What if Nazism wasn't anti-Semitic?

[Eddie Dane]

They still would have had Geral Plan Ost.
They still would have tried to push the Slavs behind the Ural.
This still would have pissed off the Slavs, who would still have built a whole lotta grade-A tanks and moved in to kick some ass.

It would still have been an epic fail.


Perhaps they would have had a slightly bigger army by incorporating the Jewish conscripts.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Not, mind you, that reading either work is necessarily "intellectual".

But reading books at all is a pretty good start in that aspect

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Excuse my ignorance, but what role did the Nazi genocide play vs the general prevention of upsetting economic and political power in the choice of countries such as France, UK, and US in opposing Germany?

1. The actual plan for organized genocide didn't even happen until the Wannsee Conference in _1942_. Even starting discussing the problem and planning the conference didn't start until the end of 1941. I think you'll find that that's a bit too late to explain why Britain and France declared war in _1939_.

2. Arguably the first systematic genocide of the Jews started in Lithuania, by mid-1941. Again, it's almost two years too late to explain why Britain and France were fed up with Germany in 1939.

3. Even more ad-hoc pogroms only happened in Poland, where the SS Einsatzgruppen ("special ops units", but don't think as much commandos as, well, ad-hoc formed police groups) got free hand to kill any of the population groups considered undesirable or hostile. In Austria and Czechoslowakia they were only tasked with securing important buildings and documents, and could at most question people. Even in Poland, they actually were busier killing Polish intellectuals, priests, etc, than Jews.

But at any rate, it happened already after Britain and France had declared war, so it can't really explain the rivalry.

4. The genocide wasn't exactly publicized even inside Germany. The earlier attempts to kill off the handicapped and mentally ill, had proven immensely unpopular and came somewhat short of causing a revolt in some areas. So it wasn't exactly the kind of thing they wanted to write on a big banner and put it on a billboard, if you get my drift.

Outside of Germany, the Nazis took every feasible precaution to keep it a secret.

Even the logistics were occasionally taken into account as a possible give-away. E.g., that's why some camps preferred to use locally produced carbon monoxide, so as not to raise suspicion with the total amount of Zyklon B produced and transported.

Mind you, it wasn't impossible to know it either inside or outside. But it was at least kept at a level at which you could ignore the rumours, if you weren't particularly emotionally invested in finding it out. Turns out that for most people it's enough.

At any rate, it only officially sunk in for the Allied governments and commanders that a genocide had been going on, when they actually occupied a couple of extermination camps. Which was already by the end of the war.

So again it doesn't explain the buildup of hostility before the war.

5. In the end, I think Occam's Razor is the right thing to apply there anyway. Germany's constant breach of treaties and increasing territorial claims, were simply too much to ignore. Each time Hitler wanted just one more piece and then, honest to God, that's it. Then a couple of months later it would be the next piece he wants, and this time it's the final one, bla, bla, bla. At some point it became obvious to anyone that appeasement just simply doesn't work.

 

[Skeptic]

Excuse my ignorance, but what role did the Nazi genocide play vs the general prevention of upsetting economic and political power i

The reason war was declared was that it became clear Hitler and the Nazis cannot be trusted and that every attempt to cooperate with them merely results in more demands and greater violence.

The watershed events were, I think, the destruction of Czechoslovakia despite promises to the contrary in 1939, and the pogrom against the Jews in November 1938.

Before that, it could be -- and was -- argued that the Nazis were not essentially bad, but merely have a bee in their bonnet about the treaty of Versailles. Appeasing them on this, while cowardly, towards those countries that trusted France and England to protect them from Nazi aggression, at least had its internal logic.

After Kristallnacht and the occupation of what was left of Czechoslovakia even after all of the Nazis' demands were met in the infamously cowardly and perfidious Munich agreement, it became clear that the Nazis are barbarians who can only be stopped by force.

 

[bigjelmapro]

three words: Einstein and Oppenheimer.

