General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[LemmyCaution]

One of the most important documents about the holocaust you say?

That was THHP expressing things that way. Ronald Headland says that "this report is without equal" among reports about the killings of the mobile killing squads, which carried out he massacres of Jews in the East. Again, I won't pile up comments here but simply note that you somehow missed the point of my post: you say that the document is irrelevant, yet people who study and write about the Holocaust stress its relevancy. Leaving you looking like a dissembler and weasel, I'm afraid.

Let's test that using the Irrelevant Documents Test.

Another standard you are making up ad hoc?

You know, the test we apply to reject the relevance of any appearance of, say the Auschwitz four million or the Auschwitz four and a half million, in a trial transcript. When has the Jaeger Report been introduced into evidence in any court? Which specific defendant was convicted based upon which specific information found in the report? How did the Jaeger Report factor into a convicted criminal's sentence? Which specific information was cited specifically by the court as a factor in determining the guilt of and or the sentence of the convicted criminal? If any other evidence was submitted along with the Jaeger Report in any criminal trial, please explain the relative importance of the Jaeger Report vis-a-vis the other evidence and prove that the trier of fact believed that the facts in the Jaeger Report are in fact true.

1) The gold standard of a document's value in reconstructing the past is not its usefulness in a trial. 2) The document, in case a reader doesn't know this, was discovered subsequent to the Nuremberg proceedings, for example. 3) Nevertheless, the very THHP article to which I linked, and which you evidently ignored, just as you ignore questions about the claims you've made concerning Jaeger's report and about the fate of Jews in 5 German-occupied cities, said this

the Jaeger Report has been used at several other legal proceedings in several countries including Germany, Canada, and the United States. The most recent use of the Jaeger Report was in "U.S. v. Stelmokas" 100 F.3rd 302 (3rd Cir.; 1996). . . . Its impact can be gauged by the statement of one of the appeals court judges who reviewed the document. "Colonel Jaeger reports the executions of thousands of Jews and hundreds of others in such an impersonal, matter-of-fact-manner and with such pride that his account leaves one in a horror-driven state of shock." (100 F.3rd 302, 325).

Then you can tell me how this report is relevant to gas/plan/six--something you continually run away from doing.

Leaving aside the "little" definitional problem you ignore, I have done this at length in posts I've linked to, posts from months ago. The document is an official report informing Jaeger's superior of the activity of Jaeger's squad in Lithuania in executing its assignments and itemizes the murders of over 130,000 Jews in summer and fall 1941, which constitute a portion of the 1.4 million Jews estimated by Hilberg to have been exterminated by the Germans and their helpers in mobile killing actions. The report states that the goal of the murders carried out by Jaeger's squad was to make Lithuania free of Jews, which applies the goal of German Jewish policy to a specific occupied area.

To remind you, you had claimed no documentation existed for extermination actions and specifically said you wouldn't accept a document that was oblique, that used fuzzy maths, or that discussed anti-partisan actions or reprisal shooting. I wrote that the Jaeger report rubbished your silliness on all grounds. To remind you what you asked for, here is what I was responding to when I offered the Jaeger report, among other documents,

When asked for a document that unambiguously says "extermination," don't offer one that says "special treatment." . . . Don't say that the documentary evidence of a planned ethnic cleansing is evidence of an extermination. . . . Don't quote the opinion of a court that convicted members of the SS of treating Jews inhumanely as evidence that there was a policy of physically annihilating all the Jews. Don't offer a report that says X number of Jews were shot in retaliation for the murder of a German soldier as evidence that all the Jews were going to be killed."

To remind you, again, that I have never avoided the question how the report links to the Holocaust, here are some points I made during our first discussion of the report:

[The Jaeger Report] reflected a policy to exterminate Jews in Lithuania, unequivocally, and can be connected to other documents and actions to kill Jews throughout the East, even before the general European program was decided.

The early mass extermination actions targeting Jews, initiated by instructions to the Einsatzgruppen and then expanded by orders from Himmler and Heydrich in the summer of 1941, occurred in the East, with victims being Jews living in the occupied East. There are documents and other evidence that show this. One such document is the Jaeger Report.

[T]he intention to murder all of Europe's Jews developed over time, with input from regional activists as well as central orders.

