Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[LemmyCaution]

the Posen speech= a couple of paragraphs
following the header

The evacuation of the Jews

That's it. Proof positive out of a gazillion words and a gazillion documents.


pffffffffffffft

And Himmler clarified what he meant, as noted above and which you ignore (just as you ignore the questions which TSR and Moss asked you about the definition of Ausrotten), when Himmler explained at Posen, "Just as we did not hesitate on June 30 to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. . . . I am talking about the 'Jewish evacuation': the extermination of the Jewish people. . . . It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people is being exterminated,' every Party member will tell you, 'perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter.' . . . Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1000."

Himmler explained that evacuation really was extirpation, if you wish - which in his words was like the Night of the Long Knives when comrades were shot against the wall, so to speak, and involved dealing with even 1000 bodies lying together . . . and, again, in another speech shortly after this one said that the Fuhrer's intention was to rid earth of Jews. . . . I guess it's easier to post gaudy pink type without thought than to deal with the facts.

As to the many documents and sources of evidence, no, this one isn't the smoking gun. It's just one of many pieces . . .

 

[LemmyCaution]

Here is what an article at Holocaust Controversies blog argued about the term ausrotten, citing Goebbels' Total War speech:

Goebbels' Slip of the Tongue: 'Ausrott-Ausschaltung'

Kent Ford has kindly brought to my attention the moment when Goebbels unintentionally revealed that 'elimination' had become 'extermination.'

This moment comes from Goebbels' speech at the Sportpalast on 18th February 1943. The slip was captured on tape and can be heard here. Donald M. McKale's Hitler's Shadow War, p 311, refers to Goebbels' mistake as "a telling slip of the tongue," and has a translation that runs as follows:

but means to counter [the Jewish threat] in time and if necessary with the most complete and radical exterm- [correcting himself] elimination [Ausrott-Ausschaltung] of Jewry.

McKale adds:

The large crowd received Goebbels' words with applause, shouts of "out with the Jews," and laughter.

McKale's source is Jeremy Noakes' Nazism, 1919-1945, p. 239.

This slip is significant because, among other things, it destroys a denier gambit regarding Himmler's Posen speeches, whereby Himmler's use of elimination ['ausschaltung'] is deployed to minimize his use of 'ausrotten', such as in Porter's translation of this passage:

I am thinking now of the evacuation of the Jews, the extirpation of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that's easy to say: "The Jewish people will be extirpated" , says every Party comrade, "that's quite clear, it's in our programme: elimination of the Jews, extirpation ; that's what we're doing."

Goebbels' slip makes it clear that Himmler's usage conflates elimination, extirpation, evacuation and extermination because, when they are used in the context of the Final Solution, all of those terms amount to the mass murder of Jews. This is the opposite of the denier claim that Himmler's use of 'extermination' is just a hyperbolic expression of a policy that is really just 'ethnic cleansing' and forced deportation. If the denier claim were correct, there would be no need to use a stronger term than 'ausschaltung' or 'Säuberung' [cleansing] to describe Nazi policy. . . .

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2008/08/goebbels-slip-of-tongue-ausrott.html

You guys are stuck defending grotesquely ugly, criminal positions and policies.

 

[Dogzilla]

Do you ever reflect on the stupid things you post and go "ho boy, that was kind of dumb"?

I'll have to get back to you after I say something stupid. So far it hasn't been an issue.

Yes, the Nazis had a policy of removing Jews. They started off by various means of forced or voluntary deportation, until that policy failed to create the "solution" Hitler and his cronies wanted. Extermination became the final solution.

Seriously. Read a book or two on the subject. It would be 100% more books than you ever read on the subject (or possibly ever) and it would do you good.

Let me see if I understand you here. The Nazis had a policy of deporting Jews but Hitler and his cronies didn't get the results they wanted through deporting Jews so they eventually realized they needed to kill them? What results could they possibly have been seeking through deportation that could only be achieved by extermination? If Hitler and his cronies wanted the Jews out of Europe, deporting them would accomplish that. There's no need to exterminate them. If they wanted the Jews dead why do you think Hitler and his cronies would have chosen to go down the deportation path? Do you think Hitler and his cronies thought that deporting the Jews would kill them? When did Hitler and his cronies realize that the results they were seeking that could only be accomplished through extermination were not going to be realized by deporting?

Do you ever reflect on the stupid things you post and go "ho boy, that was kind of dumb"?

 

[Dogzilla]

I was quite surprised, and pleased, I must say, to read Dogzilla's post, which he threw up there with the calm confidence of a Christian with 4 aces, as Twain once described religious folk. This topic, where Europe's Jews went, is one deniers generally shun. Anyway, for someone who's passed about a half dozen times on answering where the Jews of Vilna went in the various National Socialist actions in that city, Dogzilla is certainly coming on all bold and brave for Team Denial on the "resettlement" claim.

