that gets little attention.If the Allies were creating false documents, why not forge the original copy?
This is a good question. I haven’t researched this particular area as thoroughly as I’d like. What I’m about to write should be considered informed speculation, not any attempt to offer a definitive answer. Below are possible reasons why they might have faked memos or abstracts, but not necessarily the original document.
- It’s possible they were in a hurry, and needed the documents by a certain deadline. (For example, to be used at Nuremberg.) Creating a fake memo or abstract would require less work than faking a long, detailed plan.
- A complete version of Gerneralplan Ost would have required a great deal of detail. The more detail they attempted to provide, the more open they may have become to the possibility of their fraud being detected.
That said, I don’t claim to know whether the Allies did or didn’t fake the documentation for Generalplan Ost. But during and after WWII, there was a general “anything goes” climate, in which the Allies felt entitled to say whatever they pleased, regardless of the underlying truth. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Harlan Fiske Stone, had this to say about the Nuremberg Trials:
“(Chief U.S. prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg,” he wrote. “I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.”
In a climate like that, the Allies were certainly capable of creating forged documents, if that’s what they wanted to do. Whether they actually did so in this instance is not something I know.
Why invent a planned genocide against Slavs, especially when sympathy for eastern Europeans would harm public support for the Cold War?
The Soviets were one of the participants in the Nuremberg show trials. Their propaganda effort was rooted on the idea that the Nazis planned the physical extermination of the Slavs after the war. They would have heavily lobbied to have something like Generalplan Ost to be included in Nuremberg. Nor is there any reason to believe that Truman would have resisted this lobbying effort. His administration generally (but not always) went along with what the Soviets wanted. It was not until 1948 that the United States adopted an anti-communist foreign policy. In Truman’s case, that was more an example of going along with political pressure, than it was because he personally had any anti-communist sentiments.
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Regarding the Slavs, a couple of quotes found here: http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7943
“Would there have been so many Slavs fighting on the Reich’s side if the Nazis had really been perpetrating a genocide of 30 million Slavs at that time? Wouldn’t Hitler have stopped his repatriation operation of all ethnic Germans living outside the Reich’s borders (the “Heim Ins Reich” -Home in the Reich- operation) if he had been planning to populate those areas with Germans after victory?”
“The word “Lebensraum” is often misinterpretated. In January 1939, after uniting the Austrian, Sudenten and German brothers in a German Reich, Hitler said that the process of the formation of the German nation - the German “Lebensraum” - had reached its conclusion (see speech below). One would have expected Hitler to prepare his people for a “Lebensraum war” to come at that time, but that’s not what he did. In 1938 and 1939 Hitler also offered to guarantee the Polish borders established at Versailles* and so proposed to renounce the lost German “Lebensraum” in Poland once and for all. Do “land-eaters” planning wars for living space act that way? In Mein Kampf Hitler talked about potential “Lebensraum” in Russia. That’s true. But he wrote that because he thought that the Soviet Union was about to collapse and dislocate on its own (because the jews - leading Russia at that time - were a “ferment of decomposition” according to Hitler’s words). If that had happened, Germany and other big Powers would have seized parts of the dislocated Soviet cake. But that doesn’t mean that Hitler wanted a war for “Lebensraum” with the mighty Soviet Union 17 years after writing Mein Kampf.”
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@Der:
Regarding the Slavs, a couple of quotes found here: http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7943
“Would there have been so many Slavs fighting on the Reich’s side if the Nazis had really been perpetrating a genocide of 30 million Slavs at that time? Wouldn’t Hitler have stopped his repatriation operation of all ethnic Germans living outside the Reich’s borders (the “Heim Ins Reich” -Home in the Reich- operation) if he had been planning to populate those areas with Germans after victory?”
