General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[swright777]

Oh, got it. I didn't notice that.

I thought someone was lying again.

 

[LemmyCaution]

You mean the study of Uranus?

Not mine. No way.

 

[Dogzilla]

This has gotten ridiculous. Because there's very little here that you haven't already said and to which I have already responded or is not extraneous information, I'm not going to try to answer each point. But to hit the highlights:

None of what you write necessarily follows from what I wrote.

From Wannsee onwards, a minority of Jews were to be put to forced labour and this was expected to result in the deaths of a large number of the Jews. <snip> Only in the autumn of 1944 were Jews given the same access to certain medical procedures, around the same time as the Final Solution was regarded as formally over.

OK. Fine. The Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the plan for the physical extermination of the Jews which was carried out in part through forcing Jews over a period of several years into performing slave labor and giving them inadequate nutrition and health care compared to other non-Jewish slave laborers until the Final Solution program was formally ended in autumn of 1944 at which time Jews experienced a rise in the quality of health care they received.

(sigh) We went over this a few weeks ago. You are trying to use an exemption from being subjected to the Final Solution to dispute the meaning of the Final Solution. Jews sent to Theresienstadt belonged to a variety of privileged classes of German and Austrian Jews; these privileges were not extended to Jews of other European nations, who were subjected to deportation to Auschwitz or another camp in Poland, and were selected on arrival into unfit and able-bodied groups, with the unfit being killed immediately. <snip>

The Theresienstadt Jews were meant to be exempted from the Final Solution.

If the Theresienstadt Jews were meant to be exempted from the Final Solution, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was NOT a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe

The same methods resulted in the mass starvation of more than 2 million Soviet POWs in the winter of 1941-2, and were enacted against the backdrop of quite bloodthirsty economic planning which projected the demise of 20-30 million people in the Soviet Union as a result of the Nazi invasion. <snip>
Subsequent Nazi planning for the colonisation of the occupied Soviet Union, the General Plan East, also proceeded on the basis of a population reduction of 20-30 million people.

So the Jews weren't the only people subjected to intentional depopulation measures.

Nothing like these plans have ever been contemplated by another state in human history.

That could be interpreted as saying these plans were unique.

The scale of them dwarfs what was actually carried out because they could not be enacted under wartime conditions.

So I guess people who say the war gave Nazi Germany the cover it needed to to implement the extermination of the Jews are talking out their asses

But mostly, your inability to understand the historical record is simply inane. "The Nazis" were not a homogeneous group; some Nazi politicians were more pragmatic than others. <snip>

Evidently, the Nazis found it perfectly acceptable to have something of a transition. I really don't get why this is so hard for you to understand.

So not only did the Hitler ordered policy of the complete physical extermination of the Jews involve putting some of them to work even though their labor wasn't critical, providing them increased level of health care near the end of the war and completely exempted certain classes of Jews from the Final Solution policy, the Nazi bureaucrats themselves had a wide range of ideas about what to do with the Jews and were given some degree of latitude in implementing the policy?

It's only hard to understand if the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the Hitler mandated policy of the German government to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe. You have said that that is a strawman. I can live with that.

But it is consistent with a policy of killing all unfit Jews subjected to the Final Solution. The Jews of Theresienstadt were exempted from the Final Solution. These exemptions applied only to German and Austrian Jews.

So the Final Solution was the Hitler mandated policy of the German government to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe who were subjected to the Final Solution? But there were certain Jews who were NOT subjected to the Final Solution? That sounds like a doubleplusgood way of saying it but it's the kind of hairsplitting I can understand. But that means that the policy wasn't to kill all the Jews.

"Dropping it" isn't good enough. If you "drop it" then you will undoubtedly bring this crap up again at a future date, resulting in the same spiral of incomprehension from you and the same strawmen.

If somebody says something that sounds like the policy of Nazi Germany was the physical extermination of all the Jews in Europe and you don't slap them upside the head first, yes, I will bring up all this crap again.

 

[Clayton Moore]

If the Theresienstadt Jews were meant to be exempted from the Final Solution, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was NOT a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe

So not only did the Hitler ordered policy of the complete physical extermination of the Jews involve putting some of them to work even though their labor wasn't critical, providing them increased level of health care near the end of the war and completely exempted certain classes of Jews from the Final Solution policy, the Nazi bureaucrats themselves had a wide range of ideas about what to do with the Jews and were given some degree of latitude in implementing the policy?

So they, the Holocaust believers, were saying German Jewish people who ruined Germany in the eyes of Hitler and his Nazi buddies got a bye because they were German?

 

[000063]

This has gotten ridiculous. Because there's very little here that you haven't already said and to which I have already responded or is not extraneous information, I'm not going to try to answer each point. But to hit the highlights:

OK. Fine. The Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the plan for the physical extermination of the Jews which was carried out in part through forcing Jews over a period of several years into performing slave labor and giving them inadequate nutrition and health care compared to other non-Jewish slave laborers until the Final Solution program was formally ended in autumn of 1944 at which time Jews experienced a rise in the quality of health care they received.

Did any of them die as a deliberate result of this?

If the Theresienstadt Jews were meant to be exempted from the Final Solution, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was NOT a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe

So...most of the Jews in Europe?

So the Jews weren't the only people subjected to intentional depopulation measures.

No one has claimed such. Quite the opposite; we've repeatedly pointed out to Clay that people other than Jews were killed as well.

That could be interpreted as saying these plans were unique.

Looks like.

So I guess people who say the war gave Nazi Germany the cover it needed to to implement the extermination of the Jews are talking out their asses

Arguably, if you can find those people. However, that does mean you apparently accept Terry's assertion that the war hindered the Nazi ability to kill Jews wholesale, forcing them to scale back.

