How did the Germans let Hitler rise to power?

I find pitiful rather a harsh description really, when considering the regime they were resisting against.

went to Obersalzberg last year, but didn't see the presentation you mention, but have read the German historian Joachim Fest's 'Plotting Hitler's Death'; gave some insight into resistance movements during WW2.

fact was the it was a case of the germans singing when they were winning.

sing when your winning
you only sing when your winning
you only sing when your winning

AHHH! Cruxified for something I didn't say... You can always rely on TT

Order order

The Allied High command knew full well about Auschwitz-Treblinka, Dachau, Theresienstadt, Majdanek, etc. etc.

In Poland, Jewish escapees from the Warsaw Ghetto (who's uprising against Nazi Panzer divisions was the first major land battle in the European concert of war btw) connected with partisans and sent info back to Britain.

British SOE did absoilutely fuck-all about it. Its common knowledge that the Allied commanders refused to bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz because they saw it as a diversion of resources. All aid to Polish partisans went to Poles only. The Ghetto fighters (often in their teens) were left to burn.

Sure the Allied soldiers were mortified when they marched into the camps. But their generals knew all about it.

Everyone of import knew what was going on. Why did John Paul II make such a show of apologising for the Catholic Church.

As for the concentration camps - anyone who thinks the British Generals didn't actually realise that 1000s of Boer women and children were dying each day is naive. I mean didn't they communicate with their soldiers guarding the things???

As for the witless comment about the Saffers not "learning" their lesson . . . not all Afrikaaners were/are racists. And not all S Africans were either. Some of Mandela's greatest comrades were Whites (many Jewish) who fled S Africa to join the ANC in exile.

Somewhere called germany I believe. Should present generations also be blamed for past generations though? If so, how many generations back should we go?

@boom town rat

Yes. Blame the modern-day Germans. The visitors of the father are visited upon the son. I've been here 7 months, and already I can detect why the Holocaust began in Germany of all places. The people here are arrogant, superior, self-righteous and dogmatic.

There's a saying: "the Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust".

The Germans hate the constant reminder of what they did. But perhaps that is going to be their punishment for eternity. A bit like a curse.

with ref.to the church knowing all about KZs and the holocaust...I have this film on DVD:

Amen (der Stellverter in German)

deffo recommend it.
Mathieu Kassovitch is great.

I hope your impression changes. Sounds like the first culture shock wave of the initial expat experience to me.

Whilst I was cycling two days ago in the forest to work, I sprang a puncture. Within seconds, one of these horrible people who I recognise on the bike every morning, stopped with his dog and immediately changed my wheel for me. Also the regulars who cycle the other way slowed and asked to help.

Awful people.

not true. There was only a very small group within the war office that access to the top secret material. Field Marschall Montgommery and Air Marschall Harris certainly knew no more than heresay and rumours. No officer makes decisions like that based on heresay and rumours.

And yes, i do believe the war office made the right decision under the circumstances not to divert resources. Allied, especially British, resources were constrained, having to fight an unprecendented global war. Diverting ressources into exterminating millions of jews, gypsies, commies, gays and gay communist jews and communst gay gypsies etc etc is one reason why Germany's mighty war machine eventually lost.

Bombing a rail line would have done little or nothing to relieve the suffering of those in the camps. IIt was ver difficult to bomb individual rail lines from the air back then, most hits were more luck than judgement or local sabteurs.

Why didn't the local German population sabotage the rail lines?

Theres a book called "The Gheto Fights" which you might find interesting to read.

Choosing my words very carefully: There is a side topic to this about how there were deep divisions amongst Jews in Europe on politics: Socialism v Zionism and also on regional and class lines.

Some "respectible", more middle class Jews who followed zionism actually used the anti-semitism and opression of Jews under fascism to try and bolster the Jewish population of Palestine. In some ways, the state of Israel is not only a result of anti-semitism and the Holocaust, it couldn't exist without it.

The divisions between minorites can still be seen today in Britain for example where there is a big rift between Poles who have lived in Britain since 1945 and those arriving recently since EU expansion.

@OG

i agree with you. the first thing to do was win the war, and oddly the nazi obsession with the camps damaged their ability to wage war.

@Jeremy

As we are getting into subjective experiences, here's mine . . . My neighbour is a lovely old lady. She invited me around for tea. I noticed a picture of a Wehrmacht General on her wall. Her dad. I mentioned I knew a few Yiddish words and she almost dropped her tea cup. Thats in 2005.

