WW2 politics, and leading up to the War and beyond...

[Marcus]

[bolding removed]
I just saw that Markk's post to Morley included a reposting of the section of the Cooper transcript that includes the part that's been shown to completely untrue. Markk has posted this lie multiple times in this thread, after it's been shown to be a lie. Markk has no credibility.

What part? He spoke generally, on a podcast, for two paragraphs about this. If you are talking about SS Sturmbannführer (a major) Rolf-Heinz Höppner's letter on 16 July 1941, what did the letter to Eichmann say?

You quoted this if I remember correctly.... what did that letter say, please paste the letter and we can compare it to your proof text, and what Cooper said in the podcast. You did read it right? If you haven't read it, and you can't find it, I can paste it here for you.

Recently, Darryl Cooper, in a podcast with Tucker Carlson, made statements that grossly misrepresent the German Nazi regime’s actions during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Cooper claimed that the Nazis were "unprepared" to handle millions of prisoners of war and political dissidents, suggesting their brutality was a result of poor planning. This statement is patently false. The German invasion of the Soviet Union was long-planned and included genocidal strategies of dealing with the local Jewish population not as a response to logistical challenges, but as an ideological one.

Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan remarked:

"Tucker Carlson and his guest Darryl Cooper engaged in one of the most repugnant forms of Holocaust denial of recent years. These far-fetched conspiracy theories are not only dangerous and malevolent, they are antisemitic."

Cooper attempts to prove his mistaken point by quoting a letter supposedly from a German Wehrmacht officer, where he indicates that the murder of civilians and POWS in the USSR was out of “humane” concerns due to insufficient food supplies. This, too, is patently false. In reality, the letter by SS officer Rolf-Heinz Höppner on 16 July 1941, advocated for the murder of all the Jews in the western region of occupied Poland, called by the Nazis the Warthegau. Misrepresenting this as anything but intentional mass murder distorts history and downplays the Nazis responsibility for the Holocaust and for their other crimes.

Head of Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research Prof. Dan Michman states:

"Mr. Cooper isn't known for having done any scholarly research on Nazism and the Holocaust, and his statements in this interview clearly demonstrate his ignorance."

It is crucial to uphold the truth of these events. Approximately six million Jews, including some four million killed near their homes in Eastern Europe, were murdered as part of the Nazis’ systematic genocide called by them “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” Any attempt to distort these historical facts or explain this away sanitizes these genocidal crimes and dishonors the memory of the victims.

You asked 'which part' but apparently you figured that out. It's not my 'proof text,' it's a quote and you left out the reference, please don't do that:
https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release ... 16-52.html

Yes, I read the letter being referred to, and yes, I agree with their assessment, which is the part you continue to post even though Cooper is incorrect:

Cooper attempts to prove his mistaken point by quoting a letter supposedly from a German Wehrmacht officer, where he indicates that the murder of civilians and POWS in the USSR was out of “humane” concerns due to insufficient food supplies. This, too, is patently false. In reality, the letter by SS officer Rolf-Heinz Höppner on 16 July 1941, advocated for the murder of all the Jews in the western region of occupied Poland, called by the Nazis the Warthegau. Misrepresenting this as anything but intentional mass murder distorts history and downplays the Nazis responsibility for the Holocaust and for their other crimes.
https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release ... 16-52.html

And no I won't provide the letter for you. If you want to argue Cooper wasn't wrong, make your own argument (like Morley, I see no value in your round and round obfuscations) but it's been established to my satisfaction that his statement re this was in error.

[Gadianton]

As a tidbit for tonight, consider this part Cooper's statement Morley documented:

We don’t have the food to feed these people. And one of them actually says, ‘Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn’t it be more humane to just finish them off quickly now

"The Nazis were humanitarians!" is what Cooper is trying to say, and millions of his MAGA fans say, "He does have a point, whether you agree or not."

But this is taking one statement, one that was far more likely to be political posturing than true concern, a cheap justification, and applying it to this murky, overall situation that he's trying to paint that suddenly, here are all these Jews and we just don't have food for them.

You can't take such a statement as counting for anything, when the Nazis were also the architect of what they called, "der Hungerplan", which according to wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan

the Hunger Plan intended to create an artificial famine in Eastern Europe, which would have resulted in deaths of around 31 to 45 million inhabitants through forced starvation.[4][5]

So the Nazis drew up a plan to starve 31 to 45 million people, but Cooper tries to convince MAGA (successfully) that "they felt bad" about people going without food.

