Holocaust Memorial Day today 27th Jan

[Mozilla]

Holocaust was caused by ignorance and could have been prevented.

The west knew what was happening and did nothing! 70 years on we learned nothing.......

[Harleyman]

I very much doubt the holocaust could have been prevented since when the real killing started we were already at war with Germany and the Nazis still occupied Europe.

 

Auschwitz and other concentration camps were turned into mass extermination camps early in the war following a summit by top Nazi leaders in Berlin, Heydrich and Himmler being among them. Prior to that, although deaths occurred mass extermination of prisoners was not the policy. That started to happen after the invasion of Poland and Russia which created an influx of thousands of Jews, Russian POWs and Roma.

 

I don't think until 1945 when these camps started to be liberated that the full horror of what had happened became known to the outside world

 

After one camp was liberated an American General had all the people in a nearby town rounded up and forced to witness the camp and whether true of false help place the bodies in a large burial pit

[tzijlstra]

Holocaust was caused by ignorance and could have been prevented.

The west knew what was happening and did nothing! 70 years on we learned nothing.......

 

I very much doubt the holocaust could have been prevented since when the real killing started we were already at war with Germany and the Nazis still occupied Europe.

 

Auschwitz and other concentration camps were turned into mass extermination camps early in the war following a summit by top Nazi leaders in Berlin, Heydrich and Himmler being among them. Prior to that, although deaths occurred mass extermination of prisoners was not the policy. That started to happen after the invasion of Poland and Russia which created an influx of thousands of Jews, Russian POWs and Roma.

 

I don't think until 1945 when these camps started to be liberated that the full horror of what had happened became known to the outside world

 

After one camp was liberated an American General had all the people in a nearby town rounded up and forced to witness the camp and whether true of false help place the bodies in a large burial pit

 

Sadly, part of the problem is the narrowed narrative on concentration camps that makes your debate happen. Concentration camps were nothing but an advanced form of eugenics. It is easy to point at the Germans as being the sole perpetrators, but nothing could be further from the truth, although in terms of scale WW2 and its atrocities were unprecedented.

 

Several leading British Victorians and Interbellum figures were supporters of eugenics, including Churchill who thought it a solution to solve poverty in the working classes.

 

A very sad aside to this is the faith of babies that were born with deficiencies. It was not unheard of that these poor things were 'put down'.

 

Colonial nations have a long history of eugenics related genocides. The Brits have several dark marks as do the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Germans. The Australians believed that aboriginals were inferior, well into the 20th century, Apartheid is well known and the faith of the native tribes in America does not need a lot of explanation.

 

It is still happening by the way, the Hutu/Tutsi genocide in Rwanda a sad example of using the superior/inferior argument to get men to savagely slay up to a million people purely because they were considered different.

[blake]

 

Auschwitz and other concentration camps were turned into mass extermination camps early in the war following a summit by top Nazi leaders in Berlin, Heydrich and Himmler being among them.

 

you have a tendency to make these sweeping statements of fact without actually being aware of them. Presumably you are talking about the Wannsee Conference, which is not 'early in the war' at all, as if we say the European war started on 1 September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and finished on 7 May 1945 with the signing of Germany's surrender, then it was already 42% over in terms of days lapsed when the Wannsee Conference happened on 20th January 1942. One of the features of the Holocaust is that by the time the murders were taking place on a truly industrial scale by mid to late 1942 and into 1943 in Poland, Germany was already losing in a big way. Most Auschwitz victims were murdered AFTER Germany's surrender at Stalingrad.

 

also Himmler wasn't there, at the Wannsee conference despite the fact that at least one dramatisation on the History Channel or similar depicts him as being there, he wasn't. Most of the people there were total nonentities/bureaucrats hardly anybody today has heard of (Adolf Eichmann was there). Himmler, sometimes wrongly referred to as the 'architect' of the Holocaust (that was Heydrich) did not emerge as its supremo or man-in-charge until after Heydrich's assassination six months after Wannsee.

Edited January 29, 2015 by blake

[Harleyman]

you have a tendency to make these sweeping statements of fact without actually being aware of them. Presumably you are talking about the Wannsee Conference, which is not 'early in the war' at all, as if we say the European war started on 1 September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and finished on 7 May 1945 with the signing of Germany's surrender, then it was already 42% over in terms of days lapsed when the Wannsee Conference happened on 20th January 1942. One of the features of the Holocaust is that by the time the murders were taking place on a truly industrial scale by mid to late 1942 and into 1943 in Poland, Germany was already losing in a big way. Most Auschwitz victims were murdered AFTER Germany's surrender at Stalingrad.

