Stalingrad and the Endlösung...

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Timo
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Stalingrad and the Endlösung...

#1

Post by Timo » 29 Oct 2004, 10:22

On a Dutch forum somebody posted the following opinion. Revisionism or what?
Ik hoorde laatst een interessante gedachte van mijn leraar geschiedenis (Hoge School):
De Joden werden gedeporteerd en opgesloten in kampen om in een later stadium de veroverde gebieden te bevolken.
Toen de oorlog tegenliep (stalingrad) en van dit plan niet veel over bleef, hebben overijverige nazi-medewerkers het plan bedacht om ze allemaal om te brengen. Hitler heeft zelf ook nooit enig document ondertekend om mee te doen aan deze slachtpartij, maar vanwege sentimenten tegenover oude kameraden gaf hij hier aan toe.
De stellingen zijn dus:
- Hitler wilde helemaal de joden niet ombrengen.
- In de jaren tot 1942, (tot stalingrad), zijn er geen joden omgekomen in concentratiekampen. (ps. wanneer was dat top overleg eigenlijk in dat huis met heydrich en zo??, is ook een film van...)
Translation:
Some time ago heared an interesting thought from my history teacher:
The Jews were deported and locked up in camps to populate the conquered territory in a later stadium
When the war went bad (Stalingrad) en this plan could not be realized, some too diligent nazi-cooperators worked out the plan to kill them all. Hitler never signed any document to take part in this massacre finally gave into it because of old sentiments toward old comrades.
The thesis:
- Hitler did not want to kill the Jews
- In the years prior to 1942 (Stalingrad) no Jews died in concentration camps (p.s. when was that top meeting in that house with Heydrich, etc.? There's also a film about it...)
I pointed out to him that the defeat at Stalingrad in January 1943) could never have been the reason for the start of Aktion Reinhard (Wansee, January 1942) and that the Einsatzkommandos started their dirty work in June 1941, both Wansee and Barbarossa were long before thing went bad at the front anyway.

Any comments and more details from the more knowledgable members of the forum? David?

David Thompson
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#2

Post by David Thompson » 29 Oct 2004, 20:22

Timo -- Thanks for the interesting problem.

(1)
Hitler did not want to kill the Jews
There's no shortage of blood-curdling imprecations, threats and promises of Hitler in regard to the destruction of the Jews. Here are four statements from 1939-1942:

(a) January 21 1939
Adolf Hitler told the Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister, Dr. Frantisek Chvalkovsky, that: "Our Jews will be destroyed." (Hoehne 400)
(b) January 30 1939
In a major speech to the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler predicted the destruction of the European Jews in the event of a world war:
"Europe cannot find peace until the Jewish question has been solved. It may well be that sooner or later an agreement may be reached in Europe itself between nations who otherwise would not find it so easy to arrive at an understanding. There still exists sufficient available land on this globe . . . .
One thing I should like to say on this day which may be memorable for others as well as for us Germans. In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" (Nazism 2, #770)
(c) November 5, 1941
In an evening conversation with his intimates and staff, Adolf Hitler said: "The end of the war will see the final ruin of the Jew. And their egotism goes so far that they're not even capable of risking their lives for the defense of their most vital interests." (Hitler's Secret Conversations 135)
(d) January 30 1942
In a speech at the Berlin Sports Palace, Adolf Hitler again predicted that the European war would end with the destruction of the Jews:
. . . [T]he war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely with the uprooting of the Aryans, but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews.
Now for the first time they will not bleed other people to death, but for the first time the old Jewish law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, will be applied.
And -- world Jewry may as well know this -- the further these battles [of the war] spread, the more anti-Semitism will spread. It will find nourishment in every prison camp and in every family when it discovers the ultimate reason for the sacrifices it has to make. And the hour will come when the most evil universal enemy of all time will be finished, as least for a thousand years. (Gilbert Holo 285)
(2) As for whether Hitler was aware of the mass murders of Jewish civilians, we have:

(a) Hitler's behavior on the execution of Jews in Poland

Hitler and Murders in Poland 1939-1940
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=24138

(b) Numerous statements by Himmler and Heydrich saying Hitler personally ordered the destruction of the Jews:

Himmler, Heydrich and the Fuehrer Order
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=24139
Himmler's "Special Mission from the Fuehrer"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 341#555341
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 419#555419
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 358#564358

and one from Rosenberg:

Document: *1517-PS Memorandum from Rosenberg concerning discussion with the Fuehrer, 12/14/1941. (USA 824)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 853#552853

(3)
In the years prior to 1942 (Stalingrad) no Jews died in concentration camps
In the first place, this statement is false. Jews had been dying in concentration camps since 1933. In the second place, it doesn't prove the premise that the final solution was undertaken only after Stalingrad.