So not only did the Hitler ordered policy of the complete physical extermination of the Jews involve putting some of them to work even though their labor wasn't critical, providing them increased level of health care near the end of the war and completely exempted certain classes of Jews from the Final Solution policy, the Nazi bureaucrats themselves had a wide range of ideas about what to do with the Jews and were given some degree of latitude in implementing the policy?

Do you milk a cow before you butcher it?

It's only hard to understand if the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the Hitler mandated policy of the German government to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe. You have said that that is a strawman. I can live with that.

And since a straw man is, by definition, false, then your question, by your own admission, becomes easy to understand.

So the Final Solution was the Hitler mandated policy of the German government to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe who were subjected to the Final Solution? But there were certain Jews who were NOT subjected to the Final Solution? That sounds like a doubleplusgood way of saying it but it's the kind of hairsplitting I can understand. But that means that the policy wasn't to kill all the Jews.

We've already established that's a strawman. "A policy of killing all unfit Jews subjected to the Final Solution" is almost completely different from "a policy to kill all the Jews in Europe".

If somebody says something that sounds like the policy of Nazi Germany was the physical extermination of all the Jews in Europe and you don't slap them upside the head first, yes, I will bring up all this crap again.

In other words, if anyone gets even close to the strawman, you'll debunk the straw man instead of what they're actually saying and declare victory. Just like you've done here. Got it.

 

[Nick Terry]

This has gotten ridiculous. Because there's very little here that you haven't already said and to which I have already responded or is not extraneous information, I'm not going to try to answer each point. But to hit the highlights:

It's only gotten ridiculous because you wilfully distort and misunderstand perfectly comprehensible history.

OK. Fine. The Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the plan for the physical extermination of the Jews which was carried out in part through forcing Jews over a period of several years into performing slave labor and giving them inadequate nutrition and health care compared to other non-Jewish slave laborers until the Final Solution program was formally ended in autumn of 1944 at which time Jews experienced a rise in the quality of health care they received.

And the other part involved the murder of Jews deemed unfit for work or who became unfit for work.

To speak of a rise in the quality of healthcare in the autumn of 1944 is entirely relative depending on which part of the now expanded KZ system you're talking about, and on the type of work carried out.

It was paradoxically, better to be at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944 than to have been shipped out to a camp in the Reich. The inmate population of Auschwitz was beginning to decline due to transfers, at the same time as the camp facilities were getting to be as complete as they could. A new extension of the main camp opened in the autumn of 1944 for women, and had a very low death toll because there was less overcrowding. But the older main camp hubs like Buchenwald and Ravensbrueck as well as half-completed camps like Gross-Rosen experienced a major rise in their inmate population, so that overcrowding, disease, starvation and so forth rose dramatically through 1944, before the collapse in 1945.

New sub-camps sprung up everywhere, and tended to be appalling if they housed men (of whatever kind) because they involved heavy construction labour or other mankilling forms of work, whereas women's camps tended to be attached to factories for sit-down work. So a huge gender disparity emerged in some camps, like Neuengamme.

If the Theresienstadt Jews were meant to be exempted from the Final Solution, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was NOT a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe

Jews sent to Theresienstadt were meant to die a 'natural' death, according to Himmler when he reprimanded Kaltenbrunner for deporting too many from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz in early 1943. That is an interesting turn of phrase since it implies that deportation to Auschwitz would result in an unnatural death.

Since the Final Solution referred to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe, then it is irrelevant whether that destruction was brought about by one means or another. The bottom line is that the Jews would be no more in the medium term.

Theresienstadt was also one of two camps which served a propaganda function, the other being Belsen in 1943 to mid-1944. Some very few Jews were exchanged for interned German nationals or ransomed, or happened to be citizens of nations which the Nazis did not want to alienate. So they were held in Belsen prior to exchange.

Theresienstadt was the showpiece camp, so it could be used to create a legend that the Nazis weren't treating 'the Jews' badly, and could be shown off to visiting foreign dignitaries and the ICRC. When the action to deport Danish Jews failed, the very few who were caught were sent to Theresienstadt as a means of reassuring Sweden.

Very large numbers of Jews sent to Theresienstadt were then deported to Auschwitz on a repeated basis, despite the intention to let the privileged German Jews croak there 'naturallly' in the world's worst old people's home. Some of the transfers to Auschwitz furthered the deception because they were placed in the 'Theresienstadt family camp', where they were not selected and kept alive in order to write letters home and generally create a further red herring. But the contingents were then liquidated six to seven months after arrival, following a somewhat limited sieving for able-bodied workers.

So the Jews weren't the only people subjected to intentional depopulation measures.

Indeed not, which is why Poles and Russians will tell you to eff off because of your apologism for a regime that they consider to have committed genocide against them.

That could be interpreted as saying these plans were unique.

Indeed, the Nazis were unique in devising not just one but three plans intended to bring about 7 figure population reductions: the Hunger Plan, the General Plan East, and the Final Solution.

So I guess people who say the war gave Nazi Germany the cover it needed to to implement the extermination of the Jews are talking out their asses

The Hunger Plan and GPO were both considerably bigger visions than the comparatively much more manageable task of eliminating 9-10 million Jews in Europe.

So not only did the Hitler ordered policy of the complete physical extermination of the Jews involve putting some of them to work even though their labor wasn't critical, providing them increased level of health care near the end of the war and completely exempted certain classes of Jews from the Final Solution policy, the Nazi bureaucrats themselves had a wide range of ideas about what to do with the Jews and were given some degree of latitude in implementing the policy?

Yes, there was a certain latitude, although the gap between 'kill 'em all' and kill 80% while sparing 20% for a while in order to work doesn't seem very big to me.

It doesn't suggest that there was much in the way of room for maneuver for subordinate Nazi officials to really save lots of Jews just because they felt like it. The economic argument was the only really substantive one, which is why we fete Oskar Schindler and Major Karl Plagge today.

