SpitfireIX
Philosopher
It's right next door to the office where you sign up to be a paid government disinformation agent.
[Moderated]The Holocaust never happened!
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It's right next door to the office where you sign up to be a paid government disinformation agent.
SpitfireIX
Philosopher
Nick Terry
Illuminator
There are some serious factual errors in this post
1. Systematic gassing of Jews began in December 1941 at Chelmno, followed by Semlin near Belgrade (March 1942), Belzec (March 1942), Sobibor (April 1942), Auschwitz (sporadically since February 1942, systematically from May 1942), Maly Trostinets near Minsk (May 1942), Treblinka (July 1942) and Majdanek (August 1942).
2. The bulk of the death toll came in 1942, with at least 1.7 million gassed in the above named camps, along with an equal number killed in shootings, which had begun in 1941.
3. The 'Hungarian action' actually involved 430,000 deportees, of whom 120-130,000 were selected for slave labour and sent out from Auschwitz to every corner of Gerrmany. So the correct number of dead is half the 600,000 figure you quote. As Hungarian Jews were also deported to be shot in Russia in 1941 and there were additional deportations not via Auschwitz in late 1944, plus murders in the Budapest ghetto/siege, the death toll in Hungary was at least 450,000.
4. It is very easily grasped by human understanding that the Nazis applied a simple criteria as to who would live and who would die: whether they were capable of work. Feeding 'useless mouths' was not in their rational interests. The irrationality was in designating Jews as the source of all evil in the world according to Nazi ideology. Hitler blamed the Jews for bringing America into the war, forgetting of course that he himself was the one to declare war on the US. Hitler also accused the Jews of being behind Bolshevism. This is why the two key dates of the escalation of Nazi policy are June and December 1941.
The same logic of fitness for work was applied to all other nationalities, but in a much less virulent fashion. The difference - the greater need to exterminate the Jews than to exterminate all unfit Poles or unfit Russians - is why the Holocaust cannot be reduced to economic logic alone, though people would be foolish to ignore the economic semi-rationality of it, as this explains timing and the geography. For example, the Jewish ghettos of Upper Silesia, right next to Auschwitz, survived significantly longer than many other ghettos, because they were fully integrated into the industrial economy of the region. The same applied to the Lodz ghetto, which was the last to be destroyed. Ideological imperatives had to overcome economic interests for the destruction process to succeed. In other areas, however, economic interests accelerated the ideological imperative, since the ghettos might be located in under-industrialised regions, where there were food shortages, making it 'easy' for the ideological fanatics to persuade the more pragmatically minded to assist in eliminating a functional burden.
5. Many of the Einsatzgruppen commanders were prosecuted by the US in 1948 and of these several were executed. Many others were able to blend back into postwar German society until in 1958 the West German government began prosecuting them, starting with the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial. As West Germany had abolished the death penalty shortly after being constituted as a state, ironically in part because of agitation on behalf of Nazi war criminals sitting on death row in the US controlled prison of Landsberg, none of those convicted after 1958 were sentenced to death. Many however received life sentences.
6. The Holocaust is almost entirely ignored by 'leftists' who have historically been more interested in class, contemporary issues, and since 1967, anti-Zionism. A small number of Marxists in France became Holocaust deniers because they thought that Nazism was the ultimate alibi of capitalism - however bad capitalism was, it couldn't have been as bad as Nazism. Marxist analyses of Nazism always stumbled on explaining the Holocaust, since the Holocaust cannot be reduced to economic logic alone.
gumboot
lorcutus.tolere
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I think this is a dangerous line of thought to follow. It leads to conclusions that only depraved monsters and bumbling mental midgets do things like this.
The Nazis were normal people, at first. They drew their ranks for normal German citizenry. And they got their support from normal German citizenry. Any country could become Nazi Germany, given the right (wrong) circumstances. That's the important lesson. Your country. Or mine. Anyone's.
Secondly, the Nazis were so dangerous because they were certainly not "mental midgets". They were incredibly smart, perceptive, some of them even gifted. They knew exactly what they were doing, and for a decade and a half they fooled the entire world, save for Roosevelt and Churchill.