Here are some German documents or links to sources on the mass killings of Jews in Poland 1939-1942:

Document 2233-A-PS: Frank Diary, Meetings of Departmental Chiefs in 1939/40 [Abteilungsleitersitzungen 1939/40]: Minutes of the First Conference of the Departmental Chiefs on 12/2/1939 [partial translation]
"Document 2233-C-PS: Frank Diary, 1940: Volume IV, 10-12/1940 [Partial translation]"
"Document 2233-D-PS: Frank Diary, 1940: Volume IV, 10-12/1940 [partial translation]"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 185#493185
Document 2233-E-PS: Frank Diary, Conference Volume, Cabinet session in Cracow on 8/24/1942 Cabinet session in the Great Conference Room of the Government Building in Cracow Monday, 8/24/1942, Part 01 [partial translation]
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 187#493187
Partial Translation of Document NOKW-1531, Prosecution Exhibit 587.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 409#557409
Extract From 17th Army Corps, Order No. 1, 23 July 1940, Initialed by Defendant Woehler
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 558#557558

and in the USSR prior to the German defeat at Stalingrad:

Enclosure 3 to OKW/Armed Forces Operations Staff/Dept National Defense IV/Qu No. 44560/41
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 151#552151
Document: *L-180; Description: Report by SS Brigade Commander Stahlecker to Himmler, "Action Group A", 10/15/1941. (USA 276)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 827#552827
Document: *1104-PS; Description: Memorandum, 11/21/1941, enclosing copies of report concerning anti-Jewish action in Minsk. (USA 483)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 838#552838
Document: *D-411; Description: Letters of 11/26/1941 and 11/28/1941, enclosing orders concerning protection of troops against Partisans and sabotage. (USA 556)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 847#552847
Document: *1517-PS Memorandum from Rosenberg concerning discussion with the Fuehrer, 12/14/1941. (USA 824)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 853#552853
Document: *2273-PS; Description: Extract from a top secret report of Einsatz Group A. (USA 487)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 860#552860
Document: *3428-PS; Description: Letter from Kube, 7/31/1942, concerning combatting of Partisans and action against Jews in White Ruthenia. (USA 827)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 371#553371
Document: 1113-PS; Description: Report of 11/6/1942 concerning action "Marshfever".
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 436#553436
Document 053-PS: Report of Captain Dr. Girus Koch on Civil Affairs in the Ukraine, 5 October 1941.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 841#554841
Document 2992-PS: Affidavit of Hermann Friedrich Graebe [translation]
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 900#554900
Document 3663-PS [translation] Correspondence on executions at Liepaja (Libauu)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 975#555975
Letter of Transmittal and 'Reichenau Order', of 10 October 1941, Distributed by XXVII Army Corps of the 18th Army, Commanded by Defendant von Kuechler
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 430#557430
Letter of Transmittal From army High Command (OKH) To Major Subordinate Units in the East, 28 October 1941, Requesting Implementation of 'Reichenau Order'
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 535#557535
Document: 3047-PS; Description: File notes on conference in Fuehrer's train on 12 September 1939; report on execution of Jews in Borrisow; and entries from diary of Admiral Canaris. (USA 80)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 147#560147
Letter From Himmler to Defendant Berger, 28 July 1942, informing Berger that the Occupied Territories will be purged of Jews, and advising Berger of a forthcoming memorandum by Lammers
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 357#564357
The German Army and the Einsatzgruppen
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=61804
Einsatzgruppe affidavit of Walther Schellenberg
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=60792
Einsatzgruppe 20 Nov 1945 affidavit of Otto Ohlendorf
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=60121
Himmler, Heydrich and the Fuehrer Order
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=24139
Einsatzgruppen Operational Situation Reports USSR
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=50368


xcalibur
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#3

Post by xcalibur » 29 Oct 2004, 20:35

It's hard to know whether this what the teacher actually said or whether this is his interpretation of what the teacher said. Either way it's a rather confused version of events.

Timo
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#4

Post by Timo » 29 Oct 2004, 21:12

Superb! Thank you very much David.

xcalibur, you're right. I am a history teacher myself and I can hardly believe a collegue presented this story to his students. Meanwhile the discussion on the Dutch forum turned out rather confusing, the topic starter claiming that did he not mean Stalingrad but the war in general turning bad for the Germans (odd because he specifically mentions Stalingrad twice). He says his teacher referred to Kerschaw's book as his source (??? I can hardly imagine he got this story from Kerschaw) and also had some vague remarks about Hitler having a gentile nature :?

