@Zhukov_2011:
In that earlier thread, I’d made several statements. Prior to WWII, Hitler had attempted to solve the so-called “Jewish problem” by resettling Jews outside of Germany. A program had been put in place to resettle German Jews in Palestine. 10% of the prewar German Jewish population emigrated to Palestine via that program; with many more German Jews emigrating elsewhere. Hitler had also envisioned resettling Jews in Madagascar.
Ok, is this just a fun fact you’re throwing out there or are you saying this was a noble gesture by Hitler? This is the third or fourth time you’ve mentioned this, and this is the third or fourth time I’ve had to tell you, this plan doesn’t excuse Nazi depravities. Forcing a group of people to move to some underdeveloped sub-tropical island with only the clothes on their back doesn’t really compare to just leaving that group of people alone. You keep saying Hitler tried to “solve” the “Jewish problem.” The Jews weren’t some mathematical equation that just needed to be solved, there were a group of living, breathing people, women, men children and old people.
I supported the aforementioned statements here, and my understanding is that they are not under dispute.
No, you threw out some various quotes from a book that illustrated the Nazi perspective behind the Holocaust and other killings (and not everyone shares Tooze’s views of that perspective - many believe, with lots of evidence, that the Jews et al were killed because the Nazis just didn’t like them). Tooze is certainly no Holocaust revisionist, and his book does nothing to support your ridiculous claim that the “proximate cause” for the extermination of the Jews and millions of others was the food blockade, or that all of the “illegal killing” would have stopped if the blockade had ended. Did you even read my last post, or, as I’m beginning to believe, are you just trying to get a rise out of someone (if so, I hate to say it definitely worked)?
The thing we’re arguing here is your misguided theories as to why the Germans were “forced” to kill so many innocent people. If you factor in the death of Soviet civilians, the Germans killed approximately 17 million people, most of them women, children and old people. This number does not take into account the number of Allied soldiers killed during the war. You blame those deaths on the Allies because of the food blockade and because the Allies wouldn’t find homes for Europe’s Jews. You really think those deaths had nothing to do with Hitler’s insistence on cleansing the “master race” of its “undesirables”? It had nothing to do with Nazi eugenic programs, or just the pure hatred the Nazis held for anyone not of German Teutonic stock? You believe the Germans were justified in killing millions? You would have to be a blind fool to believe such things.
- Which nation bears the blame for the British (and later American) government’s decision to use food as a weapon? During a time of war, the deliberate targeting of enemy civilians is a war crime. A food blockade directed against an entire nation can have no possible target except civilians.
Which country bears the blame? Which country?!?! Are you daft? Germany you burke! They started that war and if they couldn’t handle what the Allies threw at them in response, too f***ing bad. They are the ones who chose to start the war, they are the ones who chose to indiscriminately bomb European cities and murder civilians and gas Jews and slaughter Ukrainians and sink civilian ships and kill Roma children and chose to perform many more similar acts. The German people are just as much to blame for leading their country to war as the Nazi leaders through their complacency and outright dedication to the Nazi effort, and many (including me) would argue the German people reaped what they sowed. It should have forced them to seek a change in government like the blockade did in 1918. No, you can’t shift the indiscriminate killings of millions of people to the Allies. I can’t even believe I’m arguing this…
You seem to think the Nazis were decent people who were forced to do horrific things because of the Allies. You base your claims off of one book which doesn’t even come close to supporting some of the claims you’re making, and a few wikipedia articles you twist in order to support your claim that the blood of millions of innocent people lays at the Allies’ feet (White Paper, Madagascar plan). In other words, you are trying to feed us pure BS.
You have made a number of surprising assertions in your post. I will attempt to address them here.
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“Ok, is this just a fun fact you’re throwing out there or are you saying this was a noble gesture by Hitler?” [The text in question refers to the Nazis’ prewar plans–which had been partially implemented–to solve the so-called “Jewish problem” through emigration to places outside Europe.] I did not describe this plan either as a “fun fact” or as some kind of “noble gesture” on Hitler’s part. Nor did I claim that Hitler was somehow justified in singling out a specific group of people for forced emigration. I simply stated a fact which I felt was relevant to the discussion; without trying to put any particular labels like “fun” or “noble” on that fact. If you feel the Nazi government’s pre-war plans for solving the so-called “Jewish problem” are somehow irrelevant to this discussion, please explain why.
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“(and not everyone shares Tooze’s views of that perspective - many believe, with lots of evidence, that the Jews et al were killed because the Nazis just didn’t like them).” The Nazis’ prewar solution to the so-called “Jewish problem” had been emigration. Once Germany was no longer in a position to feed everyone within its borders, that policy changed to one of extermination. There can be no reasonable dispute about the fact that Germany’s food situation was such that millions would starve or otherwise die no matter what the government did. (Short of outright surrender to the Allies, that is.) Your argument here, if I understand it correctly, is that Germany would have changed its policy to one of extermination even if no food shortage had existed. That argument is speculation. I am not prepared to start handing out guilty verdicts on the basis of your speculation or your gut feelings about what might have happened.
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“Tooze is certainly no Holocaust revisionist, and his book does nothing to support your ridiculous claim that the ‘proximate cause’ for the extermination of the Jews and millions of others was the food blockade, or that all of the ‘illegal killing’ would have stopped if the blockade had ended.”
