michael mills wrote:Roberto wrote:
So it seems quite reasonable to assume a total loss of life of 23-24 million due to causes related to Hitler's war of extermination against the Soviet Union.
Roberto here adopts the leftist formula of "Hitler's war of extermination against the Soviet Union", a formulation that had its origin in Soviet wartime propaganda.
The term can actually be derived from the Führer’s own utterances.
My translation from Christian Streit,
Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945, 1997 edition, page 34:
[…]The preparedness of the military leadership to take part in the ideologically motivated war of annihilation was scanned by Hitler on March 30, 1941, in a speech of two and a half hours he held before about 250 high officers – the commanders and chiefs of staff of the army groups, armies, army corps and divisions that were to carry out the war in the East – in the Reichskanzlei. Hitler had already attempted to convey the attitude desired by him to high troop commanders before previous campaigns, but never in front of so large an audience. Prior to the Polish campaign he had already announced that the war would be “conducted until the total destruction of Poland with the greatest brutality and without considerations”. At that time, however, the commanders had remained uncertain about the tasks attributed to the SS Einsatzgruppen. On this 30th of March 1941 however, he made clear to the assembled generals with an unprecedented openness what methods he wanted to be employed in the war against the Soviet Union. Chief of the General Staff Halder took the following notes:
[….]
Colonial tasks!
Two world-views fighting each other. Demolishing verdict about Bolshevism, which is equal to asocial criminality. Communism is an enormous danger for the future. We must depart from the standpoint of soldierly comradeship. The Communist is no comrade before and no comrade afterwards. This is a fight to annihilation. If we don’t see it as this, we will defeat the enemy, but in 30 years we will again be faced with the communist enemy. We don’t make war to conserve the enemy.
[…..]
Fight against Russia:
Annihilation of the Bolshevik commissars and the communist intelligence. The new states must be Socialist states, but without an intelligence of their own. It must be prevented that a new intelligence comes into being. A primitive Socialist intelligence is sufficient.
The fight must be conduced against the poison of disintegration. This is not a matter for military tribunals. The leader of the troops must know what this is about. The must lead in the fight. The troops must defend themselves with the means by which they are attacked. Commissars and GPU-people are criminals and must be treated as such.
For this the troops need not come out of the hands of their leaders. The leader must issue his directives in consonance with the feelings of the troops. [Marginal note by Halder: This fight is very much differentiated from the fight in the West. In the East harshness means mildness in the future.]
The leader must require themselves to do the sacrifice of overcoming their considerations.
[Marginal note: Order of the Commander in Chief of the Army][…]
Emphases are mine.
The original German term used by Mills’ idol, according to Halder, was
[…]Es handelt sich um einen Vernichtungskampf.[…]
Thus the Führer proclaimed, months before the start of his aggression against the Soviet Union, that the fight would be a fight to annihilation, one that would end only with the total destruction of one of the contenders.
Which in turn means that the term “war of extermination” was not coined by the “leftists” our dissident researcher keeps making such a fuss about, but corresponded to the Führer’s own proclaimed intentions.
As to what a “fight to annihilation” meant in concrete terms, the Führer was also clear enough:
- No observance of the rules of warfare (“This is not a matter for military tribunals”);
- No rights whatsoever for enemy prisoners of war (“We must depart from the standpoint of soldierly comradeship. The Communist is no comrade before and no comrade afterwards.”);
- No mercy for representatives of the Soviet government (“Annihilation of the Bolshevik commissars and the communist intelligence”; “Commissars and GPU-people are criminals and must be treated as such”).
A war of aggression, prepared and waged with the intent to massacre a foreign people’s leadership and to decimate, subdue and exploit it. I don’t see why the term “war of extermination” for such an undertaking should be all that wrong.
michael mills wrote:It is intended to give the impression that the deaths of 23-24 million people were a result solely of exterminatory actions by the German Government.
Mills is again indulging in paranoia, or trying to build paper dragons.
The most those evil “leftists” can intend is to portray the Soviet loss of life as a consequence of a war of aggression waged with the criminal intent of decimating and exploiting a foreign people, and of acts of mass murder committed in the course of that war.
Which is quite a reasonable point of view, considering the facts.
michael mills wrote:It would have been more honest of Roberto to say "a total loss of life due to causes related to the war between Germany and the Soviet Union".
The word “honest” is one that a dishonest propagandist like Mills should refrain from using.
The war waged by his beloved Führer was a war of aggression waged for the purpose of conquest, extermination, decimation and exploitation of a foreign people, which makes it reasonable to see those who lost their lives in that war, whether they were killed in combat, died of starvation of were massacred by the invaders, as the victims of the aggressor.
michael mills wrote:It would have been quite proper to count all the casualties suffered by the Soviet population under that formulation, which would not have falsely attributed the war to one single cause, but would have recognised it for what it was, a break-down in the relationship between two states which had previously co-operated in overthrowing the existing order in Europe, but whose expansionist ambitions had now come into irreconcilable conflict.
Nonsense.
The German-Soviet war was not a clash between hostile sovereigns who eventually resorted to war in order to settle their disputes, like the First World War had been.
It was an unprovoked aggression launched by one nation against another, with the declared purpose of obliterating the latter, conquering and exploiting its territory, exterminating certain segments of its population and decimating or enslaving the remainder.
michael mills wrote:Eventually both sides prepared to make war on each other; as it happened, Germany got its blow in first, but it could quite easily have gone the other way.