Sure there's nice Germans. But there is a German psychology here which is not English, American, Australian or French. My opinion is that these people are and were ripe for Hitler. I still believe that (and I am going out with one).

@OG
Every Jew in the United States during the war knew what was happening in Europe. They lobbied Washington constantly to no avail. British and American officials turned back loads of refugee boats from Europe. Presumably for the same reasons as you have suggested . . . "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." So please don't say that the camps surprised everyone but the upper echelons of the Allied forces.

Your view disappoints me no end. Six million people were killed by the Germans in the camps. Why was the prevention of their deaths not deemed as important as the saving of Allied lives? The quickening of the German defeat simply meant that they hurried the process more. Stuffing more and more humans into showers, and resorting to mass shootings on the spot.

I suppose that not being gay, Jewish, retarded, gypsy or communist, you are simply unable to empathise.

That's called a change of tack. We were not talking about that.

@ MTV, alot of those lobbyists were primarily in the business of pushing for a state of Israel. Most of the refugees who were tuned away were poor. There was a LOT of anti-semitism in the newspapers against Jewish refugees that has frightening parallels with the shite the gutter press churns out today.

Interesting to note that one of Europe's most anti-semitic countries in itself was Poland. Also that there were plenty of non-germans who willingly and gleefully took part in the Holocaust. Many of the monsters that have been exposed in the last few years have been from the Baltic States.

eh? I said 'present day Germans' in my original post. Thats what I was talking about

Agree 100%. There are nice germans, I have a german partner and lots of german friends, but this superior stain still lives on.

Take today for example. Over lunch somebody said that the german university system is the best in the world and even the guys I cound as my friends defended what he said. No evidence of it, just an impression he said, but an impression strong enough to voice as an opinion.

@grtho

"Some "respectible", more middle class Jews who followed zionism actually used the anti-semitism and opression of Jews under fascism to try and bolster the Jewish population of Palestine. In some ways, the state of Israel is not only a result of anti-semitism and the Holocaust, it couldn't exist without it."

And your point is my friend???

Of course the Third Reich led directly to the formation of the State of Israel (PLEASE lets not get onto that one now).

Bloody good argument for the early Zionists, wouldn't you agree?

And many of the earliest Zionist were "Bundists" ie. socialists in the Marxist mould who believed in the best parts of the Manifesto.

It sounds like you are trying to introduce a class angle to whatever it is you were trying to say, but I don't quite understand the point. Are you saying that the Jews deserved what they got because some were bourgeois? Or that the "evil" that is the modern state of Israel shows that the Jews deserved what they got? Or neither?

i think you may be getting your time lines wrong here.

The "boatloads" of people that were turned away was in the late 30's before the concentration camps and death camps really got going. Initially the concentration camps were built to inter criminals, political opponents and other non-desireable. Much like a regular prison in many countries.

Before the Death camps, the jews were forcablly settled into Ghettos, the conditions in which steadily deteriorated. The Final Solution was decided in January 1942. At first, the Jews were carted off to the camps where the healthy males and femaleswere worked to a slow and long death. the sick children and the elderly were put into "separate camps" (ie shot)+

The first real prurpose built death camps with ovens and gas were only built later in 1942 and after in Polish territories, way beyond the reach of the RAF or US Air Force at the time. Extermination on a massive scale with Zyklon B only really got going in 1944. By that time there were no more boatloads of people being turned away. At that time the end of the war was in sight.

STOP. this is a discusion about history, and some extent its intepretation. i'm personal fascinated and willing to learn from anybody here, be it rahul's percpective and knowledge on colonialism, grtho's on communism and stalinism, or yours. but such comments are just emotionalisation of the subject and basicly insulting to others here. should i reply with no i cant emphasis while i am none of the above, in fact i'll stop trying to understand history and just keep on blaming germans for their fathers sins. my wife is german, like sin and jeremy here i've mongrel children,and we're faced with dealing with this history from BOTH sides with understanding and a factual basis which is a little less jingoistic, a little less robotic and a little less emotional.

by the way, dont be suprised at the replies you get

why are you only allowed to deal with history from both sides if you have anglo-german kids?

@grtho

"Interesting to note that one of Europe's most anti-semitic countries in itself was Poland."

Whay is that interesting? At the risk of offending educated Catholics on this site, I would suggest that countries like Poland have hated Jews virulently for eons.

