What if the holocoust never happened

This thread is pretty much like walking on eggshells. Be very careful. I may lock it if it gets out of hand.

As far as labor utilization it was catastrophic to the war effort potential for Germany and this goes without saying the obvious factors of how humanity was treated in these years.

Its a ‘what if’ that most likely was not possible. To clarify a world with Hitler as leader and a world where Germany under his leadership had no impact on a host of other peoples could not be possible.

Holocaust is the correct spelling. and It applied to nearly 22 million people of various types.

Interesting qustion, Germany would need less luck to win in this “what if” scenario.

Some historians may have researched to tell how many jews and others who (some people opposed Hitler and Nazipartei)  would fight with Germany against Russia, and even against Western Europe. The jews didnt oppose, some other people did, and both got killed…

Serious leaders doesnt have inside enemies, all enemies are outside of own borders, except contenders to the “throne”.

An important factor is how many would join the Nazi party??? Some would be soldiers, others would work for decent avarage salary.
How many million more German soldiers? 1-2 million more soldiers would probably not be enough (all things being equal), armygroups got stuck in Stalingrad and Leningrad.

I read Mein Kampf only a few months ago, and although Hitler did have several good thoughts/ideas on social reforms, unemployment, the positive sides of nationalism, he also had some other disturbing ideas.

Expansionism works if you win  :wink:

What is very hard (if at all possible) to understand is Hitlers fundamentalistic views which he declares himself antisemittic.

If holocaust never happend, then Hitler is not Fuhrer…and then the other guy would make less mistakes, but then again, as Hitler wrote in the last part of Mein Kampf, he was member nr. 7 in the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, he once tried to speech in front of people, and he discovered that he was good at making speeches and moving the masses  :mrgreen:

According to Ahmadinijad (Leader of Iran) the Holocaust never happened and was a story created by the Jews and the Europeans to defraud the Palestinians of their land.

We also know that the torture camps the Jews were in was not believed by many people for a long time, so it seems plausible that the war would have ended similarly with or without them.

A more interesting question would be if the war would have been lost if Pearl Harbor was not attacked and blown out of proportion to rile up the American people into a seething frenzy?  We would have probably still entered the war, but by the time we did, it is plausible that England would no longer be free.

Jennifer, the question if holocaust never happened is not about some people still claim it didnt happen, and WW2 is at least history, even if it was political issues that started the war. Ahmadinijad and Iran is not the issue here and is much more political than events that happened over 60 years ago.

Just saying that the question of if it never happened really depends on who you ask.  Many believe it did not happen, so the question to them would seem silly.

Anyway, the rest of my post does refer to the question posed from the traditional standpoint of it did happen.  In case you missed that part, I was commenting on the fact that, at the time, hardly anyone believed that this was really going on in Germany, and thus, if they did not believe it - at the time in history - then it could not effect their response, correct?

Therefore, if the event had minimal - if any - impact on the response from Germany’s enemies, the question is what impact did it have on Germany?  Again, it is doubtful that the majority of German citizens knew what was going on in the concentration camps in great detail, since it is my belief that the average human being is inherently a moral and ethical creature, and therefore whether or not it was occurring would have a minimal impact on German citizens as well.

So, if it had a minimal impact on the plans of the allies, and it had a minimal impact on the armies and citizens of the European axis (and arguably the Japanese as well) then one could argue that the holocaust had a minimal impact on how the war was prosecuted and the decisions made on either side.

This is not to say that killing what, 6 million ethical, moral beings is a good thing or a trivial thing.  It is most assuredly an unethical, beastly thing to do, an act that could only be perpetrated by a government and those enslaved to a government, as no self respecting person would chose to engage in these acts (because all persons are ethical, moral beings at their core.)

Perhaps it is this inherent ethical and moral basis of a being that has driven Ahmadinijad to believe that the holocaust never happened?  (It obviously DID happen, but I am attempting to “hear” his side of the story instead of militantly saying he is wrong and then punching him in the nose.)