So, recognizing that it takes books of 1000 pages to explain where the Jews of all of Europe went, let's hear from Dogzilla on (1) where, out of Europe, the Jews of the just following five cities were taken by the Germans and (2) how Dogzilla knows what happened to the Jews of these cities:

1. Vilna (Lithuania, Ostland)

2. Lodz (Warthegau)

3. Warsaw (General-Gouvernement)

4. Kiev (Ukraine)

5. Riga (Latvia, Ostland)

We should thank Dogzilla in advance for stepping up. It will be good to hear, finally, the denier case for Vilna, for example, not to mention the other cities. These are exciting times we live in, and Dogzilla's willingness finally to spell out the Team Denial view of National Socialist Jewish policy and its implementation is only part of the exhilaration we are in for these days.

Where they went? Let me see if I can remember how Nick Terry put it....Oh yeah. I don't know and I don't care.

 

[MG1962]

Where they went? Let me see if I can remember how Nick Terry put it....Oh yeah. I don't know and I don't care.

Probably you should care - It is one of the keystones of the whole holocaust theory. Show where they went and team holocaust is gonna make the Broncos look competitive

 

[Robrob]

Where they went? Let me see if I can remember how Nick Terry put it....Oh yeah. I don't know and I don't care.

Probably you should care - It is one of the keystones of the whole holocaust theory. Show where they went and team holocaust is gonna make the Broncos look competitive

Yep, without it they are simply JAQing off.

 

[Nick Terry]

Where they went? Let me see if I can remember how Nick Terry put it....Oh yeah. I don't know and I don't care.

But you should care. The fact that you don't care means you're totally unwilling and unable to answer the #1 question which is put to you guys time and again by quite ordinary people. It's the obvious, logical response to hearing the basic denier thesis. And it's equally obvious that deniers haven't got an answer worth hearing. So naturally you pretend the question doesn't exist, or misrepresent the implications, or handwave and say you don't know and you don't care. That's when you're not reacting with hissy fits to the apparent indignity of being asked a question.

It's my view that the reason why denial has completely failed to make any serious inroads into serious opinion is because you guys have been utterly unable to come up with a proper answer to that question. True, there are large numbers of people who refuse to listen to you because you are antisemites and Nazi apologists. There are more who refuse to listen because denier tactics are generally idiotic and often obnoxious. There are maybe even still others who notice the shoddy scholarship produced by denier gurus, or the lack of scholarship, and conclude that it must be baloney.

But there are plenty of people who are quite capable of seeing past those failings, and giving you guys a chance, to see what logic denial might have, for the sake of argument and to give you guys the benefit of the doubt. They're the people who might be persuaded if you had an answer. Except you don't have an answer. You don't know and you don't care.

 

[Dogzilla]

The Nazi Germans gassed Jews...

Forget the amount...They did it...The world knows it...

The Germans, in WW2, gassed Jewish people...and anyone else they didnt like..

Anyone who denies that...

Well...Lets hope we never meet...

DB

Veiled threats are not very persuasive. However, if the facts ain't on your side, I suppose violence is all you got.

 

[uke2se]

Veiled threats are not very persuasive. However, if the facts ain't on your side, I suppose violence is all you got.

Good thing the facts are on his side then.

 

[Dogzilla]

Nick was talking about the groups exempted from the Final Solution, which Hilberg discusses and which he outlined for you in his post above.

Nick was talking about Hilberg's discussion of Rosenstrasse, not Hilberg's discussion of different groups that were exempt from the Final Solution.

Regarding the Rosenstrasse gathering: Why is it so hard to understand the difficulty of distinguishing between a protest and a gathering of support, especially 70 years after the fact? The dividing line between the two is pretty fluid.

Whether you call it a protest or not isn't as big a deal. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a rebellion as wiki does but a large group of women gathering in the street could conceivably called a "protest." When you put this incident In the proper context it's not difficult understand or explain at all. It's only when you presume that Nazi Germany had made the decision to exterminate all the Jews--and had been implementing that policy for at least a year--that Rosenstrasse becomes an anomaly.

But more importantly, since it's well known that a defined set of small groups were exempt from extermination in the short term, why is the nature of the Rosenstrasse gathering relevant at all? I'd be more interested in hearing your answers to the questions posed to you about the Jäger report.

Which groups of Jews were temporarily exempt from extermination? How long were they going to be exempt from extermination? How do we know which groups were exempt from extermination? Be sure to look up "extermination" and "deportation" in the dictionary before you answer.

