Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#16

Post by wm » 08 Jul 2021, 19:33

The problem is that properly organized extermination was basically indistinguishable from resettlement.

During the Holocaust, only the crews of death camps needed to know that the Jews were killed, for all the others the cover story was sufficient, i.e., that they were going to be resettled in the East where food was plenty and workforce badly needed.
The cover story didn't have to be included in any plans (including the Wannsee Protocol) - only the trains rerouted at some point of their journey.
In practice, It wasn't that perfect but good enough.

As result in many ghettos in occupied Poland Jews boarded the death trains willingly - suspecting nothing. Most of their reluctance stemmed from the desire to stay in the nice and known family town/city, not from the knowledge of their fate.
Even in 1944 the Jews from the West, the Hungarian Jews arrived at death camps totally unaware of their fate.

Yes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar but we have no means to decide was it or not.

User avatar
Sheldrake
Member
Posts: 3726
Joined: 28 Apr 2013, 18:14
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#17

Post by Sheldrake » 08 Jul 2021, 20:46

The Nazis saw the slavs as native labour to work on the farms of the master race, a bit like British rule in Africa and Asia. However, the consequences of the German strategy to seize and divert food from the Ukraine to Germany resulted in the deaths from starvation of millions of people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan Arguably the holocaust was merely a logical extension to the Hunger plan, disposing of some millions of people in German held areas that the Nazis would rather not feed.


User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#18

Post by wm » 08 Jul 2021, 23:51

We don't know that, Hitler never told us why he did it. Most likely there were many reasons. Himmler usually claimed the Jews were mortal enemies of Germany, a direct threat to its existence.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#19

Post by michael mills » 09 Jul 2021, 09:32

In historical reality, there were not millions of deaths from starvation in the German-occupied regions of the Soviet Union. That point is made in the book by Christian Gerlach, "Kalkulierte Morde". He says that the German occupation authorities had expected a large-scale famine during the winter of 1941-42, based on the prediction made by Backe in his food-extraction plan, and were surprised in the spring of 1942 to find that the famine had not occurred after all. Gerlach also makes the point that the German authorities did not then try to exterminate the civilian population by other means.

There were two reasons why the implementation of the food extraction plan did not cause a large-scale famine. The first was that Backe's plan was based on faulty premises; there was not a clear division between the food-surplus and the food-deficit areas, so it proved impossible to seal them off completely from each other, with the result that the amount of food diverted to Germany was far less than Backe had predicted, indeed less than was obtained from France.

The second reason was that the amount of grain that Goering had demanded to be extracted from the food-surplus regions was actually less than had been exported from those regions during the 1930s. Accordingly, even if that amount of grain had actually been extracted, which it was not, that extraction would not have caused a famine of such a magnitude as to cause mass starvation.

In fact, where starvation did occur was in the non-occupied Soviet territory, particularly in the Ural area and Central Asia. That was because several million people had been hastily evacuated to those regions from the area that came under German occupation, without making adequate arrangements for the provision of food to them. Since the regions where the evacuees were now located were cut off from the main food-producing areas now under German occupation, there was a drastic food shortage in those regions, and there are reports of malnourished workers in the Ural region falling dead at their workplaces.

A by-product of the mass-evacuation to the Soviet interior was that the urban food-consuming population in the German-occupied areas was greatly reduced, which is an additional reason why the expected famine did not occur there.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#20

Post by wm » 09 Jul 2021, 15:20

So in the end the planned mass starvation was an intended but not malicious consequence of Operation Barbarossa - nothing personal, strictly war.

User avatar
Sheldrake
Member
Posts: 3726
Joined: 28 Apr 2013, 18:14
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#21

Post by Sheldrake » 09 Jul 2021, 15:42

wm wrote:
09 Jul 2021, 15:20
So in the end the planned mass starvation was an intended but not malicious consequence of Operation Barbarossa - nothing personal, strictly war.
....Not sure that the term "not malicious" really fits when applied to the starvation of the urban populations of the Soviet Union. Sopme of this was close and personal, such as preventing people in Kiev for receiving food.
“The removal from Ukraine of surplus agricultural products to provide the Reich with supplies is possible on condition that the internal consumption in Ukraine should be reduced to the minimum. This will be achieved through the following measures:
1. The destruction of the unnecessary mouths (Jews), and residents of big Ukrainian cities, such as Kiev, will be getting no food supplies at all;
2. Through cutting to the maximal food quota for Ukrainian urban dwellers…”

