Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi GLG,

You really should aim higher than History 101!

As you favour Wikipedia as a source, try this one on the Einsatzgruppen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgr ... viet_Union

It includes, "Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen, related agencies, and foreign auxiliary personnel killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million of the 5.5 to 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust."

The definition of "Holocaust" is up for debate, not settled.

In pursuing that debate, perhaps now you would answer my earlier question:

"Hundreds of thousands of Jews had been killed before the Wansee Conference by Einsatzgruppen, gas vans, malign neglect, etc.

They were murdered by the same organizations following the same ideology and leadership as those who died later.

On what grounds are they to be arbitrarily excluded from being victims of the so-called "Holocaust"?"

Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Malign neglect wasn't the Holocaust, millions of Soviet POWs and citizens died because of malign neglect.
Gas vans weren't the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of Germans died in gas chambers too.
Einsatzgruppen weren't only for Jews, they were for the Poles and the Soviets too.

The Holocaust was for the Jews only.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Yup, malign neglect very much was a tool of the "Holocaust". The heightened death rates of Jews in the Ghettos or in transit were the result of malign neglect.

Nor is everyone agreed that "The Holocaust was for the Jews only.", though that is the common usage.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

It wasn't really malign neglect. The Nazis factually didn't have enough food for the Jews and the Poles so they allocated them almost none.

From Hitler's point of view, it was reasonable - if your ship is sinking you need to throw abroad the least valuable cargo first,
in the vein of "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on".

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Nope. The Nazis had enough food, though the possibility that they might not have certainly worried Hitler after the dire effects of the British blockade in WWI. They just weren't yet prepared to further ration their own people. At no point in the war were masses of Germans starving to death in their own homes! Not in 1942 and not even in 1945.

Allocating almost no food to others is a perfect example of "malign neglect"!

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

"The Nazis had enough food" is false and not supported by any evidence. Don't push fake history for ideological reasons.

A constant concern was the supply of meat and bread. In April 1940, Herbert Backe had little choice but to cut meat rations, and he did so again the following year. In the summer of 1941, the amount of meat available to a normal consumer had shrunk to 400 grams, just a little more than half of the amount of the first ration introduced in August 1939.
Nineteen forty-one also saw the beginning of potato rationing. When hopes for a quick victory in the East evaporated and advances on the Russian front stalled, the food situation deteriorated further. Alarmed by a bad harvest and increasing shortages in manpower and food, Nazi economic planners feared a repetition of World War I. A sweet treat for Christmas—everybody received 125 grams of marzipan—was to camouflage the shortages and brighten the mood.
Goebbels's worries about how reduced rations would affect the morale of the people led to the government's explicit directive to do anything to avoid further reductions in food allocations to Germans. Taking as many resources as possible from the occupied countries became the highest priority.

But it would only get worse in the following months. More ration cuts were introduced in February 1942, reductions that left the normal consumer with only 300 grams of bread. The situation remained socially explosive. Darre's optimism had been misplaced, and he would pay for this with his job. His ongoing conflicts with Goring over food rations culminated in his removal from his ministerial position in spring 1942. He was officially put on medical leave since the regime did not want to create the impression that problems in food supplies had demanded a change in leadership.

Herbert Backe, the administrator of the efficient food-rationing system, had long gained the confidence of Goring and Hitler, and took over his former boss's portfolio Backe's main concern remained the supply of food, and in his mind only the ruthless exploitation of the occupied territories in the East could alleviate the situation.

The war—while supposedly launched to bring bread and employment to Germans—greatly hampered agricultural production and quickly diminished food reserves. The military draft and new opportunities in the expanding war industries led to a serious shortage of farm labor. The workload for those who stayed in the countryside dramatically increased. Farmers' wives and daughters remained on the farm while their husbands and brothers left for the front or for better paying industrial jobs. Rationalization and investment in agriculture slowed down since the demands of the war economy gave priority to armaments production.