I visited Lithuania to see where my grandfather was shot in the head. Lithuania, like Poland, is an ultra-Catholic country.

The Lithuanians started massacring Jews EVEN before the Wehrmacht tore through. After the War, those Jews that survived turned with open arms to the Communists. Many rose in the ranks of Communist Lithuania. So today, the anti-semitism in modern-day Lithuania is quite comical. I was beaten up in Rociskis, where I was (ironically) visiting the town where my family came from.

There was a death camp outside Vilnius called Panieriai, where 100K people where killed. The pictures are shocking. Naked women clutching their babies standing before huge pits, with Lithuianian/German SS guards aiming carbines at their shaven heads.

Forgotten what the point of this was, but just wanted to share that ...

he didn't say that though, did he? He merely said that because he a German wife and half German kids he WAS facing it from both sides. He didn't say that you couldn't if you didn't.

???

NO!


Glad you know about them.


We can can go off and discuss Israel somewhere else if you like.

Just to say that I don't think that the Holocaust was "just" a "good argument" for the state of Israel. I don't think that the state of Israel as it now is could have even existed without the Holocaust. And that SOME zionists cynically exploited the Holocaust and suffering to push for a state of Israel with the British and American governments. I think the state of Israel still cynically explots the Holocaust for its own purposes.

of course not silly, but it helps didn't mean to infer that your inability to sire children of a mixed european ancestory was a reflection on your thirst for understanding...

(he says writing it quickly before sin whacks me one on the head)

You simply need to understand both sides better with mongrel half breeds. Certainly looking at both sides is admirable, but it becomes more like compulsory with kiddies.

Edit: Forgot to add, yep, Germans have a serious superiority complex. Blinkered krout fools.
Ta, finished.

bloody hell, you nearly posted a nice understanding post about germans... you'll be shopping at morrisons next
lets get back to the discussion its friday yeah!

I'll stick with the half swedish ones. They were pretty much nazis anyway

When it became known that I had a German girlfriend in my narrow minded village one no-brainer did the Hitler salute at me. The attitudes of the Brits back home are so anti German it still shocks me. Arrogant and self righteous.

Another tangent:

In the last months of my stay in Saudi Britain was bombing Iraq on Operation Desert Fox 1998. I saw the Tornadoes flying over my house laden with bombs. One very nice Jordanian guy alwys shook my hand every day until then. One morning he said Should I shake your hand? Your people are murderers." and I could not argue against that. So I know how it feels to be the perpetrator of war.

@gidders - Haha - Don told you about Morrisons and their stock control, did he? Did he do that Northen accent he does for half-witted Yorkshiremen?
As for the thread here's an interesting little factoid - talking about the camps, the Allies knew, but of course had to be careful - our biggest Ally, and who effectively won the war for us, was committing vast attrocities every day - and the Germans had evidence to prove the Katyn Wood massacre.

@don riina - like the views.

@grtho - "And that SOME zionists cynically exploited the Holocaust and suffering to push for a state of Israel with the British and American governments. I think the state of Israel still cynically explots the Holocaust for its own purposes."

(TRYING VERY HARD TO STAY OFF THE ZIONIST ISSUE HERE, BUT . . )

What my dear is cynical about Zionists using the Holocaust to lobby for the state of Israel?

Objectively, it provides a bloody irrefutable argument for modern self-determination. The Holocaust taught the Jews that they need their own state, and it must be defended with every single drop of Jewish blood.

The Holocaust taught tough bastard like Sharon and Barak that no-one is going to waste a grenade on helping a Jew (see OG's comments above).

If they ever come for us again, we will have somewhere to go. That is the whole issue in a nutshell.

mmm so all those soldiers who lost their lives fighting the Nazi mean nothing?

How you managed to twist my posts in your brain to come up with that, i don't know.

I never said that it was a waste of time helping the Jews. I said the camps would be liberated quicker and the suffering ended quicker by concentrating on defeating the enemy, not making political statements like bombing camps.

It is debateable exactly what good this would have done, if any.

I seem to remember reading about an aerial attack near a prison camp. The SS-officers guarding the camp promptly took out 200 prisoners and shot them. Fat lot of good that did.

@OG

And I've already said that the Germans accelerated the killings when the tide of war turned against them. How, therefore, did the Allied reasoning ultimately help save people from the Final Solution?