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#5

Post by xcalibur » 29 Oct 2004, 23:45

Timo, sounds more like Irving than Kershaw.

Dan
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#6

Post by Dan » 30 Oct 2004, 02:04

Ik hoorde laatst een interessante gedachte van mijn leraar geschiedenis (Hoge School):
De Joden werden gedeporteerd en opgesloten in kampen om in een later stadium de veroverde gebieden te bevolken.


If you translate it
I just heard an interesting idea from my high school history teacher, that the Jews were deported and kept in camps to be used at a later stage to populate conquored territory
Maybe some mangled idea about Jews being used for labor, like some have said was though of in areas like the Black sea areas? Remember the idea of using Czechs to guard and manage the Jews there?

But the fact that he's a teacher just shows how little the average person knows about what went on during WW2. Mr. Hebden once said that the average person that hangs out on forums like this knows more about the nuts and bolts of the holocaust that the average history teacher.

xcalibur
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#7

Post by xcalibur » 30 Oct 2004, 02:09

Dan wrote:
Ik hoorde laatst een interessante gedachte van mijn leraar geschiedenis (Hoge School):
De Joden werden gedeporteerd en opgesloten in kampen om in een later stadium de veroverde gebieden te bevolken.


If you translate it
I just heard an interesting idea from my high school history teacher, that the Jews were deported and kept in camps to be used at a later stage to populate conquored territory
Maybe some mangled idea about Jews being used for labor, like some have said was though of in areas like the Black sea areas? Remember the idea of using Czechs to guard and manage the Jews there?

But the fact that he's a teacher just shows how little the average person knows about what went on during WW2. Mr. Hebden once said that the average person that hangs out on forums like this knows more about the nuts and bolts of the holocaust that the average history teacher.

Agreed... It sounds more like a rather poor medley of differing points of view.

Timo
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#8

Post by Timo » 30 Oct 2004, 12:12

Dan - no offense - but what was wrong with my translation of those lines? BTW, Hoge School does not translate as highschool. "Hoge School" is where one gets his bachelor degree :)

I agree that the opinions of this Teacher are probably the results from poor knowledge regarding this specific subject. But it disturbs me that because he's poorly informed his pupils get a factually wrong view on the Holocaust and defend it as "the truth" because their theacher says so. I mean, on the Dutch board this boy disqualifies the generally accepted facts as "allied propaganda".

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Beppo Schmidt
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#9

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 30 Oct 2004, 21:19

Either this student grossly distorts what his teacher told him, or neither knows very much about WWII or the Holocaust. If this guy really told a pupil that, he has no place teaching anyone.

Dan
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#10

Post by Dan » 31 Oct 2004, 00:47

Sorry, as you know there are differences between Afrikaans and Dutch, and I though Hoge was Hoog or something.

But "stadium" is surely the same in both languages and means "stage" or "at that time". In English a stadium is where athletic events take places.

There were a few other things, but I certainly have no questions about your English skills.

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#11

Post by David Thompson » 31 Oct 2004, 08:49

Timo -- For remarks of Goering, Hess, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Streicher, and Fritzsche on Hitler's responsibility, see:

Nazi leaders and holocaust denial
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 882#299882

The entire final statements of the defendants at the IMT trial can be seen at:

Final Statements of the Nuernberg Defendants
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=15464

Timo
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#12

Post by Timo » 31 Oct 2004, 10:01

Aha, yes. Stadium, I should have known :)
The Dutch educational system is very complex with a wide variety of school types. There are three basic levels, each with different school types based on intelligence of the pupils, their possibilities and career plan. The main levels are:
1) Basis onderwijs (also known as lager onderwijs or lagereschool and in fact a combination of primary and secundary school)
2) Voortgezet onderwijs (a wide variety of schools. Gymnasium and atheneum to prepare for university, HAVO to prepare for Hoge School and VMBO to provide at least some form of basic skills or to prepare for a wide variety of jobs that require no higher education)
3) Hoger onderwijs (university for theoretical and, Hoge School for practical education).
I know, all very off-topic :D

David, thank you very much for the additional links. I have copy-pasted your replies to the thead on the Dutch forum and the topic starter overthere promised to print the discussion and give it to his teacher. I am most curious what the reply of this theacher will be :)

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#13

Post by michael mills » 01 Nov 2004, 03:32

The Luxemburg Jewish historian, Arno Mayer, in his book "Why Did The Heavens Not Darken? : The "Final Solution" in History" (New York : Pantheon Books, 1988), promotes the thesis that the genocide of the Jews of German-occupied Europe was resorted to by the German Government when it failed to defeat the Soviet Union and therefore could not implement its original plan to expel the jews from Europe.