As to Jaeger, I answered all the questions. Actually Lemmycaution answered them for me. The more interesting questions are how the Jaeger report is evidence of a plan that hadn't been decided yet according to everybody except the extreme intentionalists and where does anybody get anything about gas chambers from that report?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Where they went? Let me see if I can remember how Nick Terry put it....Oh yeah. I don't know and I don't care.

Well then you should, first, stop making claims about Nazi policy and its implementation and that the Jews were deported and resettled, that they were caught up in antipartisan warfare, or that they killed in excesses and, second, stop posting here.

Your lack of caring transfers over into your lack of knowledge - which enables you to make claims you can't back up - your bothering to make claims at all being odd in that you don't care - and into your strawmanning, as you continually do, not having even read the core works, the narrative for the Holocaust.

We know, of course, you don't care about the Jews as people, or where they went or what happened to them - but that isn't the question: if you want to argue that the National Socialist policy was deportation, and that the National Socialists implemented a resettlement program, you have to have a better answer to where and how you know than "I don't care." If you want to be anything other than a running gag.

I do think it is telling that you care right up to the point where you actually have to do something, rather than simply be incredulous.

We had a denier here who cared enough to manipulate dates, places, statements, and the like. To invent fictitious forgery factories. To lie about chain of custody. He cared because he wanted to get people hopping mad. Even he, caring so much, couldn't tackle this core issue - if the National Socialists didn't carry through on their threats to exterminate the Jews, what did they do, where did Europe's Jews go, and what is the evidence? You, with your flippancy and lack of knowledge, come up even short of his low standard.

Everyone here knows that your now-stated inability to answer simple, critical questions about the Holocaust and about your own claims will not stop you in the future from making your same baseless claims when it suits you. Because most of you guys, if you don't tire of being take for clowns when you imagine yourself bold iconoclasts, just continue on.

Anyway, thanks for the admission of bankruptcy - for your own part and that of Team Denial.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Nick was talking about Hilberg's discussion of Rosenstrasse, not Hilberg's discussion of different groups that were exempt from the Final Solution.

Actually, you're wrong again. Nick was NOT talking about Hilberg's supposed discussion of Rosentrasse. He was urging you to understand how the National Socialists categorized people and defined Jews - and how that related to the Final Solution - by reading the background in Hilberg. He even tried to clarify this by writing, in his excellent post, that

uke2se has already recommended you read up on the Nuremberg Laws and the Wannsee Conference. That was after I drew your attention to the extensive discussion of these issues in Hilberg, whose book you have claimed repeatedly to have read and opined about on numerous occasions.

It is really not difficult to grasp the fact that the Nazis treated German and Austrian Jews with a degree of circumspection that was utterly absent in Poland and the occupied Soviet Union. That's because whereas the aim was a total solution, in practice separating German and Austrian Jews from the 'Aryan' population was always going to be tough due to the degree of intermarriage and the existence of mixed-race (by Nazi standards) offspring . . .

This, clearly, is background on National Socialist racial policy, not a description of Rosenstrasse, an event I do not believe Hilberg covered.

Whether you call it a protest or not isn't as big a deal. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a rebellion as wiki does but a large group of women gathering in the street could conceivably called a "protest." When you put this incident In the proper context it's not difficult understand or explain at all. It's only when you presume that Nazi Germany had made the decision to exterminate all the Jews--and had been implementing that policy for at least a year--that Rosenstrasse becomes an anomaly.

It is a little odd for you, who come across to be just learning about this event, to lecture on how it should be understood. That little matter aside, the event isn't an anomaly at all but is in line with the background information and the policies toward different groups Nick was trying to teach you about.

Not to introduce another topic, but, to take as a point of comparison, SS policy toward Zigeuner was ultimately differentiated according to specific factors - in the East, nomadic Zigeuner were targeted for elimination, whilst in the Reich it was settled half-castes who were arrested, and sent to camps, like Auschwitz. The pure-blood Zigeuner were to be sterilized, not deported from the Reich. As a result of the differentiated policy, about 20,000 Reich Zigeuner classified as half-castes were sent to Auschwitz, where a further selection for labor took place and about 1000 were sent back to labor camps; the Reich Zigeuner were interned at Auschwitz with Zigeuner who had been rounded up in the east. In preparation for the Hungarian action in spring '44 those Zigeuner who had survived up to that point, close to 6000, were gassed.

None of this is anomalous but perfectly in accordance with SS policy; in the same way, differing treatment for different groups of Jews is not anomalous but the logical outcome of a policy you don't understand. That is all that is going on here and causing you such angst.

As to Jaeger, I answered all the questions.

No, you didn't. You made claims which you failed to support when asked to do so. And repeatedly ran away from the questions about your claims.

The more interesting questions are how the Jaeger report is evidence of a plan that hadn't been decided yet according to everybody except the extreme intentionalists and where does anybody get anything about gas chambers from that report?

