Schindler's List and Hitler's List

[RandFan]

Re: Re: Schindler's List and Hitler's List

The smartest two percent were a threat and Hitler was simply trying to defend against the threat?

idea, the question is nonsensical in context with Hitler's irrational fear and hatred of the Jews. You are trying to insert logic where it won't fit.

Hitler believed that Jews were genetically inferior. Nothing in that belief held that Jews could be made superior through selective breeding.

On the contrary, ANY Jewish blood was reason to find an individual inferior. Hitler didn't test for ability and intelligence as far as survival goes. Some were kept some for labor free labor purposes. He didn't care about breeding them. In fact he destroyed many gifted and highly intelligent people because of his irrational fear.

Trying to make sense from such madness is a waste of time.

 

[Crossbow]

Re: Re: Schindler's List and Hitler's List

The smartest two percent were a threat and Hitler was simply trying to defend against the threat?

Hitler viewed all Jews (not just 2% of the Jewish population, but 100% of the Jewish population) as a threat to himself and Germany and therefore felt completely justified in all of his efforts to rid Europe of all Jewish people via legal discrimination, to forced emmigration, to genocide.

His hatred and fear of all Jews was quite evident and legion; for example, this is just one of the many anti-Jewish passages from Mein Kampf:

"The Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end...spying on the unsuspicious German girl he plans to seduce.....he wants to contaminate her blood and remove her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew hates the white race and wants to lower its cultural level so that the Jews might dominate."

 

[LW]

Why didn't Hitler make a list?

He made many lists. Getting on his list was not a good thing for survival, though.

Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people?

I hope you are not under the misbelief that Hitler knew about and approved of Shindler's list. Hitler wanted to kill all Jews. (Well, at least in the end he did, earlier he pondered about just sending them somewhere far away). No exceptions.

However, Hitler was also in a great shortage of workers. This need was so pressing that he could be persuaded to let a portion of them to work in the war industry. Even then the main objective was never to produce lots of good work but to work the Jews to death.

Schindler's list basically said that "these Jews have specialized industrial skills so they are difficult to replace and thus still more valuable living than dead." (BTW, the reason why he is a hero is that he lied in the list. Most of those in the list were not highly-trained workers and if this had been found out by the Nazi officials he would have ended in a concentration camp himself).

The Nazi officials never thought that the Jews in the list would be left alive at the end. Only that killing them "just now" would be counterproductive. Had Germans won the war, none of them would have survived.

 

[joesixpack]

This question is so weird. I'm sure I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be asking "If Hitler had decided NOT to kill EVERY SINGLE jew he could get his (metaphorical) hands on, then would he have killed as many as he did?"

I guess the answer would be that, no, he wouldn't have killed, um, excuse me, MURDERD as many as he actually did.

My question to you is, would that have redeemed him in some way? I'm pretty sure that's not what you're suggesting, but it sortta' sounds that way.

 

[The idea]

My question to you is: would that have redeemed him in some way?

No. However, you can't say that there's no significant difference between sparing the smartest 2% and not sparing the smartest 2% unless you are also going to say that Schindler's list itself had no significance.

If there would inevitably be some survivors then Hitler had two choices: have some random survivors or have the smartest 2% along with some random survivors. If Hitler was in favor of eugenics, then why didn't he choose the latter option?

 

[Beady]

I'm going to hate myself for this, but...

If there would inevitably be some survivors then Hitler had two choices: have some random survivors or have the smartest 2% along with some random survivors. If Hitler was in favor of eugenics, then why didn't he choose the latter option?

Hitler's version of eugenics demanded the extermination of any factor which polluted the Aryans. He saw the Jews as the worst pollutants. He therefore had no interest in improving the genetic stock of the Jews, he wanted them completely removed from the face of the planet. He was not interested in preserving a remnant for academic study or other purposes. He wanted them gone.

Try this for an analogy: Your house is infested with roaches. Your interest is in exterminating them. You want to eradicate them, you do not want to improve or nurture them because that would only make them more difficult to get rid of. You know that there are going to be survivors after each time you call the exterminator, but that does not make you think that maybe it's time to start learning to live with the little @%&*!s. You keep on indiscriminately killing them, and keep on calling the exterminator, dreaming of the day when they are all dead, never to be seen again.

