If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces know?

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wm
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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#31

Post by wm » 13 Aug 2020, 17:31

Do you have any proof that the Nazis intended to kill all Jews pre-December 1941?

The point is pre-December the Nazis didn't intend to kill them all, they would gladly expel the Jews abroad.
Post-December it was "kill them all."

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#32

Post by wm » 13 Aug 2020, 17:32

Mori wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 17:22
It's not the first time you suggest that Jews enjoyed priviledged under the 3rd Reich.

In another thread, you explained that being deported to Riga was a way to be safe from Allied bombing and that non-Jewish Germans had reasons to be jalous of the Jews... I am waiting for your comments on how the women's orchestra of Auschwitz made it such a nicer place than working in a factory in the Ruhr.
Your post is incorrect in its entirety.


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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#33

Post by Mori » 13 Aug 2020, 17:37

wm wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 17:32
Mori wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 17:22
It's not the first time you suggest that Jews enjoyed priviledged under the 3rd Reich.

In another thread, you explained that being deported to Riga was a way to be safe from Allied bombing and that non-Jewish Germans had reasons to be jalous of the Jews... I am waiting for your comments on how the women's orchestra of Auschwitz made it such a nicer place than working in a factory in the Ruhr.
Your post is incorrect in its entirety.
That was on July 23rd: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=250641&p=2281914#p2281914

You commented on how smiling the Jews were on their way to the station before deportation. You called Riga "a beautiful city out of range of British bombers" and wondered "how many Germans present (if any) envied them such a relocation."

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#34

Post by Ivan Ž. » 13 Aug 2020, 17:43

wm wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 17:31
Do you have any proof that the Nazis intended to kill all Jews pre-December 1941?

The point is pre-December the Nazis didn't intend to kill them all, they would gladly expel the Jews abroad.
Post-December it was "kill them all."
The point is you've stretched this topic to page 3 and have been leading it in circles for way too long, in anything but a respectful manner towards the victims of the Holocaust, "security measures", or whatever you prefer calling the mass murder of Jewish people on the basis of their ethnicity.

Ivan

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#35

Post by MLW » 13 Aug 2020, 19:05

wm wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 09:35
Concentration camps were (eventually) ran like a business but they had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Death camps weren't. They were small, well hidden, extremely efficient, ran by a handful of Germans.
There were quite a few civilian firms who worked on the construction of the death camps and the material used to equip them. Here is just one - Topf and company that made the ovens - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... ry-company

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#36

Post by Sid Guttridge » 13 Aug 2020, 19:25

Hi wm,

You say that the killing of Jews was not systematic before December 1941. You must know this is nonsense.

The Germans had been experimenting with gas vans on Jews in Yugoslavia and, before launching Operation Barbarossa, created five Ensatzgruppen largely charged with killing Soviet Jews en masse. These were very systematic activities and just part of the rising continuum of deprivation, contrived differential death rates and murder of Jews that culminated in the death camps.

If the killings before December 1941 were really "arbitrary", how was it that most of the victims were Jews even though they formed only a tiny minority of the conquered populations of Eastern Europe?

You say "at the same time in the Warsaw Ghetto Jews worked, danced in their cafés, protected by their own police, lived in relative security. They were more secure in their Ghetto than the Poles outside." What, on 187 calories of rations a day? You have previously complained that the Polish rations, which were nearly four times as high, would lead to slow starvation, and now you have happy, productive Jews gaily dancing their protected lives away in eateries on barely a quarter of that. Are you saying this Jewish paradise was typical?

You write, "Similarily in Germany German Jews worked, enjoyed not that bad food, were surrounded by quite friendly Germans." Hmmm, so no boycotts of their businesses? No Kristalnacht and its associated murders? No banning from the professions and public service? No expropriation of their businesses, art works and savings? No burnt synagogues? No yellow stars? And all of this was even before war broke out!

You say, ".....pre-December the Nazis didn't intend to kill them all, they would gladly expel the Jews abroad.
Post-December it was "kill them all."
Hmmmm. I don't recall them placing any limit on the number of Jews they intended to kill. Even while emigration was still an apparent possibility, they had started to kill Jews by the hundreds of thousands. What was the mysterious upper limit on Jewish deaths the Germans had set themselves before December 1941?

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#37

Post by wm » 13 Aug 2020, 20:28

MLW wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 19:05
There were quite a few civilian firms who worked on the construction of the death camps and the material used to equip them. Here is just one - Topf and company that made the ovens - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... ry-company
You are confusing two things.
The ovens were in concentration camps. They incinerated in them deceased prisoners and then sent the ashes to their families (although usually, the family had to go for them.)

There were no ovens in death camps (with an exception that proved the rule). The Jews were buried in mass graves or/and were incinerated in pyres.

The death camps were built (with a single exception that proved the rule) by local Polish contractors, a few German specialists, but mainly by Jewish prisoners. Nobody saw there any German corporation ever.
The reason was the Holocaust was done extremely cheaply (and in secret). So cheaply that guards in one of them didn't even get proper uniforms, the prisoners had to make the uniforms for them.