The irony is:

The plans to starve the entire civilian population of the occupied territories had been abandoned by the end of 1941, because the goal was considered to surpass the capability of the German military forces

So here's Cooper and Markk trying to tell us:

They launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war

therefore, they were caught unprepared to feed all of these people they desperately wanted to feed.

The reality is, they launched a starvation campaign where they were logistically unprepared to capture all the food they needed to in order to kill 40 million people, and abandoned the campaign having only achieved 10% of the goal.

[Markk]

Where did Cooper say accidental Holocaust? That is just a lie. Can you cut and paste from the transcript where he said that?

“They went in with no plan for that, and they just threw these people into camps, and millions of people ended up dead.”

Oops. I hate it when that happens.

At least they seem to have worked out things after 1941 with a better planned and more humane holocaust, but Cooper didn’t get into that part.

Lol...that means accidental Holocaust?

[Markk]

As a tidbit for tonight, consider this part Cooper's statement Morley documented:

We don’t have the food to feed these people. And one of them actually says, ‘Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn’t it be more humane to just finish them off quickly now

"The Nazis were humanitarians!" is what Cooper is trying to say, and millions of his MAGA fans say, "He does have a point, whether you agree or not."

But this is taking one statement, one that was far more likely to be political posturing than true concern, a cheap justification, and applying it to this murky, overall situation that he's trying to paint that suddenly, here are all these Jews and we just don't have food for them.

You can't take such a statement as counting for anything, when the Nazis were also the architect of what they called, "der Hungerplan", which according to wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan

the Hunger Plan intended to create an artificial famine in Eastern Europe, which would have resulted in deaths of around 31 to 45 million inhabitants through forced starvation.[4][5]

So the Nazis drew up a plan to starve 31 to 45 million people, but Cooper tries to convince MAGA (successfully) that "they felt bad" about people going without food.

The irony is:

The plans to starve the entire civilian population of the occupied territories had been abandoned by the end of 1941, because the goal was considered to surpass the capability of the German military forces

So here's Cooper and Markk trying to tell us:

They launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war

therefore, they were caught unprepared to feed all of these people they desperately wanted to feed.

The reality is, they launched a starvation campaign where they were logistically unprepared to capture all the food they needed to in order to kill 40 million people, and abandoned the campaign having only achieved 10% of the goal.

Here is the letter, I assume, that Cooper was paraphrasing....I was hoping Marcus would paste, but it fits well here with what you just wrote.

Context and title...."Solution of the Jewish Question." Note the date after the hunger plan. Point being, one, there was not a concrete plan that everyone was on board with as I stated several times here. And two, Cooper is paraphrasing this SS officer, he is not just making it up. Was the Hunger Plan the Plan? Was Shooting them the Plan, was working them the plan?

I'll quote Christopher Browning one more time when he wrote......it is worthy to ponder, given all the plans, and actions that evolved.

After several decades of debate, historians have reached relative consensus on a number of important points concerning the decisions for the Final Solution. First, there was no single decision, no “big bang,” that produced the Final Solution. Rather, there were a series of decisions taken incrementally; the decision-making process was cumulative and prolonged. Second, the Final Solution on Soviet territory did not result from a clear decision and unequivocal instructions given to the Einsatzgruppen prior to the invasion on June 22, 1941. Instead closure of this phase of the decision-making process was reached in mid-summer, and both awareness and implementation of the new goal spread unevenly across the Eastern Front. Third, there is more continuity than discontinuity between the decisions for the Final Solution taken in 1941 and those behind the policies of ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering—what the Nazis euphemistically called “population policy” or Bevölkerungspolitik—in 1939–40. Fourth, decision-making did not abruptly stop in 1941; vital decisions continued to be made in 1942 and even later. Finally, most historians agree that the decision-making process was an interactive one between the center and the periphery, and it was based on both consensus and polycracy. It must be studied from below as well as from above.

L Hö/S
To the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
Office IV B 4
to the attention of SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann
Berlin

Dear Comrade Eichmann,
Attached please find a memorandum summarizing various meetings at the local Reichsstatthalterei. I would appreciate your occasional feedback on it. Some of the things sound fantastic, but in my opinion, they are entirely feasible.