The most obvious and glaring point is your steadfast refusal to give an explanation of your view that Colonel Jaeger's report doesn't discuss the extermination actions resulting in over 130,000 Jewish deaths but rather anti-partisan operations, rogue activity, or ethnic cleansing. If we could clear this up, we could then move on to Cyrix's requested discussion intentionalism/functionalism or to your sophistic presentation of what constitutes an action that's part of the Holocaust. But first things first - and you've been dodging a defense of your stated viewpoint for months.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Good thing the Nazis didn't do that!

The Nazis didn't confine elderly people into a massively overcrowded ghetto and undernourish them?

So now we have ghettos, gas vans, gas chambers, 5+ million murder victims, state-sponsored extermination policy, open-air shootings in Lithuania . . . you deny all these . . . what else?

You tell us.

As a reminder, in Hilberg's tally of Jews killed in the Holocaust, which he calls the destruction of the European Jews, the figure given for ghetto and aggravated deaths, of which the starvation deaths of the elderly Jews mentioned by Nick make up part, is 800,000. It is appearing to be increasingly irrelevant how you define the Holocaust, as you seem to deny the crimes of the Nazis whether they are included in your sophistic definition or not.

 

[Belz...]

The Nazis didn't confine elderly people into a massively overcrowded ghetto and undernourish them?

Of course they didn't !! The Nazis were cuddly creatures with not an evil bone in them. They didn't kill a single human, but maybe a few Jews. There was no holocaust, but if there was, good for them !

Disgusting.

 

[Multivac]

I'm having an image of a Nederlandsche SS in Amsterdam, waving a submachine gun -- "You there, with the yellow star! Do you have close friends or family? Okay, then -- on to the train with you!"

"But...I'm a branch manager at the Bank of the Netherlands -- my co-workers would wonder where I'd gone."

"Oh. Sorry then, sir. Don't tell anyone about this conversation, though, or we will have you....err....left in place and severely frowned at."

With John Cleese as the SS officer? Just because I can imagine him saying these lines in a Python sketch. He would then mutter "right, then!" and march off to annoy someone else.

 

[Belz...]

And their missing status proves the holocaust???? How?

 

[LemmyCaution]

We bring you this as a public service announcement, reminding you of yet another claim made by Dogzilla which he is hoping to cover over in diversion, obfuscation, semantic quibbles, and sophistry:

So there's the last scenario. This is the one that puts all the pieces of the puzzle together and, given the current state of knowledge, is the best:

3) Those people were never there.

 

[Multivac]

This is a very good point. If there was a policy of killing Jews, why Hitler exempt any of them?

Because he wanted them as slave labour before they were killed. Or as canon-fodder in the army.

The point is this: if there was no system in place for killing jews, there would be no need for Hitler to authorise excemptions. The fact that he was required to make occasion excemptions proves that the standard operation procedure was to kill Jews.

 

[Multivac]

I love how you guys will never answer a straight up yes/no, true/false question.

My irony meter just exploded! How do I claim for a new one?

 

[Nessie]

Nessie disagrees. There's no agreement as to whether Germany had planned to exterminate all the Jews or not. Some of you say that a plan to exterminate the Jews isn't even a salient feature of the holocaust. This is why Team holocaust appears to be confused and unable to articulate a coherent position. Your "arguments" are nothing more than disagreeing with anything a person you've labeled a "denier" says and blindly agreeing with everything a "skeptic" says.



.....

You are seriously clutching at straws if you are having to cite me in any shape or form to make an argument for your position

However, I would say that if the Nazis had won and had total control of Europe, they may have still been Jewish survivors as plans are rarely 100% successful, not all Germans and others mentioned such as Bulgarians were anti-semitic.

That in no way disproves the Holocaust.

 

[Nessie]

Re this

Originally Posted by Dogzilla
This is a very good point. If there was a policy of killing Jews, why Hitler exempt any of them?

Because whilst there was a policy of killing Jews, some were still considered to be of use to the Nazis. But the policy of killing Jews was so ingrained that it needed the authority of the top man, Hitler himself to be able to go against it.

There may be no written Hitler order to kill the Jews, but it appears we have them to be exempt from being killed. That strongly suggests Hitler knew and approved of the policy to kill the Jews as he wanted to be informed of and approve when there was a request not to kill them. That was not something trusted to anyone lower in the chain of command.

 

[Clayton Moore]

Re this

Originally Posted by Dogzilla
This is a very good point. If there was a policy of killing Jews, why Hitler exempt any of them?

