Fate of the Slavs and Poles if the Nazis won?

[David Thompson]

Paul -- You wrote:

Why not just change the initial question?

You could argue that the initial question is fairly pointless as it calls for blind speculation. The ensuing conversation has been valuable.

(1) We have a forum policy of keeping discussions on-topic. That way the discussions are less likely to take on a "stream-of-consciousness" quality, or be subject to poster "hijacking." The discussion about Nazi policy and the Jews is interesting, but has almost nothing to do with the thread question. Posters who want to discuss other matters can open a separate thread, or post to a pre-existing thread.

(2) We also have a policy against redundant threads and posts. There are already a number of open threads on Nazi policy and the Jews here. Among those other threads, some of which are quite lengthy, see:

Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews? (locked)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=185178
"Germany didn't have any annihilatory intention pre-1939"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=184059
The Madagascar Plan
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27282
Madagascar
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5901
'Hitler's holocaust plan for Jews in Palestine stopped'
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=99345
A challenge to Michael Mills and others
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=105490
Decision to kill Polish Jews: Mid-March 1942?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=105317
Plan to use Ukraine as dumping-ground for Jews
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=92710
Germans wanted to send Jews to USSR?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=79884
Heydrich said: Czechs to guard Jews in White Sea region
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=42326
What is this "ausrotten" supposed to mean?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1809
German for "Uprooting"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1284

(3) Nazi plans regarding the fate of Poles and the Slavs, on the other hand, is an interesting subject on its own, and is infrequently discussed here. The call of the question in the initial post is only partly speculative. It asks for more detailed information on Nazi planning for the fate of Poles and the Russian Slavs.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

Given the shifting nature of German policy, it is impossible to be definitive about this.

For example, could the actual fate of the Jews over 1941-44 have been predicted from any pre-war German documentation?

Given that the Nazis had barely begun the planned displacement of Poles and Czechs by the time they were defeated, any answer is necessarily speculative.

All that can reasonably be said is that mass displacement was likely and that this would probably have resulted in excess deaths on some indeterminable scale. Given existing German policies it is likely that, if at all possible, any distinctive Polish national identity would have been eliminated, even if physically the people weren't.

But who knows if the Germans had won? Having built the necessary muderous infrastructure and disposed of the remaining Jews and Gypsies, could the nazis have restrained themselves from extending their extermination policies further, if all-powerful?

In any event, the Nazis can only be held responsible for the crimes they did commit, not for those they never had the opportunity to.

Cheers,

Sid.

[sarahgoodson]

Hi Guys,Given existing German policies it is likely that, if at all possible, any distinctive Polish national identity would have been eliminated, even if physically the people weren't.

We know from Himmler's secret memo "Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East" in 1940 that the Nazis intended to eliminate the identity of the peoples in the East.

Concerning the treatment of peoples of alien races in the East we have to see to it that we acknowledge and cultivate as many individual ethnic groups as possible, that is, outside of the Poles and the Jews, also the Ukrainians, the White Russians, the Gorals [Goralen], the Lemcos [Lemken] and the Cashubos [Kaschuben]. If other small and isolated national groups can be found in other places, they should be treated the same way.

What I want to say is that we are not only most interested in not unifying the population of the East, but, on the contrary, in splitting them up into as many parts and fragments as possible.

Within a very few years--I should think about 4 to 5 years the name of the Cashubes, for instance, must be unknown, because at that time there won't be a Cashubian people any more (this also goes especially for the West Prussians). I hope that the concepts of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony. Within a somewhat longer period, it should also be possible to make the ethnic concepts of Ukrainians, Gorals and Lemcos disappear in our area. What has been said for those fragments of peoples is also meant on a correspondingly larger scale for the Poles.

For the full text of the memo, see http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=63400

Hitler read and agreed on it, see the same link.

[David Thompson]

For additional materials and previous discussion of this and related topics, see also:

German costs assessed on occupied countries 1940-44
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=62936
Hitler's plans for Ostland -- Fuehrer Conference 16 Jul 1941
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=60772
Generalplan Ost
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=20050
Hitler's plans for Slavic nations
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=25655
My position (for those who care) [Nazi Policies in Poland and Russia]
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=953
Slovenian inhabitants according to plan
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=35874

Source Documents on "Germanization"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=61091
Nazi plans for Poland
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=13435
". . . I'm happy about each Pole that no longer lives"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=10998
Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=16555
The premeditated murder of Polish university professors
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53370
Slaughter of Polish professors in Lwow/Lemberg - 1941
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=17676
Documents on the Nazi occupation of Poland 1939-1944
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=54862
The German Resettlement Trustee Company (DUT)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=66094
Proclamation [Nazi Policy in Ukraine]
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=3112
German Plans to Seize Food from the Soviet Union
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=11976
Nazi occupation policies for the USSR
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=61454

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi sarahgoodson,

Like so many other Nazi documents, it is opaque.

Barely a year after talking in this document of sending Jews to to colonies in Africa or elsewhere, Himmler was starting to physically exterminate them.

Nazi policy was a moving target. That is why it is impossible to be sure of the "fate of the Slavs and Poles if the Nazis had won" beyond affirming that it was likely to be bad to some degree or other.