It isn't evidence of a plan that wasn't yet decided, as I explained to you. It is evidence of the Germans' intent and actions taken to free the Baltics of Jews, by murdering the Jews living there, by means mostly of open air shootings, prior to the decision being taken to murder all of Europe's Jews. According to Jaeger himself, about 2/3 of the Jews living in Lithuania were murdered prior to December 1941 as part of this action - and yet you described what happened there as resettlement, antipartisan warfare, and local excesses. (Historians put the figure at 8 of 10 Lithuanian Jews killed by the end of 1941, but let's stick with Jaeger.) When asked to explain your claims, you clammed up for 2-3 weeks and finally declared you don't care - only after that to continue to spout nonsense.

The Jaeger Report describes in some detail who was murdered in Lithuania (over 130,000 of the country's 200,000 or so Jews), why (to free the area of Jews), why the murders were brought to a conclusion temporarily (to leave behind a remnant of Jews for labor), and how (by carefully staged open air shootings). Ignoring what Jaeger wrote, and claiming not to care, you try to excuse yourself for your mendacity. As Stephen Colbert has explained of American politics, the same is true of denial: "I can't prove it, but I can say it." In fact, according to you, you don't even need to care about the things you spout off about.

 

[LemmyCaution]

As to Jaeger, I answered all the questions. Actually Lemmycaution answered them for me. The more interesting questions are how the Jaeger report is evidence of a plan that hadn't been decided yet according to everybody except the extreme intentionalists and where does anybody get anything about gas chambers from that report?

Let's look another way at what Dogzilla has been unable to answer.

When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Lithuania having been incorporated into the Soviet Union, Vilna had a Jewish population of about 60,000.

Of these, at most 3,000 Jews successfully got out of the city and made their way to the east.

The Jaeger Report itself details the following murders for "City of Wilno," just to take one city in Lithuania, between 8 August and the end of November 1941:

Jews [men]: 5,904
Jewish women: 10,691
Jewish children: 4,639
Communists: 21
Poles, others: 19

Subtotal Jews: 21,234
Subtotal others: 39
Total: 21,273

(My numbers are a couple 100s off from Arad's; I can't find why - but his and mine are close. My guess is that the discrepancies have to do with minor arithmetic errors which Roland Headland noted in Jaeger's report - to take just one error, not mentioned by Headland, Jaeger's subtotals for the 2 September killings add to 3,700, whilst his total is 3,704.)

Jaeger's Report covers the activity of his EK 3 beginning 8 August and thus excludes the murders carried out in Vilna during July and early August by EK 9 and other units; the number of Jewish victims in these executions totaled about 6,500. Many of these murders are listed in the Eriegnismeldungen.

Another 500 or so Jews were shot within the city of Vilna, during roundups and other operations. This is a rough, low-end estimate.

Further, for reasons unknown, Jaeger didn't list the Yom Kippur action (round ups in Vilna on 1 October, shootings at Ponar on 2 October), which, according to Arad, figured in the trial of Martin Weiss and was given attention in 4-5 different Jewish sources, including Kruk, and in passing by Sakowicz; the number of Jews killed at Ponar in this action was 3,900.

A few small actions (the so-called Underworld Action, Pink Pass Action) killed about 850 more Jews in December.

Adding together Jaeger's tally with the other tallies gives us the approximate number of Vilna Jews murdered in summer and fall 1941, about whom Dogzilla doesn't care: 33,000.

(Jaeger listed 15,000 Work Jews and families still alive 1 December in Vilna. Perhaps 5,000 Jews were living illegally in the city - underground, without work cards, etc. Another few thousand, given events in Vilna, fled to Belorussia, where the situation was "quieter" at this time. Taking the number killed, those who fled east at the time of the invasion, the Work Jews, Jews living illegally in Vilna, and those who fled the city probably into Belorussia gives us approximately 60,000 - the pre-invasion Jewish population.)

Every historian who has studied the sources has concluded that more than 30,000 of Vilna's 60,000 Jews were murdered by the National Socialists and their Lithuanian partisan helpers during summer and fall of 1941.

Dogzilla, not caring and not having studied the matter, says he knows better. For one thing, he claims that what were really German operations against partisans are misunderstood by historians as anti-Jewish actions. Yet Jaeger described the purpose and result of his actions as being to free Lithuania of Jews; gave a total of over 21,000 Jews killed, including over 4,600 Jewish children, and just 39 others; and did not mention anti-partisan fighting (the only partisans mentioned in his report were the Lithuanian units allied with and subordinated to the Germans - and in fact Jaeger described the freeing of some Communist prisoners, after punishment and with severe warnings).