SS-Sturmbannführer

1 Enclosement

L Hö/S Posen, 16 July 1941

Memo

Re.: Solution of the Jewish Question

During meetings at the Reichsstatthalterei, the issue of the Jewish question in the Reichsgau Wartheland was brought up by various parties. The following solution is proposed there:

1. All Jews of the Warthegau will be taken to a camp for 300,000 Jews, which will be constructed in the closest proximity possible to the coal transport route in the form of barracks, and will include barracks-style facilities for economic activities, tailoring, shoemaking, etc.
2. All Jews of the Warthegau will be brought to this camp. Able-bodied Jews can be assembled into work units as needed and pulled out of the camp.
3. According to SS-Brigadeführer Albert, such a camp can be guarded with significantly fewer police forces than is currently the case. Additionally, the risk of epidemics, which repeatedly threatens the surrounding population in Litzmannstadt and other ghettos, is minimized.
4. There is a danger this winter that the Jews may not all be able to be fed. It is seriously worth considering whether the most humane solution is not to eliminate the Jews, as far as they are not capable of working, by some quick-acting agent. In any case, this would be more pleasant than letting them starve.
5. Furthermore, the proposal was made to sterilize all Jewish women in this camp who are still expecting children, so that with this generation, the Jewish problem is indeed completely solved.
6. The Reichsstatthalter has not yet commented on this matter. There is the impression that Government President Übelhör does not want the ghetto in Litzmannstadt to disappear, as he seems to be making quite a profit from it. As an example of how one can profit from Jews, I was informed that the Reich Ministry of Labor pays RM 6 from a special fund for every Jew employed in work, but the Jew costs only 80 Pfg.

SS-Sturmbannführer

https://holocausthistory.site/letter-of ... july-1941/

[canpakes]

“They went in with no plan for that, and they just threw these people into camps, and millions of people ended up dead.”

Oops. I hate it when that happens.

At least they seem to have worked out things after 1941 with a better planned and more humane holocaust, but Cooper didn’t get into that part.

Lol...that means accidental Holocaust?

Yes, if it’s phrased that way. That’s why I asked you 17 weeks ago why you were defending that phrasing.

[Markk]

Lol...that means accidental Holocaust?

Yes, if it’s phrased that way. That’s why I asked you 17 weeks ago why you were defending that phrasing.

Actually you keep after me about a week ago to answer this question.....

Markk, can you explain why the Nazis “kept the Jews in ghettos and worked and starved them to death for the most part, when they were not beating and shooting them”… but then felt stressed when they rounded them up and couldn’t starve them fast enough while stuffed into concentration camps?

Which after the life of this thread, which is only 10 days old, has been been beaten to death over and over in several different ways. But was is another lie between friends.

[Kishkumen]

L Hö/S
To the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
Office IV B 4
to the attention of SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann
Berlin

Dear Comrade Eichmann,
Attached please find a memorandum summarizing various meetings at the local Reichsstatthalterei. I would appreciate your occasional feedback on it. Some of the things sound fantastic, but in my opinion, they are entirely feasible.

SS-Sturmbannführer

1 Enclosement

L Hö/S Posen, 16 July 1941

Memo

Re.: Solution of the Jewish Question

During meetings at the Reichsstatthalterei, the issue of the Jewish question in the Reichsgau Wartheland was brought up by various parties. The following solution is proposed there:

1. All Jews of the Warthegau will be taken to a camp for 300,000 Jews, which will be constructed in the closest proximity possible to the coal transport route in the form of barracks, and will include barracks-style facilities for economic activities, tailoring, shoemaking, etc.
2. All Jews of the Warthegau will be brought to this camp. Able-bodied Jews can be assembled into work units as needed and pulled out of the camp.
3. According to SS-Brigadeführer Albert, such a camp can be guarded with significantly fewer police forces than is currently the case. Additionally, the risk of epidemics, which repeatedly threatens the surrounding population in Litzmannstadt and other ghettos, is minimized.
4. There is a danger this winter that the Jews may not all be able to be fed. It is seriously worth considering whether the most humane solution is not to eliminate the Jews, as far as they are not capable of working, by some quick-acting agent. In any case, this would be more pleasant than letting them starve.
5. Furthermore, the proposal was made to sterilize all Jewish women in this camp who are still expecting children, so that with this generation, the Jewish problem is indeed completely solved.
6. The Reichsstatthalter has not yet commented on this matter. There is the impression that Government President Übelhör does not want the ghetto in Litzmannstadt to disappear, as he seems to be making quite a profit from it. As an example of how one can profit from Jews, I was informed that the Reich Ministry of Labor pays RM 6 from a special fund for every Jew employed in work, but the Jew costs only 80 Pfg.