That’s what Mills would badly like to believe.
Unfortunately for him, there is no evidence that the Soviet Union was preparing for a strike against Germany anywhere in the near future at the time Nazi Germany “got its blow in first”.
Which, incidentally, was how the Nazis saw it themselves. Despite later pretensions to the contrary, the fear that Stalin might eventually “anticipate” them was non-existent on the German prior to the attack. And for good reason, for neither did Stalin intend to strike first, nor were his armed forces in any condition to do so if he had.
michael mills wrote:Since Roberto has insinuated that the stated number of Soviet casualties was somehow the result of a putative "war of extermination" waged by Germany, it will be useful to analyse the figures quoted by him, to determine which of them can be justly attributed to German exterminatory activity.
I haven’t “insinuated” anything, my dear boy.
I consider it reasonable and justified to blame the victims of a war of aggression and conquest, whether they die in combat or are simply murdered, on the aggressor.
But let’s have a laugh with Mills’ expectably deplorable “analysis”
michael mills wrote:The group of casualties that can most obviously be attributed to German exterminatory action is the Jews who fell victim to the Security Police and SD. Their deaths were quite clearly due to the measures taken to destroy the "Communist apparatus", originally ordered by Hitler and Heydrich in the Spring of 1941, in the context of the Commissar Order and similar directives, and which by the early autumn of 1941 had assumed gigantic, perhaps unforeseen dimensions. But the number cited by Roberto is open to question; the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee estimated the total number of Jews killed on the territory of the Soviet UNion (ie in its borders of 1941, including the Baltic States and the territories annexed from POland and Romania) at 1.5 million, and there is no good reason to exceed that total.
Regarding the Jews, Mills is reduced to bickering about the figures and lying a bit about the motivations.
From what documentary evidence he draws the conclusion that the wholesale killing of entire Jewish communities, men, women and children, was “quite clearly due to the measures taken to destroy the "Communist apparatus"”, is likely to remain another of the mysteries of a true believer’s mind, which deliberately confounds the motivations of anti-Jewish measures up to the autumn of 1941 – resulting in selective massacres of male Jews – with the extermination animus that took hold thereafter and resulted in the wholesale slaughter of the entire Jewish population.
As to the figures, a reason for revising upwards the estimate of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee would be the interesting demographic calculations of Gert Robel in the book
Dimensionen des Völkermords by Wolfgang Benz et al, from which my figure of two million is derived.
michael mills wrote:The Soviet POWs who died while in German hands, the great majority in the winter of 1941-42, might also be included in this category.
Out of ca. 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war taken throughout the conflict, about 3,350,000 were taken in 1941. Of these about two million had been executed or perished in German camps, mostly from avoidable starvation, until the spring of 1942. From then until the end of the war, another 1,300,000 Soviet POWs perished in German captivity.
michael mills wrote:There various causes for the mass-mortality, some due to circumstances such as the breakdown of the transportation system combined with a shortage of food resulting from the wide-spread destruction of the harvest by the Soviet authorities (the "scorched earth" specifically ordered by Stalin), others due to German malfeasance and malevolence, more the case in the camps in Germany and Poland.
The apologist conveniently forgets to mention the most important reason: the Nazi government’s policy to feed the Soviet prisoners only out of the occupied territories and only after the demands of the German armed forces and the German home front had been satisfied and the local civilian population granted an “existence minimum”, which in the autumn of 1941 was radicalized into a policy of letting non-working Soviet prisoners of war starve to death, most clearly expressed in the statements of General Quarter Master Eduard Wagner at a top-level meeting in Orsha on 13 November 1941:
Points to note from the top level meeting at Orsha on 13.11.1941, General Quarter Master Eduard Wagner
Source: State Archive Nuremberg, NOKW-1535
[…]Nichtarbeitende Kriegsgefangene in den Gefangenenlagern haben zu verhungern.
Arbeitende Kriegsgefangene können im Einzelfalle auch aus Heeresbeständen ernährt werden. Generell kann auch das angesichts der allgemeinen Erhährungslage leider nicht befohlen werden.
Die Lage im Verpflegungsnachschub bei der Heeresgruppe Mitte ist z. Zt. So, dass eine sofortige Hilfe nicht einsetzen kann […]
My translation:
[…]Non-working prisoners of war in the prisoner camps are to starve to death.[my emphasis]
Working prisoners of war can in individual cases also be fed out of army supplies. Given the general food situation this cannot be generally ordered, however.
The food supply situation at Army Group Center is currently such that immediate help cannot be provided.[…]
michael mills wrote:Nevertheless, since the millions of Soviet POWs were in German hands, it is reasonable to see their deaths as the fault of the German authorities.
How generous of Mr. Mills.
I’d call that “fault” mass murder, considering the evidence.
michael mills wrote:But again there is a dispute over the extent of the mortality; Roberto quotes the figure of more than three million preferred by German leftist historians, but conservatives such as the late Dr Joachim Hoffmann consider that the true figure was closer to two million.
Well, the figure of more than three million “preferred by German leftist historians” happens to be well substantiated, whereas the late “conservative” Hoffmann (nothing against conservatives, but this fellow was a plain Nazi apologist, just like his admirer Mills) seems to have sucked his own lower figure out of his thumb.