Because whilst there was a policy of killing Jews, some were still considered to be of use to the Nazis. But the policy of killing Jews was so ingrained that it needed the authority of the top man, Hitler himself to be able to go against it.

There may be no written Hitler order to kill the Jews, but it appears we have them to be exempt from being killed. That strongly suggests Hitler knew and approved of the policy to kill the Jews as he wanted to be informed of and approve when there was a request not to kill them. That was not something trusted to anyone lower in the chain of command.

Originally Posted by LemmyCaution View Post
And, a brief essay, on the question of Jewish soldiers in the Wehrmacht: http://books.google.com/books?id=jdR...jewish&f=false Chapter 9
Quote:

In light of how aggressively Hitler pursued the extermination of the Jews, it is surprising how much time he spent reviewing applications for exemptions from the racial laws submitted by Mischlinge. One can understand his careful analysis of the pros and cons of removing a Mischling general from his post, but to many to whom Hitler granted these coveted exemptions were common soldiers with the ranks of private or NCO. Hitler's exemptions and the actions of thousands of Ayran offic

ers, including men close to Hitler, in support of Mishclinge contradicted the Nazis' Weltanschauung. What is particularly difficult to believe that the antisemite Hitler himself granted even one exemption from the racial laws. But he personally issued many. As Kershaw wrote, "Nothing was as it seemed in the Third Reich."

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

The procedures, most humbling for the (grand)mothers, who had to declare in court they had committed adultery, more often ended with the wished success, than the other way around. Success resulted from several reasons. First, some lawyers specialised in such procedures and prepared them professionally, also refusing hopeless cases. There was no danger in the procedures, because in case of failure, this did not downgrade the classification of the litigant. Second, usually all the family members - including the sometimes still living doubted (grand)father - co-operated. Usually very likely alternative fathers were named, who either appeared themselves in court confirming their most likely fatherhood or who were already dead, but known as good friends, neighbours or subtenants of the (grand)mother. Fourth, the included obligatory, and most humbling body examinations of doubted father and child especially searched for allegedly racial features of outward appearance as conceived among anti-Semites to be typically Jewish, besides the blood typing test etc. already usual in earlier regular paternity suits.

Especially when the doubted (grand)father was already dead, emigrated or deported (as after 1941), the examination concentrated on these supposedly abnormous outward features considered Jewish, to be found in the physiognomy of the descendant (child). Since the anti-Semitic clichés on Jewish outward appearance were so stereotyped, the usual litigant did not show features clearly indicating his Jewish descent in the eyes of the expert witnesses, so they often delivered in their medical evidences ambiguous results.[15] Fifth the judges then tended to believe the (grand)mothers, alternative fathers, doubted fathers and other witnesses, who paid such a high price publicly humbling themselves, and not recorded for earlier perjuring, and declared the prior paternity annulled, ensuing the status improvement for the litigant.[16]

Not even close Nessie.

 

[Border Reiver]

While I agree with your overall point, in the interests of accuracy I have to say that in regards to points (A) and (D) the comments are not entirely correct, based on some sources I have read.

I would say the biggest thing which doomed Germany during the war was its senior leadership. Göring, for example, was a disaster as head of the Luftwaffe.

You are right, I simplified slightly to make a point. I drew most of this from a single source (James Lucas' "World War II Through German Eyes"), and general overview of the period.

The idea that the German economy was not rigged for a protracted war and planned it's war economy for short sharp campaigns with a startegic pause in between to rebuild stores for the next one is fairly sound when you start looking at the priorities for production - short to mid range tactical bombers, tanks that required a lot of precise machining and individual work (Panthers and Tigers), precisely machined small arms, etc. When the fighting got to the protracted war (essentially after June 1941, when the war became a two front job), the established factories were simply unable to keep up with the demand - which is why late war items tend to be far less well finished, and/or are easier to manufacture (for example the MG 42 is much simpler to manufacture than its predecessor MG34).

I will definitely agree that the nazi leadership was a huge reason they lost - and the inability of their subordinates to really be able to speak out against bad decisions made sure that any mistakes were amplified.

 

[Dcdrac]

Clayton you are no more qualified to comment on this than Dogzilla is all you both betray is clear ignorance of what you are discussing in this and other threads we see your knoweldge is not based on any real research into the subject to hand and is entirely gleaned from the internet.