Schindler, from Hitler's POV, was a human who thought it wrong to kill cockroaches. He liked cockroaches, and wanted to keep them in his world.

My apologies for any offense the analogy may have caused. I suppose, though, that it's understandable that someone so removed in time from the Holocaust as "The Idea" obviously is would have trouble understanding the Nazis' mindset. Face it, even for us older farts, who either experienced it first-hand or directly from the survivors and other participants, it's not easy to understand a hatred so consuming that it loses all passion.and simply becomes an accepted way of life.

 

[Skeptic]

Er, since Hitler wanted to destroy the jews, since he considered their very existence as bad, it would not make sense for him to try and save any one of them. And in any case it would not make sense for him to deliberately save the smartest--and therefore, from his point his view, the most dangerous--jews.

But again, the question is weird. You are asking, in effect, "why wasn't Hitler more rational in his genocidal hatered?". That's a question that answers itself, doesn't it?

 

[joesixpack]

No. However, you can't say that there's no significant difference between sparing the smartest 2% and not sparing the smartest 2% unless you are also going to say that Schindler's list itself had no significance.

Regardless of which 2% you save, you've still murdered the other 98%. It's not important WHICH 2% you save, so yeah, I say there is no significant difference, and Schindlers list was significant in that it saved anyone.

 

[The idea]

Regardless of which 2% you save, you've still murdered the other 98%. It's not important WHICH 2% you save, so yeah, I say there is no significant difference, and Schindlers list was significant in that it saved anyone.

The question of which 2% would have been saved is a question of what kind of eugenics would have been applied. If we are comparing eugenics to no eugenics then we are comparing something like an additional 2% (i.e. 2% more than the random survivors) to an additional 0%.

 

[Beady]

The question of which 2% would have been saved is a question of what kind of eugenics would have been applied. If we are comparing eugenics to no eugenics then we are comparing something like an additional 2% (i.e. 2% more than the random survivors) to an additional 0%.

Don't you get it? We're not talking eugenics, we're talking extermination, eradication, and genocide. The goal of the Final Solution was the complete erasure of an entire race.

 

[Soapy Sam]

idea- Have you considered the obvious answer, namely that Adolf Hitler was a screaming nutjob who was rational about very little?

 

[Flo]

If there would inevitably be some survivors then Hitler had two choices: have some random survivors or have the smartest 2% along with some random survivors. If Hitler was in favor of eugenics, then why didn't he choose the latter option?

Hitler was in favor of eugenics only for the "superior" races (i.e. breeding a super-duper-superior race), and that included eliminating all possible "corrupting influences". His plan didn't allow for any survivors among those he had singled out as such, be them Jews, Roms, homosexuals, mentally or physically handicapped, etc. The only reason there actually were survivors had nothing to do with his choice, but all with the fact that his dream of a "thousand years reich" was thwarted earlier than he had predicted. In his (and his henchmen) mind, he had all the time in the world to eliminate all Jews and others undesirable while taking advantage of free labor on the way.

 

[Psi Baba]

The Nazi's concerns were precisely the opposite (to what The Idea is suggesting they could have done). In fact, they began to worry about what they might be creating by selecting those fit for work and exterminating the unfit. In Part III of the Wansee Protocol, Eichmann offered this "solution":

Under appropriate direction the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labor) columns, with the sexes separated, Jews capable of work will be moved into these areas as they build roads, during which a large proportion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction.

The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival (Witness the experience of history.)

 

[Beady]

The Nazi's concerns were precisely the opposite (to what The Idea is suggesting they could have done).

The Idea apparently lost interest in this conversation when he couldn't find a single person to agree with him.

My only regret is that you didn't join in earlier.

 

[Psi Baba]

The Idea apparently lost interest in this conversation when he couldn't find a single person to agree with him.

My only regret is that you didn't join in earlier.

Yeah, I wish I had seen it before now, but his OP was a little confusing. I wasn't even sure what he was getting at until I read some of the subequent posts. I'm not sure if he even knows what he was trying to say.

 

[The idea]

Try this for an analogy: Your house is infested with roaches. Your interest is in exterminating them. You want to eradicate them, you do not want to improve or nurture them because that would only make them more difficult to get rid of. [...]