On pages 10 and following of the 1997 edition of
Keine Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941 - 1945, Christian Streit assessed the criticism to which his book had been subjected by other historians, including Alfred Streim and Joachim Hoffmann. This is what he wrote:
[…]Wie nicht anders zu erwarten, löste die von mir berechnete Zahl der Todesopfer - etwa 3 300 000 - Widerspruch aus. Alfred Streim schätzt dagegen eine Zahl von “mindestens 2 530 000”. Seine Berechnung basiert in erster Linie auf einer Aufstellung von OKW/Kgf. vom 1.Mai 1944; er legt eine Gesamtzahl von etwa 5 200 000 Gefangenen zugrunde. Während Streim seinen Berechnungsmodus offenlegt, nennt Joachim Hoffmann bei einer Gesamtzahl von “genau 5 245 882” eine Opferzahl von “rund 2 Millionen”, ohne diese Zahl näher zu begründen; er führt lediglich “unbekannte Originalakten und sonstige Unterlagen” an, ohne sie nachzuweisen. [Fußnote] Weder Streim noch Hoffmann begründen, weshalb die von mir einer Aufstellung der Abt. Fremde Heere Ost im OKH entnommene Gesamtzahl von 5 754 528 (für Februar 1945) nicht zutreffen sollte. Diese Größenordnung ist aber in den Akten noch einmal belegt. Der Chef des Kriegsgefangenenwesens schätzte die Gesamtzahl der sowjetischen Gefangenen im Dezember 1944 auf 5,6 Millionen.[…]
[Fußnote, S. 304]
[…]“Die Kriegsführung aus der Sicht der Sowjetunion” (1984), S. 730. - Roschmann, Gutachten, S. 17-25, rechnet die Zahl durch mehrfachen Abzug desselben Faktors auf 1 680 000 herunter. Er argumentiert, die Fronttruppen hätten in der Siegeseuphorie 1941 stark überhöhte Zahlen gemeldet. Deswegen vernachlässigt er eine Zahl von 280 810, die in der Aufstellung vom 1.5.44 als “Abgänge beim Transport, Zählfehler u. dergl.” erklärt ist, von vornherein (Streim, S. 225, rechnet sie mit gutem Grund “zu einem großen Teil zu den Todesfällen”). Sodann zieht R. von den 845 128 für den OKH-Bereich gemeldeten Todesfällen kurzerhand 300 000 als “Meldefehler” ab. Er nimmt nicht zur Kenntnis, daß der Generalquartiermeister des Heeres schon am 25.12.1941 die Kriegsgefangenenstatistik wegen “nunmehr festgestellter Fehlmeldungen [...] um rund 500 000” berichtigt hatte: KTB OKW, Bd. I, S. 1106.[…]
My translation:
[…]As was to be expected, the number of deaths I calculated - about 3 300 000 - led to protests. Alfred Streim estimates a number of “at least 2 530 000”. His calculation is mainly based on a listing by the OKW/Kgf. of 1 Mai 1944; and he considers a total number of about 5 200 000 prisoners. Whereas Streim openly shows his way of calculation, Joachim Hoffmann speaks of a total number of “exactly 5 245 882” and a number of victims of “around 2 million”, without providing a detailed justification of this number; he merely refers to “unknown original files and other documents” without providing evidence to their existence.[my emphasis] [Footnote] Neither Streim nor explain why the total number that I took from a listing of the Abt. Fremde Heere Ost at the OKH, 5 754 528 (as of February 1945) should not be accurate. For this order of magnitude, however, there is further proof in the files. The Chief of Prisoner of War Matters estimated the total number of Soviet prisoners in December 1944 at 5.6 million.[…]
[Footnote, page 304]
[…]“Die Kriegsführung aus der Sicht der Sowjetunion” (1984), S. 730. - Roschmann, Gutachten, pages 17-25, reduces the number by repeated deduction of the same factor to 1 680 000. He argues that the front-line troops had reported strongly exaggerated numbers in the victory euphoria of 1941. Thus he dismisses a number of 280 810 that is explained in the listing of 1.5.44 as “Losses during transport, counting errors and similar” right away (Streim, S. 225, considers it, with good reason, as referring “to a large extent to deaths”). Hereafter R. takes the 845 128 deaths reported for the OKH area and simply deduces 300 000 as a “reporting error”. He does not take into consideration that the General Quarter of the Army had already on 25.12.1941 corrected the statistics of prisoners of war due to “reporting errors detected in the meantime [...] by around 500 000”: KTB OKW, Volume I, page 1106.[…]
michael mills wrote:In any case, the most recent Russian studies in the post-Soviet period, using Soviet-era sources, have not been able to document anything near three million deaths among Soviet POWs.
“Soviet-era sources” are likely to be the worst possible source on Soviet prisoners of war, given that captivity was considered tantamount to treason by the Stalinist regime and that regime would accordingly have been everything other than eager to keep records of the number of servicemen who had committed such “treason”.
