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Old 22-12-2016, 23:46
phylo_roadking
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In relation to comments made previously about the sense or sanity of doing it....and other comments about the camps themselves, and how Otto Frank survived...and slave labour...

the Nazis had since the mid-30s a way of utilising the camp labour resource. There was a wholly-owned company registered as the Deutsche Erd- und Stein Gewerk....the DEST...that organised the first concentration camp inmates inside Germany as forced labour and made it available to certain types of industry. Erd und Stein...clay(brick) and stone - the first forced labour was used in quarries and clay pits and dirty nasty work like brickmaking and firing. With the outbreak of war, the DEST was expanded to use forced labour wherever it was needed, all over Occupied Europe - hence concentration camps....LABOUR camps, not death camps...springing up by the hundreds, even in the Channel islands.

What happened in 1942 with the Wansee Conference in Berlin was the movement of Germany's jews, and the jews from all over Occupied Europe and the East was systematised into the DEST organisation. Jews and others shipped to the camp complexes in the East were divided into those useful on arrival - teenage males, older males....and those NOT useful to DEST - women, the sick, children, OAPS, etc. These last were fed into the death camp system and got rid of - but the others were fed into the DEST system of forced labour in the factories springing up round the large camp complexes, like the Buna artificial rubber plants around Auschwitz.

Forced unskilled labour was gradually utilised in more and more German industry as the war progressed; Albert Speer and others worked "wonders" - from a logistical point of view for the Nazi war effort - in breaking down complicated industrial processes requiring highly skilled labour into a series of simple operations that untrained, unskilled workers could do by hand. It required far more forced labour to carry out these manufacturing tasks end-to-end than if carried out by time-served craftsmen...but that's what the Nazis had - vast resources of untrained, unskilled labour in the concentration camp system.

The DEST had a set of calculations that allowed the most work to be got out of a human male for the longest possible time for the least possible calorie intake. Slave workers would slowly starve, weaken and die across a three month period during which they'd be worked to death simultaneously - although those who worked harder, or seemed to have skills in some way suited to a task would get extra rations. For the labour pool wasn't THAT unskilled - opticians? doctors? dentists? Jewish craftsmen themselves? There were many german factories and industries that used slave labour that found, like Schindler, that it was better to preserve their more skilled and productive slave workers than simply work them to death rather than have to partly train a new intake Which is how people like Otto Frank survived and were allowed to recover from illness etc. if possible.

It didn't wholly solve the Nazis' labour problem of course - German industry STILL needed hundreds of thousands of trained industrial workers etc. shipped in compulsorily from the Occupied countries....and we're back at the story of the thousands of Dutch workers who hid instead, with their families, the Onderduikers. In the end it went as far down as eventually transferring farm workers etc. from France and other nations to Germany as the Nazis mobilised the very last of Germany's manpower to fight.
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Old 22-12-2016, 23:56
phylo_roadking
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One of the other travesties of WW2 IMO is that so many of Hitler's henchmen got away with it and Germany itself didn't do enough to capture these people after the war had ended. IIRC, it is estimated that up to a quarter of a million Nazis took part in the 'extermination' and associated activities. It was mainly left to the allies and Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal to round up some of these people and prosecute them for war crimes. Some are still on the wanted list to this day and most others are likely to have long died by now.

Some of the others still alive are too old to be considered fit to stand trail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...senthal_Center

The people above have literally got away with being responsible for mass murder directly or indirectly and that is a crime in itself.
The "denazification process" the Western Allies carried out after the war on the millions of Disarmed Enemy Personnel...Eisenhower changed their legal definition so they didn't need to be fed as much as POWs...was so slow that by 1947 only a few hundred thousand had been released and sent home. By agreement with the renascent German civil authorities, the Denazification process was handed over to the Germans to complete...and - ahem - they found it to be SO much trouble that the system only remained in place for THREE MONTHS after it was handed over, then the gates were opened and virtually everyone sent home!

