Allies could have saved 4 million Jews, says Bibi

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

You ask, "And how many could they have saved by not opposing Mr Hitler at all?". Presumably none, as Hitler would have been in control of all Europe's Jews. Whether Hitler would have initiated an extermination campaign if every country had just succumbed without resistance is another matter.

But why should anyone expect a dozen or more countries to surrender their national sovereignty to Nazi Germany without resistance?

Cheers,

Sid.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

You seem to overlook the fact that the systematic mass killing of Jews (as opposed to some earlier high death rates due to malign neglect) was begun with the invasion of the USSR. Special Einsatzgruppen were created for this very purpose and had killed hundreds of thousands by the end of 1941. Assuming that Germany had won in the USSR by the end of 1941, what was to stop them carrying on with the slaughter? They certainly planned for that possibility as the earliest known plans for gas chambers at Auschwitz appear to date from October and November 1941.

The initiation of the extermination camps in early 1942 was after the war had begun to turn against Germany, and most of the Jewish deaths occurred after defeat became probable. If they were prepared to risk this just as their exposure and punishment through defeat became increasingly likely, what makes you think that they would be less draconian in the event of victory?

You are asking us to believe that the Nazis would have been gentler on the Jews if they could have treated them as they wished with total impunity. Yet there doesn't seem much evidence that the Nazis did anything but escalate their pressure on the Jews, regardless of the war situation.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

You ask, "And how many could they have saved by not opposing Mr Hitler at all?". Presumably none, as Hitler would have been in control of all Europe's Jews. Whether Hitler would have initiated an extermination campaign if every country had just succumbed without resistance is another matter.

It's possible that after defeating Poland, annexing a part of its territory, converting the rest to a bantustan, and dumping Hitler's pet project of war with France nothing drastic would have happened. Although it's all highly speculative.

The new Museum of Jewish History in Warsaw, which I visited in August last year, accepts Gross' version of the massacre at Jedwabne. It states that although German police were stationed in Jedwabne, they took no part in the massacre, which was perpetrated entirely by the Polish population of the town, without any instigation or pressure by the Germans.

It's not his version, it's the version established by the trial where those responsible were punished shortly after the war. He really didn't contribute anything useful on his own. And although many of the depositions were extracted with beatings, there is no doubt that the local mayor (a Reichsdeutsche Silesian, later disappeared) and his pal Karol Bardoń (a volksdeutsch and local gendarme, sentenced to death) organized it with the help of their local helpers. And that locals were looting everything they could (in itself nothing unusual, unusual would be no looting). Anything more is just mere conjecture.
The problem is his book was a political hit piece (he himself is a SJW), not an useful impartial history book, and was used immediately as such by the left-wing against their political enemies among mass hysteria reminiscent of the today's in the US. Which led to nothing useful, except a dialogue between the deaf and the blind, as even well educated people know very little history beyond the usual stereotypes. There were other real Polish massacres, driven by vengeance it seems, but this one isn't a clear cut case.

Thus, if wm is implying that if the Allies had not opposed Hitler at all there would have been no mass killing of Jews, he is almost certainly correct. After all, the Jews of Germany had been in Hitler's grasp ever since 1933, but none of them had been actively killed until May 1942.

I rather meant no WW2 at all.
A very quick defeat of the USSR could have prevented the Holocaust only if it was mainly motivated by economic not ideological reasons.

[Gorque]

However, paradoxical as it may seem, it is fairly certain that far more European Jews would have survived if Germany had not been defeated than did in historical reality. That is because the high-intensity comprehensive mass slaughter of European Jewry only began when Germany started to lose the war, due to its failure to achieve a clear victory over the Soviet Union before the end of 1941.

Hi Michael:

The above is not entirely accurate. While the members of the Einsatzgruppen may not have actively participated in the murders of Communists and Jews in June and July 1941, they did encourage the above, especially in the Baltic States. And as the Germans were now militarily in control of the area, it was up to them to enforce military law.