Cheers,

Sid.

[PF]

After any leadership not approved from the Germans was destroyed The illerate helots of Polish and Russians Slavs were to serve the German Masters of Poland, Latavia, Lithawania; Estonia, Great Russia; Little Russia, White Russia and the Crimeria as slaves either on Estates or as expandable refuse to keep the German war Machine going as forced labor. Jurgen Stroop was to have an estate in the Ukriane....if the Germans won the war..as an example

[michael mills]

That is why it is impossible to be sure of the "fate of the Slavs and Poles if the Nazis had won" beyond affirming that it was likely to be bad to some degree or other.

The fate of Russian men does not appear to be all that great at the present moment, despite not having been under German rule for the past 70 years.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/j ... s-to-vodka

Russian men who down large amounts of vodka have an "extraordinarily" high risk of an early death, a new study says.

Researchers tracked about 151,000 adult men in the Russian cities of Barnaul, Byisk and Tomsk from 1999 to 2010. They interviewed them about their drinking habits and, when about 8,000 later died, followed up to monitor their causes of death.

The risk of dying before age 55 for those who said they drank three or more half-litre bottles of vodka a week was a shocking 35%.

Overall, a quarter of Russian men die before reaching 55, compared with 7% of men in the UK and about 10% in the United States. The life expectancy for men in Russia is 64 years, placing it among the lowest 50 countries in the world in that category.

It would appear that Russian men are killing themselves off at as a fast a rate as they might have died under an extended German rule. Alcohol seems to be as efficient a killer of Russians as the Germans might have been.

[michael mills]

After any leadership not approved from the Germans was destroyed The illerate helots of Polish and Russians Slavs were to serve the German Masters of Poland, Latavia, Lithawania; Estonia, Great Russia; Little Russia, White Russia and the Crimeria as slaves either on Estates or as expandable refuse to keep the German war Machine going as forced labor. Jurgen Stroop was to have an estate in the Ukriane....if the Germans won the war..as an example

That is sensationalised conjecture.

The German administration in the occupied Soviet territories did retain the collective farm system, with all the restrictions that that system imposed on the farm workers.

Whether collective farm workers were slaves is a matter of opinion. However, they were no more slaves under German rule than they had been under the preceding and following Soviet rule.

[PF]

An example of Slavs fate under the Germans is in William Manchester's "THE ARMS OF KRUPP 1587-1968"

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

You write, "It would appear that Russian men are killing themselves off at as fast a rate as they might have died under an extended German rule."

Certainly a theoretical possibility, if not a likely or demonstrable one.

Cheers,

Sid.

[michael mills]

Hello Sid,

One reason for making my rather facetious comment is that Hitler himself, in one of his monologues, had suggested promoting alcoholism as a means of keeping the Russian population down, along with free abortions and reduction of public health care to the minimum needed to prevent the spread of epidemics.

Those are the factors that have had such a negative effect on the ethnic Russian population in recent years, albeit self-inflicted rather than imposed by a conqueror. It would appear that the Soviet victory over Germany did not save the Russian people from at least part of the fate intended for them by Hitler.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

Perhaps not so facetious. In 1914 the Russian Imperial Government stopped the sale of vodka in order to conserve discipline in the army. However, as a third of its tax revenue came from this source it soon had to resume sales.

The Japanese also actively promoted opium consumption in both occupied and unoccupied China for decades in order to undermine Chinese powers of resistance.

Have you seen: http://www.worldometers.info/world-popu ... opulation/

Cheers,

Sid.

[sarahgoodson]

Hi sarahgoodson,

Like so many other Nazi documents, it is opaque.

Barely a year after talking in this document of sending Jews to to colonies in Africa or elsewhere, Himmler was starting to physically exterminate them.

Nazi policy was a moving target. That is why it is impossible to be sure of the "fate of the Slavs and Poles if the Nazis had won" beyond affirming that it was likely to be bad to some degree or other.

Cheers,

Sid.

Well not everything that happened was as black and white as what Himmler said in the memo but for the most part everything he said in it was in line with what he saw being carried out e.g. kidnapping of children, Lebensborn, Lebensraum, policies of the General Government, no national identity of the peoples of the East, etc.

Yes, although Himmler called the extermination of people as a Bolshevik method and un-German, by 1943 in his Posen speeches Himmler explicitly referred to the extermination of the Jews.

Nazi policies did change over time but the main ideas Himmler propagated in the memo were actually carried out.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi sarahgoodson,

I agree.

The problem seems to be that Nazi policy appears to have become more radical the more they had the practical possibility to be so.

For example, most of Europe's Jews were beyond their reach in 1938 and their policies were then essentially limited to expulsion of their own Jewish population. However, by late 1941 most of the continent's Jews were in their tender hands and the expulsion option was no longer immediately practicable, so they adopted more radical measures - the so-called "Holocaust".

The end remained the same - to make their territories "Jew-free", but the policy means altered.

Sid,

[sarahgoodson]

so they adopted more radical measures - the so-called "Holocaust".

What are you meaning when you say "so-called"?