I love the scene in Band of Brothers where they take the German town people out to the camp and make them help with the cleanup or a situation they had worked hard to ignore.

It’s a dang shame that the Nuremberg tribunal didn’t pay more attention to Albert Speer’s role in the slave labor going on in Germany during The War. He got away with being the “Good Nazi” with his so-called apology.

He should have been hanged. Also, he denied any knowledge of the Holocaust, but after he finally died (in the bedroom of a young honey in London), evidence was found that showed he knew about it from the start and had lied all along.

Of course, his feigned ignorance mirrored the majority of the German population after The War.

“What? Dey vas keeling der Jews? I was een Svitzerland having lunch during der Var. I know nothing. Nothing!”

There but for the grace of God go all of us. And all of our countries. Not whitewashing, just saying.

On the face of it, this looks like a classic case of defining down to get the numbers up. ‘15–20 million dead or imprisoned’ is not necessarily worse than ‘6 million dead’, because the latter number doesn’t include those imprisoned. But it adds an extra digit to the number and looks more impressive.

It’s only natural, alas, that a more complete survey of the camps and ghettoes — and this is useful work — should lead to a higher death toll. I have always suspected that the official figures for the Holocaust dead were on the low side. But it does no good, and may do active harm, to conflate the dead with those who were imprisoned and survived. By all means let us be mindful of both; but let us not draw a false equivalence between them.

As for Albert Speer: I have always had the distinct impression that the Nuremberg tribunal was looking for an excuse to let him off lightly, because his actions in the closing months of the war saved many thousands of lives. He not only refused to carry out Hitler’s orders for the complete destruction of the remaining German industry and infrastructure, he is reported (by reliable witnesses) to have travelled extensively round Germany in those months, countermanding demolition orders on the spot.

Once he knew the war was hopelessly lost, Hitler’s objective changed: he wanted to kill as many Germans as possible, on the grounds that they had turned out to be inferior to ‘the stronger eastern nation’ after all, and deserved death for betraying him. His orders were intended to deprive the German people of ‘the most primitive means of survival’. No nation deserves extermination — not even the Germans, who are made in the image of God as much as any of us.

But golly, I thought those world-class, respected Muslim scholars had definitively proved that the Holocaust was a piece of Zionist propaganda!

I think with the aging out and death of the Baby Boomer generation, the Holocaust deniers are going to have a lot easier time of it.

Good point, Matthew B.c.

and I’ve always heard that the death toll in the death campus was 18 millions.

Makes Pius XII’s saving of so many Italian Jews even more remarkable.
Satan had a very good century in the 20th. Wonder what he has in store for the 21st!

I think with the aging out and death of the Baby Boomer generation, the Holocaust deniers are going to have a lot easier time of it.

Why the Baby Boomers particularly? By definition, none of them were eyewitnesses; they were all born after the Holocaust was ended.

It’s particularly chilling to me to read this and realize that MOST Germans MUST have known what was going on. Not quite the story told for some decades; there were Germans and there were Nazis, the one not necessarily the other? No more. This was right under everyone’s nose. Oh, yes, and Muslims and their sympathizers will still deny it. Can’t expect much more.

Jay Random

The only reason Speer disobeyed Hitler’s orders at the end of The War is because he thought the allies were going to hire him to rebuild Germany. He was a cold-blooded Nazi who used slave labor to build his status with Hitler. Don’t forget – Speer said if Hitler had a friend, I was him (Speer).

I have read the “Spandau Diaries” by Speer. He spent twenty years walking in circles and learning nothing.

I still think he should have been hanged. He killed thousands of slave labors to enhance his own reputation. And he adored Hitler.

Read Joachim Fest’s work on Speer as the “Good Nazi.” It reveals what an evil worm he was.

As far as the German populace’s knowledge, most did not know about the death camps apparently. They knew people were being deported for labor, but only a relatively small percentage guessed at the truth. Since workers were being carted in for slave labor from every occupied country, slave labor was what most people thought was the likely destination. People whose disabled relatives disappeared suspected the worst early on. Towns near the death camps caught on too. Recent research shows that the yellow stars actually led many people to actively aid Jews, to the great anger of the leadership. However it was a police state, and had became one very quickly. There was very little the ordinary citizen could do without being shot. There are quite a few very interesting books out in the last couple of years, memoirs and such. I’ve been reading quite a few of them, wondering if we are being set up for a similar police state.

The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, is a good read and movie about Christians hiding Jews.

Diary of Ann Frank!!

Q: Weren’t the Nazis a Socialist party?

If so, why are they considered right-wingers? Shouldn’t they be considered left-wingers instead?