We can only guess what “recent Russian studies” the Führer’s advocate may be referring to, but this might be a good throw:
Christian Streit,
Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945,1997 edition, page 20:
[…]Auch von russischer Seite sind vor kürzerem niedrigere Opferzahlen genannt worden. Eine Kommission von Militärhistorikern unter Generaloberst G.F.Krivosheev beziffert die Zahl der umgekommenen sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen auf 1.283.300. Die Berechnung hält allerdings einer näheren Überprüfung nicht stand. Deutschen Angaben zufolge, so die Studie ohne weiteren Beleg, seien 673.000 Gefangene ums Leben gekommen – eine absurde Behauptung angesichts der Deutlichkeit, mit der sich der millionenfache Tod der Gefangenen in den deutschen Akten niedergeschlagen hat. Die Kommission postuliert einfach, daß die in der deutschen Forschung verwendeten Gesamtzahlen, seien es nun 5,7 oder 5,2 Millionen, reine Propagandazahlen seien. Bei der Berechnung sind weder die deutschen Akten noch die Ergebnisse der deutschen Forschung verwendet worden. Die Zahlen der Kommission sind auch aus einem weiteren Grund unhaltbar: Als “Kriegsgefangene” werden nur die Soldaten der Roten Armee definiert. Die Angehörigen von Sonderformationen ziviler Behörden, der Volkswehr, der Arbeiterbataillone, der Miliz etc. werden ebenso ausgeklammert wie Mobilisierte, die vor der Eingliederung in die Truppe in Gefangenschaft gerieten. Gerade diese Gruppen bildeten aber 1941 einen erheblichen Teil der Gefangenen. Es kann nicht angehen, daß sie, die auf deutscher Seite als Kriegsgefangene gezählt wurden, bei der Berechnung der Gesamtzahl der Opfer ignoriert werden. […]
My translation:
[…]Also from the Russian site lower numbers of victims have been mentioned. A commission of military historians under Colonel-General G.F.Krivosheev puts the number of Soviet prisoners of war who perished at 1,283,300. The calculation does not stand up to closer scrutiny, however. According to German data, the study tells us without providing evidence, 673,000 prisoners lost their lives – an absurd assertion considering how clearly the death of millions of prisoners was recorded in the German files. The commission simply postulates that the total numbers used in German research, be it 5.7 or 5.2 million, were mere propaganda numbers. In the calculation neither the German files nor the results of German research have been taken into consideration. The commission’s numbers are unsustainable also for another reason: they define as prisoners of war only the soldiers of the Red Army. Members of special formations of civilian authorities, people’s defense, workers’ battalions, militia etc. are excluded, as are those mobilized who were taken prisoner before they were integrated into the troops. Especially these groups, however, made up a considerable part of the prisoners in 1941. It cannot be that they, who were counted as prisoners of war on the German side, are ignored when calculating the total number of victims. […]
Or were these the “recent Russian studies” Mills was referring to?
As above, footnote 4 to pages 10-16, page 302:
[…]Die offizielle sowjetische Darstellung, die Geschichte des Großen Vaterländischen Krieges (1962-1968), machte zur Zahl der umgekommenen Kriegsgefangenen keine Angaben. Neuer russische Publikationen verwenden auch die hier gegebenen Zahlen. Kozlov schätzt die Zahl der umgekommenen Gefangenen auf “weit über vier Millionen”, geht dabei aber irrtümlicherweise davon aus, dass bereits bis Januar 1944 3,3 Millionen umgekommen seien (Kozlov, S. A 205)[…]
My translation:
The official Soviet account, the History of the Great Patriotic War (1962-1968), gave no data about the number of prisoners of war who had perished. More recent Russian publications also use the figures here given. Kozlov estimates the number of prisoners who perished at “far more than four million”, though in this he erroneously assumes that until January 1944 already 3.3 million had perished (Kozlov, S. A 205)
Work cited by Streit:
Kozlov, V.I.:
“Die Kriegsverluste der Sowjetunion. Neue Berechnungen eines sowjetischen Wissenschaftlers”, in:
Osteuropa Archiv 40 (1990), pages A 199-209
(Osteuropa-Archiv)
michael mills wrote:Apart from the above cases, none of the casualties suffered by the Soviet population can reasonably be attributed to a "war of extermination" waged by Germany, unrelated to the Soviet Government's own actions.
“Reasonably” is another of those terms an unreasonable fanatic like Mills should avoid.
His above argument about the Soviet government’s failure to have done everything it could have to protect its people from harm is the equivalent of blaming the rape of a teenage girl on her parents’ having allowed her to walk dangerous streets at night.
michael mills wrote:For example, Roberto mentions mentions one million civilians who died of starvation in Leningrad. The immediate cause of their deaths was the German siege, which prevented food getting through.
Mills forgets to tells us that the siege of Leningrad was a rather particular kind of siege, the purpose of which was not to force the surrender of an enemy stronghold, but to obliterate a large urban center and to get rid of a population that the conqueror would otherwise have to feed – something which, in accordance with its occupation and exploitation policies, it was not willing to do.
This sinister policy, which turns the implementation of siege warfare against a civilian population into an act of mass murder, becomes apparent from a number of documents shown on the thread
The Siege of Leningrad in German Documents
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 90772acf50
Of which I will here quote only one:
The Führer’s Decision on Leningrad (Entschluß der Führers über Leningrad), transmitted by the Naval Warfare Command (Seekriegsleitung) to Army Group North on 29.09.1941 (Tagebuch der Seekriegsleitung, quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945, Volume 4, Page 1755)
Betrifft: Zukunft der Stadt Petersburg
II. Der Führer ist entschlossen, die Stadt Petersburg vom Erdboden verschwinden zu lassen. Es besteht nach der Niederwerfung Sowjetrußlands keinerlei Interesse an dem Fortbestand dieser Großsiedlung. Auch Finnland hat gleicherweise kein Interesse an dem Weiterbestehen der Stadt unmittelbar an seiner neuen Grenze bekundet.