“The word “Lebensraum” is often misinterpretated. In January 1939, after uniting the Austrian, Sudenten and German brothers in a German Reich, Hitler said that the process of the formation of the German nation - the German “Lebensraum” - had reached its conclusion (see speech below). One would have expected Hitler to prepare his people for a “Lebensraum war” to come at that time, but that’s not what he did. In 1938 and 1939 Hitler also offered to guarantee the Polish borders established at Versailles* and so proposed to renounce the lost German “Lebensraum” in Poland once and for all. Do “land-eaters” planning wars for living space act that way? In Mein Kampf Hitler talked about potential “Lebensraum” in Russia. That’s true. But he wrote that because he thought that the Soviet Union was about to collapse and dislocate on its own (because the jews - leading Russia at that time - were a “ferment of decomposition” according to Hitler’s words). If that had happened, Germany and other big Powers would have seized parts of the dislocated Soviet cake. But that doesn’t mean that Hitler wanted a war for “Lebensraum” with the mighty Soviet Union 17 years after writing Mein Kampf.”
I followed the link you gave, and found a detailed discussion about Generalplan Ost. Apparently there were six different versions of the plan, no one of which had been approved by Himmler. As best I can tell, none of the six versions involved plans to exterminate Slavs. However, the goal was apparently to increase the percentage of Germans, in some cases by forcibly transferring Slavs east of the Urals, and in other versions by leaving them in the former western section of the Soviet Union, but moved around a little to make room for incoming Germans.
My sense is that Himmler had planned to choose one of these versions, then spell things out in a little more detail. At that point, he’d submit the plan for Hitler’s approval. As it is, there is no evidence of which I’m aware to indicate Hitler had even seen any of the six versions of the plan, let alone that he approved of them. Nor is there evidence to suggest that any of these six versions would have entailed genocide.
These, at least, are the claims being made on the other website. The particular post in question strikes me as well-researched and credible. This is not to suggest that that post should represent the end of the discussion; or that there is no need for us to do further research.
On another matter, I do not fully agree with the post you quoted. I’ve read Mein Kampf, and in that book Hitler discussed the need to conquer the western portion of the Soviet Union. He did not want war with the Western democracies. A successful war against the Soviets would give Germany the land with which to feed its own people, it would prevent anyone from ever again imposing a Versailles Treaty, it would deal a harsh blow to communism (which Hitler hated), and it would secure Germany from the future threat of Soviet invasion. During the prewar years, only about 10 - 12% of German military spending went to its navy. This was because its foreign policy objectives did not include war against Britain or conquest of non-European territory.
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On another matter, I do not fully agree with the post you quoted. I’ve read Mein Kampf, and in that book Hitler discussed the need to conquer the western portion of the Soviet Union. He did not want war with the Western democracies. A successful war against the Soviets would give Germany the land with which to feed its own people, it would prevent anyone from ever again imposing a Versailles Treaty, it would deal a harsh blow to communism (which Hitler hated), and it would secure Germany from the future threat of Soviet invasion. During the prewar years, only about 10 - 12% of German military spending went to its navy. This was because its foreign policy objectives did not include war against Britain or conquest of non-European territory.
I agree that quote probably went too far - I believe Hitler did want land in the East. But I don’t think it was any more evil than the US government wanting more “living room” in the Black Hills of Dakota or other Indian land. (Or the expansionist policies of Britain and Russia.)
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@Der:
I agree that quote probably went too far - I believe Hitler did want land in the East. But I don’t think it was any more evil than the US government wanting more “living room” in the Black Hills of Dakota or other Indian land. (Or the expansionist policies of Britain and Russia.)
Good point. To add to what you’ve written: there’s a moral distinction between the Dakotas or other Native Americans on the one hand, and Joseph Stalin on the other. Stalin was guilty of the following:
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Approximately 40 million murders.
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Long-term goal of world conquest.
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Attempting–rather successfully–to undermine the Western democracies through infiltration. In their efforts to weaken and destroy the social fabric of Western nations, communists have promoted such ideas as radical feminism, white guilt, the end of the existence of race, class warfare, attacks on religion, attacks on patriotism, and attacks on “traditional” morality.
Hitler had his flaws, but his anti-communism was not among them. Had the Soviet state been eliminated, and its leaders executed, the world would have been a better place.