Ahmadinijad is a civil engineer, and although he is good at using vage and abstract metaphors, at least when speaking to iranians, he is not that “stupid” that he really dont think holocaust never happened. He says what he think iranians/arabians wants him to say. Maybe Ahmadinijad thinks like Goering: “the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country”.

I think that the “what if holocaust never happened” cannot be removed from WW2 facts purely as a single factor.
If holocaust never happened, then some other things would be very different, I guess that most historians would also believe that this issue alone would not nearely be enough to make Germany have, what can be assumed, much more than 50% to win the war.

I actually think that other issues than holocaust, if handled differently, would be more important factors to decide the outcome of WW2.

AFAIK, the only thing i can see that would be different today if the Holocaust never happened is that 6 million (or whatever the number was) Jews and their descendants who are currently not here would be here.

There would be no impact on World War II.  The only difference there would be a few more soldiers for Germany on the frontlines and that ratio would not have made drastic differences, I think. (We’re talking what, about 1000 men give or take?)

Jen,

For sake of argument lets say it was only 1,000 men.  Seems a bit low to me but lets go with it.  I think that Germany would have been a stronger power without the concentrations camps because of all the assets they tied up.

You would now have more trains devoted to moving supplies to the fronts.  Although the prisoners didn’t eat well by any stretch food would still have had to been allotted to these facilities.

Going back to you number of 1,000 soldiers.  Lets take into account the labor that was needed to build these camps.  Granted a lot of that came from “slave labor” but what about the contractors that would be needed to build the infrastructure of these camps. These men and woman could have been in a factory building more tanks.

I agree with you that numbers wise it may not have made a big difference.  When a country is in that type of state you will always need a place for political prisoners so you wouldn’t be able to just decommission all the camps.  I’m just saying as the allies got closer in stead of moving prisoners to other camps closer to the German core they could have been moving troops to the fronts instead.  I know this wasn’t always the case but I can’t help but think that could have altered the course of at least a few battles.

LT

The point I was making had nothing to do with 1000 men, give or take, so much as the pitiful amount of resources diverted to genocide compared to the massive amount of resources diverted to fighting France, America, England and Russia.

Would they have made a real, significant difference?  I doubt it.  They may have caused a delay of a few hours, maybe a few days tops, but in the grand scheme of things, they are but a pebble in the avalanche that was befalling Europe at the time.

As for actual numbers, I don’t know.  I used 1000 because it seemed reasonable for the amount of guards with fully automatic machine guns and permission to use them for any reason, to keep prisoners five steps away from starving to death in line.

@Gewehr:

Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder. 6 million died. Thats 6 million more people that couldv’e bin torward to the war effort. And if Hitler had the sense to not kill them off, then he also might of had sense to other situations. Like Battle of Britian to keep bombing military and not switch to civilian.

Lets say it prolonged the war for 3-4 months. Think of the ME 262s and all the other amazing german enginiering that could’ve bin put into service in mass. Trains are sending troops and supllies to the lines instead of inocent to their death, contracters and builders reinforcing fortifications instead of building death camps, women, men, old, young who died, could’ve bin building more tanks. Even if it was only 1000 soilders, which I doubt,  that could’ve won Bastgone The Allies would still win, but they’d be getting a real pounding all the way to the end.

I will not answer this poll for many reasons which i will not state until i feel comfortable to answer.  I have been saying this a lot if hitler stuck to his plan the brits, would have lasted for 1 more week many historians say. (the brits would not allow jews to live in there land if germany came to powerful 1 more week and the brits would have surrendered!)

@Gewehr:

Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder…

I was wondering if those few days could have been added to the Normandy invasion.  That could have had a very diffrent outcome with the war.

If the Nazis in Germany had not held such strong feelings towards ethic cleaning how would the War in the East been different? The Nazis treatment of “lesser races” cost Germany the War.

I just ate all my wife’s pie!!!  :|

@LT04:

@Gewehr:

Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder…

I was wondering if those few days could have been added to the Normandy invasion.  That could have had a very diffrent outcome with the war.

On a one to one basis, ok, I’ll give you 1 SS was more scary than 1 Allied Soldier.