III. Es ist beabsichtigt, die Stadt eng einzuschließen und durch Beschuß mit Artillerie aller Kaliber und laufendem Laufeinsatz dem Erdboden gleichzumachen.
IV. Sich aus der Lage der Stadt ergebende Bitten um Übergabe werden abgeschlagen werden, da das Problem des Verbleibens und der Ernährung der Bevölkerung von uns nicht gelöst werden kann und soll. Ein Interesse an der Erhaltung auch nur eines Teils dieser großstädtischen Bevölkerung besteht in diesem Existenzkrieg unsererseits nicht. Notfalls soll gewaltsame Abschiebung in den östlichen russischen Raum erfolgen.
My translation:
Subject: Future of the City of Petersburg
II. The Führer is determined to remove the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth. After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban area.[my emphasis] Finland has likewise manifested no interest in the maintenance of the city immediately at its new border.
III. It is intended to encircle the city and level it to the ground by means of artillery bombardment using every caliber of weapon, and continual air bombardment.
IV. Requests for surrender resulting from the city’s encirclement will be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, there can be no interest on our part in maintaining even a part of this large urban population.[my emphasis] If necessary forcible removal to the eastern Russian area is to be carried out.
michael mills wrote:However, in the months before the siege began, the Soviet Government could easily have evacuated practically all the civilian population, as it did with most other major cities that fell under German occupation, leaving only a military garrison that could be adequately supplied by air or across Lake Ladoga, as was in fact the case throughout the siege. The Soviet Government chose to make the civilian population remain in the city to fight and, if necessary, die for the cause of the "Proletarian revolution"; the one million starvation deaths must therefore be laid at Stalin's door as much as at Hitler's.
Apart from the mentality that such contentions reveal (see the above rapist parallel), I wonder whence Mills derives the conclusion that the civilian population of Leningrad could have been evacuated “easily” but was left there on purpose.
In fact the Soviet government made a considerable effort to get the civilian population out of the city, and if it failed to get out more people only inadequate organization and a belated realization of the threat of encirclement, but not ill intention, can be blamed on it.
Harrison E. Salisbury ([i]The 900 Days[/i], pages 242 and following) wrote:[…]Evacuation from Leningrad had been on-again off-again. For the most part it involved children, first sent to the nearby countryside and then re-evacuated to the Urals and other distant areas. To organize the exodus, a special department had been created by the Leningrad Soviet. Up to the eleventh of August it sent out of Leningrad 467,648 persons. But that figure had been largely nullified by the inward flow of refugees from the Baltic states. On August 10 it was decided to send another 400,000 women and children out of the city. The figure was upped to 700,000 only four days later. In reality, nothing like these numbers were evacuated. When the circle closed, 216,000 persons had been processed but not evacuated. The railroads were not able to handle the volume. They were being heavily bombed. For instance, on August 15 105 German bombers attacked the Chudovo railroad station, and on August 18 they damaged the Volkhov River bridge on the Leningrad-Moscow line, tying up traffic.[…]
michael mills wrote:If an orderly evacuation had been carried out in late summer, when it was still possible, most of the civilian population could have been saved.
Yeah, sure. See above.
michael mills wrote:Even when the siege was underway, the German authorities were still prepared to leave gaps for the civilian population to leave the city.
We now what that “generosity” was about, don’t we, Mills?
In my post of Sat Sep 07, 2002 8:37 pm on the above mentioned thread under
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 90772acf50
(where Mills unsuccessfully tried to sell the apologetic nonsense he is now repeating), I wrote the following:
It’s worth while looking at the passage that Michael Mills makes so much of in the context of the document in question
Kein deutscher Soldat hat daher diese Städte zu betreten. Wer die Stadt gegen unsere Linien verlassen will, ist durch Feuer zurückzuweisen. Kleinere, nicht gesperrte Lücken, die ein Herausströmen der Bevölkerung nach Innerrußland ermöglichen, sind daher nur zu begrüßen. Auch für die übrigen Städte gilt, dass sie vor der Einnahme durch Artilleriefeuer und Luftangriffe zu zermürben sind und die Bevölkerung zur Flucht zu veranlassen ist.
My translation:
No German soldier may thus set foot in these cities. Whoever wants to leave the city in the direction of our lines is to be rejected by fire. Smaller gaps not sealed which allow for a streaming out of the population to inner Russia are thus only to be welcomed. Also for the other cities the principle applies that prior to being taken they must be worn down by artillery fire and air attacks and the population induced into fleeing them.
Emphases are mine.
The highlighted term “daher” (which means “thus” or “therefore”) struck me as odd because I would have expected a “dagegen” (meaning “whereas” or “on the other hand”) in its place.
The statement would then have meant that “whoever wants to leave the city in the direction of our lines is to be rejected by fire,
whereas smaller gaps not sealed which allow for a streaming out of the population to inner Russia are only to be welcomed”. This would have been a perfectly logical sequence of thought.
But the term is “daher”, which means the message conveyed by the two sentences is that “whoever wants to leave the city in the direction of our lines is to be rejected by fire,
for which reason smaller gaps not sealed which allow for a streaming out of the population to inner Russia are only to be welcomed”.