Dogzilla, not caring and not having studied the matter, says he knows better than historians who do care and have studied these events - and claims that the operations described by Jaeger were ethnic cleansing by the UN definition. Yet Jaeger's report - and the other sources meshing with it - described extermination actions, by shooting, netting over half the Jews living in a city where a significant number were kept alive, temporarily, for labor. Jaeger never mentioned a deportation of Vilna's Jews to a new region - he described only mass murder actions with almost exclusively Jewish victims.

Dogzilla, not caring and not having studied the matter, says he knows better and that the murders in Vilna (which he variously characterizes as not murder at all - resettlement operations - or as legitimate antipartisan warfare?!?!?!) were unapproved, rogue activities by low level soldiers. Yet Jeager was not a private but a Standartenfuhrer, and he referenced in his report the approval process, which resulted in a halt to the murder operations, to leave about 35,000 Jews alive for forced labor - after more than 130,000 Lithuanian Jews and, under his command, 21,000 Vilna Jews had been murdered. And his report was the basis for the section on Lithuania in later reports prepared by his superior, SS Brigadefuhrer Franz Walter Stahlecker, commander of EG A, on the killing operations in Reichskommissariat Ostland.

Frankly, I can see why Dogzilla has declared lack of interest and decided both to move on and, when it suits him, to repeat his fictional version of the eastern killings. He has no choice, because engaging the sources brings crashing down his house of cards and shows him to be the uninformed, mindless negationist he is.

 

[Dogzilla]

Here is Dogzilla's second opportunity in two days to enlighten us with the denier research and argument on where Europe's Jews were deported to.

Nick was the guy who said they were deported. In the post just before this one, you said to CM:

Does he think Nick Terry or I to be surprised by the problem of mixed marriages and Mischlinge in German Jewish policy? Especially when Peter Longerich (remember him? he's the historian whose statement denier LGR distorted on purpose earlier in this thread) wrote this of how Wannsee approach these "marginal" groups, in Holocaust: "the category of those to be deported had to be established: the status of Mischlinge and those married to non-Jews had to be clarified. . . . However, by being included in the detailed discussion of the problems surrounding Mischlinge and 'mixed marriages', the representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy came to share knowledge of and responsibility for the 'Final Solution'. For, with the concerns they raised against the inclusion of the marginal groups in the deportations, the representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy had made it plain that they had no concerns about the principle of deportation per se."

Why don't you tell us where these people were deported to?

 

[Nick Terry]

Nick was the guy who said they were deported. In the post just before this one, you said to CM:

Why don't you tell us where these people were deported to?

Jesus, but this is poor trolling from you, Dogzilla. The deportation destinations are well known and described on numerous websites, in reference works and history books. The conventional version tracks the fate of the deportees and determines that the overwhelming majority vanished into various death camps. The ones that survived remained in various ghettos and camps, their subsequent fate is documented quite copiously.

You, however, don't seem to have the first clue what happened to the deportees, even though you say that 'nobody denies deportations'. Great! Tell us what happened to them, offering something more substantive than 'I don't know and I don't care'.

If you don't tell us what happened to them, then nobody is going to give a flying monkey's about your position, since it will not replace the current version of history with a new explanation.

 

[Dogzilla]

Get serious and stop posting recycled trash.

Here is some of the "context" of the Posen speech:You'd do better to take the approach of the RODOH regulars from 2, 3 years ago, when they realized the problem with the Posen speech and decided it was a fake - going so far as to try to raise money to get a speech expert to analyze Himmler's voice on the recording. Here is where Team Denial really misses LGR, who could always be counted to throw in the Moscow Forgery Factories . . . or doctor a statement of a historian . . . or make up an address to suit his purposes . . . or lie about dates . . .

"U.S. land forces on Guadalcanal island are contuing a slow-moving but relentless campaign to exterminate a steadily weakening enemy, the navy disclosed today" Eugene Register-Guard Dec. 4, 1942

"It took 2900 tons of explosives, millions of rounds of machine-gun bulllets, 1026 Americans killed and 2557 wounded to exterminate the Japanese who held a mile square spot of land in the Gilbert Island group." Miami News Dec 4, 1943

"Halsey, asked about the attitude of the Japanese fighting men whom he has defeated in the south Pacific, declared that "the Japanese still are like rats and fight until they are exterminated. We are perfectly willing to exterminate them. If they want to die for the dear old emperor we are still perfectly willing to kill them.'" Spokane Daily Chronicle July 25, 1944

"Governor Ernest Gruening of Alaska, in an interview Thursday, said the doom of the Japanese on the island of Kiska in the Aleutians was sealed and it was not "a matter of can we exterminate them, it's just a matter of when.'" The Calgary Herald July 2, 1943