Then, of course, I could say that 1 US Delta Force Member is more scary than 1 Terrorist.  However, there are like thousands of terrorists for every delta force member in America, so I don’t think adding a few dozen more delta force members are going to make a SIGNIFICANT (notice the emphasis here) impact on the over all course of World History.

It might have impacts on getting XYZ objectives done a few hours faster, maybe a day or two (in a 6 year war) but that’s not SIGNIFICANT. (Emphasis.)

By significant I mean to say that if all those guards were added to the front lines, would Russia have been defeated in 1942 instead of Russia defeating Germany in 1945?

By significant I mean to say that if all those guards were added to the front lines, would England have fallen before America joined the war? Or would France have never been liberated and all the allies slaughtered on the beaches of Normandy.

The answer to all of the above, IN MY OPINION, is no.  The few thousand soldiers used to guard political and war prisoners in National Socialist Germany just would not have any significant impact on the over all course of the war.

Just my opinion.  I’m not saying, btw, that it would have NO impact.  I am saying the impact would not be SIGNIFICANT.

Jen,

I am just making the point that in the right place with an event as pivotal as D-Day having 1,000 extra SS troops manning the beach heads would have been at a minimum a lot more costly to the Allies.

Had the Allies known they were there they may have even waited, postponed or decided to go a diffrent route into Europe.  That would have also been a very diffrent out come.

Yes, but if we want to get down into the absolute minutia, then we could say if Captain Smith - Army Air Corps - had not gotten ill then the 101st Airborne may have been dropped on the correct target, and thus not been in position to resist the Germans during the battle of the bulge resulting in the loss of World War II.

We commonly refer to a poem written a while ago:

For want of a nail, a shoe was lost
For want of a shoe, a horse was lost
For want of a horse, a message was lost
For want of a message, a battle was lost
For want of a battle, a war was lost
For want of a war, a kingdom was lost.

But how often does the war hinge on a mere nail?  Now, consider if it was one battalion of soldiers (and I think I am being generous with that number of soldiers).  In a war that huge, do you think one battalion is going to be the lynch pin that saves your side?  Possibly.  But how likely is it they are the nail that stops your horse from losing a shoe and saves the kingdom?

Jen,

The whole point of this topic is “what if.”  The holocoust did happen so to discuss a “what if” is all purely speculation.

Some would say it isn’t the best idea to dwell on “what if’s” because your right it will only lead to a nail losing a kingdom and when the smoke clears all you have left is a lost kingdom.

I don’t think we are going to get to that extreme (well at lest I’m not.  I’d stop posting in this topic before it came to that).

Jen I do enjoy you playing devil’s advocate in these topics.  If nothing else you do bring up points I would not have considered.

LT

LT

I was thinking more along the lines of the battalion being equivalent in scope to the nail in the horse’s shoe.  Perhaps that nail would have kept that shoe on and resulted in that specific horse getting the message needed to the right person at the right time to save the front from being defeated and thus save the country from falling.  But that’s a lot of ifs.

Even if all of them had a 90% chance of happening

90% those soldiers would have been at the right place
90% those soldiers would have been at the right time
90% those soldiers would have been the decisive factor of that battle
90% that battle was the turning point of the front
90% that front was the turning point of the campaign
90% that campaign was the turning point of the war

We’re talking 0.90.90.90.90.9*0.9 or 53% they would have been the key to Germany’s victory over the allies.  Bear in mind, that’s assuming 90% for all of them.  I’d wager that percentage is much lower.  I’d even suggest that the correct percentage would have been much closer to 5% for each aspect, in which case the chance that those specific soldiers would have effected anything at all of significance to winning the war in Europe is (1.6 * 10^8)% or 0.000000016%

That’s an infinitesimally small number, but much more realistic when comparing just how capable those men would have been and the odds they were assigned to the right places at the right times with the right equipment and that the allies would have neglected to consider the increased threat levels with those extra assets in place.  Actually, thinking more about it, I think that number is incredibly inflated compared to the actual affect those assets would have been to the war if they had been used by the army and not the German political machine.

i said peace treaty almost happened in ww2 seriously