It might help if you appreciated how devolved much of the Nazi state was; Hitler used divide-and-rule to minimise his workload and left details up to subordinates. He provided the 'vision thing', the ideological goals and demands, the strategy, and the subordinates carried them out operationally. There was clearly a strong consensus within the upper echelons of the Nazi hierarchy (Reichsleiter, Gauleiter, Ministers and State Secretaries) around the Final Solution, but there were some disagreements about the urgency of killing labourers.

Goebbels, for example, was really pissed off when he found out that the Wehrmacht had secured exemptions for Jewish armaments workers in Berlin, and pushed to get rid of them. This took time; but it meant that 18 months after the exemption was secured, Jewish armaments workers were deported to Auschwitz. When they arrived there, some were spared to work in Monowitz, because Pohl and Himmler needed more labourers for IG Farben.

Goebbels is very clearly on the 'ideological' side of the regime whereas Speer was much more of a pragmatist. Goering combined both but also internalised conflicts between the agricultural lobby and the industrialists, as the Four Year Plan oversaw both. Thus Goering could literally contradict himself in the same meeting, because he was juggling totally conflicting aims. Himmler was primarily an ideologue, but not quite as tone-deaf to pragmatism as, say, Bormann.

It's only hard to understand if the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the Hitler mandated policy of the German government to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe. You have said that that is a strawman. I can live with that.

It's a strawman because Hitler did not lay down a five-graph order to a subaltern. When Hitler gave the green light to start the process across Europe, many subordinates had hatched plans for partial or total extermination already. So part of the 'decision' was approving existing plans. Eg Globocnik's plans for Aktion Reinhard, or Greiser's request to reduce the Jewish population of the Warthegau. The approvals were clearly filtered through Himmler

On the other hand, Hitler was also enunciating a strategic ideological goal, eliminating the Jews of Europe, which had been emphasised from 1939 onwards. Since emigration was impossible and 'resettlement' to Madagascar or Siberia wasn't going to happen, the solution chosen was to kill as many as could be killed during the war, while sparing a minority for labour.

The absolute last thing Hitler would have approved, by the way, is a plan to dump unemployed and unemployable unfit Jews anywhere in territory he controlled, where they would eat up resources that were badly needed for the home front and war effort.

So the Final Solution was the Hitler mandated policy of the German government to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe who were subjected to the Final Solution? But there were certain Jews who were NOT subjected to the Final Solution? That sounds like a doubleplusgood way of saying it but it's the kind of hairsplitting I can understand. But that means that the policy wasn't to kill all the Jews.

It's more a reflection of how the Nazis themselves came to distinguish between the strategic goal of the Final Solution and the operational details. But they did so inconsistently depending on their vantage point. Eichmann spoke of 'exempting' Jews from the Final Solution on a few occasions. He used this to describe leaving Jewish workers in Galicia behind when everyone else was being deported westwards to Belzec. Meanwhile, the Final Solution at Auschwitz meant the process of receiving Jews uprooted en bloc from the Netherlands, France etc and then sorting them into useless and useful components. So the FS carried much more of a labour connotation in that context. But then, Auschwitz was run by a different branch of the SS.

Exemptions were obviously on a continuum. Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages were exempted from deportation from the get-go, as is clear from the Wannsee protocol. But their 'case' was the subject of further deliberations and regulations, which encompassed deciding what to do if the 'Aryan' spouse died or divorced a Jew in a mixed marriage, and which of the very complex gradations of Mischlinge should be sterilised and if that was possible.

Still, it's clear that Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages were not subjected to the Final Solution as a practical measure. They were, however, biologically and genetically part of the Jewish race in Europe, and they were also biologically and familialy part of the non-Jewish 'Aryan' people of Germany. Had the Nazis won the war, and implemented compulsory sterilisation, or deported more of the exempted groups, then this would have been a change, i.e. henceforth they would have been subjected to the Final Solution.

Privileged Jews, i.e. elderly German and Austrian Jews plus WWI veterans, were not deported to the east. They were deported to Theresienstadt. From an operational perspective, then they were not subjected to the Final Solution, which meant deportation, selection and extermination. From a strategic perspective, Theresienstadt would still contribute to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe by confining a relatively small number of Jews away from good 'Aryans' and in a place where they were expected to perish. Theresienstadt also served as part of the cover story and deception plan.

Some of the confusion comes from looking at what is being discussed. Heydrich brings up Theresienstadt at Wannsee, which was a meeting about the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. He lays down the strategy, and the strategy clearly includes Theresienstadt as a means of cutting down on internal protests. So in January 1942, Theresienstadt is clearly part of the FS. Once things are implemented, however, the Final Solution takes on other meanings in the minds of Nazi bureaucrats and SS officers like Eichmann, so they start to differentiate their language.

If somebody says something that sounds like the policy of Nazi Germany was the physical extermination of all the Jews in Europe and you don't slap them upside the head first, yes, I will bring up all this crap again.

It's much more likely that someone will say 'Hitler wanted to kill the Jews' or 'the Nazis killed millions of Jews' and they won't say 'all'. Neither statement can be refuted by pointing to a few exempted or privileged categories of Jews, or to the minority spared for forced labour.

The Nazis did indeed kill millions of Jews in Europe during WWII, as part of their goal of eliminating the Jewish race from Europe. They did not finish the job, and suspended the Final Solution in its classic form in late 1944.

Hitler did indeed want to kill the Jews, but laying down a strategic vision is different to implementing it operationally. It's also very clear that Himmler wanted to kill the Jews, but like Hitler he was amenable to a smidgeon of pragmatism and saw the value in sparing a minority for work.

 

[Bluespaceoddity]

On 15th May 1940, the Dutch forces capitulated to the Third Reich army, ...

Was the invasion which prompted the capitulation a punitive measure for criminal activities or were there perhaps other reasons why this little neutral nation was invaded by those fellows from the various branches of the Third Reich's armed forces in those May days? I hope you're not suggesting that the regime which forcefully replaced the Dutch Government was a legitimate one.