How thin is the veneer of respectability and civilization! Just look at modern day political and social dialogue: All rights for me but not for thee unless you agree with me! This included your right to participate in the social, political and judicial wings of society: In the USA and many western countries for example, the religious test for public office is reality!!! Being Catholic of the genuine kind, pro choice and non approving of the gay lifestyle and marriage are sufficient grounds for demonization and proscription as an enemy of the people’s rights. That is how the Holocaust started.

I wonder when they’ll start doing research on the Soviet Empire archives. If you think 15 million by the Nazis is terrible, I’m wondering what the numbers will be once they tell us how many were killed by the Bolsheviks?

Ann r, the phrase, plausible deniability, comes to mind. The killing centers, such as Auschwitz II–Birkenau, were located in out of the way places, but other concentration camps, such as Ohrdruf, were located near population centers.

Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald, was near Weimar and the stench of the camp could be smelled for miles. It was the first camp liberated and the one that Eisenhower made German leaders and civilians tour. A description may be found here: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Ohrdruf/index.html

Patton recorded in his diary:

In a shed . . . was a pile of about 40 completely naked human bodies in the last stages of emaciation. These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime, not for the purposes of destroying them, but for the purpose of removing the stench. When the shed was full–I presume its capacity to be about 200, the bodies were taken to a pit a mile from the camp where they were buried. The inmates claimed that 3,000 men, who had been either shot in the head or who had died of starvation, had been so buried since the 1st of January. When we began to approach with our troops, the Germans thought it expedient to remove the evidence of their crime. Therefore, they had some of the slaves exhume the bodies and place them on a mammoth griddle composed of 60-centimeter railway tracks laid on brick foundations. They poured pitch on the bodies and then built a fire of pinewood and coal under them. They were not very successful in their operations because there was a pile of human bones, skulls, charred torsos on or under the griddle which must have accounted for many hundreds.[

TUAD,

You are spot on. Next time you need to piss off a progressive/collectivist/socialist ideologue, remind him of this inconvenient fact.

In the century just passed, 100 million souls perished for no other reason than they were in the way of the Perfect State. That they were underfoot in the Path to Progress.

test

I just finished reading ‘In The Garden of Beasts’ by Erik Larson, an account of the 4 years in Germany spent by America’s ambassador to that country from 1933-1937. Ambassador Dodd was a bookish academic, completely unprepared for the vicious thuggery of the Nazi regime; his daughter Martha initially took enthusiastically to the Nazis. Her greatest talent was as a grande horizontale and she had many lovers among the Nazi elite. Eventually the charm palled and she became disgusted with the criminal dictatorship; she moved on to become an ardent Communist, in honor of another lover. The most interesting thing I took away from the book was Dodd’s observation of the Nazi process of “Gleichschultung”, commonly translated as “coordination” or “bringing into line”. It involved creating Nazi organizations and support systems to involve all the people in some way with the regime. It also involved choking off and eliminating competing organizations, such as traditional groups, religions, unions, etc. What was striking was the willingness, even eagerness of the German people to go along with this program, to the point of “Selbstgleichschaltung” – SELF-coordination. Every time some new decree came down, people hurried to comply, so things changed rapidly with little opposition. People would go away for a trip then return to Germany and find their friends and neighbors completely changed. I think something similar is happening today – we call it “the new normal”. It’s like society is reeling from incessant shocks, and find it safer to just keep hurtling forward. There’s no longer any real hope that things can ever go back to the way they were.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvGotYZNPt4

Jay Random -

I think with the aging out and death of the Baby Boomer generation, the Holocaust deniers are going to have a lot easier time of it.

What I was trying to convey with that remark is that quite a few of us were born either during or after WWII and we had documentary evidence and/or knew people who were eyewitnesses to the Nazi brutality during the madness.

People born after our era do not have that advantage and historical revisionism makes it more difficult to convince people of historical facts. We are used to being lied to by government entities and the concept of “My Truth” and “Your Truth” as being equally valid concepts is not helping in that regard.

Does that help make my point clearer?

TU&D, I recommend to you Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. Briefly, the fascists were national socialists whereas the communists were international socialists. Hence, the fascists were the right wing of the socialist movement, the communists being the left wing. If one leaves out the genocide, other policies of the Nazis and of Italian and Spanish fascists were generally consistent with what American progressives wanted to do. In fact, before the war and the genocide became apparent, many American progressives publicly admired what Hitler and Mussolini were achieving.

“Eisenhower related his experience at the camp to George Marshall, as follows: “. . .the most interesting–although horrible–sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha [Ohrdruf]. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda’.”