"...preparatory to a newly unified and intensified Allied blow to exterminate the Japanese in northern Burma." Youngstown Vindicator May 22, 1944

"Brig. Gen. Claire L. Chennault pledged himself and the American China Air Task Force today to drive the Japanese from China 'or exterminate him.'" The Rock Hill Herald Dec. 18, 1944

"The Japanese Foreign Minister Masayuki Tani, addressed the Japanese people on the subject ''The resolve to exterminate and overwhelm America and Britain.'" The Evening Independent Dec. 7. 1942

"Maj. Gen. Ralph A. Mitchell, director of marine aviation, said in an interview that the Japanese will have to be exterminated on Guadalcanal before the United States will be able to occupy other islands to the north." Eugene-Register-Guard Dec 4, 1942

"Stimson's report and the navy's communique indicated that if the weather remains good for flying, the task of exterminating the Japanese intruders will be greatly expedited" The Bulletin May 27, 1943


It sounds like both sides are capable of ratcheting up the chest thumping dominant male monkey rhetoric about the enemy during times of war. This is just a sample of public pronouncements about the United States plan to exterminate the Japanese that appeared in the press. Imagine what we could find if our access to American and British wartime documents was as complete as our access to German documents! I'm sorry to interrupt..what were you saying about Porno or Possum or Posies or what was it again?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Your request is a bit unclear, in that you first quote my reference to Europe's Jews and then another post I made on German Jews.

Broadly, with exceptions of course, Europe's Jews were deported to the death camps or to slave labor camps. Because of the method of selection, deportation was not always straightforward - and while most Jews were shipped to a killing site and murdered on arrival, many were assigned to forced labor, often being moved from camp to camp in the process.

As to German Jews, which I think is the question you are asking, I can give you a quick summary but recommend either of Peter Longerich's two recent books, Holocaust or Heinrich Himmler, for complete discussion as well as context.

Even before the extermination program, some Jews were deported from the Reich. As early as October 1939 the RHSA began planning instead for a Jewish “reservation” in occupied Poland. The initial plans were not firm and included deportation of Jews from the Katowice area, from the Reich and Ostmark, and from the Protectorate. The location to which Jews, possibly as many as 300,000, were to be sent was to Nisko, on the San River, and then perhaps from there further east. In late October nearly 5,000 Jews were deported to this area from Vienna, Katowice, and Mahrisch-Ostrau. These deportations were halted almost immediately in favor of larger-scale resettlement plans, involving Poles, Jews, and ethnic Germans. The plan for the Jewish reservation in Poland was eventually dropped.

As you know, because we’ve discussed it in this thread (it was over this matter that a previous member distorted historian Peter Longerich’s statement in the Irving trial), in 1940 the Germans considered mass expulsion of Jews to Madagascar. These plans did not materialize because of the progress, or lack thereof, in the war.

In 1940 Jews were deported from Stettin to Lublin region in Poland. Also that year several 1000s of Jews from Baden and the Saarpfalz in southwestern Germany were deported to areas of unoccupied France and interned at the Gurs camp. But Heydrich, commissioned in late 1940 to draw up a “project for a final solution,” developed a much more comprehensive plan to ship Jews from across Europe, by way of the General-Gouvernment, to the Soviet east, Hitler having decided in summer 1940 to invade the Soviet Union.

The Fuhrer did not decide in favor of mass deportations of Jews from the Reich and Protectorate until IIRC September 1941, with the initial transports leaving for “the eastern territories that the Reich acquired two years ago,” as Himmler wrote to Greiser of the Lodz part of this plan, “in order to be able to get rid of them further east next spring,” on 18 October. Originally, Himmler planned to ship 60,000 Jews to Lodz, but this number was reduced to 25,000 including Zigeuner. Chelmno began its murder operations in December, with the first executions of Lodz Jews taking place on 16 January 1942.

At this time, of course, the pit massacres were underway not only in the Ostland but also, for example, in the Ukraine. There is no evidence of the Germans' subsequently sending these Jews further east - while, as outlined below, there is abundant evidence for their eventual murder in one or another phase of the mass murders.

In November 1941, Jews were deported from the Reich and Protectorate to Minsk (where security police murdered 12,000 ghetto inmates to make room for 8,000 incoming western Jews). Transports were temporarily suspended in the middle of the month for logistical reasons.

In mid-November, before a camp to accommodate them had been completed, Reich Jews were shipped to Riga – the first five transports being diverted to Kaunus (Kovno), where 5,000 Reich Jews were slaughtered by EK 3 at the Ninth Fort. In Riga, to make room for Reich Jews there, over 20,000 local Jews were slaughtered by Jeckeln’s men.