I've asked before and I'd still like you to answer these questions:
When you asked DDT on April 16 "How that is documented" was his comment the first time you became aware of that aspect of the final solution?
Were you really unaware of the methods used when on April 13 you asked Dafydd: "How the Jews were identified? What procedures the supposedly persecutors used to identify who was Jew and who was not? There was any kind of a "Manual to Recognize Jews" utilized by the SS personnel?"

I ask because in your latest reply to me you've done little more than repeat some of the things which were pointed out to you in previous messages. I ask because these exact examples were given as an incentive for you to go educate yourself. I thought it might be instructive in a tabula rasa type situation to explore that single point. In his longer reply following a succinct "Seriously?" , LemmyCaution had deduced that you lived in a fantasy world of your own where such things he listed didn't exist., on April 13.
I wonder, ca. 1 month ago you appear to have been fully unaware of such things as the "manual" for identifying Jews and the methods used to collect them but you've now taken up the defense on the side of the nazi occupation of the Netherlands whose agents devised such guidelines and used them there. Are you playing devil's advocate, perhaps?

I'd like to remind you that the people you are responding to were not unaware of these records but were in fact the ones who alerted you to their existence, in their context. My focus on one aspect is after all just that. Focus on a single aspect from a longer list Nick Terry gave you and on which DDT made specific comments to flesh them out. It is nice that you've looked around for additional websites and have found some of the material online you were assigned as homework and it is good to see that you are eager to show that off but there is no need for you to pretend that you have now taken the position of lecturer on the topic. You came here asking questions. Remember? You have yet to add anything yourself with which to cast doubt on the interpretations of normal people. On the contrary, as soon as you "discovered" the material you've come out defending those who implemented the final solution. When I asked if there was any connection I didn't expect you to look no further than the other paragraphs of the same document but to evaluate those documents themselves in relationship to each other as well.

Are you familiar with the idiom "Not seeing the forest for the trees"? It is "Por não ver a floresta para as árvores" in Portuguese. Don't bother arguing that it isn't. I googled it, therefore it is, and I am now a Portuguese language expert.

February 3, 1942, Harster makes distinctions: [...] 3. Bekampfung des Juden als Einzelgegner […].
A sub-category of a larger whole, excerpted from the record of the case against Harster, Zoepf and Slotke where the following sentence appeared below a transcript of that document:
Der Angeklagte Zoe. [Zoepf] als Leiter des Referats IV B 4 hatte in seiner Dienststelle 3-4 deutsche und 2-3 niederländische Beamte für die Behandlung sog. "straffälliger" Juden im Gebiet Den Haag. Here:
http://www1.jur.uva.nl/junsv/excerpts/64504.htm

These "S" cases are mentioned separately in the transport lists, under the heading Haeftlinge, and they are mentioned in statements of surviving victims, perpetrators and bystanders. These "S" cases are not the bulk of the deportees, however, nor were they the exclusive target of the people who drafted, promulgated and enforced the decrees [Verordnungen / verordeningen] that you attempt to justify away in isolation.

There may be people here who forgot in which context these examples were brought to your attention but I am not one of them so you can save yourself the trouble of trying to change the meaning of previous comments to align them with the straw man Dogzilla tried to build out of AntPogo's disgusted reaction to your interpretation.
ANTPogo is quite aware that the crimes you've "discovered" were not the "actual crimes". The people targeted by such measures were a small group that required a different methodology to retrieve them but they were always part of a bigger whole. You did see the word "Entjudung" in one of the excerpts from Zoepf's correspondence you pasted, I assume, before you deceptively took a small part from the bottom. The same part I had previously posted to make you look for and see the other categories.

The ordinances and the national papers in which they were printed were mentioned not because they made outlaws of those who refused to comply with such decrees - something no sane person familiar with the decrees would dispute- but because of the definitions they contained regarding who was to be considered a Jew. The public version of the "manual" for the SS whose existence you questioned. No denier supposedly denies anything except 1, 2 and 3 but you used the word "supposedly" when writing about persecutors of Jews. Now you don't just acknowledge that the "manuals" existed but have come out justifying them. Has the "supposedly" been replaced with "well there were persecutions and persecutors but ... "?
Would you like to add a bit of condemnation for such persecution or are you comfortable with your role as described here? I ask because I supposedly have to be cautious about bastardization. Can you understand why no sane person will write about this period in time and restrict himself only to what is supposedly the only thing a denier denies?

That the policies weren't exclusively directed at the people who refused to comply with the ordinances is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the fact that even members of the NSB who fell within such definitions of Jewishness eventually became targets of deportation. After deliberation on how to deal with them. In the end it was decided that these Jews -what was their crime according to the other National Socialists, one wonders- could not be allowed to emigrate. To avoid objections within the ranks of those sympathetic to the Nazi cause, these NSB-Juden were to be ignored initially until such time that deportations of Jews from the Netherlands had become so commonplace that little objection was to be expected anymore on their behalf. They were eventually sent to Theresienstadt.


Including them -in the final tally approximately 4700 people were deported to Theresienstadt from the Netherlands during nazi occupation, 60% didn't survive. No denier denies except 1, 2 and 3 but ClaytonMoore is compounding his Theresienstadt nonsense by repeating his deportation to the camp denial. Are you on the same track? Dogzilla appears to have joined him. Or are they, temporarily, parting ways?