Evil is not dangerous when it is inept. Gifted, brilliant evil, is horrendously dangerous. Students need to be taught that Hitler was an exceptionally gifted speaking, with phenomenal charisma. That's what made him dangerous. In order to prevent something like that happening again, we need to put away the monsters and the demons and understand how they did what they did. How did they gain power? How did they gain loyal supporters? Because of all things, that is the most horrific reality of the Nazi legacy.
The greatest horror of Nazi Germany, for me, is not that 11 million people were killed. Governments before and since have exterminated millions of people. Germany is unique in one way. It was a democracy. It was a republic. The horror is not that 11 million people were exterminated, it was that 70 million Germans let it happen. To understand that, you have to understand the appeal of the Nazis. Sickening as that is. People like MaGZ may actually provide the best source for preventing such a thing ever happening again.
-Gumboot
JJM 777
Illuminator
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Not so long ago, all Western countries were happily capturing black men from Africa, selling them as slaves, and forcing their children to hereditary slavery.
O sing yie Christian gentlemen yer cheerful songs of praise to God, then return home from church service in a cart driven by yer black slave, then beat up any lazy black slave of yers at home.
In what way is the modern man different from the 19th century man, except our more advanced political theories and laws? The society has advanced, the individuals not so much.
O sing yie Christian gentlemen yer cheerful songs of praise to God, then return home from church service in a cart driven by yer black slave, then beat up any lazy black slave of yers at home.
In what way is the modern man different from the 19th century man, except our more advanced political theories and laws? The society has advanced, the individuals not so much.
I guess pedantic pseudo intellectuals will always exist.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Thanks for the non-sequitur. And may I just add: Charmed firms boundaries negative lighest concurrently supply vector.
Random words courtesy of The Random Word Generatorhttp://www.zokutou.co.uk/randomword/.
SpitfireIX
Philosopher
Loss Leader, what are you doing?? That's the code phrase that activates Operation [redacted]!! That's not supposed to start for another [redacted] weeks!! You're really in for it now! It's two months' remediation at Club NWO for you. With no swimming pool, spa, or restaurant privileges.
simakperrce
Scholar
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How about you bring up a counter-argument instead of throwing fancy words around and accuse me of being a "right wing" and an "authoritarian" on top of all? That would also give me a clue as to what opinion I supposedly don't approve of.
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simakperrce
Scholar
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I stand corrected on the factual errors in case of the Hungarian Jews (I was citing from an obviously faulty memory and should have compared to data which you provided here), yet I think I have been misunderstood, especially by some around here who want to turn me into a "right wing" member.
My point was, that the "conveyor-belt style killing" through Zyklon B -- the synonymous "death factory" -- in Auschwitz didn't start until late into the war, and said that this was something that always stuck with me. It was not my intention to deny that mass executions took place prior to that, but in almost all cases (and despite the outrageous numbers of casualties), the methods used to execute prisoners could be considered as -- so macabre this may sound -- trials.
In Chelmo and Majdanek, which you cite, most prisoners were killed by way of using transportable death vans and killing through exhaust fumes or Monoxide. These methods, just as the shootings, were soon considered ineffective in view of the grand scheme to exterminate the European Jewry (Endlösung der Judenfrage) which was sanctioned in January of 1942 at the Wannsee-Konferenz in Berlin.
It was only in the Spring of 1944, that the train-line to Auschwitz-Birkenau was extended to end right at the selection ramp, and that this massive 'turnaround' (another macabre word in that conjunction) could be reached.
I agree, but these historical parameters are not what I referred to. I was referring to a particular person -- Rudolf Höss -- who freely admitted of having been responsible for the killing of close (if not over) a Million of people. Authors like Imre Kertesz, who has been a prisoner in Auschwitz himself, have used these extreme cases to ponder on the question whether such a perverted 'ability' is a particularly German trait, or whether it could not be something which belongs to the 'Human condition' per se. In Kertesz's writings you seldomly come across bad Nazis. He is trying to reflect more on which 'human' elements could have made this possible, without always being able to provide an answer.
I am NOT pointing this out in order to clear us Germans from any responsibility or guilt, but in focussing on the Nazi/German side of it alone you are running the danger of declaring this as a one time accident in an otherwise flawless project of Modernism. This is precisely the habit of some contemporary German media outlets (as I pointed out elsewhere), to declare Hitler as a hickup in our history, that, over time, needs to be downplayed (I am not accusing you of downplaying anything BTW, just trying to illustrate my point)
What I meant with 'not understandable' then is this: which element caused the Nazis to not just imprison, deport, or resettle Jews, but to actually try to exterminate them? Of course, if I am a Marxist I will explain it with some sort of "exploitation of the human body" in favor of the industries and the bourgeoisie who supported Hitler. That would be my root cause. But even that doesn't necessarily carry in it the total extermination of these bodies.