Since horses were requisitioned for the war effort as well, fewer draft animals were available to help with the hard labor on the farm. Fuel shortages, the lack of spare parts, and shortages in artificial fertilizer further affected agricultural output. Agricultural production did not keep up with the overall economic growth, and a more radical solution had to be found to meet German nutritional needs.
Nazi Hunger Politics: A History of Food in the Third Reich by Gesine Gerhard

[Sid Guttridge]

hiwm,

None of which contradicts what I posted;

The Nazis had enough food, though the possibility that they might not have certainly worried Hitler after the dire effects of the British blockade in WWI. They just weren't yet prepared to further ration their own people. At no point in the war did masses of Germans starve to death in their own homes! Not in 1942 and not even in 1945.

Allocating almost no food to others is a perfect example of "malign neglect"!

It is also worth pointing out that the Nazis' fears about food shortages were entirely the result of their own policies!

Cheers,

Sid.

[George L Gregory]

Hi GLG,

You really should aim higher than History 101!

As you favour Wikipedia as a source, try this one on the Einsatzgruppen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgr ... viet_Union

It includes, "Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen, related agencies, and foreign auxiliary personnel killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million of the 5.5 to 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust."

The definition of "Holocaust" is up for debate, not settled.

In pursuing that debate, perhaps now you would answer my earlier question:

"Hundreds of thousands of Jews had been killed before the Wansee Conference by Einsatzgruppen, gas vans, malign neglect, etc.

They were murdered by the same organizations following the same ideology and leadership as those who died later.

On what grounds are they to be arbitrarily excluded from being victims of the so-called "Holocaust"?"

Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Sid.

Wikipedia is not my “favourite source”, but it’s easy to use for history 101 stuff. I’ve cited and referenced many different sources so Wikipedia is hardly my “favourite source”.

None of the examples you have posted change any thing about the definition of the Holocaust.

Before 1941 there wasn’t a decision to exterminate Jews as an official policy. Up until 1940 Hitler agreed with Himmler that the extermination of a people was “un-German” and a Bolshevik method. It was sometime in December 1941 when Hitler agreed to exterminate the Jews as an official policy.

[wm]

The Germans didn't starve because millions of useless eaters were eliminated (and because of the impossible to foresee miracle in 1943) - not because they had enough food.

This decision to extend the Hungerplan to other occupied eastern territories shows how closely food policy and the Holocaust were connected.

In 1942, the mass murder of Jews accelerated dramatically. Responding to the protest of administrators that they could not cut Polish rations any further, Backe stated:
"In the General Government, there are currently still 3.5 million Jews. Poland is to be sanitized within the coming year."

The directive was implemented quickly and efficiently. All food was to be extracted from the General Government, and the death camps in Treblinka, Chelmno, and Belzec were made fully operational. By the end of 1942, very few Polish Jews were still alive.

At the same time, a good fall harvest in the General Government had greatly increased food deliveries to Germany and secured food rations. In 1942-1943, more than half of the rye and potato imports and 66 percent of oat imports came from the General Government.
The Hungerplan had worked. Rations in Germany were not cut any further while millions of "useless eaters" in Poland and the Soviet Union were killed. The Nazi hunger policy had expedited the final solution.
Nazi Hunger Politics: A History of Food in the Third Reich by Gesine Gerhard

[gebhk]

Hi Guys

Pleased don't be insulted, but what was an interesting discussion is turning into a somewhat pointless argument about which arbitrary definitions of a bunch of arbitrary pigeonholes are the 'right' ones and increasingly divorced from the topic in hand. It would appear that the stumbling block is the definition of a 'Nazi'. All that is required is that we agree upon a definition because there is no 'right' one.

We also should probably have to agree that political movements do not stay the same - I would hazard a guess that the Conservative Party of Boris Johnson is not the same party as that of Margaret Thatcher, let alone of Sir Robert Peel.

We also probably have to agree that there are degrees of involvement - is someone who votes for the Nazis necessarily a Nazi? I would suggest not. No doubt many people vote for a particular party because they see it as 'the least of all evils' rather than something they believe in. So who are the Nazis? It's Gurus? Its leaders? The party members? The populace herded into party organisation? How does the definition of Nazism differ within and outside the party? Is there a difference between the aims and objectives of the movement and its political manifesto? Put another way, are we defining Nazism as the movement, the party or the Nazi state?