Does this make sense?
Could the “daher” have been typed in by mistake?
Considering how often a document as important as Jodl’s order is likely to have been redrafted and reviewed, every word and every sentence weighed and discussed before reaching its final version, this must be dismissed as an extremely remote possibility.
A closer look at the context of the document, on the other hand, shows that, contrary to what appears to be the case at first sight, the message
“whoever wants to leave the city in the direction of our lines is to be rejected by fire,
for which reason smaller gaps not sealed which allow for a streaming out of the population to inner Russia are only to be welcomed”
makes perfect sense.
As becomes apparent i.a. from the Wehrmacht Command Staff’s memorandum of 21.9.1941 (document no. 4, my translation)
It is also questionable whether our soldiers can be burdened with having to shoot on women and children trying to break out.
the German High Command was very much concerned with the psychological burden that having to shoot down helpless civilians trying to leave the city in the direction of the German lines would represent for the German troops, i.e. with the effects that being called upon to perform such massacres would have on troop morale.
It is therefore reasonable to see Jodl as having reasoned that it would not be so bad if such a situation could be avoided or at least eased by leaving the starving, desperate people somewhere else to turn to in case they decided to get out of the city or at least having them believe that there was such a possibility.
This would have the additional advantage of worsening the situation in the Soviet hinterland (to the extent that any of those trying to flee actually got there), and the besiegers would get rid of the “useless eaters” they intended to get rid of all the same.
Whether any of those who might try to get out through those “smaller gaps” actually survived was of no importance to Jodl or his superior. In fact that would have been rather unlikely. People weakened by starvation usually can barely walk and would thus have hardly endured a foot march first out of the city, then through Soviet-held territory inside the encirclement and finally through German-held territory to the Soviet lines outside the ring, all that without rations and in the middle of winter.
But what happened to the people of Leningrad neither Hitler nor the German High Command cared about. That all or most of them would die of starvation or cold one way or the other (either inside the city or during suicidal attempts to get out on their own) was fine with them because it served their goal, which was to avoid having to feed the population of Leningrad.
The “smaller gaps” thus signaled no benevolence whatsoever toward the city’s civilian population and didn’t mean that they were to be given a realistic chance of survival. They were thought of solely or mainly for the purpose of keeping the starving civilians from approaching the German lines in case their desperation prompted them to seek a way out, and thus sparing German troops the psychological burden of having to shoot down emaciated, desperate women and children hoping for their mercy.
Sometimes the devil is in the details.
michael mills wrote:Once the winter had begun, such a population movement would of course have resulted in large-scale casualties from exposure and exhaustion; but again, that would have been the fault of the Soviet Government for preventing an evacuation without losses when it was still possible.
Of course, my horse.
Like it was the fault of the raped teenage girls’ parents for letting her out on the street.
Assuming, of course, that the Soviet government could have evacuated many more people than it did under the circumstances described by Salisbury, and that its failure to evacuate more was due to anything other than these very circumstances, inadequate organization and an erroneous assessment of the situation.
Nothing but often-repeated apologist lies so far, coupled with instructive insights into the mind of Mr. Mills.
Will it go on like this?
michael mills wrote:Another group of civilian casualties mentioned by Roberto consists of the one milllion killed in anti-partisan fighting. However, if there had been no partisan warfare, which was specifically ordered by Stalin and organised by Politruks smuggled into occupied territory, those civilians would not have died.
Who was there first, the egg or the hen?
I’d say it was the German invaders, who not only performed an act of unwarranted aggression upon the Soviet Union but also treated a population that initially was often friendly to them in such a way as to swell the ranks of the partisans, who without that influx would have been reduced to a few cadres stumbling through the woods until they were hunted down.
The Phantom War
The German struggle against Soviet partisans 1941-1944
by Matthew Cooper
Macdonald and Jane’s Publishers Limited, London, 1979
Introduction
Evil devours itself. Perhaps no other single aspect of the Second World War so well exemplifies the truth of this saying as the German struggle against the Soviet partisans from 1941 to 1944. Unpleasant tale though it is, its telling provides some important truths concerning the nature of the Third Reich and of its Führer, Adolf Hitler; it reveals that National Socialism contained within itself the seeds of its failure. Had it not been for the brutality of its racial dogma, the complexities and contradictions of its organization, and the intransigence and narrowness of intellect of its leader, it is at least arguable that Germany could have pacified the occupied territories of Russia, harnessed for its own purposes the discontent with the Communist regime that was widespread among the Russian peoples, and thereby brought to an end the Soviet Union.[my emphasis] The failure to achieve this was the primary cause, in its turn, of the defeat of the Third Reich.
But, interesting though such a thesis may be, it is purely hypothetical. What is certain, however, is that, by their savage repression of the Eastern peoples, the German invaders lost the support of the indigenous population, created hostility where none previously existed, and, despite the great weaknesses inherent in the partisan movement, were forced to surrender large areas of occupied territory to the Soviet guerrillas.[my empasis] Although the Germans could claim, with reason, that the partisans had not succeeded in their primary task - the dislocation of vital supply lines to the armies at the front - they themselves were brought to the realization that their ruthless measures, born of an intolerant radicalism, could only fuel the fires of resistance, and foster, rather than subdue, partisan activity. But by the time this truth had penetrated the prejudices of Führer, High Command, and regime, it was too late; the war in the East had been lost.