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“Fortunately, the Morgenthau Plan resulted in the postwar deaths of “only” 6 million Germans; not the 25 million which had apparently been planned. As an aside: it should not be thought that those 6 million deaths are the only postwar mass murders for which the Allies were responsible. There were plenty more mass murders in addition to the Morgenthau Plan.”
Quote from Wikipedia
"Unhappy with the Morgenthau-plan consequences, former U.S. President Herbert Hoover remarked in a report dated 18 March 1947:
“There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a ‘pastoral state’. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it.” [16]
It is argued that it was Hoover’s March 1947 statements in his report that led to the end of the Morgenthau plan and to a change in U.S. policy."
Hoover is not advocating for the extermination of 25,000,000 Germans, he is rejecting the Morgenthau plan.
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@Pink:
“Fortunately, the Morgenthau Plan resulted in the postwar deaths of “only” 6 million Germans; not the 25 million which had apparently been planned. As an aside: it should not be thought that those 6 million deaths are the only postwar mass murders for which the Allies were responsible. There were plenty more mass murders in addition to the Morgenthau Plan.”
Quote from Wikipedia
"Unhappy with the Morgenthau-plan consequences, former U.S. President Herbert Hoover remarked in a report dated 18 March 1947:
“There is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a ‘pastoral state’. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it.” [16]
It is argued that it was Hoover’s March 1947 statements in his report that led to the end of the Morgenthau plan and to a change in U.S. policy."
Hoover is not advocating for the extermination of 25,000,000 Germans, he is rejecting the Morgenthau plan.
Hoover is not advocating for the extermination of 25,000,000 Germans, he is rejecting the Morgenthau plan.
Correct. During and after WWI, Herbert Hoover was heavily involved in organizing efforts to feed Europe’s starving civilians. Millions of hungry people in Axis and Allied nations were fed as a result of Hoover’s efforts.
Meanwhile, Americans became increasingly aware that the tactics used by the Allies–such as food blockades aimed at starving civilians, even after WWI–as well as the Versailles Treaty, bore no relationship at all to the just war Woodrow Wilson had said America was fighting. Not only did Wilson persuade the U.S. to fight and win a fundamentally unjust war against Germany, he also was among those responsible for the creation of the IRS and Federal Reserve. By the end of his presidency, most Americans realized Wilson was much better at creating moral-sounding rhetoric, than he was at engaging in moral behavior. He exited office a largely discredited president; with WWI looking like a very bad idea in hindsight. Meanwhile, Herbert Hoover looked really good, and had the respect of the American people. He was correctly seen as a man who’d acted with decency at a time when many others–including the president–had acted without regard to a valid moral compass.
Hoover would later ride that popularity to the presidency. Unfortunately, he was a much better-suited to the role of food administrator than to the role of president.
During the post-WWII period, Hoover returned to what he was good at: helping starving Europeans. But there was very little he could do until the Morgenthau Plan had been abandoned. As you noted in your post, Hoover had concluded that the continuation of the Morgenthau Plan would result in the deaths of 25 million Germans. But that text was written in 1947: two years after the Morgenthau Plan had been implemented. The policy of starving Germans in the postwar period was not abandoned until 1948. The German population therefore experienced three years of deliberate starvation.
As a result of political pressure applied by Hoover and others, measures intended to starve the German people were gradually relaxed.
In early 1946 U.S. President Harry S. Truman allowed foreign relief organization to enter Germany in order to review the food situation. In mid-1946 non-German relief organizations were permitted to help starving German children.
Nevertheless, conditions were at their worst in 1947.
Living conditions were considered worse in 1947 than in 1945 or 1946. At an average ration of 1040 calories a day, malnutrition was at its worst stage in post-war Germany. Herbert Hoover asserted that this amount of rations was hardly more than the amount which caused thousands in the Nazi concentration camps to die from starvation.
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What is a four engined bomber again, why did Germany not built them?
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@aequitas:
What is a four engined bomber again, why did Germany not built them?