Your first claim is correct: Tooze is no Holocaust revisionist. Your second claim is false: the quotes I provided from Tooze’s book clearly illustrate that Germany was facing a very severe food crisis, and that the Nazis responded to that food crisis in part by attempting to reduce Jewish caloric consumption to zero. In your third claim, you implied that I’d definitively stated that the Nazis would have ended their illegal killing once the food crisis had ended. I do not recall having speculated about this point. However, it’s worth looking at the documentary records of the Nazis’ plans. (As Tooze did in his book.) Tooze noted the existence of a Nazi plan to force between 30 - 50 million Poles to migrate eastward after the war. The vacated lands would then have been resettled by Germans. If Germany’s food situation had remained dire, the deaths of large numbers of those Poles along the way would have been seen as an acceptable way to reduce the number of mouths that needed to be fed. The implication was that, had Germany’s food crisis been solved, large-scale deaths among the migrating Poles would not have been envisioned.
You blame those deaths on the Allies because of the food blockade and because
the Allies wouldn’t find homes for Europe’s Jews. You really think those deaths
had nothing to do with Hitler’s insistence on cleansing the “master race” of its
“undesirables”? It had nothing to do with Nazi eugenic programs, or just the pure
hatred the Nazis held for anyone not of German Teutonic stock?
Germany’s food situation meant that millions of people could die. Those deaths are the inevitable result of a simple mathematical equation involving the quantity of food available and the number of mouths that needed to be fed. It was up to Hitler to decide which millions would die; and his choices in that matter were clearly influenced by both his Nazi ideology and by Germany’s military needs. In a non-Nazi nation faced with a similar food crisis, the millions of deaths might have occurred among those too poor to buy increasingly expensive food, or among those who lacked the right connections; or those who were out of favor for some other reason. But any nation faced with Germany’s food situation would have been forced to find some mechanism for deciding which people would eat and live, and which would starve and die.
Which country bears the blame? Which country?!?! Are you daft? Germany you
burke! They started that war and if they couldn’t handle what the Allies threw at
them in response, too f***ing bad.
This argument is illogical on a number of levels. For one thing, it implies that only aggressor nations must adhere to the laws of the war. However, the Geneva Conventions are binding on both aggressor and non-aggressor nations.
Further, Britain and France declared war on Germany, which then caused Germany to declare war on Britain and France. The Anglo-French justification for their war on Germany was that they were protecting the Polish. The food crisis created by the British food blockade caused millions of Poles to starve. That action cannot possibly be justified on the basis of “protecting” the Poles. Nor is there justification for the French government’s decision to lie to Poland before the war; thus putting the Polish government in a false position.
Hitler’s reason for going to war against Poland was his belief that the German territories under Polish rule should instead be under German rule. If the United States had been subjected to a military defeat, and if Texas and California were consequently placed under Mexican rule, New England under Canadian rule, Alaska under Soviet rule, and Hawaii under Japanese rule, would the United States be justified in (if necessary) going to war to reclaim its lost territory?
The German people are just as much to blame for leading their country to war
as the Nazi leaders through their complacency and outright dedication to the Nazi
effort, and many (including me) would argue the German people reaped what they sowed.
That argument has been used to justify a host of atrocities committed against the German people during and after the war. “Civilians were run over by tanks, shot, or otherwise murdered. Women and young girls were raped and left to die. . . . In addition, fighter bombers of the Soviet air force penetrated far behind the front lines and often attacked columns of evacuees.[48][49]” “Although mass executions of civilians by the Red Army were seldom publicly reported, there is a known incident in Treuenbrietzen, where at least 88 male inhabitants were rounded up and shot on May 1, 1945. The incident took place after a victory celebration at which numerous girls from Treuenbrietzen were raped and a Red Army lieutenant-colonel was shot by an unknown assailant. Some sources claim as many as 1,000 civilians may have been executed during the incident.[notes 1][51][52]” “Following the Red Army’s capture of Berlin in 1945, one of the largest incidents of mass rape took place. Soviet troops raped German women and girls as young as 8 years old.”
There are some who feel the above events are justice. Some might feel that it was perfectly fitting for husbands and fathers to watch, helplessly, as their wives and daughters were raped and murdered by Soviet soldiers. Or for entire German families to commit suicide to avoid the dishonor of this fate. There are those who would feel comfortable explaining to the eight year old girls being raped why they “had it coming to them,” and why these rape-murders were perfectly reasonable and justified. I take a different view: Soviet actions in postwar Germany were evil, twisted, sadistic, and sick. Nor were such actions anything new for the Soviets, or directed exclusively against the Germans. This was the same government which had cynically murdered tens of millions of its own citizens, which had inflicted a reign of murder and terror in Poland, the Baltic States, the portion of Finland it had conquered, and elsewhere. Even in northern Manchuria, Soviet soldiers quickly developed a reputation for wanton rape, looting, and vandalizing. The Soviet Union was evil, and that evil was the ultimate cause of its cruelty, rape, and mass murder in wartime and postwar Germany.
One last thing before I end this post. In the thread originally about what would have happened if Canada hadn’t entered the war, Imperious Leader stated, “No more posts about whatever this topic became.” It is not clear how your subsequent, petty personal attacks against Private Ryan contribute to an understanding of that thread’s original subject. While I would argue that personal attacks represent an unwelcome change to the usual atmosphere of these boards, I am not a moderator and cannot stop you from making them. But at very least, I ask that you confine such attacks to this thread, instead of further derailing the Canada thread.