So you are clearly stating that Jews are the gatekeepers to nuclear technology, thanks for clearing that up.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Take France.

Please!

(rim shot)

 

[zooterkin]

German scientists did detonate a nuclear bomb in the Fall of 1944 near the Baltic Sea without the help of Jewish physicists and again in March 1945 in central Germany.

 

[Moss]

I really wonder if MaGZ has some kind of Pavlovian conditioning going on that causes him to deny.

 

[barrymore]

1. The actual plan for organized genocide didn't even happen until the Wannsee Conference in _1942_. Even starting discussing the problem and planning the conference didn't start until the end of 1941. I think you'll find that that's a bit too late to explain why Britain and France declared war in _1939_.

2. Arguably the first systematic genocide of the Jews started in Lithuania, by mid-1941. Again, it's almost two years too late to explain why Britain and France were fed up with Germany in 1939.

3. Even more ad-hoc pogroms only happened in Poland, where the SS Einsatzgruppen ("special ops units", but don't think as much commandos as, well, ad-hoc formed police groups) got free hand to kill any of the population groups considered undesirable or hostile. In Austria and Czechoslowakia they were only tasked with securing important buildings and documents, and could at most question people. Even in Poland, they actually were busier killing Polish intellectuals, priests, etc, than Jews.

But at any rate, it happened already after Britain and France had declared war, so it can't really explain the rivalry.

4. The genocide wasn't exactly publicized even inside Germany. The earlier attempts to kill off the handicapped and mentally ill, had proven immensely unpopular and came somewhat short of causing a revolt in some areas. So it wasn't exactly the kind of thing they wanted to write on a big banner and put it on a billboard, if you get my drift.

Outside of Germany, the Nazis took every feasible precaution to keep it a secret.

Even the logistics were occasionally taken into account as a possible give-away. E.g., that's why some camps preferred to use locally produced carbon monoxide, so as not to raise suspicion with the total amount of Zyklon B produced and transported.

Mind you, it wasn't impossible to know it either inside or outside. But it was at least kept at a level at which you could ignore the rumours, if you weren't particularly emotionally invested in finding it out. Turns out that for most people it's enough.

At any rate, it only officially sunk in for the Allied governments and commanders that a genocide had been going on, when they actually occupied a couple of extermination camps. Which was already by the end of the war.

So again it doesn't explain the buildup of hostility before the war.

5. In the end, I think Occam's Razor is the right thing to apply there anyway. Germany's constant breach of treaties and increasing territorial claims, were simply too much to ignore. Each time Hitler wanted just one more piece and then, honest to God, that's it. Then a couple of months later it would be the next piece he wants, and this time it's the final one, bla, bla, bla. At some point it became obvious to anyone that appeasement just simply doesn't work.

The reason war was declared was that it became clear Hitler and the Nazis cannot be trusted and that every attempt to cooperate with them merely results in more demands and greater violence.

The watershed events were, I think, the destruction of Czechoslovakia despite promises to the contrary in 1939, and the pogrom against the Jews in November 1938.

Before that, it could be -- and was -- argued that the Nazis were not essentially bad, but merely have a bee in their bonnet about the treaty of Versailles. Appeasing them on this, while cowardly, towards those countries that trusted France and England to protect them from Nazi aggression, at least had its internal logic.

After Kristallnacht and the occupation of what was left of Czechoslovakia even after all of the Nazis' demands were met in the infamously cowardly and perfidious Munich agreement, it became clear that the Nazis are barbarians who can only be stopped by force.

Thank you, that certainly clarifies the situation. If these countries were not opposing Germany due to ideological and humanitarian concerns, is it fair to say that, ceteris paribus, the magnitude of anti-semitism (or Nazi bigotry in general) would not necessarily be causally linked to the magnitude of opposition from these Western European countries?

Was the Jewish population of Western European countries significant enough to take notice of anti-semitism in the Nazi party? Did they care?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

TBH, I'm left with the impression that the combination of anti-semitism and anti-communism actually caused a degree of sympathy for Nazi Germany in certain circles abroad.