What is a four engined bomber ? It’s a bomber that has four engines, with each engine driving one of its propellers. The term is roughly synonymous with a heavy bomber, in the sense that four engines (as opposed to one or two or three engines, the number usually associated with light and medium bombers) give a bomber the horsepower it needs to haul very large loads of bombs over long distances. Heavy bombers tend to be slow and sluggish on the controls, at least when compared with smaller and more agile planes like fighter-bombers, so they almost always engage in level bombing, which means dropping their bombs while flying horizontally over the target.
Why did Germany not built them? In no small part because the primary advocate of the development of a strategic bombing doctrine for the Luftwaffe, General Walther Wever, was killed in 1936 (ironically, in an air crash), and because one of his successors, the hard-drinking Director-General of Equipment for the Luftwaffe, General Ernst Udet, was so obsessed with dive-bombing that he required all new aircraft designs to have a dive-bombing capability, something which is absurd for a heavy bomber from an engineering point of view.
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@Der:
The primary reason that the Germans did not engage in terror bombing to the “tremendous scale and commitment of the Allies” was because they simply could not
So you are telling me that the Germans, who built the two biggest battleships in the European theater:
Who built the biggest artillery:
And the biggest tanks:
You’re telling me that Germany could not have built big four engined carpet bombers if they had wanted to? Sorry, I’m not buying that…
Why did the United States, which built the best bombers, aircraft carriers, fighters, etc… of the entire war, not build tanks that were as tough and powerful as the Germans did, or guns as large, or battleships, etc…? Certainly it was not because they couldn’t, it was because they didn’t need to. As Wheatbeer has already pointed out. Which is the same reason Germany didn’t build 4 engine bombers like the Allies did. And when they tried to, it was a case of too little, too late. It was not necessary for the war envisioned, nor did it fit with the tactics used in such a fight.
Besides which, that is not at all what I said. I said they could not conduct a strategic bombing campaign with the “tremendous scale and commitment of the Allies”. Your words or Wayne Prante’s, not mine. I am trying to define in context, while you seem to be deliberated taking me right back out of that context.
However, perhaps I should qualify my statement. Germany could have conducted a strategic bombing campaign on the scale of the Allies, if they used all their national production and resources to that end. Obviously, that was in no way practical. Nor did it fit Germany’s strategy. As you (or Kurt, not really sure who) have stated, Germany did not wish to fight England, would have preferred an alliance and Hitler did not expect to fight them. Why, if those things are true, would Hitler have stimulated long range, high payload bomber construction? For all his warmongering tendencies, I do not believe Hitler intended to start a second world war. I am sure he was planning for, and would have much preferred, a series of one-to-one, limited wars to achieve his ideological goals.
It is simple logic why Germany did not build four engine bombers, not moral superiority. He did not want to lay waste to all the territory to be conquered… what was the point to do so if it was to be occupied and absorbed into the Fatherland? If anything, Stalingrad and Leningrad showed that heavy strategic bomber fleets are not necessary to completely obliterate a city, which the Germans did.
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Of course the Germans could have build 4 engined Bombers if they wanted to. A chimp could do that.
But in this specific war, the German war objective and goal was to conquer and occupy territory, not to destroy it.
However they did build the Condor in case they needed to bomb USA. But this would not be necessary before they had actually conquered most of Europe and Asia. But at that time they got something better than bombers, namely rockets V2
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He is one of those who believes that September 11 was orchestrated by the US government.
For an Amish person living among Amish, a trusting attitude might make sense. For a person heavily involved with a violent drug cartel, a little less trust might be in order. The point here being that there is no one right level of trust. It’s circumstance-dependent. Mr. Prante obviously has a lower level of trust in the American government than does the average citizen. That is not in itself evidence of a lack of credibility on his part–merely a difference in perspective. There are times when the U.S. government’s actions are decided by good people. And other times when they have been chosen by fundamentally evil people. Neither a trusting nor distrusting attitude toward the American government will be justified 100% of the time.