Zoepf December 31, 1942:
I. Das Judenproblem in den Niederlanden.
Eine Judenfrage in den Niederlanden bestand nicht nur wegen der ansehnlichen Zahl von 140000, zum Teil alteingesessenen, Volljuden (Amsterdam war mit 80.000 Juden die jüdische Metropole Westeuropas), sondern vor allem wegen ihres grossen Einflusses, wegen ihrer wirtschaftlichen und geistigen Verflechtung mit dem Niederländertum.
Vorherrschend im Diamanten-, Kleider-, Fell-, Metall-, Papier-, Altmaterial- und Lebensmittelhandel hatten sie hohe Kapitalien in ihren Händen angesammelt. Sie wurden dabei nicht als lästige Fremdkörper, sondern als gleichberechtigte und gleichgeschätzte Volksgenossen betrachtet. Die liberalhumanitäre Lebensanschauung des Niederländers war nicht durch fühlbare und auf jüdisches Konto zu setzende Wirtschaftskatastrophen und Linksrevolutionen erschüttert worden, die in Deutschland das Volk weltanschaulich vorbereitet hatten. Im Gegenteil wurde seit 1933 die Hinneigung zum Judentum eher noch verstärkt durch das prosemitische Bekenntnis des Herrscherhauses, der Regierung und der tragenden plutokratischen Schicht. Ein Kampf gegen das Judentum war nur von Einzelpersonen geführt und selbst die NSB erst nach dem Einmarsch von Juden gereinigt worden."

That is why references to the correspondence accompanied the references to national news papers. To point you towards the record of private deliberation behind such public announcements. Note how Zoepf wrote about the position of Jews in Dutch society, at the end of 1942.

Harster, Zoepf and Slotke were convicted for Beihilfe zum Mord for their role in that part of the final Solution for which they were in part responsible. Their records from the Netherlands do indeed provide evidence that deportation resulted in mass murder - when evaluated by sane observers.

If demonstrating that you are irrational when it comes to textual analysis it can simply be pointed out how you deal with ANTPogo's observations about Irving but you demonstrate time and again that you can't be trusted to represent the historical record honestly either.

I hope that the example of "Documenten van de Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 1939-1945" taught you a lesson about the limitations of Google. You don't really think that book sitting on my desk really doesn't have the word on page 97 and the translation on page 99 because it doesn't appear in your Google results, do you? Kopfpraemien is indeed mentioned as point 10.) in the document and in the book in which a fascimile was reproduced. Among the other points listed in that 5.5.1942 summary is also how Portuguese Jews were dealt with [Point 6. page 96)] Something about which, on April 19, you also expressed an interest. What was their crime? Why were they taken to Westerbork? In that document it says something about Abstammung pruefen. What was your interest? Were you kidding?

I asked about the 5.5.1942 letter in part because I was hoping that researching it would take you to the web site of het Joods Historisch Museum. Have you found your way there?
Most of the site is in Dutch but the document is in German and you're always welcome to ask the many native speakers here for clarification should you have trouble interpreting.

JHM Zoeken Circulaire Harster

 

[Clayton Moore]

It's only gotten ridiculous because you wilfully distort and misunderstand perfectly comprehensible history.



And the other part involved the murder of Jews deemed unfit for work or who became unfit for work.

To speak of a rise in the quality of healthcare in the autumn of 1944 is entirely relative depending on which part of the now expanded KZ system you're talking about, and on the type of work carried out.

It was paradoxically, better to be at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944 than to have been shipped out to a camp in the Reich. The inmate population of Auschwitz was beginning to decline due to transfers, at the same time as the camp facilities were getting to be as complete as they could. A new extension of the main camp opened in the autumn of 1944 for women, and had a very low death toll because there was less overcrowding. But the older main camp hubs like Buchenwald and Ravensbrueck as well as half-completed camps like Gross-Rosen experienced a major rise in their inmate population, so that overcrowding, disease, starvation and so forth rose dramatically through 1944, before the collapse in 1945.

New sub-camps sprung up everywhere, and tended to be appalling if they housed men (of whatever kind) because they involved heavy construction labour or other mankilling forms of work, whereas women's camps tended to be attached to factories for sit-down work. So a huge gender disparity emerged in some camps, like Neuengamme.



Jews sent to Theresienstadt were meant to die a 'natural' death, according to Himmler when he reprimanded Kaltenbrunner for deporting too many from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz in early 1943. That is an interesting turn of phrase since it implies that deportation to Auschwitz would result in an unnatural death.

Since the Final Solution referred to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe, then it is irrelevant whether that destruction was brought about by one means or another. The bottom line is that the Jews would be no more in the medium term.

Theresienstadt was also one of two camps which served a propaganda function, the other being Belsen in 1943 to mid-1944. Some very few Jews were exchanged for interned German nationals or ransomed, or happened to be citizens of nations which the Nazis did not want to alienate. So they were held in Belsen prior to exchange.

Theresienstadt was the showpiece camp, so it could be used to create a legend that the Nazis weren't treating 'the Jews' badly, and could be shown off to visiting foreign dignitaries and the ICRC. When the action to deport Danish Jews failed, the very few who were caught were sent to Theresienstadt as a means of reassuring Sweden.

Very large numbers of Jews sent to Theresienstadt were then deported to Auschwitz on a repeated basis, despite the intention to let the privileged German Jews croak there 'naturallly' in the world's worst old people's home. Some of the transfers to Auschwitz furthered the deception because they were placed in the 'Theresienstadt family camp', where they were not selected and kept alive in order to write letters home and generally create a further red herring. But the contingents were then liquidated six to seven months after arrival, following a somewhat limited sieving for able-bodied workers.



Indeed not, which is why Poles and Russians will tell you to eff off because of your apologism for a regime that they consider to have committed genocide against them.



Indeed, the Nazis were unique in devising not just one but three plans intended to bring about 7 figure population reductions: the Hunger Plan, the General Plan East, and the Final Solution.



The Hunger Plan and GPO were both considerably bigger visions than the comparatively much more manageable task of eliminating 9-10 million Jews in Europe.



Yes, there was a certain latitude, although the gap between 'kill 'em all' and kill 80% while sparing 20% for a while in order to work doesn't seem very big to me.