[michael mills]

Gorque,

The massacre of Jews in the Baltic States, which was essentially complete by the end of 1941, was a special case in that the impetus for it came from the local people, who began killing Jews as soon as the Soviet occupiers fled, even before the Germans arrived.

When German forces crossed the border into Soviet-occupied Lithuania in the early hours of 22 June, at the first town they came to they were greeted by the sight of Jews hanging from the trees. The lynchings had been perpetrated by local people on their own initiative.

The motivation for Lithuanians and Latvians to start killing Jews as soon as Soviet control evaporated was the high level of Jewish collaboration in the preceding oppressive Soviet occupation, which had lasted one year, what Latvians call "baigais gads", the year of horror.

When the incoming Germans saw how keen the Balts were to kill the Jews living among them, they basically stood back and let them get on with it, at most giving a bit of logistical support. If local people wanted to kill Jews, the Germans were not going to stop them.

It is a methodological error to assess German intentions at the beginning of Barbarossa on the basis of what happened later in 1941 and in 1942 and 1943. At the beginning of Barbarossa, Heydrich issued orders to carry out summary executions of a number of categories of the Soviet population considered to pose threat to Germany; one of those categories was "Jews in Stare and Party positions", but that was a limited group, basically comprising Jewish members of the Soviet bureaucracy, and not all members of the Soviet Jewish nationality.

The initial German plan in regard to the Soviet Jewish population as a whole was a revealed in a letter of August from the commander of Einsatzgruppe A, Walter Stahlecker, to the newly appointed Reichskommissar Ostland, Hinrich Lohse. Lohse had proposed to concentrate the Jewish population of Ostland in urban ghettoes, on the model of those sett up in occupied Poland; Stahlecker advised Lohse that that was contrary to the policy in regard to occupied Soviet territory, and spelt out what the policy was. It consisted of three elements:

- The Jews who were not subject to summary execution as part of the Soviet bureaucracy, ie the great majority, were to be sent to remote rural camp far from population centres, and held separated by gender.
- The Jews in those camps were to be used temporarily for labour in primary industry, particularly in lumber production.
- Once victory over the Soviet Union had been secured, the Jews held in the rural camps would be expelled to a destination outside Europe, either into Asiatic Russia or to an African colony.

This plan was not implemented since the remote areas where the temporary camps were to be located, in the region west of Arkhangelsk, were not conquered by the Germans.

From the beginning of 1941, Heydrich's office was engaged in preparing a plan for the expulsion of all Jews living in the German sphere of influence to be deported deep into Asiatic Russia and Central Asia. Most of the details of the plan did not survive, and only sketchy details have been preserved. In March, Heydrich presented a first draft to Goering, who ordered further work on the logistically details; in July a more defailed version was presented, which Goering approved and gave Heydrich plenipotentiary power to implement it.

This was the plan that Heydrich revealed to the German State Secretaries at the Wannsee Conference, but by then that plan was obsolete since Barbarossa had failed and the German forces were in full retreat.

[michael mills]

Sid,

You asked:

The initiation of the extermination camps in early 1942 was after the war had begun to turn against Germany, and most of the Jewish deaths occurred after defeat became probable. If they were prepared to risk this just as their exposure and punishment through defeat became increasingly likely, what makes you think that they would be less draconian in the event of victory?

Because if Barbarossa had been successful and Germany destroyed Soviet military power, Germany would not have been in the critical situation that it was in in historical reality, and would have been able its preferred plans for the solution of the "Jewish Problem" through expulsion from Europe.

The German actions from the outbreak of war until the failure of Barbarossa at the end of 1941 show quite clear that the German Government's aim was not physical extermination of the Jews, since it did not take advantage of the stunning victory over the Western Allies to begin killing Jews, either in occupied Poland or in occupied Western Europe. During this period, when a British capitulation was expected, the German aim was to exile Jews to Madagascar, with logistical support from both France and Britain. Once Hitler decided that an end to the war could only be obtained through the elimination of Soviet power, Madagascar was replaced by Asiatic Russia as the destination to which the Jews of the German sphere of influence were to be deported.