My intent at pointing this out, is that I believe we can label his views, either specifically or generally, as being fringe or well outside the norm. If this is true about one rather significant thing, then should we not view his other causes with caution? Yes, at the most basic level this comes down to a difference of opinion. But when the opinion is about something this serious, it inevitably colors the rest of your worldview, for either good or bad.
I would say that I have a very low level of trust in the government, or any body of government, but on a philosophical level. There is a difference between low trust in your government and believing that your government orchestrated mass murder of their own civilians. (Prante is a Canadian, but that matters little.) If you believed the latter, how could you see it as anything but evil and something that must be morally opposed? I believe that it is certainly damaging to his credibility, at least with me and anyone who holds a normal or mainstream view of the world. Fortunately, I can focus on his comments on Germany and examine them without his other views impacting my assessment. But as a whole, seen as a man who is very non-trusting, I can realize that his investigation into secrets can becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The Nazis’ genocide against the Jews began only after Britain closed Palestine to additional large-scale Jewish immigration, and only after Britain and the other Allies used their food blockade to create famine conditions inside Germany. If I deliberately strand a group of people on an island with nothing to eat, and if I leave them there for months, I do not then get to pass judgment on them for engaging in cannibalism. Nor were the Allies in any position to pass judgement about the Holocaust.
During WWII, the Nazis had drawn up plans to forcibly relocate 30 million Poles east after the war had ended. If Germany was still in the midst of famine conditions, the death of some of these Poles along the way would have been considered an acceptable way of reducing pressure on the food supply. But there were no plans to engage in widespread killings of Poles unless the Allied food blockade was still in place.
Compare that to the killings in which the Allies engaged during the postwar period.
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Approximately six million German civilians were killed in Western democratic occupation zones as a result of the Morgenthau Plan.
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Millions of civilian refugees from the Soviet Union, Baltic States, and Yugoslavia were forcibly returned to Soviet custody. “The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees.”[11]
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The Western democracies handed over large numbers of German POWs to the Soviets, which was not much different than a death sentence.
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German POWs in French or American custody often starved to death.
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Soviet soldiers who’d surrendered to Germany were forcibly returned to Soviet custody after the war. Stalin regarded these men as traitors, and treated them accordingly.
I strongly disagree. Your analogy fails because the circumstances were radically different.
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Being the government in power, the Nazis made the conscious decision to eliminate a specific group or groups of humans whom they did not find worthy, for one reason or another. This is a majority vs minority persecution, with discrimination of victims, unlike some sort of anarchical cannibalism for survival. This also ignores the fact that the Nazis created this issue themselves. As the effective ruler of Europe by 1940, Hitler could very easily have used his resources to round up all the Jews and ship them out of the Reich to some Eastern European nation or into Africa or France or wherever… if he and the Nazis had any commitment to a “humane” solution, this would have been easily achievable. Obviously, preserving Jewish and other lives was not that important… Germany was not an island with no recourse.
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The Nazis racial motivations were evident long before embargoes and starvation came upon Germany. Nor can it be argued that the Nazis held any reservations about either the forced labor, incarceration or extermination of these groups. It may not have happened when it did, had things turned out differently, but those items were inevitable.
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The majority of extermination of Jews did not happen in Germany or to German Jews, but rather in Poland to Polish Jews. This was not a case of there being inadequate foodstuffs or land to provide for the German people, rather it was plain genocide.
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Pertaining to your rationale above… There really can be no excuses for German extermination camps. Purposeful and industrialized killing is far different from starvation or death from exposure, much different even from execution as “traitors”. The murder of POWs, civilians and others by the Soviet Union is another issue entirely, but even that does not somehow justify the Nazis actions. Your examples above do nothing but to say that it was okay because other people did it too and they killed more!
The Nazis were unsentimental about shedding innocent blood; if deemed necessary for the war effort. They did not adhere to the laws of war. That does not change the fact that Stalin was pure evil, and FDR was the eager associate of evil. Churchill was a more squeamish associate, and sometimes felt bad about the postwar world the Allied victory had created. For example, he seems to have genuinely hoped for a democracy in postwar Poland. He stopped turning Soviet refugees over to Stalin, after it became clear that Stalin was murdering large numbers of refugees delivered to him. Churchill was no angel of light, as the people of Dresden might have noticed. But of the Big Three Allied leaders, he was probably the least evil.