Of course, the reaction to Kristallnacht proved that it wasn't as widespread as one would think. And may well have been a reason why the "Final Solution" was kept a secret, in as much as possible.

And just to clarify that one in the context of your question of whether genocide might have been a factor. The Kristallnacht, abhorrent as it was, was not yet a proper genocide. It was disguised, in as much as possible, as riotting rather than as official state policy. The SA and SS agents involved were in civillian clothes and, well, pretty much tried to make it look like a riot. And while some 30,000 Jews were arrested, all were released afterwards, sans the IIRC 91 that were killed in the "riotting".

Don't get me wrong, even one innocent killed is too many, so I'm _not_ saying it's ok if it was "only" 91. But if the question was about genocide, that didn't yet qualify as a genocide for the western world.

The Jews in the western world... I don't think they were in a position to do much either way.

Before the "Final Solution" stupidity, Jews were actually encouraged to emigrate if they wanted to. Or probably it's more accurate that they'd face hatred and discrimination if they didn't. Hitler certainly hated them, but he seemed to basically have just wanted them removed, regardless of how. It didn't necessarily have to mean "killed". Yet.

I mean one of the plans actually considered until very late was acturally to create a Jewish state somewhere, and mass deport them there. Palestine was actually considered, though it soon became obvious that the Brits are not that quick to fold in the area. Another area considered was IIRC Madagascar, which also had the advantage of being an island.

The problem was that there was nowhere to emigrate to. The safest place for a Jew to go, and one of the very few options at all, was... Japan, an axis power. There are a few Jewish (small) communities IIRC in China and Japan since WW2, because the Japanese didn't have much of a problem with them (in spite of constant pressure from Nazi Germany to enact anti-semitic laws, I might add) and some of the Japanese leaders actually encouraged Jewish immigration.

Ironically that was a flip side of the same coin. Not all Japanese were doing it out of humanitarian considerations. A lot of Japanese had swallowed the anti-semitic propaganda hook, line and sinker. You know, that Jews end up taking over the banks and commerce, that Jews rule the USA, etc. But to some Japanese that actually sounded like a damn good idea. They actually hoped that importing a few thousand Jews would help their economy _and_ their foreign relations with the USA

But anyway, the best bet for a Jew to emigrate was Japan, not the USA or Western Europe.

So, to get to the actual point of this long roundabout rant: I have to really question how much influence those Jews actually had with their governments. I mean, I'm supposed to believe that they could do something like make their government go to war (see the post of our friend MagZ here), yet they couldn't arrange even a basic refugee camp for the Jews in Germany. Something doesn't quite add up. It seems to me more like actually they had buggerall say in what their country does.

 

[barrymore]

TBH, I'm left with the impression that the combination of anti-semitism and anti-communism actually caused a degree of sympathy for Nazi Germany in certain circles abroad.

Of course, the reaction to Kristallnacht proved that it wasn't as widespread as one would think. And may well have been a reason why the "Final Solution" was kept a secret, in as much as possible.

On the Wikipedia entry for Kristallnacht, it described the response from the global community as follows:

The Kristallnacht pogrom sparked international outrage. It discredited pro-Nazi movements in Europe and North America, leading to eventual decline of their support. Many newspapers condemned Kristallnacht, with some comparing it to the murderous pogroms incited by Imperial Russia in the 1880s. The United States recalled its ambassador (but did not break off diplomatic relations) while other governments severed diplomatic relations with Germany in protest. The British government approved the Kindertransport program for refugee children.

As such, Kristallnacht also marked a turning point in relations between Nazi Germany and the rest of the world. The brutality of the program and the Nazi government's deliberate policy of encouraging the violence once it had begun, laid bare the repressive nature and widespread anti-Semitism entrenched in Germany, and turned world opinion sharply against the Nazi regime, with some politicians even calling for war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht#From_the_global_community

So, I understand that the word "genocide" was premature to use because it was not a genocide at that point. But the wiki entry suggests that outrage over Kristallnacht and overall bigotry was a launching board for Western Europe and the US to speak of (if not, declare) war.