In Mayer's view, the German failure became clear at the end of 1941, when the drive on Moscow was repulsed, and that the concept of the mass destruction of the Jewish people took root from that time on.

Again in Mayer's view, the physical destruction of the jewish people was not part of Hitler's plan, or the policy of the German Government.

Perhaps the history teacher was referring to the thesis of Arno Mayer, and simply got the dates wrong, ie substituting the better-known defeat at Stalingrad for the defeat before Moscow in December 1941.

I would like to point out that some of the quotations listed by the moderator are a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.

For example, the much quoted passage from Hitler's reichstag speech of 31 January 1939, often claimed to be a signalling of his firm intention to exterminate the Jews of Europe in the event of a war.

What is disregarded is his statement shortly before the much-cited passage, to the effect that "there still exists sufficient land on this globe".That indicates that Hitler was thinking in terms of resettling the European Jews outside Europe.

Another part of Hitler's speech that is usually disregarded (the moderator has left it out of his quote) is the sentence that occurs immediately after the much-cited passage, in which Hitler repeats his prediction that the Jews will be destroyed, but in slightly different terms. That following sentence makes it clear that Hitler is saying that, if war breaks out, it will be the peoples of Europe that will destroy the Jews, not the Germans.

Furthermore, the sentence makes it clear that the fate that will be suffered by the Jews of Europe will be the same as that which the Jews of Germany had already succumbed to. That fate was of course not physical extermination but mass expulsion.

So, the true meaning of Hitler's words is that if a war breaks out, which in his mind could only be the result of Jewish machinations, the enraged peoples of Europe will "destroy" the Jewish race resident in their countries by driving it out.

Thus, the much-quoted Hitler speech is in fact not an indication in 1939 that he was planning the physical extermination of the Jewish race under cover of war, as has often been claimed.

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#14

Post by David Thompson » 01 Nov 2004, 03:47

Michael -- You said:
I would like to point out that some of the quotations listed by the moderator are a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.
This is a trait we occasionally share -- though on this occasion I think it is you who is "not seeing the wood for the trees." Let's start with the observation that I posted the excerpts from the 1939 speech in response to the premise:
Hitler did not want to kill the Jews
They certainly were not used to show, as your post suggests I was trying to do, that on 30 January 1939 Hitler "was planning the physical extermination of the Jewish race under cover of war." It does suggest, however, that Hitler had considered just such a contingency.

You go on to paraphrase the context in which the quoted parts appear, without actually providing the text:
Another part of Hitler's speech that is usually disregarded (the moderator has left it out of his quote) is the sentence that occurs immediately after the much-cited passage, in which Hitler repeats his prediction that the Jews will be destroyed, but in slightly different terms. That following sentence makes it clear that Hitler is saying that, if war breaks out, it will be the peoples of Europe that will destroy the Jews, not the Germans.

If you have (as your post suggests) access to larger extracts from the 1939 Reichstag speech than those which I have given, I invite you to post them. I would prefer to read the text and interpret it myself, and many of our readers may feel the same way. If you are suggesting that I withheld a portion of the quote deliberately, you are mistaken, for I posted what I had, and no less, and cited to the source of the quotation.

As for your next statement, which reads:
Furthermore, the sentence makes it clear that the fate that will be suffered by the Jews of Europe will be the same as that which the Jews of Germany had already succumbed to. That fate was of course not physical extermination but mass expulsion.
your interpretation cannot be right, because on the date the speech was delivered -- 30 Jan 1939 -- the "Jews of Germany" had not been expelled. In any event, in his Reichstag "prophecy" Hitler clearly uses the expression "annihilated," not "expelled." Furthermore, 9 days earlier (on 21 January 1939) Hitler had told the Czech Foreign Minister the same thing: that "Our Jews will be destroyed" -- not "expelled."

I think that the two statements put the Reichstag speech quote in an easily understandable context, which differs considerably from your version. Hitler is "predicting" that if he doesn't get what he wants, there will be a war, and if there is a war, the Jews will be destroyed or annihilated. As prophecies go, this one was self-fulfilling.

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#15

Post by michael mills » 03 Nov 2004, 00:37

David,

I do have fuller extracts from Hitler's Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939 from Domarus "Hitler Reden und Proklamationen".

But I recall that I posted those extracts in one of my very first posts on this forum, about four years ago (it addressed precisely this question of what Hitler meant in the much quoted extract). That was on the old forum, that was closed down and then restarted.

As I understand it, the message board of the old forum is archived away somewhere. If I could access to it, I might be able to find my original message and report it. That would save me the tedium of rekeying the whole thing.

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