The Allies, as I have admitted, had their share of faults. However, they should be examined in two different groups: the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Because the US and UK were ideologically and geographically separate from the USSR does not prevent us from asking questions, but very little blame for actions of the Soviet Union can be shared by the US and the UK. Their alliance with the Soviet Union was one of necessity and expedience rather than brotherhood. While I shrink from calling the USSR the “lesser” of the two evils (Germany or USSR) in Europe, I am sure that is what it seemed like to the Allies at the time.
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My intent at pointing this out, is that I believe we can label his views, either specifically or generally, as being fringe or well outside the norm. If this is true about one rather significant thing, then should we not view his other causes with caution? Yes, at the most basic level this comes down to a difference of opinion. But when the opinion is about something this serious, it inevitably colors the rest of your worldview, for either good or bad.
I would say that I have a very low level of trust in the government, or any body of government, but on a philosophical level. There is a difference between low trust in your government and believing that your government orchestrated mass murder of their own civilians. (Prante is a Canadian, but that matters little.) If you believed the latter, how could you see it as anything but evil and something that must be morally opposed? I believe that it is certainly damaging to his credibility, at least with me and anyone who holds a normal or mainstream view of the world. Fortunately, I can focus on his comments on Germany and examine them without his other views impacting my assessment. But as a whole, seen as a man who is very non-trusting, I can realize that his investigation into secrets can becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I strongly disagree. Your analogy fails because the circumstances were radically different.
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Being the government in power, the Nazis made the conscious decision to eliminate a specific group or groups of humans whom they did not find worthy, for one reason or another. This is a majority vs minority persecution, with discrimination of victims, unlike some sort of anarchical cannibalism for survival. This also ignores the fact that the Nazis created this issue themselves. As the effective ruler of Europe by 1940, Hitler could very easily have used his resources to round up all the Jews and ship them out of the Reich to some Eastern European nation or into Africa or France or wherever… if he and the Nazis had any commitment to a “humane” solution, this would have been easily achievable. Obviously, preserving Jewish and other lives was not that important… Germany was not an island with no recourse.
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The Nazis racial motivations were evident long before embargoes and starvation came upon Germany. Nor can it be argued that the Nazis held any reservations about either the forced labor, incarceration or extermination of these groups. It may not have happened when it did, had things turned out differently, but those items were inevitable.
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The majority of extermination of Jews did not happen in Germany or to German Jews, but rather in Poland to Polish Jews. This was not a case of there being inadequate foodstuffs or land to provide for the German people, rather it was plain genocide.
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Pertaining to your rationale above… There really can be no excuses for German extermination camps. Purposeful and industrialized killing is far different from starvation or death from exposure, much different even from execution as “traitors”. The murder of POWs, civilians and others by the Soviet Union is another issue entirely, but even that does not somehow justify the Nazis actions. Your examples above do nothing but to say that it was okay because other people did it too and they killed more!
The Allies, as I have admitted, had their share of faults. However, they should be examined in two different groups: the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Because the US and UK were ideologically and geographically separate from the USSR does not prevent us from asking questions, but very little blame for actions of the Soviet Union can be shared by the US and the UK. Their alliance with the Soviet Union was one of necessity and expedience rather than brotherhood. While I shrink from calling the USSR the “lesser” of the two evils (Germany or USSR) in Europe, I am sure that is what it seemed like to the Allies at the time.
My intent at pointing this out, is that I believe we can label his views, either specifically or generally, as being fringe or well outside the norm.
Whether they are fringe or outside the norm is beside the point. The only question worth asking is, are they well-researched and well-supported?