The massacre of Reich Jews at Kaunus and a shooting of Berlin Jews on arrival at Riga were without Himmler’s approval, at this time his extermination orders targeting eastern Jews but not those from the Reich yet. Tens of 1000s Jews were sent to Minsk, Kaunus, Riga, and Lodz in these actions which began in fall 1941.

In spring 1942 more Reich Jews, along with Jews from Slovakia, were deported to Lublin district as Jews from that area were cleared out and sent to Belzec or Sobibor. Hitherto privileged (exempt) groups began to be deported as well, many of them to the so-called model old-age ghetto at Theresienstadt. In Lublin, when they arrived western Jews were selected for labor camps or sent into the ghetto which had been emptied. By late spring into summer, there was a shift in the treatment of western Jews coming to the General-Gouvernement, with the arriving Jews now being murdered, in a reversal of Himmler’s fall orders. Those arriving at Minsk were now being killed at Maly Trostinets, in either mass shootings or in gas vans. Deportations of Reich and Protectorate Jews from Lodz to Chelmno, for murder in gassing vans, began in the spring, with over 10,000 gassed. Other German Jews were being sent after May directly to Sobibor, with some Jews who’d been sent to Theresienstadt also being sent to the camp to be killed. During this time, tens of 1000s of more Jews from Germany were being sent to the Baltics and Belorussia and, after selections for labor, many were shot there. (The Jews interned in the “German” ghettos at Minsk and Riga were killed when the Germans liquidated these ghettos in 1943.) Himmler also made preparations at this time to have foreign workers brought from the east replace German Jews still working in German factories.

In fall 1942 orders were laid down even to clear prisons and concentration camps in the Reich of Jews, with the inmates being deported to Auschwitz or Lublin. A few months later, in February 1943, as more foreign workers came into the Reich, the Fabrikaction cleared the factories of Jews who had remained working that winter, shipping these Jews, as Nick explained in the Rosenstrasse discussion, to the so-called east. In May Himmler ordered that all Jews remaining in the Reich and Protectorate be cleared out, some being shipped to death camps, others still to Theresienstadt, temporarily. About 30,000 Jews held at Theresienstadt died there, while 10s of 1000s were shipped to other locations, including Auschwitz, for extermination.

By May 1943, Germany was considered to be judenrein, although perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 Jews (some in mixed marriages like Victor Klemperer, others categorized as Mischlinge, still others hiding and living illegally) still lived in the Reich.

It is staggering that you think you have something here, with your clumsy opposition of deportation to extermination; while deportation did not always and everywhere mean extermination, by 1942 the two worked hand in glove - which is what the narratives of this period claim and show.

 

[Nick Terry]

The thing is, Dogzilla, that the Americans really did exterminate Japanese troops in battle. About 1 in 100 Japanese soldiers survived the battle of Iwo Jima. Virtually no quarter was given. This is well known.

Pretty much every example you cite above relates to military men talking of exterminating Japanese forces on the battlefield. The German military used the same language from the 19th Century onwards, because it routinely spoke of 'annihilating' enemy forces.

The difference is you won't find very many statements from US politicians talking of exterminating the Japanese people. You also won't find anything as blunt as Himmler speaking at Sonthofen:[FONT=&quot][1][/FONT]

It was necessary to resolve another big question. It was the most horrible task and the most awful assignment that any organization could receive: the solution of the Jewish question. I want to say a few words on the matter to this group with complete candor. It's good that we had the hardness to exterminate the Jews in our territory. Don't ask yourselves how difficult it would have been to carry out such an order, even though, as soldiers, I might say you would understand. But thinking critically as German soldiers, you can see that the order was essential. Because we wouldn't have been able to withstand the aerial bombing if we had had the Jews in our cities. I am also convinced we would not have been able to hold the Lemberg front of the Generalgouvernement if the big ghettos in Lemberg, Krakau, Lublin, and Warsaw had still been there. We cleaned out the last one, the big ghetto in Warsaw, in summer 1943. In Warsaw there were 500,000 Jews. I tell you this number confidentially. It took us five weeks of street fighting. Just the same, I want to answer a little question that surely you must have. The question is, of course you had to kill the adult Jews, I understand that, but how could you do the same to the women and children? So I have to tell you something: The children will be grown one day. Do we want to be so improper that we say, no, no, we're too weak to kill children. Our children can deal with them. Our children will fight that one out. But the Jewish hate, small today, will be big tomorrow, and the grown avengers will attack our children and grandchildren, who will then have to deal with them. I am convinced that this will be the case even if Adolf Hitler does not survive. No, we cannot shirk our responsibility to kill all the Jews. That would have been cowardly and therefore we adopted a clear solution to the problem, as difficult as it was.

[FONT=&quot][1][/FONT] Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (eds), Heinrich Himmler. Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945. Frankfurt am Main, 1974, p.203.