It doesn't suggest that there was much in the way of room for maneuver for subordinate Nazi officials to really save lots of Jews just because they felt like it. The economic argument was the only really substantive one, which is why we fete Oskar Schindler and Major Karl Plagge today.

It might help if you appreciated how devolved much of the Nazi state was; Hitler used divide-and-rule to minimise his workload and left details up to subordinates. He provided the 'vision thing', the ideological goals and demands, the strategy, and the subordinates carried them out operationally. There was clearly a strong consensus within the upper echelons of the Nazi hierarchy (Reichsleiter, Gauleiter, Ministers and State Secretaries) around the Final Solution, but there were some disagreements about the urgency of killing labourers.

Goebbels, for example, was really pissed off when he found out that the Wehrmacht had secured exemptions for Jewish armaments workers in Berlin, and pushed to get rid of them. This took time; but it meant that 18 months after the exemption was secured, Jewish armaments workers were deported to Auschwitz. When they arrived there, some were spared to work in Monowitz, because Pohl and Himmler needed more labourers for IG Farben.

Goebbels is very clearly on the 'ideological' side of the regime whereas Speer was much more of a pragmatist. Goering combined both but also internalised conflicts between the agricultural lobby and the industrialists, as the Four Year Plan oversaw both. Thus Goering could literally contradict himself in the same meeting, because he was juggling totally conflicting aims. Himmler was primarily an ideologue, but not quite as tone-deaf to pragmatism as, say, Bormann.



It's a strawman because Hitler did not lay down a five-graph order to a subaltern. When Hitler gave the green light to start the process across Europe, many subordinates had hatched plans for partial or total extermination already. So part of the 'decision' was approving existing plans. Eg Globocnik's plans for Aktion Reinhard, or Greiser's request to reduce the Jewish population of the Warthegau. The approvals were clearly filtered through Himmler

On the other hand, Hitler was also enunciating a strategic ideological goal, eliminating the Jews of Europe, which had been emphasised from 1939 onwards. Since emigration was impossible and 'resettlement' to Madagascar or Siberia wasn't going to happen, the solution chosen was to kill as many as could be killed during the war, while sparing a minority for labour.

The absolute last thing Hitler would have approved, by the way, is a plan to dump unemployed and unemployable unfit Jews anywhere in territory he controlled, where they would eat up resources that were badly needed for the home front and war effort.



It's more a reflection of how the Nazis themselves came to distinguish between the strategic goal of the Final Solution and the operational details. But they did so inconsistently depending on their vantage point. Eichmann spoke of 'exempting' Jews from the Final Solution on a few occasions. He used this to describe leaving Jewish workers in Galicia behind when everyone else was being deported westwards to Belzec. Meanwhile, the Final Solution at Auschwitz meant the process of receiving Jews uprooted en bloc from the Netherlands, France etc and then sorting them into useless and useful components. So the FS carried much more of a labour connotation in that context. But then, Auschwitz was run by a different branch of the SS.

Exemptions were obviously on a continuum. Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages were exempted from deportation from the get-go, as is clear from the Wannsee protocol. But their 'case' was the subject of further deliberations and regulations, which encompassed deciding what to do if the 'Aryan' spouse died or divorced a Jew in a mixed marriage, and which of the very complex gradations of Mischlinge should be sterilised and if that was possible.

Still, it's clear that Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages were not subjected to the Final Solution as a practical measure. They were, however, biologically and genetically part of the Jewish race in Europe, and they were also biologically and familialy part of the non-Jewish 'Aryan' people of Germany. Had the Nazis won the war, and implemented compulsory sterilisation, or deported more of the exempted groups, then this would have been a change, i.e. henceforth they would have been subjected to the Final Solution.

Privileged Jews, i.e. elderly German and Austrian Jews plus WWI veterans, were not deported to the east. They were deported to Theresienstadt. From an operational perspective, then they were not subjected to the Final Solution, which meant deportation, selection and extermination. From a strategic perspective, Theresienstadt would still contribute to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe by confining a relatively small number of Jews away from good 'Aryans' and in a place where they were expected to perish. Theresienstadt also served as part of the cover story and deception plan.

Some of the confusion comes from looking at what is being discussed. Heydrich brings up Theresienstadt at Wannsee, which was a meeting about the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. He lays down the strategy, and the strategy clearly includes Theresienstadt as a means of cutting down on internal protests. So in January 1942, Theresienstadt is clearly part of the FS. Once things are implemented, however, the Final Solution takes on other meanings in the minds of Nazi bureaucrats and SS officers like Eichmann, so they start to differentiate their language.




It's much more likely that someone will say 'Hitler wanted to kill the Jews' or 'the Nazis killed millions of Jews' and they won't say 'all'. Neither statement can be refuted by pointing to a few exempted or privileged categories of Jews, or to the minority spared for forced labour.

The Nazis did indeed kill millions of Jews in Europe during WWII, as part of their goal of eliminating the Jewish race from Europe. They did not finish the job, and suspended the Final Solution in its classic form in late 1944.

Hitler did indeed want to kill the Jews, but laying down a strategic vision is different to implementing it operationally. It's also very clear that Himmler wanted to kill the Jews, but like Hitler he was amenable to a smidgeon of pragmatism and saw the value in sparing a minority for work.

This lengthy explanation is exposed as a fabrication on the fly by its but after but after but. 12 in all. Can you imagine the stern German hierarchy making exception after exception? Like some teen making up his own rules in a game of clothes poker with his girl friends.

 

[Bluespaceoddity]

This lengthy explanation does not describe a game.

Imagine that

 

[Border Reiver]

This lengthy explanation is exposed as a fabrication on the fly by its but after but after but. 12 in all. Can you imagine the stern German hierarchy making exception after exception? Like some teen making up his own rules in a game of clothes poker with his girl friends.

Yes, I can imagine it.