The order issued on the very first day of the occupation called for handing over surplus food under the pain of death. A family could keep no more than a one-day supply of food. Stores were closed. Ration cards were issued as late as December to buy 200 grams of bread a day. Fats, meat, sugar and other foods were not included. The mayor reported to his superiors that people bloated from starvation began appearing on the streets.
https://www.bsb-muenchen.de/mikro/lit487.pdf

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#22

Post by David Thompson » 09 Jul 2021, 16:05

For more on the Nazi plan to create an artificial famine in the USSR by plunder, see the exchanges in the "Life in Occupied Russia" thread beginning at
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 968#589968. See also:

The Ost Plan
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=249975
Generalplan Ost
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=20050
German Plans to Seize Food from the Soviet Union
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=11976
Generalplan Ost revisited
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=96574
The "artificial" famine in the German-occupied USSR
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=203766
Nazi occupation policies for the USSR
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=61454
Hitler's plans for Ostland -- Fuehrer Conference 16 Jul 1941
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=60772

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#23

Post by wm » 10 Jul 2021, 02:22

Sheldrake wrote:
09 Jul 2021, 15:42
....Not sure that the term "not malicious" really fits when applied to the starvation of the urban populations of the Soviet Union. Sopme of this was close and personal, such as preventing people in Kiev for receiving food.
The phrase nothing personal, it's just business was invented by the Jewish gangster Otto Berman, it meant that they were killing people not because they hated them but because their existence threatened in some way their sources of income.
Similarly, the Hunger Plan was needed to win the war, the Nazis believed the war was unwinnable without it.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#24

Post by michael mills » 10 Jul 2021, 04:16

In regard to Kiev, its population had already been substantially reduced by the evacuation of a large part of it by the Soviet authorities before it was captured by the German forces. In particular, the great majority of the Jewish population of the city was evacuated.

Once the city was in German hands, it was sealed off and no food was allowed to be brought in. However, the German occupiers did not prevent the population from leaving the city and going to the countryside, since it was the German policy to encourage a return to the farms to increase the food-producing population.

But the fact is that there was no mass starvation in Kiev. There was a bread factory where the former players of the Dynamo soccer team were employed, the players who took part in the so-called "soccer match of death" that has become the source of so much lurid mythologising.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#25

Post by michael mills » 10 Jul 2021, 07:16

The list of German documents held in the Soviet archives linked by Sheldrake is interesting, but it does not support the claim of a German intention to exterminate or at the least decimate the population of Kiev by starvation.

The introduction to the list states this about the operation of the native Ukrainian administration subject to German supervision:
The Council did much to restore normal life in the city. The document entitled “One Year in Liberated Kiev” summed up the Council’s actions during the first year of the occupation. Three municipal power plants were rebuilt; the water supply system pumped 55,000 to 60,000 cubic meters of water a day; a special 8-kilometer tram line between Pushcha and Bucha with a bridge over the Irpen’ was built to carry peat; 18,000 families were given land to grow vegetables; 45,985 vouchers for living space were issued; 918 trucks and 252 cars were repaired; 21 wagon trains with 286 horses were formed; 56,000 RMs (Raummeters or, roughly, cubic meters) of firewood were procured for municipal needs; A telephone exchange serving 2,000 numbers and 18 post offices was established; 92 food stores, 19 meat shops, 17 consumer goods stores, 32 stalls, 71 kiosks, and 22 soup kitchens for the disabled opened for business; and 13,000 children of 7 to 11 years of age went to 59 elementary schools. The opera house, Ukrainian Choir, Bandurist Capella, Operetta Theater, Puppet Theater, conservatory of music, one dancing school, two schools of music, the Zoo, and the Botanical Garden also opened within the first year.”2
The existence of food stores, meat shops and soup kitchens is obviously not consistent with a policy of imposing starvation on the people of Kiev. The other functions of the Council indicate a policy of re-establishing normal civilian life, even with cultural activities.