As the effective ruler of Europe by 1940, Hitler could very easily have used his resources
to round up all the Jews and ship them out of the Reich to some Eastern European nation or into Africa or France or wherever…The problem was not so easily solved as that. In 1938, Hitler had suggested the idea of relocating Germany’s Jews to some British or French colony. He suggested French Madagascar, but made it clear he didn’t care which colony was chosen as the destination, as long as it was someplace other than Europe. Both Daladier and Chamberlain refused. Hitler therefore exported large numbers of Jews to Palestine, until Britain put a stop to it in 1939.
Two years later, Hitler and other Nazis seized upon a modified version of the Madagascar plan. This time around, the idea was for Nazi Germany to gain control of Madagascar via negotiations with Vichy France. Once this was achieved, the Jewish population could be resettled there, in a Nazi-controlled state. This was less than ideal from the Jewish standpoint, but it would have been preferable to the Holocaust. However, Britain soon seized Madagascar from Vichy France, rendering the new Madagascar Plan moot. Nor could Hitler export the Jews to Western nations, because of their restrictions on Jewish immigration.
As events of the day contributed to the closure of the west to Jewish immigrants, so too was the sanctuary of the Land of Israel denied the Jews in their greatest hour of need.
Getting rid of the White Paper of 1939 was so important to the Jewish community that they even began attacking the British during WWII.
[Avraham] Stern believed that the war in Europe was so important to the British that they would be more than willing to make concessions to Jews in Israel if this proved necessary. He . . . formed the LEHI (Lochamei Cherut Yisrael - “Freedom Fighters of Israel”), also known as the “Stern Gang.” The British did everything possible to track LEHI members. Finally, in 1942, the British arrested Stern himself and killed him shortly thereafter. This only served to make Stern a martyr to LEHI members, and their resolve to attack the British was strengthened with Stern’s death. . . .
As the world outside of Germany began to learn the gruesome details of the Holocaust, the Jews of Israel increased their pressure on the British to rescind the White Paper and allow Holocaust survivors to come to Israel. The British, however, refused to cooperate. As a result, the struggle against the British intensified - especially from the LEHI, whose members considered any British policeman or soldier a legitimate target.
With more and more British being killed in Israel, the people of the United Kingdom increased their demands that the British pull out of Israel altogether. The British finally gave up, returning the Mandate for Palestine to the United Nations in 1947.
For many Jews, the events of World War II underscored the need for a safe haven for Jews, so that they would never again be without a place to flee from anti-Semitism in the Diaspora. Consequently, the State of Israel was founded in 1948.
After WWII, large numbers of Jews attempted to immigrate to Palestine. Many made it into Palestine successfully, aided by underground Jewish organizations. But a number of would-be Jewish immigrants were captured by the British, and placed in concentration camps.
|| The immigrants had no citizenship and could not be returned to any country. Those interned included a large number of children and orphans.
Most of the inmates of these camps were Holocaust survivors and refugees. There was also the plight of the Jews in postwar Europe.
The press was filled with stories about the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors in European Displaced Persons camps, waiting for permission to go to Eretz Yisrael. U.S. envoy Earl Harrison had recently returned from a visit to the camps and reported that the DPs suffered from inadequate medical care, shelter, food, and clothing. Some had nothing to wear but German SS uniforms. Conditions were so poor, Harrison asserted, “we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them.”
Holocaust survivors placed in concentration camps. Holocaust survivors with nothing to wear but SS uniforms. Not what the Allied public relations teams were hoping for! These public relations problems could easily have been solved, had there been some nation willing to take in very large numbers of Jewish immigrants. However, no such nation existed–a problem Hitler also faced after the creation of the White Paper of 1939.
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What is a four engined bomber again, why did Germany not built them?
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Wait wait wait - are you telling me that Hitler invaded Poland and France, allies of the United Kingdom, and DIDN’T expect a blockade? Did he know nothing of 19th century history? If Germany couldn’t feed itself without trade, Hitler essentially brought famine on his own people by invading Poland.
The Jews would not be in refugee camps if not for the Nazis. They were living in their own homes providing for themselves before the “final solution”. Hitler created his problems by inviting a blockade and beginning the holocaust.
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What is a four engined bomber again, why did Germany not built them?
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