If Germany had gained control of European Russia and all its resources, enabling it to resist the British blockade and defeat any invasion, it would have had no need to kill the Jews en masse, just as it had not felt any need to kill the Jews after its conquest of Poland and Western Europe. The draconian nature of its treatment of the Jewish population, which culminated in mass extermination, was entirely a result of the desperate situation in which Germany found itself after the failure to defeat the Soviet Union; if it had achieved victory over the Soviet Union in 1941, it would have had no motive to be so draconian.

You also stated:

Assuming that Germany had won in the USSR by the end of 1941, what was to stop them carrying on with the slaughter? They certainly planned for that possibility as the earliest known plans for gas chambers at Auschwitz appear to date from October and November 1941.

If you have discovered German plans for gas chambers at Auschwitz dating from October/November 1941, then you possess knowledge that no other historian has access to. Perhaps you could give us details of those plans, quoting German documents.

The first application of homicidal gassing to Jews was at Chelmno, commencing at the very end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942. That killing action was initiated by the Reichsstatthalter of Reichsgau Wartheland, who had asked Himmler and Heydrich for permission to apply Sonderbehandlung (= summary execution without a judicial process) to 100,000 of that territory; ie one-third of the Jewish population of that territory. That killing action therefore was not an extermination but rather a limited cull, designed to reduce overcrowding.

At that time, the staff of Auschwitz Concentration Camp experimented with the homicidal use of Zyklon-B, for the purpose of executing Soviet POWs who had been to Auschwitz for that purpose on the basis of having been identified as "dangerous Communist". The experiments were not related to the extermination of Jews, which had not been decided on when they were being carried out.

[wm]

Well, except for example this:

In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the exact date, I was suddenly summoned to the Reichsfuhrer SS, directly by his adjutant's office. Contrary to his usual custom, Himmler received me without his adjutant being present, and said in effect "The Fuhrer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order."
[...]
You will treat this order as absolutely secret, even from your superiors. After your talk with Eichmann you will immediately forward to me the plans of the projected installations. "The Jews are the sworn enemies of the German people and must be eradicated. Every Jew that we can lay our hands on is to be destroyed now during the war, without exception. If we cannot now obliterate the biological basis of Jewry, the Jews will one day destroy the German people." On receiving these grave instructions, I returned forthwith to Auschwitz, without reporting to my superior at Oranienburg.
[...]
Shortly afterwards Eichmann came to Auschwitz and disclosed to me the plans for the operations as they affected the various countries concerned. I cannot remember the exact order in which they were to take place.
[...]
This could only be done by gassing, since it would have been absolutely impossible to dispose by shooting of the large numbers of people that were expected, and it would have placed too heavy a burden on the SS-men who had to carry it out, especially because of the women and children among the victims. Eichmann told me about the method of killing people with exhaust fumes in lorries, which had previously been used in the East. But there was no question of being able to use this for these mass transports that were due to arrive in Auschwitz. Killing with showers of carbon monoxide while bathing, as was done with mental patients in some places in the Reich, would necessitate too many buildings and it was also very doubtful whether the supply of gas for such a vast number of people would be available. We left the matter unresolved. Eichmann decided to try to find a gas which was in ready supply and which would not entail special installations for its use, and to inform me when he had done so.
[...]
Eichmann could not then give me the starting date for the operation, because everything was still in the preliminary stages, and the Reichsfuhrer SS had not yet issued the necessary orders.
Eichmann returned to Berlin to report our conversation to the Reichsführer SS.
[...]
At the end of November a conference was held in Eichmann's Berlin office, attended by the entire Jewish Section, to which I, too, was summoned. Eichmann's representatives in the various countries reported on the current stage of the operation and the difficulties encountered in executing it, such as the housing of the prisoners, the provision of trains for the transports and the planning of timetables, etc. I could not find out when a start was to be made, and Eichmann had not yet discovered a suitable kind of gas.
Rudolf Höss, Autobiography

[michael mills]

This statement given by Hoess to Judge Sehn during the preliminary investigation before his trial (in November 1946 if I remember correctly) is full of contradictions, and is no longer accepted by any competent historian as an accurate account of the events leading to the mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz. It mixes up events from 1941 and 1942 in a completely illogical way.