Imagine the stern German hierarchy wasting valuable resources (financial and human) by setting up multiple intelligence agencies (Abwehr, SS intelligence, Foriegn Ministry, etc.), military formations (SA, Waffen SS, Wehrmacht), etc.

Imagine the stern German hierarchy wasting valuable resources on a fluff propaganda movie (Kolbenz) diverting munitions and soldiers to the set so that Goebbels could have his equivalent to "Gone with the Wind"?

Imagine a stern German hiearchy having to balance the competing ideological need to implement the anti-semetic policies of the ex-Austrian corporal while not going so far, so fast as to alienate the masses of the German people until they had been brought into it by acquiesence?

 

[LemmyCaution]

This lengthy explanation is exposed as a fabrication on the fly by its but after but after but. 12 in all. Can you imagine the stern German hierarchy making exception after exception? Like some teen making up his own rules in a game of clothes poker with his girl friends.

You have great difficulty understanding that strategies and goals have to be achieved by people operating in real contexts - and thus you fail to grasp that what states and organizations implement always reflects matters like work done to date, competition among those involved for credit and power, the need to win support and participation, tactics to overcome opposition or recalcitrance, logistical and technical solutions, how blockages and resistances are dealt with, competition from unexpected and competing priorities, and trial and error. This is why implementation takes time and often differs to first thoughts. (The Nazi effort to get rid of Europe's Jews was not a game played by a few people in a living room in Berlin but a complex, geographically dispersed operation involving large number of people, different bureaucratic elements and political entities, and novel implementation issues, carried out during wartime.) You and your pal seem to be taking the position that only the "textbook"/pure case is believable, when, in fact, it would be a textbook implementation that would not be believable.

 

[Border Reiver]

Yes, I can imagine it.

Imagine the stern German hierarchy wasting valuable resources on a fluff propaganda movie (Kolbenz) diverting munitions and soldiers to the set so that Goebbels could have his equivalent to "Gone with the Wind"?

Right, my mistake - I was working off memory and I have a mind like a steel collander at times - the movie in question is Kolberg.

Apologies for the error.

 

[Nick Terry]

This lengthy explanation is exposed as a fabrication on the fly by its but after but after but. 12 in all. Can you imagine the stern German hierarchy making exception after exception? Like some teen making up his own rules in a game of clothes poker with his girl friends.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_faction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Nuremberg_Laws

... just some of the concepts you evidently haven't encountered before.

 

[FluffyPersian]

If the Theresienstadt Jews were meant to be exempted from the Final Solution, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was NOT a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe

As countless people have written already in this thread, the Nazi goal was to eliminate the biological seed of Jewry as quickly as possible given the constraints they faced. One of those constraints was the need to avoid the kind of protests that got in the way of T4. Since they knew the German population would be particularly galled by the extermination of the elderly, they set up a special camp for them, knowing they wouldn't reproduce and would die within a few years. Playing semantic games won't fool anyone.

 

[Dogzilla]

I think you are confusing "begs the question" with "raises the question" here.

It's a small point, but it bothers me how many people use "begs the question" incorrectly.

I stand corrected. It is a small point but I bristle when I see e.g. and i.e. mixed up so I understand.

 

[Dogzilla]

http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/the-evidence/the-tattoo/where-is-elies-tattoo/

Once again you say Wiesel's lie makes no difference.

Truth is not important to the holocaust. Say whatever you want but make sure it sounds really bad. That's all that matters.

 

[Cyrix686]

Truth is not important to Revisionists. Say whatever you want but make sure it sounds really annoying. That's all that matters.

 

[Dogzilla]

LOL, you evidently don't know much about Hoess's statements. Hoess testified under oath to the same numbers deported from individual countries in his very first affidavit. He repeated them to GM Gilbert at Nuremberg, and he repeated them in a signed statement in November 1947 (the one published in Polish in 1951, and in German and English in 1958), then repeated them in court (and thus under oath) in March 1947, also while explaining why he gave a higher number for the overall death toll initially, and why he changed his mind.

So your argument is screwed.

But you can have half a banana, since Hoess's surprisingly accurate recollection of 1.1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz isn't the same as 1.1 million Jews gassed at Auschwitz, since not all Jews deported there were gassed.

And what were the "same numbers deported from individual countries?" What were the numbers he repeated to Gilbert? What were the numbers he gave under oath in March 1947? What were the numbers he reported when testifying at Nuremberg for Kaltenbrunner?

 

[Dogzilla]

No Nazi war criminal could be charged with all gassings at Auschwitz, because no Nazi was solely responsible for all of the gassings.

Good. Then the "No Nazi denied the holocaust/The Germans don't deny the holocaust" are idiotic statements advanced by people who don't properly understand the holocaust.

Can you present either the indictment (charging instrument) or the judgement of the British court which convicted the Tesch executives? The Law report has the charge specified without naming any number, and there isn't any written judgement affirming specific numbers. All you have is an estimate by the prosecution which was contradicted by the prosecution's own evidence.

The facts in the Law Report are the facts in the Law Report. The defendants were accused of supplying the murder weapon to Auschwitz with the knowledge that it was to be used as the murder weapon. That is the issue in this trial. The number of victims had already been determined, presumably based upon compelling evidence, and accepted by the court as true. If the number of victims was disputed, the report does not reflect that dispute. If the number of victims was revised, the report does not reflect that either. Absent a revision, the facts presented in the report stand.

If you want to say that only the facts presented in an indictment are relevant and only the facts which are specifically mentioned to be true in the judgement are in fact true, be my guest. That would mean that historians would be unable to rely on testimony given in court unless the facts in that testimony are specifically enumerated in the judgement. If you're going to focus only on the specific facts in the charge, the number of victims isn't mentioned but the fact that they were Allied nationals in an ecumenical sense is important as is the fact that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were operating until March 1945.