Do you agree with this assessment?
Or, were these countries merely being opportunistic and exploiting the situation in order to pursue alternative economic and political interests? (which is not to say they did not genuinely care about the pogroms).

 

[Skeptic]

Was the Jewish population of Western European countries significant enough to take notice of anti-semitism in the Nazi party? Did they care?

Yes, and yes. They noticed, and used their democratic right to protest and influence to try and influence the policy of Nazi Germany. But no, certainly not enough to make those countries enemies of Hitler by itself.

A good analogy here is the Catholics. Catholics in Germany were also prosecuted in the 1930s. Catholics in other western European countries, especially in Catholic France and -- naturally -- the Vatican, sometimes raised their voice against the Nazis persecution of Catholics.

Did this have an effect on public opinion and policy? Perhaps some. Did it control those countries and determine their policies? Certainly not.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I really wonder if MaGZ has some kind of Pavlovian conditioning going on that causes him to deny.

There is also a rumor out there that Japan developed and tested the atomic bomb before the Americans did. In both cases, the implied reason that neither Germany nor Japan used this technology during the war was that...they just had more class than the US, which was just being a big ol' meanie by actually blowing people up with it.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

So, I understand that the word "genocide" was premature to use because it was not a genocide at that point. But the wiki entry suggests that outrage over Kristallnacht and overall bigotry was a launching board for Western Europe and the US to speak of (if not, declare) war.

Do you agree with this assessment?
Or, were these countries merely being opportunistic and exploiting the situation in order to pursue alternative economic and political interests? (which is not to say they did not genuinely care about the pogroms).

Well, it caused the international opinion of Germany to reach a new low, and would later be a factor in why they eventually said "**** you!" to Hitler, but it's IMHO simplistic to either call it a launching board or say that it was economic opportunism. For all that outrage, most of the west was still speaking of appeasing Germany, not of war.

To the west's defense and to better understand the situation, though, nobody really wanted another war. WW1 had thoroughly shocked the world, and even for the winners it was very much of a loss and may have helped cause the Great Depression in the long run. The deadly flu epidemic right after the war, also didn't help. The Great Depression was still raging in some places (e.g., Canada's laissez faire policy helped it keep its depression until the 40's) and other places had not fully recovered yet. Most countries were still basically healing after all that, and were really in no position to start another war either for economic gains or for not liking Hitler's anti-semitism. And most of them had massive political and social problems due to the depression (e.g., France was very badly hit in that aspect), and the last thing they needed to justify to their population was starting another war.

IMHO a better candidate for the _real_ turning point, the point where Britain and France actually said "no more", was the invasion and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, in complete breach of the 1938 Munich Pact. (You know, the pact where Hitler had said that the Sudetenland is all the land he wants, and from where Neville Chamberlain had come waving that piece of paper and proclaiming peace in his time.) That's when it became blindingly clear that appeasement simply doesn't work.

Still, they didn't declare war at that point either.

In fact, heck, even past that point Chamberlain and his faction actually insisted that they could secure peace by giving Germany the piece of Poland it wanted, and trusting that Hitler will leave the rest of it alone.

But that faction was diminishing rapidly in popularity or influence. Most people no longer believed that there is any point in trying to appease Germany, and its increasingly cocky international stance didn't earn it any friends either. E.g., the fact that on 28 April 1939, right after the invasion of Czechoslovakia (already a unilateral act of war), Germany promptly unilaterally withdrew from the non-aggression pact with Poland and started basically using military threat to get wat it wanted from Poland.

With that military threat and pressure on Poland mounting, on 25 August the UK signed a mutual defense pact with Poland, and braced itself for war.