Other parts of the introduction suggest that the policy of the German occupiers was not to exterminate the population (apart from the remaining Jews who had not been evacuated by the Soviet authorities), but rather to use it for labour in the German war effort to the greatest extent possible.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#26

Post by michael mills » 10 Jul 2021, 07:45

David Thompson has provided a link to the discussion of this topic on the thread "Life in Occupied Russia".

Here is my contribution to that discussion back in 2004, which summarises my view on this matter:

viewtopic.php?p=604416#p604416

1999
Member
Posts: 15
Joined: 24 Jun 2021, 09:44
Location: Spain

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#27

Post by 1999 » 16 Jul 2021, 15:01

But we are not in a logic of massacre but rather of "letting die". The General Plan Ost wanted to move several tens of millions of people beyond the Urals. Given the circumstances of their evacuation and the nature of the Siberian land, it is obvious that it will be a massacre. Millions of Jews and Slavs would die of hunger and cold.
In fact, on closer inspection, we return to the logic of the Madagascar Plan. The undesirable elements are sent to a land where it is well known that the people will die like flies - Madagascar is one of the poorest islands in the world and the majority of the Jews are city dwellers not used to farming.
In the case of the General Plan Ost, the Urals is to the Reich what the Rhine was to the Roman Empire: a border between civilization and barbarians. The idea of the General Plan Ost is not to massacre but to let the undesirable populations die, probably in order to restore the "racial balance" between the enslaved subhumans and their Arian masters.
We don't forget that Nazis saw Reich like a second Roman Empire.

snpol
Member
Posts: 245
Joined: 22 Aug 2017, 14:35
Location: Moscow

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#28

Post by snpol » 16 Jul 2021, 17:18

wm wrote:
23 Apr 2021, 09:54
The gas chambers were dismantled, and death camps razed to the ground very quickly in 1943 - that proves they weren't needed anymore.
As a Russian (and thus a Slav) I doubt that the Nazis intentionally planned to exterminate Slavs (at least all Slavs). It should be said that Northern Russians frequently are tall, blonde or nearly blonde and apparently fit to Nazi racial standards. So many could be just Germanized. Famous Russian Chess champion Alekhin being French officer was captured as a POW and lived in Nazi Germany. He even wrote a book about 'Arian Chess' how they differ from 'Non Arian' Chess. Russian actress Chekhova was one of favorite ones for Hitler.
As an engineer (though in power energetics) I doubt that German engineers would propose gas chambers as a technical solution for mass murder. It is unsafe, technically too difficult, requires production of gas and sophisticated equipment. At the same time there are obvious cheap and practical methods for the task. Use any proper underground, fill it with water, wait 10 minutes, pump water out and that's all. It's very inexpensive and reliable method for mass extermination.
Yes, Nazis were cruel, inhuman but they were not idiots. At least not all of them.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#29

Post by wm » 16 Jul 2021, 23:31

Water-soaked bodies (with water in the lungs) wouldn't burn easily and the disposal of the bodies was the bottleneck of the operation.
Zyklon B was very safe and is produced to this day (if I'm not mistaken) because it's an excellent pesticide. It's not like you're going to die by inhaling it once or twice.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Did the Nazis intend to exterminate the Slavs?

#30

Post by wm » 17 Jul 2021, 00:07

1999 wrote:
16 Jul 2021, 15:01
But we are not in a logic of massacre but rather of "letting die". The General Plan Ost wanted to move several tens of millions of people beyond the Urals. Given the circumstances of their evacuation and the nature of the Siberian land, it is obvious that it will be a massacre. Millions of Jews and Slavs would die of hunger and cold.
The usable and arable territory behind the Urals was larger than entire Europe and included Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, and Mongolia. The West Siberian Plain and Primorye were heavily industrialized (including the famous Magnitogorsk.) It wasn't like behind the Urals the gates of hell were located, see below (the A-A line is in red, the map is from the forties), actually numerous large cities and industrial regions were located there:
A-A line.jpeg
1999 wrote:
16 Jul 2021, 15:01
In fact, on closer inspection, we return to the logic of the Madagascar Plan. The undesirable elements are sent to a land where it is well known that the people will die like flies.
That assumes the Nazi planners knew that, and they almost certainly didn't, Madagascar looked good on the map, not that many people knew that it was unsuitable for colonization.

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”