If you can find us a statement which discusses the killing of Japanese children retrospectively, as something that has happened, then and only then can you have your analogy.

 

[LemmyCaution]

"U.S. land forces on Guadalcanal island are contuing a slow-moving but relentless campaign to exterminate a steadily weakening enemy, the navy disclosed today" Eugene Register-Guard Dec. 4, 1942

"It took 2900 tons of explosives, millions of rounds of machine-gun bulllets, 1026 Americans killed and 2557 wounded to exterminate the Japanese who held a mile square spot of land in the Gilbert Island group." Miami News Dec 4, 1943

"Halsey, asked about the attitude of the Japanese fighting men whom he has defeated in the south Pacific, declared that "the Japanese still are like rats and fight until they are exterminated. We are perfectly willing to exterminate them. If they want to die for the dear old emperor we are still perfectly willing to kill them.'" Spokane Daily Chronicle July 25, 1944

"Governor Ernest Gruening of Alaska, in an interview Thursday, said the doom of the Japanese on the island of Kiska in the Aleutians was sealed and it was not "a matter of can we exterminate them, it's just a matter of when.'" The Calgary Herald July 2, 1943

"...preparatory to a newly unified and intensified Allied blow to exterminate the Japanese in northern Burma." Youngstown Vindicator May 22, 1944

"Brig. Gen. Claire L. Chennault pledged himself and the American China Air Task Force today to drive the Japanese from China 'or exterminate him.'" The Rock Hill Herald Dec. 18, 1944

"The Japanese Foreign Minister Masayuki Tani, addressed the Japanese people on the subject ''The resolve to exterminate and overwhelm America and Britain.'" The Evening Independent Dec. 7. 1942

"Maj. Gen. Ralph A. Mitchell, director of marine aviation, said in an interview that the Japanese will have to be exterminated on Guadalcanal before the United States will be able to occupy other islands to the north." Eugene-Register-Guard Dec 4, 1942

"Stimson's report and the navy's communique indicated that if the weather remains good for flying, the task of exterminating the Japanese intruders will be greatly expedited" The Bulletin May 27, 1943

It sounds like both sides are capable of ratcheting up the chest thumping dominant male monkey rhetoric about the enemy during times of war. This is just a sample of public pronouncements about the United States plan to exterminate the Japanese that appeared in the press. Imagine what we could find if our access to American and British wartime documents was as complete as our access to German documents! I'm sorry to interrupt..what were you saying about Porno or Possum or Posies or what was it again?

Except of course for the wee problem with your own rhetorical flight that in most of what you quote from the Allies above, killing was intended for the specific combatants named, just as killing was the Final Solution intended by the Germans for Europe's Jews.

Crap, "we" bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, atomically, not to mention Tokyo and Yokohoma conventionally, half of Tokyo destroyed IIRC in a firestorm. Not a page of glory, by the way, but real extermination. You really do write goofy things, you know. Maybe you just don't know much history? It's a puzzlement, it is.

 

[FluffyPersian]

Nick was talking about Hilberg's discussion of Rosenstrasse, not Hilberg's discussion of different groups that were exempt from the Final Solution.

Before you make references to the "slower members of the studio audience," you may want to actually reread people's posts:

The plan to exterminate Jews excluded deporting the minority of German and Austrian Jews married to 'Aryans', up until the 'Aryan' spouse died or divorced them, at which point the Jewish spouse was deported. This is a sufficiently well known fact (discussed at length in that book by Hilberg you keep pretending to have read) that not to get it is a bit of a fail, really.

Regarding Rosenstrasse:

Whether you call it a protest or not isn't as big a deal. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a rebellion as wiki does but a large group of women gathering in the street could conceivably called a "protest." When you put this incident In the proper context it's not difficult understand or explain at all. It's only when you presume that Nazi Germany had made the decision to exterminate all the Jews--and had been implementing that policy for at least a year--that Rosenstrasse becomes an anomaly.

Why is it an anomaly if, as stated earlier, spouses of "Aryans" were to be one of the groups who were temporarily exempt? In any case, your earlier statement was that the discussion of Rosenstrasse was damning because "Team Holocaust" supposedly couldn't agree on whether it was a protest or not.

As to Jaeger, I answered all the questions. Actually Lemmycaution answered them for me. The more interesting questions are how the Jaeger report is evidence of a plan that hadn't been decided yet according to everybody except the extreme intentionalists and where does anybody get anything about gas chambers from that report?

No you didn't. Lemmy asked you to answer where in the report you see evidence that the extermination was an example of ethnic cleansing (rather than extermination) or "excesses." Your only evidence of the latter was a comparison of Jaeger (a colonel) to Lynndie England. Hell, why not compare Hoess to England too?