Didn't work like that in the Soviet-occupied zone, rapidly becoming East Germany...
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Old 23-12-2016, 01:21
Eurostar
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That's a misunderstanding of how Nazi Germany was actually governed. Hitler was lazy, it was actually hard to get work out of him APART from playing at being general. Instead, he was surrounded by an inner circle and an much larger outer circle of sycophants and acolytes - and progress from one to the other meant grabbing Hitler's attention and holding it. So what they did was listen to every word he said, every desire no matter how lightheartedly expressed - and try to put it into action. No other authority was needed than signing any paperwork required as being "at the Fuhrer's will".

He didn't actually NEED to order the jews killed; in fact, as late as 1942, when the last arrest waves were being carried out in Berlin, Goebbels - nominally in charge of the project thought it was being carried out by Reinhard Heydrich - records in his diary that Hitler wanted the jews removed from Germany..."removed from his sight"...not necessarily killed...

But several attempts to find somewhere to ship them had come to nothing, especially with the entry of the U.S. into the war - so the only way to carry out this wish was to simply get rid of them. He didn't NEED to order them killed - it was to those involved the only way of doing what he said he wanted in the revised circumstances. The fact that it happened to gel with the personal prejudices etc. of those involved was convenient...
Nonetheless Hitler simply had to be aware what was happening to the Jews and that it was happening at his behest. Every dog in the street in the upper echelons of the Nazi leadership - Goring, Goebbels, Bormann etc and many others - knew that it was state policy for the Jews to be exterminated and it would be virtually impossible for this to happen behind the Fuhrer's back and without his permission.

There was the famous and very telling clash between Baldur von Schirach's wife and Hitler at Berghof when she tried to tackle him on the fate of the Jews, he flew into an absolue rage, kicked her out and she was never invited again. She was expecting a sympathetic hearing but instead the mask dropped and she got a glimpse of the real Hitler and his thoughts about the Jews (the incident was verified after the war by other witnesses too, so there was no question she made it up to make herself look good).
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Old 23-12-2016, 02:14
Supratad
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As I said in my original post, the articles on those pages are far too long and contain way too much information. I'm just looking for a summary. It would take forever to read those pages.
Anti-Semitism is bad, mmkay?
You shouldn't do anti-semitism, mmkay?
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Old 23-12-2016, 08:03
CravenHaven
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Logistically, it made no sense whatsoever to be rounding up literally millions of civilians across Europe and transporting them hundreds of miles by train to be murdered. The fact that they were still rounding people up in July 1944 and sending them to Auschwitz at a time when the war was lost and the Reich was retreating on all fronts shows that there was no rhyme or reason to any of it and policy was being dictated by a bunch of ideological fanatics who scarcely had any connection to the real world.
You simply have to remember that Hitler said a war against Germany would mean the destruction of the jews in Europe. That wasn't a threat, it was a promise, because Hitler had been angling at some kind of war- but he expected it to be a contained one against eastern european countries who the west did not care about. Because he humiliated the west by renegging on his Munich agreement some politicians felt shamed into guaranteeing the borders of Poland, and the rest is history. Hitler letting Mussolini broker an agreement at Munich may have been his greatest mistake. If he hadn't, the west still might have done its best to ignore his activities in eastern Europe.
Since Nazism maintained jews were irredeemable enemies and genetic corruptors of their race, it was ideologically consistent that poor progress in the war meant they would accelerate their "Final Solution" rather than slow it. The Nazis were evil but they were consistent.
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Old 23-12-2016, 08:16
dee123
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I may be wrong, as I have a bit of a cold, but I smell disingenuity quite strongly here.
Was my first thought too. Perhaps we are horribly jaded?
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Old 23-12-2016, 09:32
koantemplation
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Well I've seen the film 'Denial' and personally I didn't think it was very good.

Too much emphasis was placed on Rachael Weisz's character who just came across as bitter and smug.

And Timothy Spall's character was too much of an easy target to dislike.

Not sure if it was based on a real court case, but I doubt it will change anyone's mind no matter which way they believe.
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Old 23-12-2016, 11:09
Cally's mum
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Cally's mum...some sleepless nights? First of all, the Einsatzgruppen were all volunteers, yet many couldn't handle what they were doing and cracked. Sickness was rife, suicide rates were high...and many even walked across and joined the groups of Poles to be shot, there's several reels of still photos surviving from the period showing this happening, SS troops cracking, putting down their weapons, and walking across to turn and face the guns of their comrades. many simply walked off into the woods and were never seen again.