So basically I don't think that either anti-semitism nor opportunism played that big a role. Germany was simply setting itself up as the new bully in the European arena, and appeasing the bully just didn't work. At some point someone just had to say "enough, already."

 

[dudalb]

German scientists did detonate a nuclear bomb in the Fall of 1944 near the Baltic Sea without the help of Jewish physicists and again in March 1945 in central Germany.

That might well be the single most ridiculous thing I have ever seen at JREF. And that is saying quite a lot.

 

[dudalb]

They wouldn't be the KKK now would they?

Exactly.
Talking about The Nazis not being Anti Semitic is like talking about Water not being Wet.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Just to add: by mid '39 it wasn't even guesswork that Germany intends to attack Poland. Hitler (who apparently still thought he can ally with the UK and conquer the world together) had oppened negotiations with the UK to be allowed to attack Poland. Including such promises as that he'll afterwards put the Wehrmacht in the service of the British Empire, you know, so they can get to conquer someone too.

It's only fair, right? I mean, right?

Dunno. Between the immediate threat to attack Poland, and just not liking his anti-semitism, I personally have no trouble believing that the former outweighed the latter.

 

[ddt]

So, I understand that the word "genocide" was premature to use because it was not a genocide at that point. But the wiki entry suggests that outrage over Kristallnacht and overall bigotry was a launching board for Western Europe and the US to speak of (if not, declare) war.

Do you agree with this assessment?
Or, were these countries merely being opportunistic and exploiting the situation in order to pursue alternative economic and political interests? (which is not to say they did not genuinely care about the pogroms).

The Western Allies - UK and France at that point - were in no position to launch a war of aggression against Germany, if that's what you're trying to get at. The reason for war was the invasion of Poland - the fourth or so "last" territorial demand from Nazi Germany.

If Hitler had only wanted to eradicate the German Jews, and had not had continuing territorial demands, he probably would have gotten away with it. International politics and international law does not care very much for how you treat or mistreat your own citizens. Still doesn't - though the UN SC in principle has the means for opposing it, Rwanda and Darfur show how poor this works.

 

[ddt]

The problem was that there was nowhere to emigrate to. The safest place for a Jew to go, and one of the very few options at all, was... Japan, an axis power. There are a few Jewish (small) communities IIRC in China and Japan since WW2, because the Japanese didn't have much of a problem with them (in spite of constant pressure from Nazi Germany to enact anti-semitic laws, I might add) and some of the Japanese leaders actually encouraged Jewish immigration.

There's a great story about Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, and Jan Zwartendijk, the Dutch acting consul there. In 1939/1940, Lithuania was swamped with Jewish refugees from Poland - who knew they weren't safe there either for long.

Zwartendijk stamped their passports with "No visa needed for Curacao" - leaving out the part that entry to Curacao was totally at the discretion of the local governor. Sugihara then would issue them transit visa for Japan. This way, thousands of Polish and Lithuanian Jews could escape to Japan.

 

[barrymore]

The Western Allies - UK and France at that point - were in no position to launch a war of aggression against Germany, if that's what you're trying to get at. The reason for war was the invasion of Poland - the fourth or so "last" territorial demand from Nazi Germany.

If Hitler had only wanted to eradicate the German Jews, and had not had continuing territorial demands, he probably would have gotten away with it. International politics and international law does not care very much for how you treat or mistreat your own citizens. Still doesn't - though the UN SC in principle has the means for opposing it, Rwanda and Darfur show how poor this works.

I really was not getting at anything. I was just trying to understand the influence, if any, the bigotry (and the actions resulting from it) of the Nazi party had on the motivations of other countries to engage them in war.

I have had discussions with experts on the EU, who generally believed that the formation of the EU (starting with the ECSC in 1950) was due to the tensions between Germany and France. And by tensions, I mean squabbling over political and economic resources. The EU essentially was setup to prevent another continental war. So, I was just trying to gauge whether how this fit in with factors non-political and economic, from a historical perspective.