Two books I would recommend are “My Brother the Pope” by Georg Ratzinger, and “Wolfram” by Giles Milton. Both books present the predicaments of the ordinary German. If you were a teacher, or in the constabulary, or any other government job, you had to join the party or lose your job. If you had a family to support you had little choice. Benedict XVI’s father took early retirement, loss of salary, and retired to his farm rather than conform. Not everyone had a farm to retire to. Neighbors would rat on you for “brownie points” if you didn’t show up for the big parades and wave your flag, and you would be visited by the local gestapo. Your house would be searched for “unGerman” books. You could not listen to music by Jewish composers. School kids were forced to join the youth groups. When the concentration camps were liberated, most Germans were appalled that such a thing had been done. The government kept them in the dark as much as possible.

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

Statements like this are frustratingly stupid. I’m sure most Germans knew there were POW camps. As well, I’m sure many knew there were forced labor camps. The former were respectable for non-Russian prisoners. The latter probably varied in how they treated the labor but I don’t know. How many knew about the death camps is something else. The conflation of all of these is inaccurate.

As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe.

Ye gads, this is wrong. Homosexuals were typically only sent to the camps for political reasons not due to their homosexuality. It was just easier to use their homosexuality against them. The Nazis were rife with homosexuals.

Also notice that Christians aren’t mentioned although large numbers of them were sent to the camps for opposing the Nazis.

I think with the aging out and death of the Baby Boomer generation, the Holocaust deniers are going to have a lot easier time of it.

I don’t know if deniers will have an easier time, but I think the constant beating of the drum and Jewish focus of it has hurt. Millions of people other than Jews suffered under the Nazis and for the same reason. They were the subhumans or defective. Making it only a Jewish event was never the best way to approach it. The other problem is the constant reminder of it. I know I just tune it out anymore. It has been one movie, book, and miniseries after another from my youth until now. You begin to resent the continuous bombardment. It starts to dull the lesson that should be learned.

TU&D, despite the name they were fascists not socialists. Hitler hated liberalism in general. There are a number of similarities but also some differences, racial purity for one. Another distinctions between the two is in economic policy. Socialists generally nationalize commerce and the means of production. Fascists generally prefer not to own the enterprise outright but to use the government to control economic activity.

The Jews were not the only ones to disappear into the Holocaust, but they were especially singled out. The Minuets of the January 1942 Wannsee Conference conducted by SS-Obergruppenführer (Reinhard) Heydrich state that the goal of the Nazis was to eliminate all of the estimated 11 million Jews living in Europe.

To quote from part of the Minutes:

II. At the beginning of the discussion Chief of the Security Police and of the SD, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, reported that the Reich Marshal had appointed him delegate for the preparations for the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe and pointed out that this discussion had been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions. The wish of the Reich Marshal to have a draft sent to him concerning organizational, factual and material interests in relation to the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe makes necessary an initial common action of all central offices immediately concerned with these questions in order to bring their general activities into line. The Reichsführer-SS and the Chief of the German Police (Chief of the Security Police and the SD) was entrusted with the official central handling of the final solution of the Jewish question without regard to geographic borders. The Chief of the Security Police and the SD then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on thus far against this enemy, the essential points being the following:
a) the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of life of the German people,
b) the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people.

As the Minutes go on make clear all the instruments of the German government, industry, law etc. were to be focused on making Germany and Europe Judenrein (Jew free).

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Hitler was a socialist and a left-winger.

I have read everything there is to read about Hitler and he epitomizes the left in this country. From total central control down to late-term abortion.

Go make your excuses for the liberals and Obama somewhere else. Or, better yet, educate yourself.

Thanks for all the responses to Nazism being wrongfully associated with social-conservative minded voters.

I don’t really think the left-right analysis is really helpful. Both seem to wind up at totalitarianism. Which is worse Hitler or Stalim? Yet we try to label them as the extreme ends of a linear continuum.

Might not a better way to think of it as a linear continuum from totalitarianism to anarchy? That way a society that values ordered liberty lies somewhere in-between. This is the model that the Founders had in mind. They wanted a federal government just strong enough to prevent anarchy (which destroys liberty because might makes right)and a government weak enough so that it can’t lead to absolutism and tyranny.

They were terrified of both monarchy (absolutism) and democracy (no historical example had ever lasted, but fell into absolutism and tyranny). They tried to avoid these dangers by setting up a constitutional republic in which powers were fragmented and the power centers would fight with each other to preserve their prerogatives. They traded efficiency for liberty.