[…]
[Pages 82 and following]
The destruction that was unleashed on the Russian peoples as a consequence of the directives issued by Hitler and OKW at the end of 1942 outweighed even the brutality that had characterized German occupation policy until then. It was, indeed, a slaughter of the innocents, of which even some of the perpetrators were to grow sick.
[…]
In a similar vein on 19 July 1943, Herf, a police general in the East, wrote to the Head of the SS Personnel Main Office in great agitation:
‘You have got to know me well over a number of years, and I hope you have a good opinion of me - at least I think you have. I do not know whether I can remain here. Things are going on here which I cannot stomach, to which I am not prepared to subscribe even in the smallest corner of my mind. The problem concerns our official reports.
‘In my opinion, the reports sent out from here to the Reichsführer are “cooked”. Long before I arrived people in the Ukraine were saying quite openly that our casualty reports were false. People said that the figures were kept artificially low in order to highlight the “successes”. I would not wish even to hint at the reason for this. After I had been here only one day the Head of the Operations Section told me quite openly that things were going on here which were not quite right. The ex Chief of Staff (who by the way had been promised my job) told me the same thing. That was on my second day here. I have told both of them that under these circumstances I cannot remain. They advise me to try to get things changed. As you know, I have done so. Yesterday the Gauleiter and General commissar unintentionally and unwittingly broadcast certain secret reports (intended for the Führer) showing that some 480 rifles were found on 6,000 dead “partisans”. Put bluntly, all these men had been shot to swell the figure of enemy losses and highlight our own “heroic deeds”. I am under no illusions that, this being the system, the winter 1943-4 will see the beginning of the end in the rear areas and probably at the front as well. The increase in guerrilla warfare is simply and solely due to the way the Russians have been treated.[my emphasis]’[…]
michael mills wrote:To be sure, the German forces went too far in their retaliatory measures for partisan attacks on them, and thereby caused large-scale civilian casualties;[…]
Yeah, they overdid it quite a bit – or then their war was directed against the civilian population rather than the partisans proper.
Regarding German anti-partisan warfare in Belorussia, here’s a part of my translation from Christian Gerlach,
Kalkulierte Morde, pages 955 and following:
[…]In the 55 major actions listed in table 20 alone the Germans killed at least 150,000 people, thereof 14,000 Jews. Additionally 17,000 prisoners and wounded were mentioned, most of whom are likely to have been murdered. 12,000 persons were resettled or evacuated, about 100,000 deported as forced laborers. These figures, however, do not include the victims of the smaller and middle-size actions, which in the Belorussian part of the Army Group Center rear area alone had already claimed about 40,000 victims until the beginning of 1942. Police Regiment 2, for instance, killed 733 people within a month in 1943 during the three middle-size operations “Manyly”, “Lenz” and “Lenz Süd”, but 1,298 during “smaller operations and ongoing security and pacification tasks”. In the General Commissariat White Ruthenia police and Wehrmacht shot 3,366 alleged partisans between July and September 1942 – obviously without taking into consideration Operation “Sumpffieber”. The same applies for the Regional Commissariat Volhynia-Podolia and the rear area of Army Group Center. This indicates that the order of magnitude of the above estimate is accurate. The same applies if the number of slain partisans in the proper sense is taken into consideration. According to Kalinin the partisan groups lost 26,000 dead plus 11,800 missing; of the latter must be considered to have lost their lives [footnote: Kalinin, page 402. Due to the membership registration of the partisan units these data may be considered reliable. “Kalinin” = Kalinin, Pjotr Sacharovich, Die Partisanenrepublik. Translated by N.P. Bakajeva, East Berlin, 1968]. If the total number of dead was ca. 345,000, these numbers coincide with the relation established above: hardly more than one tenth of the victims of German major anti-partisan actions was actually a partisan[my emphasis]. To these must be added, however, many mostly unarmed people in the so-called family camps.[…]
The translated excerpts from Gerlach’s book in which the above is included can be found on the thread
Major Anti-partisan Operation in Belorussia
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 9414b8da0c
of this forum.
michael mills wrote:on the other, untold numbers of Soviet civilians fell victim to the terror tactics of the partisans.
“Untold numbers”, Mills?
Any figures you can show us?
michael mills wrote:It is quite unreasonable to attribute these one million civilian victims solely to a "war of extermination" waged by Germany.
No, they may not all have been killed by the Germans.
But most of them were, and those who were not still fell victim to the “fight to annihilation” initiated by Mills’ beloved Führer.
michael mills wrote:Another group of civilian casualties was those caught in the crossfire or in bombing. In modern parlance these would be called "collateral damage", and are a feature even of limited warfare. There is no need to posit a German "war of extermination" to account for those casualties. Again, if Soviet resistance had ceased before the end of 1941, the greater part of that "collateral damage" would have been avoided.
What spectacularly clever reasoning!
If Hitler had not attacked the Soviet Union, no civilians at all would have become “collateral damage” of war.
And if “Soviet resistance had ceased before the end of 1941”, there would have been no more such “collateral” casualties, but instead a slave empire of exploitation, starvation and mass murder even worse than the one the Soviet people had been living under.
michael mills wrote:The final group of civilian casualties listed by Roberto is constituted by some seven million claimed to have died of starvation and hardship "behind the front line". It is not clear what Roberto means here; is he referring to Soviet civilians who died in the territory controlled by the Soviet Government and not under German occupation?