If we stop talking about roaches and start talking about people, then won't we find that the top 2% are more likely, rather than less likely, to be accepted into other countries and therefore more likely to be able to leave?

You keep on indiscriminately killing them, and keep on calling the exterminator, dreaming of the day when they are all dead, never to be seen again.

When that day arrives, is there a danger of finding out that your clean, quiet tenant, who rents a room in your house actually had a grandparent who was a roach?

 

[The idea]

The Nazi's concerns were precisely the opposite (to what The Idea is suggesting they could have done). In fact, they began to worry about what they might be creating by selecting those fit for work and exterminating the unfit.

In Part III of the Wansee Protocol, Eichmann offered this "solution":

"Under appropriate direction the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labor) columns, with the sexes separated, Jews capable of work will be moved into these areas as they build roads, during which a large proportion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction.

"The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival (Witness the experience of history.)"

You have done good work in gathering this information!

Perhaps I should have put, at the beginning of my questions, a preamble along the following lines: "If the Holocaust was an attempt to apply eugenics...." I did not intend to claim that the Holocaust was an attempt to apply eugenics. I was raising a question that arises if we take such a claim seriously.

In the past I have occasionally attempted to make conversation by suggesting that there might be good public policies that could be devised to have, over the long term, a eugenic effect. People have reacted in a hostile way and mentioned the Holocaust. Who were these people? Isn't this just anecdotal evidence?

Is there an easy way to bring Eichmann's words to the attention of the people who wrote the following?

The final result of the Nazi eugenics program was the Holocaust, which claimed six million lives.

Source: http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/bin/white_papers-articles/engineering_evolution.htm

The Eugenics movement, which aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human race through selective breeding, was the forerunner of the Holocaust.

Source:
http://www.humanitas-international.org/holocaust/eugenics.htm

Smith, J. David. The Eugenic Assault on America: Scenes in Red, White and Black. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1993.
114 p.
[...] Smith chronicles these events and legislation, holding that "the issue of eugenics as potential genocide is even today not dead."

Source:
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/publications/scopenotes/sn28.htm

The eugenics movement had its logical conclusion in the death camps of the Third Reich.

Source:
http://www.hli.org/sr_7_2004.html

[...] the Final Solution appears in hindsight to have been the logical conclusion of a chain of events that began with the popular acceptance of eugenics theories [...]

Source:
http://www.chaos.net.nz/articles/eugenics.html

The Third Reich’s racial laws were profoundly influenced by American eugenics philosophy and legislation. In turn, the eugenics movement in Germany gave rise to the "T-4" euthanasia program, which was the beginning of and the operational foundation of Nazi genocide.

Source:
http://www.spitfirelist.com/f032.html

 

[Zep]

Why didn't Hitler make a list? Suppose that all Jews under Hitler's control had been tested and the smartest two percent had been selected to live and reproduce. Then wouldn't Hitler's list have been bigger than Schindler's list? Wouldn't that have been more eugenic than the survival of some random collection of people?

Oh but Hitler DID have a list. It was a fairly short one, though, but quite encompassing: "All the Jews". But not in his own diary...

The "Final Solution", meaning extermination, was not persued actively until the Wansee conference in 1941. Before that, it appears the prefered solution was forced emmigration (e.g. the Madagascar Plan). And even when the decision was made at Wansee, Hitler made sure that his own name and/or signature was not on any "orders". It seemed to be more of a case of "the Fuhrer's wish" being enacted.

Really, I'd suggest you go take a better and longer look at this part of modern history. It is documented out the wazoo with pertinent details which are particularly easy to find, even on the Internet.

 

[The idea]

In his (and his henchmen) mind, he had all the time in the world to eliminate all Jews and others undesirable while taking advantage of free labor on the way.

Then why didn't he simply establish an income tax for Jews only, starting at one percent of income and increasing, every year, by one percent?

 

[Flo]

Then why didn't he simply establish an income tax for Jews only, starting at one percent of income and increasing, every year, by one percent?

and why didn't he wait until space travel was invented and he could send them all on the moon ?


Are you dense or are you "en train de faire l'âne pour avoir du son" ?