You can also magic away the conenction between World War 2 and the Nazi extermiantion programme was it not Snake or one of his cohorts that tried to argue they were unrelated?
Sorry about this but I've got so much catching up to do that I'm not going to be able to address everything that you've been discussing for over a week now. Hopefully you guys have moved beyond that stupid mass grave capacity discussion that relies on Charles Provan's "experiment" as a data source. So far it's not looking good but I've just started trying to catch up.
I know that most of what I'm reading now is no longer the current topic. For that reason, I'll refrain from jumping in unless I see something that deserves a response. For the next few days or so, think of me as your crazy ex-girlfriend who randomly brings up trivial arguments you had months ago during a current argument.
Anyway.
It wasn't Snaketongue who first recognized the disconnect between World War II and the holocaust. Peter Novick and Gulie Arad touched upon the concept during interviews in the BBC Channel 4 documentary "Battle for the Holocaust." I seriously doubt they are the only two who recognized the trend of seperating the fate of the Jews and the war. But I'm the person who first brought it to the attention of everybody here that the logical extension of the believer definition of the holocaust, the characterization of all Jewish deaths during the holocaust, and the increasing importance of holocaust "memory" makes the holocaust more and more of an independant historical event. The holocaust is now talked about as a unique event--a defining moment in Western Civilization rather than what is really was: nothing more than what happened to the Jews during World War II.
I'll try to explain this for the slow people who can't see the forest for the trees. It's actually quite easy to understand if you ask the right questions and really listen to the answers from those who profess to a knowledge of the holocaust.
It starts with the believer definition of the holocaust. That definition goes something like "the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of Europeean Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945." That's the USHMM definition of the holocaust and it's pretty close to the broadest definition you guys accept.
So then we ask: How many Jews died during this so called holocaust?
The answer is: somewhere between five and six million (or something like that). Holosnobs like to quote the Hilbergian 5.1 million but because popular culture demands homage to the six million, we'll go with six million.
Q. So, six million died. How did they die?
A. They were intentionally murdered--gassed, shot, starved, etc.--by the Nazis because they were Jewish.
Q. How many of them were innocent civilians who simply got caught in the crossfire?
A. None of those six million were innocent civilians who got caught in the crossfire.
Q. How many were executed because they were involved in partisan activity?
A. None of those six million were executed because they were involved in partisan activity. They were murdered because they were Jews and for no other reason.
Q. How many of them were not involved in partisan activity but were executed in reprisals for partisan activity?
A. None of them. They were murdered because they were Jews and for no other reason.
Q. So none of these Jewish deaths were ordinary wartime casualties?
A. Nope.
None.
Q. How many simply died of old age or other natural causes?
A.
None of them. A 103 year old Jewess who died in Theresienstadt in 1943 is a person who perished in the Shoah. It's even a Nazi depravity bonus point--i.e., they even murdered women who were 103 years old. What did a 103 year old woman do to deserve being holocausted?
Q. How many Jews died due to disease and starvation brought on by wartime deprivations?
A. None of them. Wartime deprivations might have been the murder weapon but they were still murdered.
Q. Were there any innocent civilians anywhere who could be classified as ordinary wartime casualties?
A. Yes, of course. During World War II there was a war going on!! Millions of innocent Poles, Russians, British, etc. were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Q. Was there any organized resistance to the German occupation forces by the local population during World War II?
A. Yes. Local populations sometimes resist foreign occupation. In Iraq they were called "insurgents" or simply "terrists." They were called "partisans" during World War II.
Q. Did the Germans ever fight back against the partisans?
A. Yes.
Q. Did "fighting back" involve executing suspected partisans?
A. Yes.
Q. Did the Germans execute innocent civilians who were not involved in partisan activity in retaliation for partisan activity?
A. Yes.
Q. Did Jews join the partisans and resist the German occupation?
A.
Technically no. Jews only joined the partisans when it became clear that Jews were being murdered. So Jewish partisans were not resisting German occupation. They were trying to survive.
Q. When the Germans executed suspected partisans, is it possible that there were Jews among them?
A. Yes. But when that happened, they weren't executed because they were partisans. They were executed because they were Jews.
Q. When innocent civilians were rounded up and executed in retaliation for partisan activity, is it possible some of those civilians were Jewish?
A. No. The Jewish population living in the old Pale of Settlement could have been left unmolested when collecting random innocent civilians for retribution. If the Germans didn't make a concerted effort to avoid Jewish civilians when rounding up random civilians, they were targeting Jewish civilians.
Q. Did anybody in Europe die due to starvation and disease brought on by wartime deprivations?
A. Yes, of course. War is a terrible thing.
Q. Were Jews among those who died in Europe due to starvation and disease?
A. Yes. But starvation and disease that afflicted the entire population in general was specifically directed at Jews when Jews were afflicted.
Q. Were there massive voluntary and involuntary population transfers during and right after the war because of the war?
A. Yes, of course. Nazis loved moving people around to create a new world order.
Q. Were Jews among those people who changed residence during the war?
A. Yes.
Q. Were there Poles, Russians, Germans, Czechs, etc. who lost contact with family and friends during the war and who were considered missing?
A. Yes
Q. Were there any Jews who lost contact with family and friends during the war and who are considered missing?
A. No. None of them are missing. They were all murdered by the Nazis.
Q. Did Jews die of natural causes during the war years?
A. Yes
Q. Were innocent Jewish civilians among the innocent civilians who killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time?
A. Yes
Q. How many Jews died of natural causes or just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
A. *silence*
Q. So there weren't any Jews who died of natural causes or who could be considered ordinary wartime casualties?
A. Nobody said that.
Q. Then how many were there?
A. *silence*
So Jews weren't killed because they were innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. They weren't executed because they resisted the German occupation. They weren't executed because they were involved in black market activity. They weren't executed as part of reprisals against civilians because of partisan activity. They didn't die because disease and starvation that killed the non-Jewish population also hit the Jewish population. They didn't even die of natural causes. Jews always maintain contact with everybody they know so if a Jew doesn't know where another Jew was after the war, that Jew is dead. All the misfortune that swept over the European continent during the war miraculously passed over the Jews.
The only thing that did kill the Jews was the holocaust, which murdered six million of them.
There is only one
tangential connection between the holocaust and World War II. World War II caused millions of non-Jewish civilian deaths which created a tremendous labor shortage for the Nazis. Some Nazis saw the Jews as potential slave laborers for the war effort. They felt it would be prudent to temporarily exempt some of the stronger, more able bodied Jews from extermination, make them slaves during the war, and kill them after the war. Fortunately for the Jews the war ended with the Nazi defeat so all the Jews who had been temporarily exempt from the Final Solution survived the war. So World War II did impact the holocaust
So let me rephrase the question: Besides saving millions of Jewish lives and strengthening the genetic pool by exterminating the old and the weak, what did World War II have to do with the holocaust?