 

[TSR]

Not even close Nessie.

The point you seem to miss, cm, is that Hitler was not ruling on their status as mishclinge, but rather whether or not this or that mishclinge wsa useful enough to warrant an exception to the laws which would otherwise apply.

These exemptions were very rarely granted to half- or full Jews (I can think of none that didn't involve official covering up of the Jewish heritage), so being declared mishclinge was a necessary but not sufficient step in the the process -- being mishclinge was no guarantee the exemption would be granted, but not being was basically a guarantee that it would not.

 

[000063]

If the answer is "yes, eventually" then the answer is "yes" If the answer is "yes, except for those who have been temporarily exempted" then the answer is "yes" If the answer is "yes, except for those who have been exempted" the answer is "no."

Answer the question, Dogzilla;

I assume you no longer believe in the "Imaginary Jews" theory?

It is entirely relevant to the thread whether you still believe in the theory you advanced. Your comprehension of the arguments of others is also relevant. The only reason you think other's positions are "needlessly complex" is because you don't understand them. A qualified "yes" being the same as a "no" is only valid if you are trying to strip all detail and nuance from the debate, or are unable to understand same.

Plus, there's your entirely vague definition of "relevance", which seems to automatically exclude any point you don't want to address, curiously.

 

[LemmyCaution]

You are seriously clutching at straws if you are having to cite me in any shape or form to make an argument for your position

However, I would say that if the Nazis had won and had total control of Europe, they may have still been Jewish survivors as plans are rarely 100% successful, not all Germans and others mentioned such as Bulgarians were anti-semitic.

That in no way disproves the Holocaust.

No fooling. And if there were just 22 survivors (5 in hiding in Berlin, 6 being either Mischlinge or Jews in mixed marriages who'd endured their time working for Organization Todt, 7 escapees of various shooting actions who hid with sympathetic peasants, and 4 Jewish children raised Catholic to conceal their identities), this handful would be touted by some loony-tune somewhere, maybe calling himself Dogzilla, as disproving the intention of the Germans to eliminate Jews from Europe and their conducting a multi-pronged mass extermination campaign to get it done. Because they didn't kill them all.

I have to say - having been through some horrifically stupid denier arguments - Dogzilla's performance in here is close to or at the bottom.

Speaking of which, has anyone nominated for a Stundie his assertion that the best concept to put together the pieces of what he imagines to be a puzzle is that Jews were never there, in Europe, in the first place? It deserves such a nod. His sophistry regarding his either/or and definition of the Holocaust, along with his persistent dodging defense of even his own claims, are just as mind boggling but lack the pith and pugnacious stupidity of

Those people were never there.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Plus, there's your entirely vague definition of "relevance", which seems to automatically exclude any point you don't want to address, curiously.

Vague and dishonest, yes.

And which seems to have gotten him wandering into denial of anything uncomfortable to his heroes, even as he acts the stickler for his reductionist and dumbed-down definition of the Holocaust.

 

[Nessie]

......


Not even close Nessie.

If there was no policy to exterminate the Jews that went all the way to the top, why did it need Hitler's approval to get an exemption?

 

[Belz...]

If there was no policy to exterminate the Jews that went all the way to the top, why did it need Hitler's approval to get an exemption?

It's actually funny that they use the exemption thing as proof that there wasn't an actual extermination policy while in fact the very existence of exemptions proves the opposite.

 

[Cyrix686]

Snipped...

I have to say - having been through some horrifically stupid denier arguments - Dogzilla's performance in here is close to or at the bottom.

Speaking of which, has anyone nominated for a Stundie his assertion that the best concept to put together the pieces of what he imagines to be a puzzle is that Jews were never there, in Europe, in the first place? It deserves such a nod. His sophistry regarding his either/or and definition of the Holocaust, along with his persistent dodging defense of even his own claims, are just as mind boggling but lack the pith and pugnacious stupidity of

Those people were never there.

Someone must perform this vital function forthwith to place this Dogzilla denier with the potential to, "knock-down bees" Stundie into the nominations bucket of stupid typings.

It'll surely follow Berg's crap about simply holding your breath in a gas chamber in order to survive and effortlessly, "win."

It's far worse than Berg's crap, so I don't see how it can't not assuredly race to the bottom of dumbass.