 

also Himmler wasn't there, at the Wannsee conference despite the fact that at least one dramatisation on the History Channel or similar depicts him as being there, he wasn't. Most of the people there were total nonentities/bureaucrats hardly anybody today has heard of (Adolf Eichmann was there). Himmler, sometimes wrongly referred to as the 'architect' of the Holocaust (that was Heydrich) did not emerge as its supremo or man-in-charge until after Heydrich's assassination six months after Wannsee.

 

I was wrong on a few things apparently but another poster claimed that the Holocaust could have been prevented and which I pointed out could not have been prevented because the Allies were far from being anywhere near the camps until just a few months before the war ended

 

Hitler's pre-war treatment of the Jews, Crystal Night etc would if it happened today have meant major sanctions and boycotts being imposed on Germany but in 1938 France and Britain seemed almost to be in some sort of trance when it came to taking measures against Hitler

[blake]

The only way the Holocaust could have been prevented would have been to prevent eastern Europe, where the massive majority of victims were, from being occupied in the first place. Auschwitz or any of the other death camps could not have been attacked from the air either with any confidence asvsome people claim that it could have been in any case by later 1944 by which time enough Jews had escaped and told their stories for the allies to begin to realise the enormity of what was happening, 80 or 90% of the victims were already dead.

[skinz]

 

Hitler's pre-war treatment of the Jews, Crystal Night etc would if it happened today have meant major sanctions and boycotts being imposed on Germany but in 1938 France and Britain seemed almost to be in some sort of trance when it came to taking measures against Hitler

 

Not sure what any of this is supposed to imply. "Crystal Night" was obvious to the whole world, inc the US..why it should be the preserve of France and Britain to recognize, sanction and boycott Germany alone seems a bit weird. Corporate America inc William Randolph Hearst an American newspaper publisher wasn't too shy from doing business with Nazis and fascists, let alone boycotting and sanctioning them.

 

Your history always seem to be mostly school boy anecdotal based on events mostly available for the majority through 40 minute discovery channels, which sometimes are embellished for effect rather than fact based laborious research.

[Harleyman]

Not sure what any of this is supposed to imply. "Crystal Night" was obvious to the whole world, inc the US..why it should be the preserve of France and Britain to recognize, sanction and boycott Germany alone seems a bit weird. Corporate America inc William Randolph Hearst an American newspaper publisher wasn't too shy from doing business with Nazis and fascists, let alone boycotting and sanctioning them.

 

Your history always seem to be mostly school boy anecdotal based on events mostly available for the majority through 40 minute discovery channels, which sometimes are embellished for effect rather than fact based laborious research.

 

In 1938 America was mostly isolationist in sentiment. The general opinion was that after WW One it was better to let Europe deal with it's own problems The world then was not the global village it is now. The Atlantic seemed a vast distance away from Europe and it was only a matter of years before that the first non stop flight across the Atlantic had taken place.

 

There were plenty of people doing business with Germany, Ford motor Company and General Motors among others and there was a strong feeling of admiration for what Hitler had done for Germany present among the British upper classes and the aristocracy up to and including Edward VIII. Henry Ford great man that he was is also known to have been an anti-Semite.

 

I suspect that there was a general feeling among the Hitler admirers that Adolf had finally put the Socialists and Communists firmly in their place and it would have been a" jolly good idea" if it were to happen in Britain also

 

---------- Post added 29-01-2015 at 06:21 ----------

 

The only way the Holocaust could have been prevented would have been to prevent eastern Europe, where the massive majority of victims were, from being occupied in the first place. Auschwitz or any of the other death camps could not have been attacked from the air either with any confidence asvsome people claim that it could have been in any case by later 1944 by which time enough Jews had escaped and told their stories for the allies to begin to realise the enormity of what was happening, 80 or 90% of the victims were already dead.

 

Obviously those people know little or nothing about how difficult pin point bombing was in WW2. Half the bombing raids on Germany over three years missed their intended targets and anyway those raids would have killed prisoners also

Edited January 29, 2015 by Harleyman

[LeMaquis]

Holocaust was caused by ignorance and could have been prevented.

The west knew what was happening and did nothing! 70 years on we learned nothing.......

 

What a completely moronic post. The people carrying out the Holocaust knew exactly what they were doing. When you say the west did nothing who do you mean by the west and what could they have done? They were actually at war with Nazi Germany. The concentration camps were east of Germany and so on the Russian side. It was the Russians who liberated Auschwitz.

 

As for not having learnt anything 70 years on, a lot of people have learnt a lot. You on the other hand...