For example, Hoess refers to a conference held at Eichmann's office in Berlin in November to discuss the current stage of the operations. he claims that as of the date of that conference, Eichmann had not discovered a suitable gas. However, that conference is well known, and was actually held in November 1942, when the deportation program was well underway. Furthermore, as of the date of that conference, Zyklon-B was already being used homicidally, and had been for several months. accordingly, Hoess's statement that Eichmann had not yet found a suitable gas makes no snesne whatever.

Elsewhere in the statement to Judge Sehn, Hoess claims that the homicidal use of Zyklon-B was discovered by his deputy, and was then used to kill Soviet POWs who had been sent to Auschwitz for execution (which was initially carried out by shooting). In other words, Eichmann had nothing to do with the homicidal use of Zyklon-B.

The experiments with Zyklon-B at Auschwitz are generally dated to September 1941. Hoess claims that after the experiments who informed Eichmann that a suitable gas had been found. However, he claims that at the meeting in November, which he implies was held in 1941, he claims that Eichmann had not yet found a suitable gas. That shows how confused and unreliable Hoess's testimony is.

In another statement made to Judge Sehn, with the title "My Meetings with Himmler", Hoess claims that Himmler gave him the order to kill the non-working Jews, in order to relieve the overcrowding in the camp, during his visit to Auschwitz in July 1942. That date is actually more consistent with the commencement of the selection and gassing of the Jews arriving on transports.

However, in that same statement, Hoess claims that at the same time as the order to kill Jews, Himmler also gave him an order to kill all the Gypsies. That is impossible, since Gypsies did not arrive at Auschwitz until early 1943, well after Himmler's visit, and the first gassing of Gypsies did not take place until the summer of 1944. Hoess has obviously mixed up two different orders at different dates.

Rober Jan Van Pelt, in his book "Auschwitz 1270 to the Present", concludes that the order given by Himmler to Hoess in the summer of 1941 was actually for the killing of Soviet POWs who were being sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps for execution, due to being identified as "dangerous Communists". Van Pelt considers that Hoess confused this order given in 1941 with a later one to kill Jews, given in mid-1942.

Another conclusion by Van Pelt is that Crematoria II and III in Birkenau were not originally designed as homicidal gas chambers, but just as corpse disposal facilities. He believes that they were converted into gas chambers during the construction phase.

[Gorque]

Gorque,

The massacre of Jews in the Baltic States, which was essentially complete by the end of 1941, was a special case in that the impetus for it came from the local people, who began killing Jews as soon as the Soviet occupiers fled, even before the Germans arrived.

When German forces crossed the border into Soviet-occupied Lithuania in the early hours of 22 June, at the first town they came to they were greeted by the sight of Jews hanging from the trees. The lynchings had been perpetrated by local people on their own initiative.

The motivation for Lithuanians and Latvians to start killing Jews as soon as Soviet control evaporated was the high level of Jewish collaboration in the preceding oppressive Soviet occupation, which had lasted one year, what Latvians call "baigais gads", the year of horror.

When the incoming Germans saw how keen the Balts were to kill the Jews living among them, they basically stood back and let them get on with it, at most giving a bit of logistical support. If local people wanted to kill Jews, the Germans were not going to stop them.

Hi Michael:

The last paragraph pertains to the point that I was making. For the occupying forces to stand back and do nothing while atrocities are being committed by the locals amounts to a sanctioning of these crimes by the military authorities, and by extension, the German government, whether or not they actually joined in or provided material support. Afterall, the occupations forces are now in control of the area and military law is now in effect until the area is handed over to some form of a civilian government. Unless I am mistaken, I don't believe that within the sets of rules and regulations governing a military occupation, murder and mayhem are not only still illegal but also do not promote the orderly administration of the area under their control.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

Regarding the pre-emptive killing of Jews in the Baltic States.