Duh, there was compelling evidence that the industrialists had supplied Zyklon in stated quantities to the concentration camp system, and compelling evidence that it had been used to kill people. The numbers part was stated explicitly as an estimate.

There are no exact numbers for the holocaust. They're all estimates. Can we dismiss all estimates?

I'm not lying about the facts. I stated that Broad testified at this trial to a lower number of victims. That is in the court record, which I've seen. I've also seen Broad's testimony from this trial excerpted as an NI-series document and submitted to successor Nuremberg trials (IG Farben trial). Your objection is based solely on a summary document, not the court record, and thus fails.

I don't have the court records so I must use the summary document that I do have available. Unfortunately that means I must rely on the person writing the the summary to adequately summarize the facts in the case. Whatever Pery Broad's testified to vis-a-vis the number of victims wasn't important enough to warrant mentioning and it didn't alter the established facts. Any number Pery Broad mentioned wouldn't be terribly relevant anyway. At best he could provide us with nothing more than an estimate. And it would be an estimate based only upon what he witnessed himself.

You're quoting from the prosecution counsel's opening statement, which is not the same as a charge or indictment.

So?

This is the purest horsehockey. Firstly, the key fact under deliberation was whether the Tesch executives had supplied Zyklon in the knowledge that it was being used to murder people. The court decided that this fact was true, and no other. That is all a guilty verdict would determine. If they had been declared innocent it wouldn't even be a ruling on whether Zyklon had been used to murder people, it would be solely a ruling on whether the Tesch executives had knowingly supplied it for that purpose.

Secondly, estimates are defeasible propositions. They are offered as statements about the order of magnitude or likely extent of a particular phenomenon. They vary in reliablity depending on the amount of information available or used to support the calculation. Calling this estimate a fact is utter childishness.

Exactly. The estimated number of victims had already been established and was accepted by the court. Of course it's not an exact number. Are you saying that estimates aren't facts?

It's even more childish when the estimate was contradicted by evidence put onto the record by the self-same prosecution, producing at the very least, a major contradiction, and when there was no ruling given on the estimate by the court, and the estimate was swiftly contradicted by other courts ruling on similar issues (you may wish to read the actual written judgements in the Gerhard Peters case, which states simply 'many millions' and 'we cannot be exact' while citing testimonies), and rapidly contradicted by the work of historians.

Evidence put on the record isn't always true. If the evidence put on the record had altered the numbers substantially, the report would reflect that. It didn't so it didn't. What's childish is saying that "many millions" contradicts 4.5 million. They're both estimates. One is less ambiguous than the other but both of them contradict the 1.1 million that we always knew was the correct number today.

So you're unable to name one person on the planet who who denies gas chambers were used by the Nazis who accepts there was a Nazi intention to physically exterminate Jews. Gotcha.



Or maybe you're just hopelessly confused. If you say that x million non-Jews were not killed by the Nazis, then you're minimising Nazi crimes, since it is well established that the Nazis did in fact kill millions of non-Jews.

If you say that x million non-Jews were killed by the Nazis but they are not part of the Holocaust, then you are making an interpretative judgement about how to define the Holocaust, in this case to reserve the term to Jewish victims only.

If you say that Simon Wiesenthal was wrong to talk of 5 million non-Jewish Holocaust victims then you are correcting Simon Wiesenthal. But that correction would either be higher, lower or definitional.

Simply blethering about Wiesenthal's "5 million others" is pointless, on a par with jumping up and down about Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn babbled about 100 million victims of Stalinism.



You really need to ask by this stage?

Look, I'll quote Wiki since it seems you aren't capable of mastering anything more complicated, and since Wiki is a crowdsourced encyclopedia which reflects widespread knowledge and common interpretations, also giving sources, which in this case are quite clearly multiple.



So we have 'approximately' six million Jews, although Hilbergians estimate 5.1 million, as is discussed later in the entry. And we have a dispute between scholars over whether to include non-Jews or not, which would take the total all the way up to 17 million on some calculations.

The opening preamble here defines the Holocaust as a genocide, making it comparable to other mass murders also defined as genocides, and describes the event as "a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, throughout Nazi-occupied territory".

There is nothing in this definition about a Plan, or Gas Chambers, or 100% extermination, but there is a clear statement that the Holocaust was a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder.

The statement 'by Nazi Germany' is inaccurate because certain Axis allies like Romania and Croatia also carried out the systematic state-sponsored murder of Jews independently. The statement 'throughout Nazi-occupied territory' is vague but relatively accurate, since the Nazis killed on the spot or deported Jews to their deaths from every territory that they occupied. They also killed Jews deported from territories not under their direct occupation (eg Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia).

Wiki's definition of Holocaust denial is different:



The most basic definition of the Holocaust is that it was a genocide of European Jews which was carried out as a systematic programme of murder.

Deniers invariably dispute that whatever happened to the Jews in WWII can be described as a genocide, although they are uniformly illiterate about other genocides and don't seem to know the UN definition of genocide. The crucial element of the UN definition of genocide is "genocidal intent"; as with legal definitions of murder, there must be intent.



Your original cluelessness went as follows: "Is the evidence of gas chambers the same evidence that proves the Nazi plan to kill every Jew in Europe?"

Ignoring the 'kill every Jew in Europe' hyperbole, it is a matter of simple logic that evidence of planning is not going to be identical to evidence of implementation. You simply said 'the same evidence'. You didn't stop to think about how one piece of evidence might relate to another. It's fairly well established that you are not very good with understanding inferential logic.

Nothing there worth responding to.

This thread says otherwise, as do private messages I have received.

You were mentioned. I didn't see my name in there. I know some people read them some of the time but alot of people don't like long posts with lots of words.

 

[Dogzilla]

Doggie, you know as well as I do that it took multiple people. At least three. At least.

Jokes aside, Nick already pointed out that you were very wrong.

You linked to a Nick Terry post about Soviet POWs.