Yet today we seen to be determined to dismantle that constitutional republic in the name of liberalism or progressivism. We seem to want a powerful government that can take from others to give to us, and we seem to forget or ignore that a government that can take from others can also take from us. A government that can do something for us can do something to us.

We seem to want to choose between Hitler or Stalin when the choice should actually be between tyranny and liberty.

Michael Berry -

Yet today we seen to be determined to dismantle that constitutional republic in the name of liberalism or progressivism. We seem to want a powerful government that can take from others to give to us, and we seem to forget or ignore that a government that can take from others can also take from us. A government that can do something for us can do something to us.

Close to 50% of the voters in the last presidential election would disagree with that. However, the sycophant media and the power brokers in Washington, DC like to pretend that it is otherwise.

The worst thing to happen as far as maintaining our Republic was the removal of the property ownership qualification in the name of “Civil Rights.” Once you let people on the government dole vote, then it is “Game Over” for a Republic style of government.

It also does not help that most politicians care more about their perks than about doing what is right for the country.

Michael Berry, while I agree with your comments about the deterioration of American ordered liberty, again, consistent with several comments above, Hitler and Stalin were at the right and left ends of collectivism/socialism/central control ideologies. Your continuum is only the left end of the spectrum. What is referred to as “right wing” today in the U.S., that is, both social and economic conservative ideas, is considerably to the right of all the twentieth century tyrannies. Falsely linking Hitler to American conservatives as “right wing” is a continuing leftist smear campaign.

Someone I know commented that the sheer density of concentration camps and other “facilities” makes it clear every German knew what was up. Just like a country near you; same sex marriage goes quite smoothly becuase some miniscule number of people ridicules the majority into accepting it followed by the politicians moving in to make it final. You wake up one morning to discover *you* are the intolerant one. *You* just grew a swastika on *your* sleeve because you are normal. It grows all around you.

Allen, I would argue that the income tax was the death knell for the republic.

Correction: Just noticed a very bad mistake::

“LaVallette
March 3, 2013″

I wrote:

“Being Catholic of the genuine kind, pro choice and non approving of the gay lifestyle and marriage are sufficient grounds for demonization and proscription as an enemy of the people’s rights.”

Of course in first line it should read “pro life” not “pro choice”.

Don’t worry, we knew what you meant, LaValette.

Regarding left and right, it doesn’t cover all the bases. Limited government style right wing tends towards libertarianism. Right-fascist vs Left-socialist are different in only one key respect, the companies are state owned in one, privately owned but de facto government controlled in the other. Government control is the common denominator.

An interesting view on the rise of the Nazi party had to do with the communist party in Germany. Originally they were mortal enemies, and some people were duped into helping the Nazis to fight off the communists. But a Russian, ex-military intelligence officer, has asserted that Stalin instructed the communists to back the Nazi party in the final election. Doing so to ensure an eventual cause for war. Poland, instead of being a buffer zone or a trip wire, was invaded by Stalin so as to be able to spring a surprise attack on Germany. The Nazis caught wind of the looming sneak attack and launched an immediate attack, initially devastating the Soviets, who still had their vehicles on train cars, etc. Hitler was vile, evil, utterly corrupt. But, it may well be that Communisim was the enabler. And to them what were some millions of Jews compared to taking Eastern Europe?

Nazis and Commies were only mortal enemies because it was useful to make it that way and they knew that even if they were to strike up a pact, back stabbing would result. Ideologically they were not actually far from each other but when you have two groups hell-bent on domination and control, either one is going to end the other or they will take eachother down.

To me it seems that the reason why the Nazis won out in Germany was the fact that they made better use of German nationalism. They aped Prussian (and thus ‘German’ after 1871) symbols and other things to appeal to that side of the German populace. The German Commies were more bookish and easy to accuse of being too international-in cahoots with the Jews and Russians. It came down to power, the ideology is largely unimportant and can be sacrificed in order to gain more power.

Did any of you read “Hitler’s Willing Executioners?” The author (Jonah Goldhagen) spends half the book arguing that anti-semitism so pervaded German society that the ordinary German couldn’t see what the fuss was about with respect to what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, and the second half blaming the average German for not overcoming their prejudices. If anti-semitism was so pervasive as that, isn’t blaming the German people like blaming the fish for swimming in polluted water? That was my reaction, anyway.

A large number of the medical practitioners who were trusted family friends were Jews, as were a number of other scientists and mathematicians. Many of them saw the handwriting on the wall, and got out when they could, much to the enrichment of England and the US. There is always a class of people that can be swayed to be anti______ (fill in the blank), because to put down any minority gives them some sense superiority.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”