The newly independent Baltic States didn't try to annihilate their Jews between the wars. When the Red Army moved in in 1939-40, there was no massacre of Jews in these states either. And yet when the Germans moved in in 1941 there was.

One has to ask why?

I would suggest that the big difference is that the retreat of the Red Army and the advent of the Germans created a permissive environment, whereas the interwar years and the advent of the Red Army had not.

Did the massacre of Baltic Jews stop with the arrival of the Wehrmacht? Sadly not.

The earliest killings by some Baltic people may represent no more than a "sin of omission" on the part of the Germans, who did not prevent it, but a "sin" it remained. Of course the later killings of most Baltic Jews were very definitely a "sin of commission", in that the Germans did it themselves.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. Were there massacres of other non-Baltic minorities, such as assorted Slavs?

[Knouterer]

The first application of homicidal gassing to Jews was at Chelmno, commencing at the very end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942. That killing action was initiated by the Reichsstatthalter of Reichsgau Wartheland, who had asked Himmler and Heydrich for permission to apply Sonderbehandlung (= summary execution without a judicial process) to 100,000 of that territory; ie one-third of the Jewish population of that territory. That killing action therefore was not an extermination but rather a limited cull, designed to reduce overcrowding.

Calling the brutal murder of a hundred thousand innocent and defenceless people "a limited cull designed to reduce overcrowding" perhaps does not qualify as "holocaust denial" but it comes fairly close and is in any case seriously repugnant.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

I see no necessary causal connection between Germany's deteriorating war situation and the imperative to kill all available Jews.

The Nazis had self-identified a "Jewish Problem". They didn't have to. Nor did they have at any stage to address it in any particular way. Yet, from 1941-42 they chose to kill all available Jews.

This they might equally have done if winning the war. Indeed, the earliest gas chamber plans for Auscchwitz date from when they thought they were winning the war. It therefore seems circumstantially plausible that the so-called "Holocaust" was going to happen in any event. (For example of early plans, see: http://hetireland.org/app/uploads/2015/ ... yout-1.pdf)

Cheers,

Sid.

[Gorque]

P.S. Were there massacres of other non-Baltic minorities, such as assorted Slavs?

Hi Sid:

Yes, in late '41 there was the massacre of about 30,000 Jews by the Romanians in Odessa followed by another mass killing in Bogdanovka.

Babi Yar occurred in late September where, Germans and their auxiliaries executed over 34,000 Jews. Before that there was the Nikolaev event where nearly 36,000 people were murdered, mostly Jews. In December, outside of Riga, about 25,000 Jews were massacred at Rumbula.

[Knouterer]

The Nazis had self-identified a "Jewish Problem". They didn't have to. Nor did they have at any stage to address it in any particular way. Yet, from 1941-42 they chose to kill all available Jews.
Sid.

Indeed. Mr Mills likes to suggest, in a rather sly and underhand way, that the Jews were somehow a "problem" that regrettably had to be dealt with. And that the Nazis were only brought to the extremity of the Endlösung through a combination of unfortunate circumstances. Or something like that.

Actually, if the Nazis had dropped the antisemitism, or kept it down to a "normal" level by the standards of the time, it would have improved their chances of winning the war (somewhat). Apart from the impression it made abroad, many German Jews would have joined the national revival, given half a chance. I was just reading about the aryanisation of the MInistry of Foreign Affairs (Auswärtiges Amt) in 1933. A diplomat (Legationssekretär) by the name of Georg von Broich-Oppert was found to have omitted, on the form provided for that purpose, the fact that his father was of Jewish origin. During the disciplinary proceedings against him several prominent Nazis, especially SA leaders, testified to his exemplary national spirit (nationale Gesinnung) and how as a diplomat in Vienna he had done everything possible to help the (then illegal) Austrian NSDAP. Probably because of that it was charitably assumed that von Broich-Oppert had not really been aware of his Jewish roots and he was just pushed into early retirement.

[OpanaPointer]

I guess we should have just let the Nazis take over any territory that wanted.