Again, I was referring to "some" of the Einsatzgruppenführer, such as Otto Ohlendorf, who were sentenced to death and executed in 1951 under rather heavy protests of the German public. We are not contradicting each other here.
That was exactly my point, albeit in your case a bit more eloquently brought forth. I assume you are also a "right wing authoritarian"?
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Belz...
Fiend God
I think the most frightening thing about the Nazis is that they were normal people, period.
Sword_Of_Truth
Penultimate Amazing
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Gumboot - I don't disagree with anything you said. It's just that I've never considered racism to be an attribute of an enlightened person.
That and the fact that - and you amateur historians here can feel free to debate this - there were a number of critical strategic errors made by the Nazi regime wich dramatically shortened the lifespan of the Third Reich to well below it's promised 1,000 years.
That and the fact that - and you amateur historians here can feel free to debate this - there were a number of critical strategic errors made by the Nazi regime wich dramatically shortened the lifespan of the Third Reich to well below it's promised 1,000 years.
Devil's Advocate
Critical Thinker
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No offense to the posters in this thread, but I wish this thread would die. Even seeing the title is offensive.
Gravy
Downsitting Citizen
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Well, it's important to understand that Holocaust denial and 9/11 denial are natural results of a denialist mindset. Because so many Holocaust deniers latched on to 9/11 denial, we've seen too much of both of those uglinesses in this subforum. Perhaps that overexposure manifests as flippancy at times. However, the fact that this thread exists is evidence that we're still sensitive to the astonishing delusions that some people work so hard to sustain.
MaGZ
Philosopher
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Nick Terry
Illuminator
Technically, 'conveyor belt style killing' began in the T4 euthanasia program. I would regard Treblinka as conveyor-belt as much as Auschwitz.
The mass executions in the east were also industrial-scale; there was a recycling of massive anti-tank ditches as pre-dug graves; machine guns were used, and they resembled nothing so much as a curtailed ghastly parody of the Somme or Verdun. (Minus the poison gas, ironically)
The Aktion Reinhard camps relied on the internal combustion engine, another industrial product of modernity.
It is easy however to fetishise technology and see that as a necessary condition; Rwanda almost disabuses us of that illusion, except for the fact that the machetes were mass-manufactured and imported from overseas, i.e. planning was needed.
Chelmno used gas vans, as did Semlin and Maly Trostinets. Majdanek had relatively small use of static gas chambers.
No, they were very effective on a local level; it was only in relation to the overall scale that newer facilities had to be planned and conceived.
Auschwitz was picked out as a death-camp by early 1942 - it managed to kill 250,000 people using very primitive converted houses, the 'Bunkers', before the much discussed new crematoria were installed.
Yet the 'ramp' was planned since 1941-2. It appears on maps of the intended Birkenau camp site very early on.
The tension between seeing in the Holocaust something specific to Germany, something specific to antisemitism and something generic to modernity has been there ever since the 1940s.
I would say that in the 1950s and 1960s, the universal elements were emphasised; from the 1970s through to the present the specifically Jewish elements have been emphasised; the catch being that the Nazis also mass-murdered millions of others for closely related reasons using identical methods.
The specifically 'German' emphasis on Arbeitsfaehigkeit was mirrored in the Soviet Union; Russian has an equivalent term that was just as widely used. German officials and medical personnel had been assessing people for Arbeitsfaehigkeit since the late 19th Century after Bismarck's welfare reforms, which were as is well known the first introduction of health insurance in the Western world. The potential to apply such coldly pragmatic logic to other groups will always exist as long as there are states.
I know that in a German context, Hitler needs to be portrayed as an aberration, yet the Sonderweg thesis persists all the same. The comfort is in seeing 1945 as a break with the past - to a very great extent it has been, in both former Germanies.
Germany, like most other European states, is now almost post-nationalist, generally opposed to war as a means of resolving interstate disputes, pacifist in its social attitudes, and so on. By contrast, America is not. Indeed some critics of American nationalism such as Anatol Lieven have described US foreign policy as possessing a distinctly 'Wilhelmine' flavour. That is on the money, and infinitely more subtle than the Bush=Hitler meme among Troofers.
