Ordinary German's Responsibility for the Holocaust?

[Njaco]

Soren, you may be correct in agreeing with Mr. Walker's assumption on the Nazis and the Vatican but I remember my impression after reading 'Mein kampf' and the books by William Shirer that Hitler held no love for catholics - maybe not as much as he had for the jews but close.

 

[Soren]

Njaco,

It's not just Jim Walker, the author of the site, you can read about it many other places.

But it's true that in general Hitler didn't like any form of religion, the difference was just that he loathed the jews and not the christians which he claimed to actually be helping.

 

[Njaco]

Thanks, I'm not going to argue the refrences he has. Like I said, I alsways thought based on what I have read, the Catholics weren't out of the gunsights either.

 

[Seawitch]

The ordinary German knew nothing of it.

Now thats what most of them say! I don't believe the ordinary German was so gullible either, events like 'Crystal night' put to many ordinary Germans in the picture.
Then again, Hitler said 'The bigger the lie...the more people will believe it'.......but is that true?
I'm half German by the way, quite convenient at a time like this and an Anglo German football match.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Adler,

I am not churching anything up, the Wehrmacht didn't start off executing Soviet POW's, this started after the partisan attacks and mutilation of captured Wehrmacht troops. But the Soviet POWs were neglected from start to finish, and simply because there was no way of feeding them.

The murder of soviet POW's was mainly carried out by the shooting squads the Gestapo. They started it, and the Soviets followed up on it by murdering and mutilating what ever Germans they could capture, and this often meant Wehrmacht soldiers. And so the Wehrmacht carried out their own reprisals, which remarkably weren't worse than they were. Seeing ones buddy mutilated in the manner that some of the captured Wehrmacht soldiers were would send nearly any soldier into a bloodlusting rage.

Yes the poor Germans were always innocent Soren. You are correct...

 

[Juha]

Soren
It's very difficult to believe that it was impossible to feed the PoWs during summer and autumn 1941. And so it is not surprising that not even Alfred Rosenberg, the former editor of the Voelkische Beobachter and from summer 1941 the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories didn't think so. See from one of links Parsifal gave, Rosenberg Letter to Keitel Concerning Maltreatment of USSR Prisoners of War, 28 February 1942 his letter to Keitel on 28 Feb 42. There a high ranking nazi official tries to convict the highest ranking Wehrmacht officer that it wasn't in Germany's interest that Soviet PoWs were dying like flies and gives some simple advices how that can be avoided.

And see secret order to his troops by one of notable German fieldmarshals.
Secret Field Marshal v.Reichenau Order Concerning Conduct of Troops in the Eastern Territories, 10 October 1941
The secret order of Field Marshal v. Reichenau, CG of 6th Army, 10 Oct 41, especially the last part of it.

Von Reichenau was an extreme case but he had a big army in his command and so his orders had wide impact.

Juha

 

[Amsel]

Secret Field Marshal v.Reichenau Order Concerning Conduct of Troops in the Eastern Territories, 10 October 1941

If you take away the nasty racial cannotations, I really don't see anything wrong with these memos. Most of the orders seem vital to invading a large country while being involved in total war.

 

[Soren]

The German army had a ZERO I repeat ZERO ability to feed the millions of Soviet POWs they had under their custody. All the food the nation could produce was already occupied by the German armed forces, and there was simply no way of feeding that number of POWs. So neglect was the only option, that or waste precious ammunition by shooting the prisoners or the unthinkable idea of sending them back to reenlist in the Soviet army. The path chosen was an obvious one.

The executions done by the Wehrmacht were nothing but reprisals, which are bad enough in themselves, provoked by the murder, torture mutilation of Wehrmacht personnel by the Soviets. And the Nazies started it all by murdering Soviet POWs in cold blood.

Yes the poor Germans were always innocent Soren. You are correct...

Adler why are you being like this ? You're acting like a child for christ sake!

Did I say the Germans were innocent? No on the contrary I made it quite clear that the Germans started it, the Soviets then returned the favor. Only point made was that it wasn't the Wehrmacht who started shooting POW's, it was the Gestapo SS shooting squads. The Soviets answered back by murdering mutilating any German soldier they could get their hands on, be it Wehrmacht or SS troops. This in return stirred up reprisals by Wehrmacht.

 

[Juha]

Soren
Quote: "The German army had a ZERO I repeat ZERO ability to feed the millions of Soviet POWs they had under their custody."

The point is that the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories thought otherwise, and I'm inclined to believe that he knew the food situation better than you. And if you read his letter he wanted to use Russian/Ukrainian etc. food supplies to feed the PoWs not German ones.

Amsel
As I saw the order it clear indications that reprisals against civilians were in order and Jews would suffer, IMHO both were against international law, so no wonder that these were secret orders.

Juha

 

[Amsel]

Soren
Quote: "The German army had a ZERO I repeat ZERO ability to feed the millions of Soviet POWs they had under their custody."