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#38

Post by history1 » 13 Aug 2020, 22:14

MLW wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 04:16
The SS ran the camps like a business. [...] One example are the crematorium ovens for the work and death camps which were designed, installed, inspected, and serviced on site in the camps by a civilian firm in Erfurt. [...]
I´m sure you need to be more specific. Which work camps did have at least one crematorium oven?
Last edited by history1 on 14 Aug 2020, 01:11, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#39

Post by history1 » 13 Aug 2020, 22:21

wm wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 09:35
[...] Death camps weren't. They were small, well hidden, extremely efficient, ran by a handful of Germans.
Ran by a handful Germans and about 100-120 willing helpers, = Trawniki men, as henchmen.
Worth to know that the families of the latter got even widow´s pension, food and other support from the German authorities when their husband/friend got KIA.

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#40

Post by history1 » 13 Aug 2020, 22:35

Ivan Ž. wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 13:26
Hello, wm
[...] Conducting the reprisals were mostly Heer soldiers (you can read more about one of the executions here). [...]
From the link:
"[...]
Text: Ivan Ž.

Photographer: Gerhard Baier, 690th Propaganda Company.
Date: 9 October 1941.
Location: Deliblato (district of Kovin), Yugoslavia.
Original caption: unknown.[...]
Yugoslavia in Oct. 1941? Please!

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#41

Post by Ivan Ž. » 13 Aug 2020, 22:40

history1 wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 22:35

Yugoslavia in Oct. 1941? Please!
For us born in Yugoslavia, it was an occupied country, as well as it was for the Allied world back in the day. You may choose to respect the occupiers' boundaries - I NEVER WILL. And PLEASE never ever bother me with such comments again.

Ivan

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#42

Post by history1 » 13 Aug 2020, 23:08

wm wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 14:08
Ivan Ž. wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 13:26
Hello, wm

If you research the war at the European crossroads known as the Balkans, i.e. Yugoslavia, you'll find many examples of the Waffen-SS, Heer and concentration camps being involved in the Holocaust. The first Yugoslav/Serbian region cleansed of Jews was Banat (which was taken over by the German minority); the very first German measures after the invasion (April 1941) included locking up of the Jews. This was primarily conducted by the Waffen-SS ("Reich" Division).
Although in April 1941 the Holocaust didn't exist. In April Jews still were able to immigrate from Germany and the occupied territories.

Just a few months earlier several thousand Jews traveled from Bratislava to Palestine on board of four ships.
Their trip was organized by Berthold Storfer, a Jewish businessman who worked for Adolf Eichmann.
Yes, that Eichmann.

The massacres, deportations, camps you mentioned prove they happened but not the existence of the Holocaust.
That doesn´t surprise me at all, wm. Until late fall 1941 Jewish men fit for military service were allowed by law to emigrate, younger males and females even until Dec 31st 1941.
And only in mid January 1942 the Wahnsee Conference happened in Berlin and with it the planning of the Final Solution = Holocaust.

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#43

Post by history1 » 13 Aug 2020, 23:35

Sid Guttridge wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 14:22
Hi wm,

[...] That is how the Slovaks became aware of them. Turanec mentions two massacres in passing without further comment. He also complains that the Germans had even taken away Soviet Jews working in a Slovak Army field kitchen. He seems to have been irritated by this because it infringed on Slovak sovereignty, rather than out of sympathy for the victims.

Turanec must have been the only man in Slovakia who didn´t know that the Slovakian gorvernment didn´t only offer a bounty for each deported Slovakian Jew but also paid this blood money. That was unique in whole Europe!
BTW, it was the Slovakian Hlinka Guard which took the Jews in Slovakia away.
Sid Guttridge wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 14:22
[...]
The Jews were not totally unaware of their likely fate in 1944. They knew their brethren were disappearing without trace and they arrived at Auschwitz cowed, nervous and impotent.
I wonder I saw hundreds of suvivor testimonies and at least in every 2nd the witness tells that they even had a clue where they arrived or what will happen to them. And it wasn´t clear for others either. Sometimes whole transports went into the camp without a selection, and in others with many young people all got murdered upon arrival as no additional workers were needed. And later other Jews got even not tattooed in Auschwiitz, the so-called Transit/exchange Jews. Of whom many were transfered into the Reich ´s industry.
Sid Guttridge wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 14:22
As early as mid-1942 several Slovak Jews had escaped from the early killings at Auschwitz and informed relatives in Hungary while escaping to the West via Switzerland.

Cheers,
Sid.
The "several" Slovakian Jews you´re talking about are Rudilf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler. And they didn´t inform Hungarian relatives but, beneath others, the Hungarian Jewish community.

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#44

Post by history1 » 13 Aug 2020, 23:38

Michael Miller wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 14:48
Excellent post, Sid. Thank you.

~ Mike
[...]
Especially the misinformations like Vrba/Wetler did inform Hungarian relatives.

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Re: If the SS was the secret police of Hitler's regime and had a part in the Holocaust, did the general armed forces kno

#45

Post by history1 » 13 Aug 2020, 23:47

Mori wrote:
13 Aug 2020, 15:04
[...]
The Soviets in the first days of the war slaughtered almost 100,000 of their prisoners (mostly Ukrainians and Poles) in so-called NKVD prisoner massacres.
Earlier, they slaughtered 110,000+ people during the so-called Polish Operation of the NKVD.
[...]
You miss a significant point. Killing prisonners is one thing. Indiscriminate killing of whole populations - including babies and children, including old and sick - is another degree. The Soviet killing of PoW is an extremely severe crime, yet it focused on victims the killers had something against in terms of (most of the time imaginary) acts, or thoughts. [...]
The Soviets killed already Austrian and German Jews and such from the Protectorat Bohemia & Morawa in 1939 which were deported to the Minsk area.

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