Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

I have got my copy of Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question" by Gordon.

As regards the extent of German knowledge of the treatment of deported Jews, she summarises thus on p.186:

"But what of the Germans not directly involved in the destructive process - what did they know? Evidence of knowledge during the war years is very limited; however, reports studied by Stokes, Steinert, Kershaw, and this author indicate that: (1) many Germans knew of the deportations; (2) rumours of shootings in the East were rampant; and (3) the majority of Germans did not know of the many horrid death camps, although there was some awareness in eastern Germany."

This seems to say that most Germans may have been aware of the mass killing of Jews in the East but not in most cases of the the main method used.

Gordon was writing in 1983, so we may know more now.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Rumors ≠ to be aware of.
Shootings in the East ≠ the Holocaust.
The everyday German (and the everyday Pole and everybody else) heard lots of rumors every day.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Who were the shootings in the East largely of? Jews.

Who were main victims of the so-called "Holocaust"? Jews.

Are they part of the same phenomenon? Yes!

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

The main victims of Barbarossa were Soviets POWs not the Jews.
And executions of some people weren't anything new.
The Austro-Hungarian and the German Army did it massively in Serbia, Galicia, and Belgium during the Great War. I don't think any German had problem with them or considered them illegal or inappropriate.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

The Soviet POWs weren't shot. They were starved to death. Jews and Commissars were shot.

You post, "I don't think any German had problem with them or considered them illegal or inappropriate." You paint a very bleak picture of German collective guilt that goes beyond anything I would have proposed myself!

Cheers,

Sid.

[gebhk]

Hi Sid

You paint a very bleak picture of German collective guilt that goes beyond anything I would have proposed myself!

Not arguing either way, because like all such things it is very nuanced and much obscured by hindsight and post-war politics large and small.

However, how wrong did the American colonists and their descendants think the genocide of the native Americans? Were the kids playing 'cowboys and Indians' in any way conscious of guilt? What about Britons in their attitude to the extermination of the Tasmanian natives? Or even much closer to home though somewhat earlier, what about the ethnic cleansing of the Highlands after the Jacobite Rebellion?

However, as usual we seem to be veering wildly off topic!

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

You post, "However, how wrong did the American colonists and their descendants think the genocide of the native Americans? Were the kids playing 'cowboys and Indians' in any way conscious of guilt? What about Britons in their attitude to the extermination of the Tasmanian natives? Or even much closer to home though somewhat earlier, what about the ethnic cleansing of the Highlands after the Jacobite Rebellion?

However, as usual we seem to be veering wildly off topic!"

We?

Cheers,

Sid

P.S. If you want answers to those questions, I will happily answer them if you put them up elsewhere.

[ljadw]

I am not gebhk

[gebhk]

We?

Those of us discussing what the German public knew about the Holocaust and whether they felt bad about it rather than the subject of this thread

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

Fair point.

My apologies.

Sid.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi gebhk,

So presumably not those who asked "However, how wrong did the American colonists and their descendants think the genocide of the native Americans? Were the kids playing 'cowboys and Indians' in any way conscious of guilt? What about Britons in their attitude to the extermination of the Tasmanian natives? Or even much closer to home though somewhat earlier, what about the ethnic cleansing of the Highlands after the Jacobite Rebellion?"

That said, your point is a good one and I shall try to desist.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Your arguments are typically elitist, heavy on the woke side.
The (German) masses, the workers/peasants, had no use for them. So what if a worker heard a rumor about a mass execution, he probably explained it away that it was like that during the Great War too.

All he knew was that his country was attacked by the Allies and desperately defended itself. That he had to work for ten. later twelve hours per day. That he barely had time to live no to mention to think.
That his/her father/brothers were fighting and fear for their fate blinded him/her to anything else.
And what was he/she going to do with the information anyway? Post it on the Internet? Alert Reuters? Start a resistance movement against his homeland?

Much more Soviets POWs were murdered in 1941 than Jews and their fate was highly visible to everybody including German soldiers. For this reason, the Polish underground reported frequently about the POWs but rarely about the executions.
The executions were done discreetly and were one-off events, the death camps for the Soviets existed for months for everybody to see.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

You post, "The executions were done discreetly and were one-off events....."

Hardly. Germany created five Einsatzgruppen. Einsatzgruppe A shot 140,000 people in the first five months of the invasion of the USSR. 136,421 are recorded as Jews.

Einsatzgruppe C shot 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar in just two days in September 1941.

Einsatzgruppe D shot 30,000 in just four days in February 1942.

I don't know what Einsatzgruppen A, C and D were doing for the rest of the time, or B and E at all, but estimates are that in total somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million Jews were shot in the USSR by German forces.

".....done discreetly and.... one-off events....."? Anything but. They were part of a pre-organized and prolonged series of mass killings that the Wehrmacht was fully aware of and whose men on leave brought news of back to the civilians in the Reich, making it widespread public knowledge.

Cheers,

Aid.

[wm]

It was a one-off event in the particular location.
If someone saw it it was just that event and nothing else. Almost nobody had a bird view of the entire procedure.

Similarly, what was a Soviet citizen going to do when he had learned about the Gulag or a Soviet atrocity? He just explained it away they deserved it or it was necessary.