When Himmler travelled to Poland and witnessed executions himself and how traumatic it was on ALL sides, that's when he ordered another way to be found.






That's a misunderstanding of how Nazi Germany was actually governed. Hitler was lazy, it was actually hard to get work out of him APART from playing at being general. Instead, he was surrounded by an inner circle and an much larger outer circle of sycophants and acolytes - and progress from one to the other meant grabbing Hitler's attention and holding it. So what they did was listen to every word he said, every desire no matter how lightheartedly expressed - and try to put it into action. No other authority was needed than signing any paperwork required as being "at the Fuhrer's will".

He didn't actually NEED to order the jews killed; in fact, as late as 1942, when the last arrest waves were being carried out in Berlin, Goebbels - nominally in charge of the project thought it was being carried out by Reinhard Heydrich - records in his diary that Hitler wanted the jews removed from Germany..."removed from his sight"...not necessarily killed...

But several attempts to find somewhere to ship them had come to nothing, especially with the entry of the U.S. into the war - so the only way to carry out this wish was to simply get rid of them. He didn't NEED to order them killed - it was to those involved the only way of doing what he said he wanted in the revised circumstances. The fact that it happened to gel with the personal prejudices etc. of those involved was convenient...
Thanks, Phylo. I hadn't delved too deep into the psychology of the regime. Most of my books are written from the perspective of the rescue of those under persecution or the documentation of how it happened. Not how it affected those who were involved on the 'other side'. I keep meaning to add to my collection to get a more rounded picture but life keeps getting in the way.
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Old 23-12-2016, 11:36
phylo_roadking
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Thanks, Phylo. I hadn't delved too deep into the psychology of the regime. Most of my books are written from the perspective of the rescue of those under persecution or the documentation of how it happened. Not how it affected those who were involved on the 'other side'. I keep meaning to add to my collection to get a more rounded picture but life keeps getting in the way.
I should sat here that that is not in ANY way meant to be an excuse for the evils they committed - just to explain why Himmler directed that an "easier" way be found.
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Old 23-12-2016, 11:56
Jellied Eel
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I keep meaning to add to my collection to get a more rounded picture but life keeps getting in the way.
There's plenty to choose from. Take this chap-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinri...cal_assessment

Himmler adopted the doctrine of Auftragstaktik ("mission command"), whereby orders were given as broad directives, with authority delegated downward to the appropriate level to carry them out in a timely and efficient manner. Weale states that the SS ideology gave the men a doctrinal framework, and the mission command tactics allowed the junior officers leeway to act on their own initiative to obtain the desired results.

Which sounds like a.. reasonable management/command technique, assuming you can trust your subordinates. Many businesses adopt the same system, but obviously with different outcomes in mind. But a fascinating character who was instrumental in creating many of the Nazi systems, from the SS to implementing the final solution.

This is a good book that explains Himmler-

https://www.amazon.com/Heinrich-Himm...YQAZ26ZNK8GS3Z

And Longerich has also published biographies on other subjects.. His biography of Goebbels is also worth reading. They both weave the men into the context of Hitler's ascension, the road to war and how they came to wield power.

An important part of the 'never forget' is preventing this kind of thing from ever happening again.. yet there are similarities with the immigration fears, the dehumanising of people and a resurgence of nationalism.
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Old 23-12-2016, 12:44
phylo_roadking
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That downwards devolution of decision making was typical of Nazi Germany, all through tge Wehrmacht /Heer as well as the SS. At squad level NCOs and junior officers had far more flexibility in the field than any army they faced, this was schooled and exercised into them from the early 30s on. It then reached back upwards through middle ranking officers like Rommel in France in 1940, and made for hard-charging officers and rapid changes in emphasis and pressure along a front line - perfect for "blitzkrieg" warfare and seeking out and exploiting weak points in an enemy's front line and pushing through it.
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Old 23-12-2016, 12:56
Cally's mum
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There's plenty to choose from. Take this chap-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinri...cal_assessment

Himmler adopted the doctrine of Auftragstaktik ("mission command"), whereby orders were given as broad directives, with authority delegated downward to the appropriate level to carry them out in a timely and efficient manner. Weale states that the SS ideology gave the men a doctrinal framework, and the mission command tactics allowed the junior officers leeway to act on their own initiative to obtain the desired results.