Extermination follows from the economic logic of warfare. No WWII, no Holocaust. Almost all genocides have occurred during wars or their immediate aftermath (applies to Armenia, Cambodia, de facto to Rwanda).
Point of clarification: Ohlendorf was tried in 1948.
Nope. I am a sometime Marxist.
i completely agree with MaGZ here, but for probably (definately!) different reasons. "Holocaust denier" is now a powerful meme. Linking Holocaust deniers to the 911 "truth" movement is intellectually honest, as are "guilt be association" posts such as "didn´t -enter CTist name here- attend a conference with a Holocaust denier present?"
It also degrades the meaning of the word Holocaust.
But I´ve had this agruement here several times, to no avail. Search the forum for this, occasionaly the skeptics come up with good reasons for this bit of nlp.
This is a really informative thread btw, it is good that it exists here (i learnt quite a lot). Many forums would have just deleted it.
Foolmewunz
Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Actually, the "popularizer" here of "911 Deniers" was Mark(yX) Iridian. I say popularizer, because there have been several "anti" movements which have been tagged with "Denial" or "Denier" (there are threads here from years ago on GW Deniers and HIV Deniers). Someone posted in a thread a while back that 911 Denial had actually surfaced in reaction to the CTers fairly early on. I tried to locate the thread, but whomever did the Tags didn't tag it with Denier or Denial.
As to your earlier point.... I figured someone (and Tirdun did the job) would come up with the list of current owners of the "major studios". I've had a week of 13 and 14 hour days at work, and I can't link to MaGZie's sites from work. (A modern Germany company that won't let you view neo-nazi garbage... Go figure!)
Even that concept is outmoded. The "majors" act as distribution arms for the most part. In the 20s to 40s, they controlled the product, the talent, the theaters and the distribution. When I was working for Warner Brothers, I looked through some of the historical stuff (I was taking courses in film history and appreciation), and the big studios used to releast over a hundred films a year. If you look at the works of Bogie, Bette Davis, Gable, etc..., it's not uncommon to see them in 2 or 3 films a year. Nowadays, the distribution companies do 25 to 30 releases a year, and more than half of those are distribution deals that they've picked up some of the financing on, but which were produced by one or more other companies. (Thus the annoying four different production/distribution company names that you see in the opening credits now for all films.)
To MaGZ. No, you're not really imagining things! You're just reading hopelessly outdated material. The majors were definitely controlled by Jewish owners and producers through the years that they* were allowed, by law, to control the industry. It's not a secret, though. There have been many good books written on the subject by Jews and non-Jews. (Very few of the ones that made my library were dedicated to the Jews' desire to take over the world, though!)
In fact, here's an actual conspiracy for you..... And it's fairly provable by merely watching a few hundred movies. Find the "bad Jew" in a Hollywood movie from the 30s or 40s. There are close to none. By "bad Jew", I refer to characters who are identified as Jewish, not as someone you might assume to be Jewish by the actor in the role or by traits of the character. If a person is identified as Jewish as part of the plot, he or she is either "good", or merely incidental to the plot. Documented? No. It was never a written policy, and the people who promulgated it probably didn't realize they were doing so. But very real, nevertheless.
I know it's a far cry from plotting to take over the world while drinking the blood of Episcopalean babies in the basement at midnight meetings, but it was definitely a tacit conspiracy. The Jews who got to Hollywood came from late 19th and early 20th century Central Europe (or were first generation from same) and came to America to escape ghettoization and discrimination. They had been battling to reverse the image of Jews for years, and they over-reacted by refusing to acknowledge that a character could be a bad guy and Jewish at the same time without reflecting on all Jews. Hyper-sensitivity at its worst.
ETA: *They = The Studios.... I just realized that "they" and "them" to bigots always have a winking meaning, and how that might read over at Stormfront.
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Cleon
King of the Pod People
Guys, let this thread die.
MaGZ says more about his arguments when he says things like "Hogan's Heroes was Jew propaganda" than 1,000 factual counter-points could ever hope to.
MaGZ says more about his arguments when he says things like "Hogan's Heroes was Jew propaganda" than 1,000 factual counter-points could ever hope to.