We also probably have to agree that you do not have to believe in/agree with every tenet (or even, in the extreme, in any tenet) of the party faith to support it. So is someone who is an active party member for personal benefit but does not agree with or believe any of its principles, nevertheless still a Nazi?

Bestest
K

[George L Gregory]

Hi gebhk,

I agree with you. Unfortunately Sid has a tendency to post on threads and divert them away from their original topics. Such behaviour can easily be observed if you read the posts he has posted on other threads.

And, I get the feeling that he enjoys being a contrarian and often the devil’s advocate.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi GLG,

You post, "Wikipedia is not my “favourite source”, but it’s easy to use for history 101 stuff. I’ve cited and referenced many different sources so Wikipedia is hardly my “favourite source”." Where did I write anything about it being your "favourite source"? I didn't. Please don't make things up and put them in spurious quotes.

Apology accepted.

You post, "None of the examples you have posted change any thing about the definition of the Holocaust." There is no "definition of the Holocaust". There are at least three options and no adjudicating committee passing judgement on a definitive answer.

Do you remember when you posted, "Most Holocaust historians define the Holocaust as the genocide of the European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945"? Well, I Googled it and one of the places it came up said the following immediately after it:

"Michael Gray, a specialist in Holocaust education, offers three definitions: (a) "the persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945", which views Kristallnacht in 1938 as an early phase of the Holocaust; (b) "the systematic mass murder of the Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945", which recognizes the policy shift in 1941 toward extermination; and (c) "the persecution and murder of various groups by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945", which includes all the Nazis' victims, a definition that fails, Gray writes, to acknowledge that only the Jews were singled out for annihilation. Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, in The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (2000), favor a definition that focuses on the Jews, Roma and handicapped: "the systematic, state-sponsored murder of entire groups determined by heredity" ."

Perhaps if you hadn't chosen to favour Wikipedia on this occasion, you might have run into it.

You post, "Before 1941 there wasn’t a decision to exterminate Jews as an official policy. Up until 1940 Hitler agreed with Himmler that the extermination of a people was “un-German” and a Bolshevik method. It was sometime in December 1941 when Hitler (presumably) agreed to exterminate the Jews as an official policy." All that is (presumably) true.

But it still doesn't address my question: "Hundreds of thousands of Jews had been killed before the Wansee Conference by Einsatzgruppen, gas vans, malign neglect, etc.

They were murdered by the same organizations following the same ideology and leadership as those who died later.

On what grounds are they to be arbitrarily excluded from being victims of the so-called "Holocaust"?"

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

No, it's not arbitrary.
It's a difference between
a driven by irrational impulses Hitler, hell-bent on destroying the Jews from day one, and
a rational Hitler that, at the end of 1941, came to the conclusion that the Holocaust was a military necessity.

[Peter89]

No, it's not arbitrary.
It's a difference between
a driven by irrational impulses Hitler, hell-bent on destroying the Jews from day one, and
a rational Hitler that, at the end of 1941, came to the conclusion that the Holocaust was a military necessity.

You claim it was a military necessity to expulse the majority of the minds behind the Manhattan project?

[Peter89]

On what grounds are they to be arbitrarily excluded from being victims of the so-called "Holocaust"?

Holocaust wasn't a single step from normal life to the concentration camps.

I imagine it as a ladder that leads downwards, step by step. If you think about it, some features of the Holocaust can be found in other eras or other regimes, but it was still unique because it was the lowest where humankind has arrived - yet.

In a wider sense, Holocaust began with the antisemitic laws that led to the Kristallnacht - before the war even began.

However, views might differ from which point can it be called "Holocaust"; anti-semitism wasn't a Nazi or a "German only" thing, nor it was restricted to the XX. century. Other regimes walked down that ladder deep enough, and of course other religious and ethnic groups were and are subjected to discrimination, abuse, deliberate starvation and whatnot. So even if it made no sense as wm mentioned, the line between the Holocaust and the non-Holocaust antisemitism is hard to draw.