By 1945 just about all the Jews the Nazis wanted to kill were dead anyway. There are simply no Jews left in these places anymore.

mr vicar, nobody wasted agrenade to help the jews because of the fear of the consequences, not because they were jewish. you realy should read the enigma story, it'll scare you to read how some people had to be sacrificed for the greater good of winning a war.

tide turned 1942.

war ended 1945.

you can fill in the gaps about what should have happened.

This thread has done a great deal to restore my faith in TT on which I recently nearly turned my back.

----------------------

The total irrationality of the Holocaust still amazes me in terms of the resources it consumed from Germany's war effort.

which helped us win the war. as far as people have told me, it wasn't a picknick and everybody was in it to stop something bigger than the loss of 20 million people.

maybe because bombing the camps ONLY became viable after the Normandy landings. Like i said before, the DEATH camps were built in Poland, not in Germany. Allied bombers could not reach the camps until they access to airfields on the continent. The first aerial photograhs made by the US Airforce of Auschwitz Birkenau were made between April 1944 and January 1945. The camp was liberated on the 27th January 1945.

Yes they COULD have bombed the railways between April and January. Would it have helped the suffering and death of all thise millions? I seriously doubt it. Would it have slowed the war effort? Probably, thus prolonging suffering.

i would have said after the stopping of the ardennes offfensive, which wae january 45. up untill then it was essential to be able to here as much communication as possible. the destruction of such politicly secret and sensitive targets would have compromised the whole intelligence gathering operation.

very true Gideon. There are numerous examples of where people, not just Jewish, perished because they did not want the Germans t know that Enigma had been cracked.

Just think how many British and American lives were lost in the Atlantic on those convoys.

@OG

I'm sory but your facts are wrong. SOE knew about Auschwitz early on. Of course the received sources to which you refer will not mention this. Can you imagine the outcry??

My sources, however, were there. I interviewed a Ghetto fighter in London in 1990 as part of a A-level project. He wrote a book. He told me that all Allied supported resistence movements in Europe knew what was going on (I#ve explained this above). Sabotage could have been funded and even spearheaded by Allied operatives on the Continent. Who needed planes?

Which will lead us back to your reply which will be:

"but why should resources have been diverted to disrupting the death camps when the main objective was seen to be the destruction of Axis."

i have actually seen the dated aerial photographs, so i think i am actually right. And to honest (I am no expert analyst of aerial photographs) it could have been any type of camp. You would need corroborating evidence to make a real judgement, like eye witness reports (humint, as they say)

If all the resistance groups knew about the death camps, so too did the local populations. Why did they not do anything about it? Why is the blame being laid solely at the only ones trying to fight the Nazis?

you miss the whole point. what would have been the consequences of this? the whole final solution was a secret kept under wraps. and why stop the death camps, when they were performing a wonderful job of diverting masisve amounts of manpower away from winning the war. every one person who was gassed saved a soilder in normandy, and normandy was a close thing. if the pegasus bridge had not been held...

i was going to post something similar but i feel it may have been attacked with the accusation of:

"HA! i told you so Jews lives are worth less than allied lives."

so i left it.

yes but to be brutaly honest, the jewish lives were worth less. jews were non-combatants, saving one jew would not have speeded up the end of the war. someone made a nasty but correct descision.

there was something on this issue in 'History Today' last month. I'll try and dig it up online

But why Mr Grtho? Your opinions are as valid as everyone else's. I did Marxist economics years ago in my degree and was fascinated by it, as well as having seen first hand aglimpse of the Eastern bloc (go to Dresden and see the ugly buildings - like that all the way to Mongolia)

Marxism has a very valid perspective on today's problems but it is not the one solution, rather one of a more complex set.

TT would not be the same without "the Ken Livingstone of Munich!"

Well, I can't really argue with the kind of argument which goes:

"and why stop the death camps, when they were performing a wonderful job of diverting masisve amounts of manpower away from winning the war. every one person who was gassed saved a soilder in normandy, and normandy was a close thing."

So I shan't.

But I do appreciate some decent debate on this site. Lets keep it up.

Cheers mate, bloody Ken Livingstone, far too right wing, a wishy-washy liberal!

But I'm not justdefined by my politics, there's sekt drums and rock n rolfing carnage as well!

vicar, you lack a will to understand not to argue... try and argue against my point not just shrug the shoulders..

@gideon

Believe me, I love to argue, and I am also big enough to "understand" the views of others, which is precisely why I am bowing out.

Its called a "clash of absolutes". We could be here all year, and it essentially boils down to belief system, which is irrational and unreasoned.

I do agree with your point above though.