SS-Sturmbannführer

https://holocausthistory.site/letter-of ... july-1941/

I have changed the bold to emphasize what lays bare the entire point of what the Germans were doing to the Jews. Context is important. You can isolate one statement and try to twist it any way you want, but put it back in context and your ruse is revealed.

The Nazis and other antisemites believed there was a "Jewish Problem." That problem was the existence of Jews and what they wrongly believed precipitated from their existence. Antisemites believe that the Jews are a source of great evil. What is their solution to this "problem"? Eliminate the Jews. Genocide.

The line in this letter about sterilizing all Jewish women who are still expecting children says it all. Horrific.

There are no excuses or defenses for this. It is evil.

[canpakes]

Yes, if it’s phrased that way. That’s why I asked you 17 weeks ago why you were defending that phrasing.

Actually you keep after me about a week ago …

Yes. I’m exaggerating. : )

… to answer this question.....

Markk, can you explain why the Nazis “kept the Jews in ghettos and worked and starved them to death for the most part, when they were not beating and shooting them”… but then felt stressed when they rounded them up and couldn’t starve them fast enough while stuffed into concentration camps?

Which after the life of this thread, which is only 10 days old, has been been beaten to death over and over in several different ways. But was is another lie between friends.

Between Carlson and Cooper, maybe.

[Gadianton]

Cooper's point was at the beginning of the war they were not ready for all the POWs and Jews. When they invaded Poland the Germans, basically overnight, had 3 million Jews to deal with. And again they had six camps. They took around 400k Polish POWs. They took 2 million French POWs in the Battle for France 6 months or so later. Then Barbarossa, they had by early 1942 3.5 Million Russian POWs.

These sentences, to justify Cooper's claims of "millions of millions of POWs and so forths" that there wasn't enough food for, are vacuous and pointless.

Just focusing on the bolded sentence, It appears that there were 3.3 million Jews in Poland when the Nazis invaded, and the total population of Poland was around 30 million. Why, after invading Poland, did they suddenly have 3 million Jews to "deal with", rather than 30 million Poles to deal with?

[Morley]

To my knowledge, no one is saying that the specific Nazi plans about the Jews did not evolve--and tragically so. That's pretty well documented historically.
What's your next gripe?

Your knowledge in limited here then, and I am not griping I am trying to have a discussion. However you yourself wrote this..."You know, from all the history you’ve read, that the Nazis had the extermination planned from the beginning. Cooper is suggesting otherwise."
Then you correctly wrote...
You’re right to correct me. The Nazi plans for dealing with the Jews evolved over time, becoming more and more radicalized as the war progressed. However, none of their plans had anything to do with being humane, as Cooper suggested. Gassing someone is not a humane solution to the problem of shooting them.
If you have been reading what I, and Doc, has written, expulsion was very real up until '41 and even beyond in a few cases.....I read somewhere the other day that around 66k Jews were allowed to deport from Germany in Hitler's early reign.
It doesn't matter Morley, it is an interesting dig, and it is history, and it is not like we are all experts here, there is so much to learn. You don't have to agree with Cooper, I certainly don't on everything, but if you listened to his podcasts, and gave him a chance, you would understand what he spoke in a different light.

This is a misdirect and a rehash. It's not an answer to my question. And you're wrong, it does matter. You pointed folks to the interview, asked that everyone listen to it, and requested that everyone give Cooper a fair hearing.

Many of us want to know why. What point was Cooper making that has not already been made by historians? What was it that you wanted us to learn? Folks read, listened, researched, and gave their reactions. Your reply is always, gee, they must not have actually watched the interview because they didn't come away with--umm, what?! You either won't say or don't know.

You say it's not a soft peddling of the Holocaust. You also maintain that it's not the suggestion that Churchill was "the true villain of WWII" and Hitler and the Nazis were not so bad as they're painted. You acknowledge that historians agree that the run-up to the Final Solution evolved over time. Given all that, I'm not sure what it is that you want everyone to take away from this. You say Cooper has something unique o say, but you won't type out a sentence to tell us what it is.

Why are you being so coy about this?

Again: What is it that you think we should be taking away from this interview that has not been already said or agreed upon by all the historians you've been reading and studying for the last 40 years?

If it's nothing special, please just tell us that.