The point is that the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories thought otherwise, and I'm inclined to believe that he knew the food situation better than you. And if you read his letter he wanted to use Russian/Ukrainian etc. food supplies to feed the PoWs not German ones.

Amsel
As I saw the order it clear indications that reprisals against civilians were in order and Jews would suffer, IMHO both were against international law, so no wonder that these were secret orders.

Juha

I don't know about that. If you are fighting as a civilian you don't have many rights anywhere. The referals to the Jews is against international law and is evil, but partisans are not protected and martial law is common in warzones. International law is not often follwed in any war.

 

[Juha]

Hello Amsel
I meant this part. "These measures will be extended to that part of the male population who were in a position to hinder or report the attacks. The indifference of numerous apparently anti-soviet elements which originates from a "wait and see" attitude, must give way to a clear decision for active collaboration. If not, no one can com-plain about being judged and treated a member of the Soviet System."

IMHO a state could legally demand loyalty from its citizen but an occupaing force couldn't LEGALLY demand in pain of death that citizens of an enemy state actively hindered forces of their state.

Juha

 

[Amsel]

Point taken, Juha.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Adler why are you being like this ? You're acting like a child for christ sake!

I told you before in a pm.

 

[BombTaxi]

Reichenau's order was, and still is, despicable, and the efforts of the Wehrmacht to implement it give the lie to the oft-repeated myth that the SS were the evil guys and the Wehrmacht were just humble soldiers trying to fight with honour. It wasn't just about killing Jews and partisans (awful as that was), it was also about killing ordinary Russian civilians on the slightest of pretexts. Hoth and Manstein (himself part Jewish) also endorsed violent action against Jews in occupied territory, and even Paulus admitted that the generals by and large complied with Nazi wishes and thereby (and I quote from his time in Soviet captivity) "became completely involved in the consequences and of his [Hitler's] policies and conduct of the war". It was also clear the senior German commanders viewed Judaism and 'Bolshevism' as being part of the same ideological system which needed to be eradicated. By implication, it seems that Soviet POWs and civilians could expect little better from the Wehrmacht than Jews could.

(Source: Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad, Penguin Books, 1999)

I am not saying that the Russians were innocent - thier systematic campaign of rape and looting through Germany in 1945 remains one of the most vile and horrific acts commited by an army against a civilian population, after the conduct of the Germans in Russia in earlier years. But to say that the persecution of Jews was the work of Nazi extremists and not decent ordinary Germans is simply not true - hte Wehrmacht was involved from the top down in this persecution, and no amount of rationalising or excuses will make that fact go away...

 

[syscom3]

......

I am not saying that the Russians were innocent - thier systematic campaign of rape and looting through Germany in 1945 remains one of the most vile and horrific acts commited by an army against a civilian population, ....

Sometimes revenge must be taken. In the rationale of total war in 1945, the Russians cannot be faulted for leveling the score.

 

[BombTaxi]

Absolutely, I cannot deny that it made perfect sense in that time and place, but it was vile nonetheless.

 

[Amsel]

Sometimes revenge must be taken. In the rationale of total war in 1945, the Russians cannot be faulted for leveling the score.

They should have leveled the score against their own despicable goverment as well. The Russians just killed you if you were captured and repatriated, man or women. I have read Antony Beevors book on Stalingrad, as well as The Fall of Berlin 1945. The Eastern front was a despicable war, but it was needed to grind down two of the most horrific regimes in the history of the world. Both regimes were antisemitic and the genocide upon the Russians and Jews was horrific, I pity the Russians who were being killed by the Germans and in greater numbers by their own goverment. Hitlers terrible hate for the Jews ad Slavs were Germany's undoing, and that just shows what happens to people who rely on their goverments. Totalarianism is no excuse, there should have been a rebellion; the problem being that the nation of Germany didn't have a problem with the treatment of the Jewish people so rebellion was unlikely.

 

[Soren]

I told you before in a pm.

No you didn't. You just said I was biased, thats it. Do you feel that justifies you acting like a child ? Come on.

 

[Soren]

Regarding the letter to Keitel,

Fact is that in the letter sent to Keitel it is NOWHERE mentioned that Germany could feed the 3+ million Soviet POWs under custody in the east. It is requested that they be fed within the framework of possibility, unfortunately that meant no food at all.

For there to be enough food for the Soviet POWs the German government would have had to get the POWs into labor first, that was the only way that enough food could be produced for these 3+ million people. And that is also exactly what Rosenberg requests in the letter to Keitel.

 

[vikingBerserker]

In 1940 Stalin ordered the execution of 22k Polish Officiers (most were POWs from the Russian invasion of Poland) and it was carried out so the mentality started before the German invasion.

I find it interesting that we always hear about the Holocaust but we hardly ever hear about Stalin starving the Ukraines from 1932-1933 when 6-7 million people starved so he could make a point.
Ukrainian Famine
Both are equally horrific.