Which sounds like a.. reasonable management/command technique, assuming you can trust your subordinates. Many businesses adopt the same system, but obviously with different outcomes in mind. But a fascinating character who was instrumental in creating many of the Nazi systems, from the SS to implementing the final solution.

This is a good book that explains Himmler-

https://www.amazon.com/Heinrich-Himm...YQAZ26ZNK8GS3Z

And Longerich has also published biographies on other subjects.. His biography of Goebbels is also worth reading. They both weave the men into the context of Hitler's ascension, the road to war and how they came to wield power.

An important part of the 'never forget' is preventing this kind of thing from ever happening again.. yet there are similarities with the immigration fears, the dehumanising of people and a resurgence of nationalism.
Thanks, Jellied Eel! I do intend to add to my collection. It's a subject which (morbidly or not) interests me. I am interested in the psychology of those who carry out heinous acts such as these and the mentality which spreads to those of their subordinates who have to be at the front end. But more so I read books of the hope that emerged from the nightmare the persecuted peoples suffered during that time. The rescues, the births of children despite the deprivations and near death of the mothers, etc. And of course I have read 'The Holocaust' - a dry, voluminous tome which charts the progression of the persecution itself from its humble beginnings to the death camps and beyond.

I am beginning to widen my reading material to the Nazis themselves but it does take time (and money!).

And yes, I can see the same reflections of attitude in the current situation. Overshadowed of course by the atrocities carried out by those zealots who may follow the same religion but take it to an ultimate extreme - in the same way the ideology of Nazism was followed.

To some extent I can grasp how these attitudes can come into being and foment and turn to loathing of an entire race. I don't in any way condone it though, obviously. But it's the behaviour of the hive and these days it is encouraged by the media - an especially pernicious media as well, who blame certain sections of society for the ills of the others (both here and in the USA particularly - albeit different sections of society),
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Old 23-12-2016, 14:06
Eurostar
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You simply have to remember that Hitler said a war against Germany would mean the destruction of the jews in Europe. That wasn't a threat, it was a promise, because Hitler had been angling at some kind of war- but he expected it to be a contained one against eastern european countries who the west did not care about. Because he humiliated the west by renegging on his Munich agreement some politicians felt shamed into guaranteeing the borders of Poland, and the rest is history. Hitler letting Mussolini broker an agreement at Munich may have been his greatest mistake. If he hadn't, the west still might have done its best to ignore his activities in eastern Europe.
Since Nazism maintained jews were irredeemable enemies and genetic corruptors of their race, it was ideologically consistent that poor progress in the war meant they would accelerate their "Final Solution" rather than slow it. The Nazis were evil but they were consistent.
What is less understood is that Hitler intended the Final Solution for the Slavs as well. After the war was won, the intention was that perhaps 30m Slavs would be "eradicted" by one means or another ie. worked to death, starvation or murdered as they would be of no use to the new expanded Reich. It really was the most morally bankrupt and evil regime that the world has ever seen or is likely to see. They regarded human beings as cattle for the slaughter and actually believed their own crackpot racist nonsense.

Hitler showed with his "scorched earth" policy in 1945 that he held even the German population in contempt and felt not the slightest bit of compassion for them, even going so far as to suggest they deserved what was happening to them.
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Old 23-12-2016, 15:22
1fab
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So I've been watching an Anne Frank show today and it was really powerful stuff (I'd recommend anyone to watch it, it was the 2001 TV series 'The Whole Story') but I had a few questions based off of it. I hope they don't sound ignorant but I just don't know that much about that time period. I know there's alot of information online but sometimes you can't really just find a simple answer, every website has huge articles with tons of jargon and references that are a bit overwhelming so I thought I'd maybe see if anyone could explain or answer these in a simpler way -

1. What exactly started the whole antisemitism towards the Jews? A few websites have pointed at them being to blame for Germany losing WW1, while others have said it was simply because Hitler and Nazis wanted to "cleanse" Germany of everyone who they deemed as inferior members of society.