The figure, as Mills well knows, comes from the following statement I translated in an article on Operation “Barbarossa” by German historian Wigbert Benz:
[…]Die heutige Forschung, z.B. Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Osteuropa-Historiker an der Universität Hannover, beziffert unter Einbeziehung neuerer russischen Forschungen die sowjetischen Menschenopfer im "Unternehmen Barbarossa" auf ca. 27 Millionen - darunter allein sieben Millionen Hungertote hinter der Front.[…]
Source of quote:
http://www.wk-2.de/unternehmen_barbarossa.html
My translation:
Current research, for example Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Eastern Europe historian at Hannover University, estimate the Soviet human victims of "Operation Barbarossa", taking into account recent Russian research, at ca. 27 million - thereof seven million starvation dead behind the front line alone.
michael mills wrote:If so, then it is plainly ridiculous to attribute those deaths to "extermination" by Germany.
The only thing plainly ridiculous here is the apologetic mumbling of Michael Mills.
It doesn’t become clear from the above quoted text whether the figure refers only to starvation deaths in German-occupied territory or also includes starvation deaths in Soviet-occupied territory, so I’ll assume it includes both.
Does that speak against considering all starvation deaths as victims of a war of aggression and conquest launched by Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, which in accordance with the Führer’s own quoted statements on 30 March 1941 has been designated a war of extermination ?
I'd say that, while the Nazi government can be held responsible under the charges of “war crimes” and/or “crimes against humanity” only for those deaths that occurred in its area of occupation, to the extent that they resulted from its policy of ruthless exploitation, it can be blamed also for the deaths in Soviet-held territory under the charge of “war of aggression”.
michael mills wrote:They were quite clearly a result of policies adopted by the Soviet Government to determine who would get enough food to survive and who would not, and perhaps also to measures to prevent private trading.
Things may be clear for Mills simply because he would like to believe in them, but nothing is clear to me without evidence.
So let’s see if Mills can provide some evidence as to extent to which starvation deaths were caused not by German occupation and exploitation policies or by shortages in the Soviet hinterland caused by the German war of aggression, but by “policies adopted by the Soviet Government”.
michael mills wrote:Moving now to military casualties, Roberto accepts a figure of nine million for Soviet soldiers killed in battle or dying from sickness etc. But that total is more attributable to the inhuman methods of waging war adopted by the Soviet Government rather than to a German "war of extermination".
Another piece of brilliant reasoning.
While there is no doubt that the Soviet conduct of war, especially in the initial phase, produced many casualties that could have been avoided, that doesn’t speak against seeing Soviet military combat dead as victims of a war of extermination waged against their government and their country.
Again, as with the civilian starvation deaths in Soviet-occupied territory, the charge would be not “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity”, but “war of aggression”.
michael mills wrote:The German Army did not set out to deliberately kill as many Soviet soldiers as possible, as is shown by the huge number of prisoners taken.
Well, the Soviet prisoner was “no comrade before and after”, and an accordingly grim fate awaited even those Soviet prisoners who were not singled out for execution because they were “undesirable” under a number of criteria. Besides, as
Christian Gerlach ([i]Kalkulierte Morde[/i], pages 774 and following, my translation) wrote:[...]Mass crimes against members of the Red Army did not only begin in the prisoner of war camps, but already during the fighting and soon thereafter. These murders and violations of the laws of war and international law, which have so far barely been taken notice of by research, can only be described on hand of some central orders and selected source studies at this place. They are likely to make the actions of the front line units – of common soldiers, the lower officer corps and the leadership – appear in a new light.[…]
For more information on battlefield killings of surrendering Soviet troops see the thread
Annihilation of Soviet Prisoners of War in Belorussia
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 90772acf50
And then we have statements like this one:
It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle
of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply.
Heinrich Himmler, June 1941, as quoted by Christopher Browning,
in
Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers p. 23.
Source of quote:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/quote.cgi?source50
But such considerations are not the criterion under which I consider Soviet battlefield casulties to have been victims of Hitler’s self-proclaimed “fight to annihilation”, see above.
michael mills wrote:It the Soviet way of fighting, so wasteful of human life, resulted in nine million Red Army casualties, that can hardly be blamed on a German "war of extermination".
Yes it can, if “only” under the charge of “war of aggression” rather than “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity”. A less wasteful Soviet conduct of the war might have resulted in casualties comparable to those of the Germans and their allies, whose armies lost over four million men killed in combat on the Eastern Front. But that is hardly an issue in this context.
michael mills wrote:In summary, if loss of life on the Soviet side did indeed amount to 24 million, only a very small part of that total can genuinely be blamed on a German "war of extermination".
All of it can be blamed on the Nazi government under the “war of aggression” charge, I would say.
The deaths of Soviet prisoners of war (ca. three million), Jews and civilian victims of “anti-partisan” operations (ca. three million) and the civilian victims of the siege of Leningrad (ca. one million) can also be placed under “war crimes” and/or “crimes against humanity” – mass murder, to put it plainly.
The same goes for a substantial but hard to establish portion of the ca. seven million starvation deaths behind the front lines.
michael mills wrote:The greater part of it is more realisrically attributed to actions and policies of the Soviet Government.
“Realistically” is another term that an unrealistic Nazi apologist like Mills should avoid using.
I hope the above has helped to explain why.