2. Following up on the first question, what was the process like in turning everyone against Jews and slowly isolating them from society before eventually sending them all to camps? It was sort of touched upon in the Anne Frank show that Jews were slowly being taken out of schools and banned from public parks and attractions and stuff, but was this over a spread out period of years or did it happen really quickly?

3. How did Otto Frank manage to survive the camps? I understand he and the others were captured in August 1944 and yet he survived in those horrible conditions until, what, April 1945? I would never have thought it would have been possible to survive so long being starved, living amongst disease and illness, being worked all day, beaten and the mental torture of possibly never seeing your family again or escaping and this is all just putting it lightly.
To address your question 2, I would highly recommend anyone to watch this documentary, "Five Steps to Tyranny", which shows very clearly how very ordinary people can turn into "monsters", given the right (wrong) circumstances:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Gz...E16F807F16D665
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Old 23-12-2016, 15:26
Jellied Eel
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I am beginning to widen my reading material to the Nazis themselves but it does take time (and money!).
There's always the library.. but the Longerich bios are comprehenisve, and.. Long. They're also not as dry as some other bios or histories.

To some extent I can grasp how these attitudes can come into being and foment and turn to loathing of an entire race. I don't in any way condone it though, obviously. But it's the behaviour of the hive and these days it is encouraged by the media - an especially pernicious media as well, who blame certain sections of society for the ills of the others (both here and in the USA particularly - albeit different sections of society),
Well, the media are sometimes just copying the Nazis.. ie dehumanise and blame their political and ideological opponents.
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Old 23-12-2016, 15:28
Jellied Eel
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That downwards devolution of decision making was typical of Nazi Germany, all through tge Wehrmacht /Heer as well as the SS.
Yup. That aspect's interesting in the way the SS gets perceived as an 'elite' force, when in reality they were often badly trained thugs who got little respect from the professionals in the Wehrmacht. Which in some ways was a good thing for us, because if Hitler had followed his Field Marshall's advice, we'd probably have lost.
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Old 23-12-2016, 15:56
Johnbee
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OP question: please give a short trivialisation of the holocaust.
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Old 24-12-2016, 15:45
Sife Lucks
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OP question: please give a short trivialisation of the holocaust.
Nope. A summary and a starting point was what I asked.
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Old 24-12-2016, 16:15
flique
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Well it opened up an interesting discussion and Annette links are worth watching.
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Old 24-12-2016, 23:38
phylo_roadking
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Yup. That aspect's interesting in the way the SS gets perceived as an 'elite' force, when in reality they were often badly trained thugs who got little respect from the professionals in the Wehrmacht. Which in some ways was a good thing for us, because if Hitler had followed his Field Marshall's advice, we'd probably have lost.
To be fair - in 1940-41, the first Waffen-SS divisions were EXACTLY that...as they showed in the massacres at Le Paradis and Wormhout in May/June 1940...and armed/equipped with "beute" weapons seized from other Occupied nations. But by mid-war they were starting to receive newer equipment and weapons first - if only because they were getting decimated and having to be re-equipped/rebuilt more often - as their..esprit de corps, though hate to use the term of the SS!...meant they held positions to the death, or suffered far greater losses than Heer equivalents would do.

Events in Normandy in 1944 illustrate that brutality was still endemic in the Waffen-SS....or was it just a case of wholly different "rules of engagement" to regular Heer troops in the Wehrmacht? The Heer did like to look down their Germanic noses at them...but they held positions longer against stronger attack than the Heer did. And there's the famous case of Sepp Deitrich's troops being forced out of a town in the East they were ordered by Hitler to hold to the death - and when castigated by Hitler, Sepp turned round the next day and his exhausted Waffen-SS troops went back and took the town back from the Soviets! Which didn't often happen...! Their own self-image of being an elite carried them farther than the Heer.
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